Appearance
SMS Broadcast Content
The Content tab holds the actual SMS body. Toggle between Settings (compose) and Preview (see how it renders in a phone bubble).
Message body
A simple text editor with merge-tag support. Click the merge-tag picker to insert personalization variables like first name, last name, donation amount, or any custom contact field. At send time these are replaced with each recipient's actual values.
Character counter and segments
SMS messages are billed and delivered in segments. The footer of the editor shows two numbers:
- Characters — total length of your message (after merge-tag expansion using the longest possible value).
- Segments — how many SMS segments will be required to deliver it.
Segment math
| Encoding | Chars per segment |
|---|---|
| GSM-7 (plain English) | 160 |
| Unicode (emoji, special chars, accents) | 70 |
Including a single emoji or special character (curly quotes, em-dashes, etc.) forces the entire message into Unicode encoding, dropping the per-segment limit from 160 to 70 characters. This can double or triple your segment count and your send cost.
Length warnings
- 160+ characters — yellow warning. The message will split into 2+ segments.
- 1600+ characters — red warning. Most carriers reject messages over 10 segments (≈1600 chars). Trim the message before sending.
Preview bubble
Toggle to Preview to see the message rendered as it would appear on an iOS or Android lock screen, including how the segments break visually. Merge tags resolve against a sample contact for preview purposes.
Link shortening
Long URLs in SMS bodies are not auto-shortened — every character counts toward your segment math. Shorten links manually (Bitly, your own short-link service) before pasting them in.