How to Send SMS with Alibaba Cloud Short Message Service?

SMS is a very commonly used tool to send notification, promotion or transaction verification. I would say majority of the software todays require sending SMS service. Hence, Alibaba Cloud also provide the service for their clients.

In Alibaba Cloud Short Message Service, you can purchase SMS package base on the country mobile that you intend to send, otherwise you can opt for the Global package which is much more expensive but support world wide any mobile number.

The SMS package price is different for different country, potentially due to the telco operator in different country charge the SMS service differently.

After purchasing the SMS package, if you wish to test the SMS service from Alibaba Cloud, you can use the Quick Start function to test sending SMS to your own mobile number to confirm receiving the message.

Next, go to the Go Globe if you are not from China and intend to broadcast promotional SMS to your customers.

Create a New Campaign, then enter the Campaign Name then follow by the promotional message that you wish to send. If you want the SMS content to have variable value, you need to download the sample Excel file from the "example download".

Enter the variable name with $ sign with curly bracket such as ${name}. The variable value will be changed and different base on the Excel file content. The variable name is the first row of the Excel. The To column must be remained as it is, add more column if you wish to have more variables to be supported.

Then, click the Import Number button to upload the Excel file that you have the variable setup.

If you wish to broadcast your SMS at a scheduled time, just hit the Schedule Campaign button and simply choose the date and time you wish.

Lastly, hit the Schedule Campaign button and you are good and just wait for SMS broadcast automatically until the scheduled time.

It is advisable that before scheduling the campaign or perform immediate broadcast, always test the broadcast with a few of your own or friends mobile first to verify the content. SMS broadcast cannot be retracted if there is any mistake that you discover later.

You can check your SMS broadcast report under the Statistic section. So that, you can see which mobile number is failed to be delivered the SMS.