How to Set Up Twilio & Send SMS Notifications from WooCommerce (Bonus Campaigns Included)
Tavleen Kaur
June 1, 2021
If you’re looking for an easy solution to send WooCommerce Twilio SMS notifications, this one's for you.
SMSs have a 35%+ click-through rate and offer a whopping 25x higher ROI as compared to emails.
SMS lets you interact with your customers, promote your products, send notifications about discounts and coupon codes, and so much more.
In this post, you’ll learn how you can set up Twilio and send SMS notifications from your WooCommerce store.
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Text messages have a better open and click-through rate than any other form of communication channel.
These messages are highly personal and give you creative ways to interact with your customers and deliver value.
You can use the WooCommerce Twilio SMS notifications to give your buyers updates about their orders.
Plus, give them discounts to encourage them to come back again to your store or engage them with all kinds of post-purchase campaigns.
Here’s what you can do by enabling the Twilio SMS service on your WooCommerce store:
WooCommerce Twilio SMS notifications will help your campaigns get noticed leading to generating high revenues from your store.
You’ll need a Twilio account first to get started.
Twilio is an online solution provider that offers services such as calling, voice messaging, and SMS that you can use with different applications.
It provides a free trial of the premium services that you can set up and experiment with.
Head over to the Twilio website and sign up for the free trial.
Enter your name, email and password to create your Twilio account.
You’ll receive a verification email - confirm it to proceed.
The next step is to verify your email address and phone number.
After that, select the products that you want to use.
Here, we’ll be selecting the ‘SMS’ with ‘Alerts & Notifications’. Then choose ‘With no code at all’ and ‘3rd Party integrations’.
Click on Get Started with Twilio once done.
You’ll get redirected to the Twilio dashboard.
Click on ‘Get a Trial Phone Number’ to link a phone number to your account.
This will generate your trial phone number.
You can find your Account SID, Auth Token, and Twilio phone number here on this screen.
Make sure to copy these details - you’ll need them in Step 3 of this post.
We will be using an automation plugin to send SMS from WooCommerce.
FunnelKit Automations is the best marketing broadcast and marketing broadcast plugin for WordPress.
It opens up infinite possibilities by integrating with different plugins and third-party applications to achieve your use cases.
Not just that, you can store unlimited contacts and send unlimited emails.
Get a copy of the FunnelKit Automations here.
Please note that FunnelKit Automations also has a Lite (free) version but we will be using the Pro version for advanced functionalities.
Once you’ve purchased FunnelKit Automations, go to your FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) account and download the following zip files:
1. FunnelKit Automations Lite
2. FunnelKit Automations Pro
3. FunnelKit Automations Connectors
Install and activate all the plugins by uploading them to your WordPress website.
Once it’s done, go to your account and copy the activation code of the FunnelKit Automations Pro and Connectors plugin.
Paste the code in the settings page of FunnelKit Automations.
That’s it! You’re now ready to use FunnelKit Automations.
Twilio lets you send and receive messages with ease using messaging APIs.
You can create an SMS marketing campaign with Twilio using FunnelKit Automations.
FunnelKit Automations integrates well with Twilio to set up SMS automations and broadcasts the way you want.
But first, you need to connect the two.
Go to the Connectors tab on FunnelKit Automations and click on ‘Connect’ under Twilio.
Paste your Twilio Account SID, Auth Token and Phone Number here.
Once done, click on ‘Connect’.
You have successfully connected Twilio with FunnelKit Automations.
This way you have completed the Twilio WooCommerce integration - you can now start setting up SMS-based automations from your store.
Now that you’ve connected Twilio with FunnelKit Automations, you can set up a Twilio SMS notification.
Let’s try this use case - when a user places an order, it’ll automatically send them a message.
To do this, go to Automations >> Add New.
Click on ‘Start from Scratch’ and name your automation as ‘WooCommerce Twilio Order Created SMS’.
You’ll get directed to the automation workspace area.
The first node is for your automation trigger. Click the trigger button to set it up.
Select the event trigger - ‘Order Created’ under WooCommerce.
Configure this event node by clicking on the trigger.
Select the order status as ‘Processing’ and make the automation run ‘Multiple Times’
Click on 'Save' when done.
Next, click on the blue icon from where you can add actions, conditions, delays, exits and goals for your automation.
Select ‘Action’ from here.
Click on the ‘Send SMS’ action under Messaging.
Now you need to fetch the details of the customer's phone number in the ‘To’ field.
To do that, click on ‘Merge Tags’.
Copy the billing phone number merge tag - this will fetch the phone number entered by the customer during the checkout process.
Now, paste the ‘billing phone number’ merge tag here.
Write your Twilio SMS body that you want to send when someone places an order from your WooCommerce store.
Click on ‘Save’ to lock all your changes.
Next, activate your WooCommerce Twilio SMS automation by clicking on the toggle to ‘Active’.
Well done! Your automation is now live and running.
Now your customers will receive the SMS notification once they make a purchase from your WooCommerce store.
You can also send SMS updates to customers when their order status is updated or even many other use cases.
This is how you can send WooCommerce Twilio SMS notifications to your contacts with FunnelKit Automations.
We’re sure by now you're convinced about using SMSs to engage with your customers on autopilot.
It complements your email marketing strategy really well.
Please note that we have various campaigns as pre-built automation recipes already available for you to use in FunnelKit Automations.
All you need to do is import them with a single click and save your time brainstorming about your next WooCommerce Twilio SMS campaign.
Let’s look at some effective Twilio SMS campaigns that you should automate on your WooCommerce store.
8 out of 10 online shoppers tend to abandon their cart.
You can use the power of FunnelKit Automations to bridge the gap between WooCommerce-Twilio and reach out to cart abandoners via a series of SMSs with adequate delays.
It’s important to carry the conversation forward after the sale and not cut the cord abruptly.
So make sure you reach out to your customers after the purchase is complete just to check in with them or get a review or inform them about the next sale.
SMS offers a great way to engage with subscribers and remind them when their subscription renewal is due.
Set up a simple WooCommerce-Twilio based SMS automation to remind them about subscription expiry, auto-renewal, payment details updation, and more.
Celebrating your customers’ 3 months or 6 month or 1-year purchase anniversary is a great way to stay top-of-mind.
Therefore, FunnelKit Automations lets you easily set up an automated WooCommerce-Twilio SMS campaign for their purchase anniversary.
FunnelKit Automations allows you to send WooCommerce Twilio SMS notifications to your customers who haven’t bought in a particular time period.
So let’s say if a customer had bought from you around 3 months back but hasn’t bought anything since then, you can send an automated SMS to win them back.
Loyal customers, those who make frequent purchases from the store are great for every business.
You can increase their shopping frequency by offering them incentives and making them feel special.
Your VIPs are more likely to respond to your request for review and shout out on social media than one-off buyers.
So it’s a great idea to send a blast campaign to your segmented list of VIP customers asking them for reviews.
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In our next post, we will dive deeper into some more WooCommerce SMS campaign ideas and how you can set them up in your store.
You can always follow our YouTube channel and Facebook group for more such tips/tricks and strategies to help boost your store’s revenue.
We’re sure by now you already are excited about setting up your automated SMS services to boost the engagements in your store.
While one can set up email campaigns using the free version for cart abandonment, and post-purchase sequences; one needs the pro version for SMS-based campaigns.
FunnelKit Automations lets you automate SMSs and emails to help ease up the burden off your shoulder to be in constant contact with your customers.
It can be used in many more scenarios than the ones discussed above.
So go ahead and play around with the tool to understand its full potential.
Create an automated SMS sequence with WooCommerce-Twilio setup and retain more customers for your business.