Introduction
What is a text campaign?
A text campaign can be defined as a script you want to send via text message and the list of contacts who will receive it. Creating a text campaign is as easy as adding your contacts and scripts to Spoke. You can also customize your campaign to set up data collection via tags or scripted replies, VAN integration, and more.
How are text campaigns sent out?
Spoke offers you two ways to send out your text campaigns: classic peer-to-peer mode, where every text is sent out individually, or blast mode, where the initial script in your campaign is sent out automatically, and subsequent replies are sent out individually.
When do you need a text campaign?
Most Spoke administrators build a campaign for each group of contacts being targeted with a specific script.
For example, if you want to recruit attendees for an upcoming campaign rally and plan to send everyone the same recruitment message, that would make for one campaign. If you also want to recruit volunteers for a phone bank, you’d likely want a separate group of contacts and a different set of scripts. Your event recruitment and phonebank recruitment initiatives would make for two different text campaigns.
You can also copy your campaign scripts to reuse them with a different group of contacts. In this case, the message sent would be the same, but you’d have more than one campaign because you’d be targeting more than one group of contacts.
Create a new campaign or copy an existing campaign
How to create a new text campaign
Go to your Spoke admin view and click on "Campaigns". To create a new text campaign, click on the green + sign located in the bottom right corner of the page.
To create a new campaign, click the green circle with the + icon in the bottom right corner of the Campaigns page.
Campaign creation / edit page
After clicking the green + button or copying a campaign, you’ll be brought to the new campaign’s creation page. This is where you’ll load your contacts, add your scripts, and customize the campaign’s settings.
Example of the campaign creation page on a peer-to-peer campaign. This is where you upload contacts, specify your scripts, and customize that campaign’s settings.
You’ll need to fill out the “Basics”, “Contacts”, and “Script” sections in order to access the “Start Your Campaign” button at the top right of the campaign. Clicking this button will activate your campaign so that you can send your texts.
Note: Always click “Save and go to next section” as you navigate between sections.
If you're sending texts in the classic peer-to-peer mode, you’ll also need to use either the “Texters” or “Assignment Management” sections to assign texts to the people who will send them out.
The campaign creation page also has optional features to let you customize your campaign further, which we'll cover in more depth below.
How to copy a campaign
Instead of starting from scratch, you can also copy a campaign to re-use its name, description, phone number settings, scripts, VAN integration, VAN action handlers, and texter sidebar settings.
You can copy campaigns at any point, even if you haven't started them yet.
To copy a campaign that hasn't been started yet, click “Copy Campaign” on the top of the campaign’s creation page.
To create a copy a campaign in draft status, click the "Copy Campaign" button at the top of the edit/creation page.
To copy a campaign that has been started, go to the "Campaigns" page, then click on the name of the campaign to open its data dashboard. Click on the "Copy Campaign" button in the menu located in the upper right corner.
To copy a campaign that is running, click the "Copy Campaign" button at the top of the data display page.
Step 1: Name and describe your campaign in "Basics"
The first step in creating a campaign is to give it a name and description in the "Basics" section. You won't be able to start your campaign without filling out the name and description fields.
Titles commonly include the date of texting, information about the group of contacts like their time zone or locality, and the campaign’s purpose. Descriptions can be used to share instructions or set expectations. For example, you might name your campaign “6.21.21 East Side Volunteer Recruitment” and give it a description like “Recruiting volunteers for next Tuesday’s canvass in the East Side”.
Your team has a default time zone and texting hours - the window when texts can be sent from the campaign - set up in the “Settings” section. If you want your campaign to use custom texting hours, you can override this default in the "Basics" section. Simply select “Override default texting hours?”, then choose the specific hours and timezone.
Please note that legal texting hours are within 8 am and 9 pm in the timezone of your contact.
Image displaying campaign-specific texting hours settings, accessed by overriding the default hours
The "Basics" section also lets you customize how the campaign looks to texters by adding friendly names, additional descriptions, colors, and images texters can see. Read more about these optional settings here.
Step 2 (Optional): Connect your campaign to NGP VAN or Action Kit
Campaign data can be synced to and from VAN. You can also sync contacts from Action Kit to your campaign. The "Integrations" section of a campaign allows you to connect the campaign to any VAN API Key or Action Kit user that has been added to your Spoke.
We support direct two-way integrations for the EveryAction suite, including Votebuilder My Voters, Votebuilder My Campaign, EveryAction / LAN, Smart VAN, and NGP. The Action Kit integration allows you to pull reports into campaigns but does not sync data back.
To connect a campaign to a key, click on the dropdown menu (it will show "No Integration" by default). You should see a list of the keys you have entered into your Spoke instance.
Image displaying the Integrations dropdown menu. Use this to connect your campaign to the right key.
If you don’t see the key you expect, confirm it was entered into your Spoke instance.
Navigate to Settings in the left-hand menu of your Spoke admin view
Click the Manage API Keys button in the upper right corner to see the list of keys entered into your Spoke
To add an API key, you’ll need to request your API key from your VAN administrator.
Once you have the key, click on the green + sign in the bottom right corner of the Manage API Keys page to proceed.
See here for more information about using VAN integration, and here for more information about Action Kit.
Step 3: Select your sending phone number
Depending whether you've registered for 10DLC or toll-free phone numbers, you may have the option to choose which phone numbers are used to send your text campaign. The "Phone Numbers" section allows you to choose between phone number types and, on 10DLC, even select a specific phone number for sending that campaign.
Background: When texts are sent in Spoke, they’re coming from phone numbers we provide based on your preferences. Texters in your organization will never be sending messages from their own phone numbers. Some organizations choose to send texts from phone numbers with local area codes (10DLC), others from phone numbers with toll-free area codes; yet others from both.
Change your campaign phone number type
To toggle between sending SMS and MMS on 10DLC, for example, click into "Phone Numbers" and open the dropdown menu. Select the phone number type you want to use, i.e. "10DLC Phone Number - SMS", then hit Save.
Image above: Select the numbers used to send your text campaign.
Choose specific 10DLC phone numbers
10DLC allows your organization to access multiple local phone numbers for SMS campaigns. Owners can add phone numbers to a registration using the "10DLC SMS Numbers" feature. Once phone numbers have been added, you can select the specific phone number you want to use for your campaign.
First, make sure that "10DLC Phone Number" has been selected. Then, you'll be able to view a list of all available phone numbers, and select the one you want to use from a dropdown menu.
Image above: Once you have more than one 10DLC number on your account, you’ll see the option to choose between them in the “Phone Numbers” section of campaigns.
Step 4: Import your contact list
Every campaign needs a list of contacts to text. The "Contacts" section is where you import your contact list. There are three different ways to import your contacts into your campaign:
You can upload your contacts as a CSV file. Spoke will accept CSV files containing up to 250,000 contacts.
You can select a saved list from NGP VAN. This option is only available if you’ve entered an API key into your Spoke. Lists selected from VAN can contain up to 250,000 contacts.
If you’d like to text people you’ve texted before, you can also use the Follow-Up Campaign feature to re-target contacts who were filtered or who match specific criteria (like answering a survey question or not responding at all).
If you've integrated Spoke with Action Kit, you can also upload contacts from an Action Kit report.
Image displaying the dropdown with the four options for uploading contacts.
Option 1: Upload a CSV File
To upload a CSV, select “CSV Upload” and click the “Upload Contacts” button. This will allow you to select a file from your computer.
At minimum, CSV files must contain these column headers: firstname, lastname, and cell (case insensitive). Even if you have a list of just phone numbers and no names, the CSV file must contain columns with the firstname and lastname headers.
Select the file and hit "Save". Spoke will read your file and remove opt-outs, duplicates, landlines, and contacts whose first names would populate as a slur. You can read more about uploading scripts from CSV files here.
Note: if you have connected your campaign to a VAN key, your CSV must include a column with the VAN IDs of your contacts in order to sync with VAN. The column header must be named “vanid” (no quotes, case insensitive).
If your CSV file includes columns other than the ones listed above, these will upload as custom or dynamic fields. The format for custom fields is "word" if one word, and "word_word" if two words, e.g. "age" or "polling_location".
Note: to bulk upload the results of your campaign to a voter file platform other than VAN (i.e. PDI, NationBuilder, or any other CRM), include a column with ID numbers titled “external_id” (no quotes, case insensitive).
Option 2: Select a Saved List from VAN
To pull up a saved list from VAN, select the corresponding VAN instance from the “Contact Load Method” drop-down in the Contacts section of the campaign. Then, type the name of the list into the Search field. If the list has only just been saved, it may take a few minutes for it to appear. For more information about utilizing the VAN sync, click here.
Spoke can only read saved lists from VAN. Saved searches will not appear for selection. You will need to save your list in a folder shared with the Scale to Win API user. Lists selected from VAN must contain less than 150,000 contacts.
If you've set up your NGP VAN integration within a campaign, we'll automatically sync back "Texted" as a canvass status to any contact you proceed to message in your texting campaign. We will only apply this canvass status once per contact per texting campaign.
We do not sync data back automatically to NGP VAN for contacts who respond, but you can set up additional canvass statuses, survey responses, event statuses, and activist codes to sync back to NGP VAN through our branched scripting and tags features.
Option 3: Build a Follow-Up Campaign
If you want to text people you’ve texted before, you can create a follow-up campaign. Follow-up campaigns allow you to narrow your target audience to contacts who responded (or never responded) in a specific way. Click here to learn more about how to utilize this feature.
Option 4: Upload an Action Kit report
If you've connected an Action Kit user with Spoke, you can use the contacts from a report. In your campaign, select the Action Kit user in the Integrations section. Then, select "Action Kit" in the Contacts section, and type in the number of the report you want to use.
After Upload: Removing Duplicates and Landlines
Once you’ve uploaded your contacts, Spoke will remove duplicate, invalid, and landline numbers as well as contacts that do not have a phone number. Numbers removed in this way will not be texted. Spoke will also remove any opt-outs. If you are syncing a list from VAN, note that VAN will also remove contacts according to an internal logic. Spoke will let you know if VAN has removed any numbers from your list.
Changing or Correcting a List
Spoke can only hold one CSV file or VAN saved list at a time. If you uploaded the wrong list or need to correct something in your list, simply re-upload the file. Spoke will overwrite the original file so long as you haven’t started the campaign.
Note: Contacts cannot be overwritten after the campaign is launched.
Step 5 (Optional): Suppress contacts
The "Suppressions" feature allows you to suppress contacts you have already added to your campaign.
Image displaying the Suppressions section of a campaign.
You can:
Upload a suppressions list as a CSV file or by copy-pasting in numbers
Suppress contact overlaps with other campaigns
Read more about these features here.
Note: while you cannot add contacts to a campaign after it has been started, you can remove contacts from your campaign even after you have begun texting.
Step 6: Add your initial message
The “Script” section is where you upload the message that will be sent to every contact in your campaign. Click here to learn more about how to add an initial message to your campaign.
Example of an initial message added to the "Script" section of a campaign.
Rotate through multiple variants of your script
Spoke supports adding more than one iteration of your initial message to your campaigns. We highly recommend using this feature: the more you can vary your scripts, the better for overall deliverability.
Add media files to your script
You can also use this section to add media files to your texts. If you want to include a picture, gif, or short video in the first message of your campaign, you'll need to make sure to send these texts from numbers that support MMS: a registered toll-free number or 10DLC MMS numbers. You can select phone numbers that support sending MMS in the "Phone Numbers" section of the campaign.
Step 7: (Optional) Add additional scripted replies
If you plan on responding to contacts who reply to you, you can also upload scripted responses that will guide texters through conversations and track data for your records. Examples of campaigns that commonly use scripted responses include:
“Will you support our candidate?"
“Can we count on you to volunteer?
“Will we see you at the event?"
Set up branched scripts or linear canned responses
Spoke offers two ways to set up scripted responses that track data: branched scripts and canned responses. Check out this support article for a comparison of the two approaches.
Upload your script from a Google Doc
Rather than writing the script inside the Spoke platform, you can write a script in Google Docs and then import that document directly into your campaign. See here for more information on how to use this feature.
If you need to make changes to an already uploaded script, you can upload the script again if the campaign has not been launched. If the campaign has been launched, changes can only be made in the tool. Your Google Doc will not sync or map live to Spoke.
Step 8 (Optional): Add clickable tags, freeform notes, or a convo link
Image above: The Texter Sidebar section of a campaign allows you to turn on a sidebar for texters. Add a link that texters can share to direct you to their conversation, a Contact Notes box, or clickable "Manual Tags" for texters to save data.
The texter sidebar is used to turn on features like a permanent conversation link, freeform notes, and manual tags. When any of the toggles are turned on, they will appear in a grey sidebar to the right of the texter’s conversations.
Image above: When toggled on, the Texter Sidebar appears to texters on the right of their conversation screen. You can customize these settings to show just some or all of the texter sidebar options.
Contact Conversation URL: turn on a permanent link to the conversation
Turn this on to give texters access to a sharable link to the conversation they are having. Texters can then copy this link - you can also make it clickable from the texter view - to share it with you (or other folks with admin access in your Spoke). The link gives users with Spoke admin permissions the ability to view and take action on the conversation in Message Review.
What is this for? The link creates an opportunity for texters to get advice about conversations they’re finding difficult, while making it easy for admins to see what the texter is doing.
Contact Notes: turn on a freeform notes box
Turn this on if you need texters to record freeform notes about conversations, i.e. contact email addresses or specific needs. These notes will be saved to your CSV exports and can also be accessed in the conversation window on the Message Review page.
Enable manual tags: turn on clickable tags
Turn this on if you want your texters to record data by manually clicking on and saving tags. You will be able to specify which tags are available to be saved manually in the campaign. Tags can be mapped to VAN. To learn more about tags, you can check out our overview of tags here.
Manual tags are commonly used to help identify conversations that need to be reassigned to special respondents. Examples include “Spanish” or “Escalate”. Conversations tagged as “Spanish”, for instance, will appear in Message Review, where they can be reassigned to Spanish speakers.
Step 9: Sending the texts
Once you are satisfied with your contact list, scripts, and other campaign settings, you can hit the "Start" button on the campaign. Once the campaign is running, you can begin sending out the texts.
Peer-to-Peer: Send texts individually
If you are using Spoke as a peer-to-peer tool, where each text is sent out individually, you need to add people to the campaign to send the texts. You can either do this in the "Texters" or "Assignment Management" sections. Learn how to assign texts to texters here, and check out a guide on how to send the texts here.
Blast: Send first messages automatically
If your team has blast mode enabled, the first texts in your campaign will be sent out using buttons that you access after starting your campaign. Read on here for instructions on how to send out campaigns using blast.