Mastering Templates in Sent 🚀

All right.

What's up, guys?

This is Kevin, your favorite technical account manager.

I think everybody's at this point.

Welcome, to another video explaining how to use sent.

What does this all mean?

What's the meaning of life?

You know how it is.

today we're going to be talking about templates, right?

This is something that comes up a lot.

how exactly do I send messages?

What's the point of templates?

Can I send free form?

how does this apply to different channels?

Don't worry, we're going to cover most of these questions today.

As always, you can send me an email, KevinNT.

DM.

All right, great.

So let's get into it here.

I'm going to go down a couple of different paths, a couple different branches of the tree today.

But stay with me, it's all going to make sense by the end.

First off, what I want to touch on is what is the purpose of this screen right here?

So you can either create templates, manually, which is what this dashboard is for, or you can create them programmatically.

If you only have a couple templates and probably not going to be creating any new ones anytime, names, just something simple like OTP codes forever, probably just easiest to create the templates here.

if you do have like thousands or maybe even hundreds of templates, do suggest doing that programmatically.

But we're going to walk through this not only to show what it looks like to create a template here, but to understand what a template actually is and what it entails within sent.

So, first off, whenever you do call the API to send a message, you do have to reference a template id.

this is for every message and this will allow you to select, you know, what is the actual message that we're sending to our customers, our users, whoever it might be.

Now, the distinctions between how we define things and how we talk about things, between WhatsApp and SMS is work.

It's a little bit murky and I usually have to explain it to people, but, trust me, it's not that complicated once you get it.

essentially, whenever you do go through, you know, the US registration for SMS, it's called 10 DLC, I have another video about it if you want to learn even more.

but you do, submit sample messages.

For example, hey, you know, you got 15% off, use this code.

Hey, this is your OTP code, or, hey, your package has been delivered, right?

That doesn't necessarily mean within the SMS world for us that you always have to send these exact phrases, right?

These are just sample messages.

We can send anything within anything within the bounds of those categories.

So we can also send 25% off and, you know, Memorial Day sale or hey, your OTP code is now, you know, 1, 2, 3.

These things can change.

Really, what we want to define is the categories right on that side.

And if we come over to WhatsApp world, there still is categories as well, but instead of submitting it to the regulators the very first time, like we do with us 10 DLC for SMS, we have to submit the templates every time for WhatsApp.

Now, before you pull out your pitchforks and say, kevin, I send all different types of messages.

You think you're telling me I have to get them approved every single time?

Well, put the pitchforks away.

There are two different types of messages.

You see what I was talking about with branches and trees?

There are two different types of messages that you can send with WhatsApp.

The first off is templatized messages, which is what I'm covering here, where it's going to be the same sort of structure every time with different variables that we pass in.

Right?

And then you also have what's called the freeform messaging, Right?

So you, you know, you don't want to sound robotic if someone asks a question you want to be able to answer, maybe customer support or sales questions.

And I myself recognize that.

Recognize that.

You know, Meta recognizes that not everything is a template.

Right.

All right, the last thing that I'll talk about before I get into creating the template is when you're allowed to Send Freeform messages vs.

When you send templatized.

Freeform has to be customer initiated.

Think a customer support request, or think maybe a sales question.

For example, if I want to say, hey to Bob's Donuts myself is, Kevin, I had a terrible experience with your donuts.

They tasted terrible.

And I reach out to the WhatsApp.

Now, one of their, customer support agents can reach out and say, hey, you know, what was wrong?

How can I help you?

And it's an actual freeform conversation between myself and the agent.

However, if I did not reach out to Bob Stonehutz, what they have to do is use templatized messages to reach out to me.

Think about it as opening the door for your customer to walk in.

And once they walk in through the door, then you can have the actual conversation.

Right?

So to put a cap on the metaphor, the template messages saying, hey, we've got new specials.

Opens the door, and then the customer can walk in a message and say, hey, what are those specials?

Right?

So hopefully that was a good explanation of it.

you do have a window of 24 hours to keep that, freeform conversation open.

And those messages that you send between you and the customer are free in that time.

every message that they send to you resets that window.

So if they wait 23 hours and 59 minutes and then send another message, it reopens that.

All right, enough talking.

Let's start doing here with scent.

Let's start off with choosing the category of this template.

So this is mainly for WhatsApp because depending on the category it will be charged differently.

So if this is your first time doing this, I suggest clicking Auto selected.

This will have sense AI read the context of the message and automatically pick the best one for you.

you don't want to mislabel it or mischoose the the category here because meta might see it as you trying to subvert the way that they charge messages.

I think you're a bad actor.

So if you are experienced with it, pick the correct one.

If not, feel free to pick Auto Selected.

We'll pick the right one for you.

Languages.

This is just for you to keep track of in terms of, you know, maybe you have international customers, you want to have multiple languages for the same template.

And then over here we have the header.

So a template has four parts.

You have the body which is the main message, and this is the only required piece.

And then you have three optional ones.

You have the header which can be a text or an image.

You have the footer which can be you know, a disclaimer for example.

And, and then you also have the buttons option which can be a variety of different things.

Here we have some examples.

You know, visit website, call phone number, copy offer code, whatever your heart desires.

But the real power here lives within the dynamic content.

So you can see here dynamic variables, dynamic links.

You can essentially have these variables dropped in and then populate it from your database or your application with customers names, excuse me, order numbers, dates, whatever again your heart desires.

And then just have that data feed in automatically.

That way instead of writing a thousand different messages, you can just have one template and then feed in the correct information here.

Now one of the cool things that we have here in sent, is the option to create this message as a multi channel message rather than me having to go on the SMS side of the house with other platforms and you know, build out the message for something that's usually just plain text or maybe a link and then switch over to the WhatsApp, developer API and build out sort of a rich message with buttons and images.

I could just have everything here and then have sent auto downgrade the message from WhatsApp to SMS for example.

Right.

So let's just say Kevin's Donuts.

Hey there.

Insert dynamic variable.

This is going to be first name of the customer.

we do, we do have camel case requirement.

Hey there, first name we have.

If I can Type new flavors.

Click here to find out more.

And then here we would put in the link.

This is going to be donut menu.

Hopefully this accepts the URL because this is not a real donut shop.

This is, you know, call to action, eat donuts.

All right, we do need a valid URL.

All right, this time we're just going to use sent, but.

All right, I'm back.

I just wanted to make sure we have the right.

All right, perfect.

So they'll click on that link right there.

Maybe down here in the footer.

look, I don't want to say good afternoon if you hate donuts.

Unsubscribe.

alright, there we go.

Maybe up here in the header we want to say good morning, top of the morning, any Irish viewers out there?

all right, so jokes aside, if you look over here on the right side, you can see that we can have the live preview of what the message is going to look like on both channels.

So on sms you can see it's a little bit, downgraded.

We don't have the header, we don't have the footer.

It does still have the link, the dynamic variable and the dynamic link.

And then on the WhatsApp side in this case we just have the, the header and the footer.

But you know, let's say I did, you know, throw in some images in there.

It would also populate as well.

Now you might tell me, Kevin, I want to.

variables cannot be at the start end of the template.

Eat up.

That's a good error to get, on this video to show you don't put the variable at the end.

now, you might say, hey, Kevin, I want to do two completely different, you know, templates.

If it's on sms, the user gets it on sms.

I want to have something a little different.

If it's on WhatsApp, I want to do something a little different.

If it doesn't have to be exactly the same.

If you enable multi channel, this allows you to specify depending on the channel that it gets routed to, what the message is going to say.

So let's say if it goes to sms, I'll say instead of eat up at the end it's going to say enjoy your day and eat lots of donuts.

Now you can see here on the right side, the two different channels are different.

Alright, cool.

And when I turn it off, it will adjust both as well.

That's pretty much it.

From the template creation side, we can save this as a draft or we can Submit it immediately for review.

I just, you know, want to start selling these as quickly as possible, so I'm going to submit that for review.

All right, perfect.

So now you can see here, the template has been submitted to WhatsApp and it is pending approval.

This is on the meta side for them to take a look at it, decide if it passes all of their, you know, checks and balances.

Gosh, I can't talk all those checks and balances.

If they think it looks good, it's not malicious, there's no fraud, no spam, then they'll go ahead and approve it as long as my business looks good as well.

do you want to make the distinction here?

Again, this has nothing to do with this part right here where it says pending and WhatsApp details has nothing to do with SMS.

If your campaign has already been approved, you've probably talked to someone like me at this point, and if I've let you know that you're good to go, this is just to get it approved from the WhatsApp side.

and then you'll be able to send both SMS, I should say, this template on SMS and WhatsApp and take advantage of the sent smart router.

All right, this video has been great.

I hope you guys enjoyed it.

It was a little bit longer than I expected, but hopefully the details and explaining some of these things was helpful.

If you do have any questions, if you do just want to reach out and say you're a fan, hit me up at Kevin@SENT DM.

thank you and have a great day.