SMS Scheduling: Plan Messages Around Your Day

The best time to send a text isn’t always when you’re able to.

What if you could schedule messages to send later? That’d be more convenient for you and a better experience for customers. Here’s how you can do it.

1. What "Scheduling" Is

Choose a later time to send, wherever you compose a message.

“Scheduled Messages” is a Text Request feature that lets you simply and effectively type a message now, and schedule it to send at a later time or date. It’s available for both individual and group messaging and comes in handy all the time—more on that at the end.

2. How Scheduling Works

Click the clock icon next to “Send.”

Choose the time and date when you actually want your message to send, and schedule it. A couple of things to keep in mind when scheduling:

Messages will send in the time zone they were scheduled, so consider whether you have contacts in different time zones
Large group messages (sent to thousands and thousands of contacts) may take some time to send—not an issue, just good to remember

At any time, you can see all your scheduled messages in the View Scheduled Messages tab of your Conversations and Group Messages queues.

Note: Scheduled Messages is available for all accounts. If you don’t see it already in yours, ask your account admin or Text Request rep about adding it.

3. When to Use It

Save time and plan messages around your day.

Scheduling messages is typically helpful whenever it’s a good time for you to type a message, but not a good time to send it. For example:

It’s Friday afternoon and you want to tee up a promotion for Monday morning
You want to schedule appointment reminders for each day of the week in one sitting
An update or announcement needs to go out during the evening or weekend, and you have no plans of being in the office for that

Use scheduling however is right for you. If it will make your life easier or allow you to better plan your workday, it’s probably a good call.