SMS campaigns — segments, scheduling, and staying compliant

The SMS campaigns guide covers how to send. This one covers the bits that make the difference between a campaign that drives bookings and one that gets you marked as spam.

Segments — building a useful audience

The segment builder lets you slice your customer list by:

• Visit recency — last visit was within X days, or hasn't visited in X days
• Visit frequency — visited at least N times overall
• Spend — lifetime spend > $X
• Service tag — booked any of these services in the past
• Location — preferred location
• Source — how they arrived (lead source, referral, walk-in)
• Custom field — any tag or field you've added to customer profiles
• Birthday — birthday in the next 7 / 30 days
• Has consent — only customers who haven't opted out of marketing SMS

Combine multiple criteria with AND/OR. Save the segment to reuse next time.

Best segments to start with

• "Lapsed regulars" — visited at least 3 times AND last visit > 90 days ago. The cheapest re-engagement segment.
• "Birthday this month" — perfect for "complimentary mini-service on us" offers.
• "High-value missing" — spend > $500 AND last visit > 60 days. Worth a personal outreach, not a bulk SMS.
• "New first-timers" — visited exactly once in the last 30 days. Send a "thank you, here's 10% off your next" to convert them to repeats.

Scheduling

Pick Send now or Schedule for. Scheduled sends fire at the date+time you pick in your tenant's timezone — so if your salon is in AEST and a customer is in WST, the customer's phone rings at the WA-equivalent time. That's intentional: business-hours rules are about your business, not theirs. (For multi-location chains across timezones, segment by location and schedule each one separately.)

Compliance — Australia

If you're sending in Australia, the Spam Act 2003 has three rules:

1. Consent. Customers must have opted in. Trimsy auto-records consent when they tick the box at booking; the segment builder filters anyone who's opted out.
2. Identification. Every campaign SMS includes "From {your salon name}" by default. Don't disable.
3. Unsubscribe. Every campaign SMS includes "Reply STOP to opt out". When a customer texts STOP, they're auto-flagged opted-out and never get marketing SMS again. Booking-related SMS (confirmations, reminders) still go out — those are transactional, not marketing.

Don't send marketing SMS between 9 PM and 9 AM customer-local-time. Trimsy doesn't enforce this — it's on you to schedule responsibly.

Compliance — outside AU

UK / EU GDPR + PECR are stricter than AU spam rules — explicit consent only, easy unsubscribe, no implied consent based on prior purchase. US TCPA is similar with serious penalties. If you're sending outside AU, get legal advice on what consent you can rely on.

Costs

Each SMS uses one credit from your monthly quota. Long messages (>160 chars) split into multiple SMS and use multiple credits. The campaign preview shows the cost before send. International numbers may cost more than the standard credit; check Reports → SMS for actual sent vs received cost breakdown.

After send

The campaign report shows delivery rate (delivered vs failed), opt-out rate (% who replied STOP), reply rate (% who texted you back something), and conversion rate (% who booked within 7 days of receiving). Watch the opt-out rate especially — over 2% on a single send is a sign the message or the audience was wrong.