New Email to SMS Feature

The Vitelity SMS platform is growing in popularity every day and, as such, we get a constant stream of feature requests to add functionality to the system. We have just launched a new email-to-SMS feature that will allow for very easy messaging ability from anywhere as well as some interesting options for third-party software integration.

Email to PhonebookOne of the difficulties we have seen when working with bulk SMS lists is having to get customers to log into the portal, navigate to the right area, select lists, and send messages. With the new email-to-phonebook feature, authorized email addresses can send an email to the list name

This allows you to manage and send text messages to your lists anywhere you are. It will text the email subject to the list of your choice.

Create a Phonebook list

First you will need to create the list to hold the phone numbers you want to send to. This function is in the user portal, use the SMS tab on the top of the menu bar, then go to the Phonebook tab on the bottom of the menu bar, use the form to create a new phonebook list.

Authorized Email Addresses

Before someone can use this function, their email address has to be authorized. To do this, go to the user portal, use the SMS tab on the top of the menu bar, then go to the Email to Send tab on the bottom of the menu bar, use the form to add authorized email addresses.

Sending to the list

For example:
If you were a teacher you could create a list for the parents of your students called “students”.

Now if you wanted to announce homework for this list of students you would do the following:

• Open your email client
• Put the To: students@mailmysms.com
• Put the Subject: Hello parents, your student has homework in his math class today. Please make sure he brings it in tomorrow.
• Now send your email

To send a message to the phonebook list, send an email from an authorized email to <listname>@mailmysms.com.

Your email should look like this:

Email To Text Without Lists

This function allows you to send text messages to a list of numbers not part of a pre-created group  In order to use this feature, the email address that is sending the message must be in the authorized email list as shown above.

Say you want to send a text message to a group of people who you don’t have a list for.

Example:
You have a group of customers who you need to send an emergency text message to. Their numbers are 303-300-3000, 949-777-3333 and 303-999-3333.

• Open your email client
• Put the To: send@mailmysms.com
• Put the Subject: We have an emergency at our building and will not be able to accept customers on site right now

In the body of the message put the phone numbers of your customers, line by line.
This means type the customers phone number, then hit enter, and type your next number.

Your email should look like this:

Summary

Hopefully these new features will allow greater flexibility for you and your customers for using the Vitelity SMS and Shortcode services. Be sure and let us know how you are utilizing these features and if you have requests for any new features you would like to see added.