Understanding Message Center
WellnessLiving's Message Center is your business's two-way SMS inbox. Send text messages to clients directly, receive their replies, and manage every conversation from one shared inbox. WellnessLiving saves conversations per client and lets you assign them to specific staff members, so anyone on your team can pick up where the last reply left off.
To access the Message Center, you must have an active subscription. It can be used on its own to send and receive SMS, and it also powers the SMS side of any Marketing Suite automations you have running.
What Message Center does for your business
Answer client questions instantly. When a lead texts asking about class times, your staff can reply in seconds from a shared inbox and turn an after-hours inquiry into a booking.
Run SMS marketing campaigns. SMS open rates are significantly higher than email. Send targeted campaigns to promote new offers or re-engage inactive clients, and let clients reply directly to book or ask a question.
Build stronger client relationships. Clients can text to reschedule, ask a question, or share feedback. Every conversation is saved on the client profile, so any staff member can continue where the last one left off.
Turn notifications into conversations. When clients receive a reminder or wait list promotion via SMS, they can reply to confirm, reschedule, or ask a question, and the reply lands in your Message Center inbox instead of disappearing into a one-way channel.
Key tips
To use Message Center, you'll need to:
Be located in a supported region. Message Center is currently available to businesses in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.
Confirm your staff role permissions. Staff members need the Manage messages permission under the Message Center permission group to send and reply to messages. To manage plans, the Access Message Center Subscription permission is required, and to change Message Center settings, the Access Message Center settings permission is required.
Make sure clients have a valid cell phone number under the Cell Phone field on their Profile Details page. Clients without a cell phone number can't be contacted by SMS.
Work in Message Center
Once Message Center is set up, you can manage everything from the Message Center inbox. Open the App Drawer then click View All > Message Center. For step-by-step instructions on each task, see:
Manage a conversation in Message Center – Send messages, reply to clients, archive, pin, mute, and mark conversations as read or unread.
Assign staff to conversations in Message Center – Route conversations to specific team members.
Filter messages and conversations in Message Center – Narrow your inbox by message type, status, date, client type, client group, or home location.
Manage your marketing automations – Connect Message Center to your automated marketing campaigns.
Client opt-out and opt-in
Clients can manage their SMS preferences at any time using standard reply keywords.
To opt out, clients can reply with STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT.
To opt back in, clients can reply with START, YES, or UNSTOP.
Once a client opts out, your business can't send them further SMS messages until they opt back in. Opt-out status is managed automatically; staff don't need to take any action.
Availability and limits
Message Center is available to businesses in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.
Message Center can only be used to send SMS messages to individual clients. To message a group of clients, see Contact your clients.
A conversation must first be started by your business, either by a staff member sending a message, an automated notification, or a Marketing Suite automation. Once started, clients can reply to begin a two-way conversation.
Note: Sending a manual SMS to a client from their profile page or through QUICK Contact doesn't start a new conversation in Message Center on its own. The message is recorded in the client's Contact History, and it only appears in Message Center if a conversation with that client has already been started.
Each outbound and inbound SMS counts as one message against your monthly plan. MMS messages (images and attachments) count as three messages each. Booking reminders and purchase receipts sent via SMS are free for US and Canadian customers and don't count toward your plan.
If you go over your plan's monthly message limit, the extra messages are billed per message at the rate in your subscription plan.
View your SMS message usage
On the Subscription Plans page, the Message usage counter shows the total number of marketing SMS messages your business has sent and received this month, compared to your plan's limit. To see sent and received messages broken down individually, view the SMS History Report.
To view your message usage:
Click the App Drawer
then click View All > Messages > Subscription plans.
On the Subscription Plans page, refer to the Message usage counter.
Next steps
Once you've set up Message Center, you're ready to start managing client conversations and connecting SMS to your marketing automations. Here are some helpful next steps: