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titleA Longer Explanation Email to SMS Gateway - Basic useUse | Text Marketer

Send text messages to your customers via a simple email. Sign up for a free account to try the Text Marketer Email to SMS Gateway. 

You need a Text Marketer account to use our email-to-text gateway. You can sign-up for free at www.textmarketer.co.uk and get 10 free credits to get you started. 

Username and Password

To be sure that no-one else can use your account for sending text messages, we provide you with an API username and password to identify you when you use any of our API services, such as the email gateway. These are different to the username and password you use to log in to the web interface.

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Table of Contents

Tip

If you don't know your API username and password, you'll find them when you log on to the Text Marketer web interface here:


https://messagebox.textmarketer.co.uk/ (Account Settings > API Settings)

Email Subject: Field and Authentication - There are two ways we allow emails to be authenticated


  • Username and password

Your API username and password must go in the email subject, separated by the '%' sign. If you get the username or password wrong, or you forget the %, no text message will be sent and you will not get a response from the email gateway.

 

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titleExample
joe%secret
  • Domain Authentication

In this instance the subject field is ignored and the domain name from the email is used, this has to 
be a company based domain (not hotmail etc) and your mail server needs to configured correctly 
as we will reverse look up the domain to prevent unauthorised use.

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To enable domain authentication, log in to your account then navigate to: Settings > Account Settings. Complete the “Use Domain Settings” box with your domain, click submit then click “toggle” next to your domain.

Email To: Field

For basic use of the email gateway, the To: field is used to specify the mobile number to send the message to. The address is:

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titleExample
<mobile-number>@textmarketer.biz

where '<mobile-number>' is replaced with the mobile number of the recipient. For example to send to the mobile number 07777123123, the address to put in the To: field is either:

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titleExample
07777123123@textmarketer.biz

or, the international format for a UK number.

 

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titleExample
447777123123@textmarketer.biz
Note

Numbers in international format should not include any leading zeros or + signs.

 

Please note that you cannot put multiple numbers in the To: field, only one number per email. If you want to send a message to multiple recipients, please see Advanced Use

 

Warning

Please note that the email address you use for basic use should end in textmarketer.biz (as above) and NOT textmarketer.co.uk.

 

 

Email Body

The content of your email is the message you wish to send to the recipient. Your message can be on more than one line, by default it must end with two #.

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You can change the termination string ## to anything you like up to 2 characters or you can disable it completely.

To change the settings, log in to your account then navigate to: Account Settings. Complete the “Message Termination” box with your changes then click on the save button.

 

Note

 

There are some restrictions on the characters you can use in the email, please see Advanced Use.

 

 

 


Everything in your email up to the ## will be sent to the recipient, so be careful how much you write. Remember that a normal text message is only 160 characters.

 

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titleExample of a single line message
Please call 02012345678 to book your next car service.##
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titleThe message that the recipient will get
Please call 02012345678 to book your next car service

How much is 160 characters?


The multi-line example is exactly 160 characters

 

 

 

 

 

So everything up to the ## is sent in the message, and the rest is discarded. This means that if your email software automatically includes a signature at the end of your email, it will not be sent to the recipient.

 

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titleExample of a multi-line message
Hi George,
I thought you might like a reminder of our meeting tomorrow at 2pm.
Looking forward to discussing the project & planning the next step.
Regards,
John##
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Widgets Ltd.
02012345678
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titleThe message that the recipient will get
Hi George,
I thought you might like a reminder of our meeting tomorrow at 2pm.
Looking forward to discussing the project & planning the next step.
Regards,
John

Long messages

What happens when your message exceeds 160 characters?

If you exceed 160 characters you automatically invoke 'concatenation sending'. This will mean that each message consists of 153-character ‘chunks’, i.e. no longer 160 characters. The extra characters are used to 'glue' the messages together. So a message that is 307 characters long will actually require 3 text messages to send (153 characters + 153 characters + 1 character). Although it will appear as one long text message to the recipient, it will use 3 credits to send.

The originator/sender

The originator of the message is what is displayed to the recipient as 'the sender'. This can be text (up to 11 characters) or a mobile number (up to 16 digits), . For example, you might want the originator to be “Hair Salon”. Or you might want it set to Joe's mobile number, so that people who reply to the message will send it directly to Joe's mobile.

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For more advanced 2-way messaging, see Two-way messaging with txtUs© and reply keywords

 

The originator is set by including a line in the email body that ends with a '#', e.g.: Hair Salon#


You'll notice that the originator ends with one '#', whereas the message ends with a double '##'. It doesn't matter whether the message comes first, or the originator comes first, so long as the ending is correct. As shown in the examples 1 and 2.

Will both work, and will mean  the recipient see's the sender as "Hair Salon". 

If you do not set an originator in the email body, the default originator on your acount will be used. 

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titleExample 1

Hi Jane,
Just a quick reminder that you've got an appointment at Joe's Hair Salon 
tomorrow at 5pm.
See you then!
Joe##
Hair Salon#

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titleExample 2

Hair Salon#
Hi Jane,
Just a quick reminder that you've got an appointment at Joe's Hair Salon 
tomorrow at 5pm.
See you then!
Joe##

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