Wondering if SMS fits in your messaging strategy? SMS has numerous benefits and is one of the top drivers of mobile engagement. We’ve added SDK support for SMS, which opens up your targeting capabilities and helps sync your users across messaging channels.

Improved Segmentation and Audience Management

For phone numbers that are added through the setSMSNumber method in the SDK, you can now access data collected by the SDK for better segmentation and messaging. You can now default filters to segment your audience and target your messaging campaigns to improve engagement.

App & Website Engagement Filters

• First Session: Time and date of when the user first used your app or visited your website. You could use this to set up welcome messages or onboarding texts.
• Last Session: Time and date of when the user most recently used your app or visited the website. You could use this to re-engage inactive users, such as sending them an SMS with a promo.
• Session Count: How many times the user has used your app or visited your website. You could use this to identify your infrequent users and text them with big updates or major sales to encourage them to return to your app or website.
• Total Duration (app only): The number of seconds the user has ever interacted with your app, as recorded when the app is in the foreground. You could use this to identify your engaged users and send them a text to reward their loyalty.
• (In-app) Amount Spent (app only): Amount of consumable in-app purchases made by the user while our SDK was active. You could use this to identify those who haven’t purchased yet and send an SMS with an offer.
• (In-app) Purchased Item (app only): The code of the consumable in-app purchase. You could use this to identify those who purchased a given item and send an SMS about a related item.
  

User Demographic Filters

• Language: The default language reported by the device / browser. You could use this to localize your text in the appropriate language.
• Country: The most recent country of the device / browser (in ISO 3166-2 format). You could use this to send geo-specific texts to your audience, such as alerting people in a country when there is news about that country.
  

Device Information Filters

• Device Type: The type of messaging channel or operating system. Use this to make sure you’re only reaching SMS subscribers and not your push or email subscribers.
• App Version (app only): The version of the app that was running during the most recent session. You could use this to encourage users on your old app versions to update their app to access the latest and greatest features.

Manage Your Users Across Channels

You can use the SDK to add your users’ phone numbers and synchronize your contacts across messaging channels. For example, if the customer is an existing push user, the SDK will sync both records together if you call external_user_id. Adding and modifying data tags via the SDK will also automatically update both records. The SDK will also help you track subscriber details, including subscription status and changes.

Grow Your Customer Lists With Web Prompts

Web prompts are one of the most effective ways to easily grow your audience, identify your best customers, and build lasting relationships. Set up your prompt to ask for a user’s phone number, email, or both. If you set up an external user ID, OneSignal’s web SDK will automatically synchronize captured emails and phone numbers to user devices under a single user record.  Don’t forget to implement these best practices for your web prompt.

SDK support for SMS is currently live for the major releases of our web, iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, Cordova, Xamarin, and Unity SDKs. Check out our SDK Guides resource library to see what's supported and unlock advanced segmentation and user management capabilities in minutes.

Learn More about SMS Messaging Strategy

SMS is well-suited to both transactional and marketing messages and can provide unique benefits when used alongside other messaging channels. As you build out your SMS campaigns, knowing what messaging strategies work well in different contexts and industries can help you outperform your competition. Download our free SMS eBook to learn fundamental SMS messaging strategies, use cases, best practices, and insider tips for leveraging SMS across industries.