How do Inbound Rules work? – Incoming/Reply SMS options
How do Inbound Rules work?
Inbound rules offer you a set of preset automations that will trigger when receiving replies to your messages. In other words, “when someone replies to my campaign, do ‘x’.”
Your account will have some standard rules, like the “Opt Out” rule that moves anyone replying “Stop” to the Opt Out contact list.
But by going to your Message Settings, you can choose from a series of automations. These are the most commonly used ones:
- AUTO_REPLY: this is a very popular rule that allows you to set an automatic SMS reply to the user based on certain criteria. For example:
- “Hey {first name}, would you like to order the fish or the pasta at the team dinner? Respond with FISH or PASTA”
- “FISH”
- “Great choice {first name}! We’ve got your order noted and look forward to see you at the party.”
- EMAIL_FIXED: This is often used for people who are doing lead generation and want to get replies forwarded to an email. As an example, when leads engage with your SMS, you can have their replies forwarded to “sales@company.com” and have the SDR team chase up on the opportunities.
- SMS: Similar to the email rule, where you can forward replies to a mobile number.
- MOVE_CONTACT: This one is often used in conjunction with other rules, but it essentially allows you to move a contact in a new contact list when they engage.
- For example, if you have a contact list called “Leads January” to whom you send a campaign, for all the replies you can move the respondent to a new contact list called “January MQLs”. This makes it easier to sort through the opportunities.
How many rules can I have?
Technically, you can have as many rules as you want, but only 10 will trigger for a given message. For every inbound reply, the ClickSend platform will run through your rules and look for a “match”. If the rule is a match for that reply, it will trigger the automation. The platform will then continue to look for matching rules up to a total of 10 rules.
Note that the platform will run through the rules based on the Rule ID, or in other words, in order of creation. So the oldest rules will be applied first, then the newest.
What are all the inbound rule options?
- AUTO_REPLY: Send a SMS back to the user
- EMAIL_USER: Forward as email to user who send the message
- EMAIL_FIXED: Forward as email to dedicated address
- URL: Forward to URL
- SMS: Forward as SMS to a dedicated mobile number
- POLL: Add to poll API inbox - Poll our server for updates
- GROUP_SMS: Send Group SMS to contact list
- MOVE_CONTACT: Move contact to a list
- CREATE_CONTACT: Create a contact and add the phone number from the incoming SMS sender
- CREATE_CONTACT_PLUS_EMAIL: Create contact. Also add the email address from the SMS body
- SMPP: forward SMS to SMPP bind - contact us to have this setup.
Want to find out more?
Hop on our weekly demos and ask all your questions.