SMS Marketing FAQ

SMS marketing enables businesses to send text messages to customers for promotions, alerts, reminders, and engagement. Drop Cowboy provides a bulk SMS platform with 98% open rates, 2-way messaging, marketing automation, and CRM integrations for personalized campaigns at scale.

SMS marketing typically achieves 98% open rates with 90% of messages read within 3 minutes. This results in significantly higher engagement compared to email marketing. Drop Cowboy provides analytics to track delivery, opens, and click-through rates for your campaigns.

Sign up for a Drop Cowboy account, complete Campaign Registry (TCR) registration with guidance from your account manager, import your contact list, and create your first campaign. Most customers launch their first SMS campaign within a few hours of signing up.

SMS sends text-only messages up to 160 characters. MMS includes images, videos, GIFs, and longer text. Drop Cowboy supports both formats. MMS costs slightly more but can increase engagement with visual content like product photos or promotional graphics.

Yes, SMS marketing is legal when done compliantly. You must obtain express written consent, register with The Campaign Registry, honor opt-out requests immediately, respect quiet hours, and identify your business. Drop Cowboy provides compliance tools, but you remain responsible for legal compliance.

You must obtain express written consent from recipients before sending marketing text messages. This is required under TCPA regulations and enforced by carriers through The Campaign Registry. Drop Cowboy provides tools to manage opt-outs and suppression lists.

The Campaign Registry is a central database that verifies businesses sending SMS campaigns in the United States. Registration is required by carriers to prevent spam. Drop Cowboy guides you through TCR registration and helps maintain your brand reputation score.

Customers can reply STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, or similar keywords at any time. Drop Cowboy automatically processes these opt-outs instantly, adds the number to your suppression list, and includes opt-out instructions in your messages for TCPA compliance.

Drop Cowboy provides tools to support your compliance efforts, including automated opt-out processing, quiet hours enforcement, suppression lists, TCR registration guidance, and audit trails. However, you remain responsible for ensuring your SMS campaigns comply with all laws.

Drop Cowboy SMS marketing plans start at $125 per month with bulk message credits included. Per-message rates decrease with higher volume plans. BYOC customers with existing Twilio accounts pay as $0.006 per message plus carrier fees.

BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) lets you connect your existing Twilio account or SIP carrier to Drop Cowboy. You pay our low platform fee plus your carrier's wholesale rates. Most BYOC customers save 35-55% compared to standard per-message pricing.

No, Drop Cowboy requires no long-term contracts. All SMS marketing plans are month-to-month and you can cancel anytime. Unused message credits roll over to the next month.

Campaign Registry registration incurs monthly fees based on your use case. Compliance fees of $0.0039 per message apply. Link tracking is included free. International SMS has separate country-specific rates. MMS messages cost slightly more than SMS.

2-way SMS messaging lets recipients reply to your campaigns. Drop Cowboy captures all replies in a unified inbox where your team can view, respond, and manage conversations. Set up automated keyword responses or manually reply to individual messages.

Yes, Drop Cowboy includes powerful marketing automation. Send behavior-triggered SMS based on customer actions, build automated drip campaigns, schedule texts for optimal times, and create complex multi-message sequences with conditional logic.

Yes, Drop Cowboy supports merge fields for personalization. Insert recipient names, order numbers, appointment times, and any custom fields from your contact data. Personalized messages drive significantly higher engagement than generic broadcasts.

Drop Cowboy integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, and thousands of apps via REST API, native connectors, webhooks, and Zapier. Trigger SMS campaigns based on CRM events like lead status changes, form submissions, or custom workflow triggers.

Yes, Drop Cowboy automatically shortens and tracks all links in your SMS messages. See real-time click data, conversion tracking, and engagement metrics for each campaign. Link tracking helps measure ROI and optimize future campaigns.

Use Drop Cowboy REST API for programmatic campaign creation, native CRM connectors for Salesforce and HubSpot, webhooks for real-time event notifications, Zapier for no-code automation, or CSV import for batch contact uploads.

Drop Cowboy delivers messages immediately through Tier 1 carrier partnerships with intelligent routing. Most messages arrive within seconds. For large campaigns, the platform can send thousands of messages per second while maintaining high deliverability.

Yes, Drop Cowboy supports flexible scheduling. Send immediately, schedule for a specific date and time, or use smart scheduling that delivers at optimal times based on recipient time zones while respecting TCPA quiet hours.

Yes, Drop Cowboy supports SMS delivery to 200+ countries worldwide. International messaging rates vary by country. You can manage contacts from multiple countries and send localized messages at appropriate times for each timezone.