What are Followups?


Followup messages let you send an additional message to everyone in your campaign or a targeted segment of contacts—without launching a new campaign. Whether you're reminding people about an event or asking them to take another action, followup messages help keep your outreach organized and effective. 


This guide walks you through how to create, launch, and troubleshoot followup messages in ThruText.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Why Use Followups?

Followup messages help you continue conversations with contacts after the initial message. For example, if your campaign began with an event invitation, you can send a followup two weeks later with a reminder or an invitation to a different event.


Followup messages are easy to create and come from the same phone number as your initial messages, which helps your contacts feel like they're participating in an ongoing conversation.


How to Create and Send Followups

Step 1: Create the Followup Campaign

On the ThruText Campaign Summary page, scroll down to the Followups Section. Read more about this page here: ThruTalk Campaign Summary Page.

This screenshot shows the campaign summary page, and shows an arrow pointing below the page to indicate you must scroll to find the Followups section.

Click Create Followup to begin.

This screenshot shows the Followups section with an arrow pointing to the Create Followup button


Step 2: Set Up the Followup

Set the parameters of the followup.

This is the first part of the Followup creation form. This shows the Title and Expires at selections.

  1. Title: Enter a descriptive title that helps identify the followup.
  2. Expires at: Determines how long the followup will be available to send in the Messenger. You can edit the followup's expiration time later if needed.
  3. Variables: Insert variables such as contact first/last name or sender first/last name.
  4. Message Text: Type the body of the reply.
  5. Total Segments (approx): An estimate of how many message segments the reply will use. This varies depending on variable or  custom field length. Read more about segments here: Text Message Segments.
  6. Characters remaining in current segment (approx): The approximate number of characters left in the current segment This is also an approximation because variables vary in length.
  7. Character set: This is the character set of your text message. Read more about this here: Text Message Encoding.
  8. Message Preview: View a preview of the followup with sample data replacing variables or custom fields.
  9. Save & Build Target List: Click to save your followup and show the New Segment button.


Step 3: Click New Segment

After you save your followup settings, you will see the New Segment button appear. Click here.

This image of the followup creation wizard highlights the New Segment button

Step 4: Target your Followup Message

Next, you will set the audience for your followup messages. Your first segment is the Base Segment, and any additional segments you add will provide further targeting options.


Base Segment

The first segment you create will be your base segment, where you'll be able to filter by Reply Status or by Survey Responses. 

This image shows the Base segment, or the first segment for your Followup. You can choose a Segment Source and a Segment Type. You can also filter by Reply Status or Survey Responses.

  1. Segment Source and Segment Type: You will not be able to select a Segment Source or Segment Type in the Base Segment.
  2. Reply Status: You can filter by response behavior: 
    • Any Reply Status
    • Contacts who replied at least once
    • Contacts who did not reply 
  3. Survey Responses: You can further filter the audience through survey responses. You can filter based on whether a contact had 
    • Any response
    • No response 
    • A particular response from the possible survey responses
  4. Set Base Segment: This saves your settings for your base segment. You must click this to move forward.
  5. Save as Draft: Click this to save your followup if you'd like to launch it at a later time.
  6. Launch Followup: Click to launch your followup and notify senders that they have a new followup to send.

Important: Make sure to click Set Base Segment before you click Save as Draft or Launch Followup, or your target list won't be saved.


Additional Segment

If you add any segments after the Base Segment, you will be able to select a Segment Source or Segment Type.

This image shows the segment creator for additional segments. Here you can some additional selections to the base segment, like adding contacts with certain survey responses.

  1. Base Segment: This is the base segment of the campaign.
  2. Segment Source: Choose a group or a past campaign as your segment source. This works in conjunction with the segment type, so you will see different options based on the segment type.
  3. Segment Type: You can choose to add or remove contacts from your base segment. 
    • Remove: You can remove contacts from previous groups, previous campaigns, or you can remove contacts based on reply status or survey responses.
    • Add: You can only add contacts from the current campaign based on the Reply Status or Survey Filter responses. You won't see the option to add a group, or the option to add contacts from a previous campaign. The add function here can be helpful if you filter based on multiple survey responses in the same segment.

When you're finished making selections, make sure to click Add Segment before you click Save as Draft or Launch Followup.


You cannot add contacts to a followup campaign that were not part of the original campaign. If you need to reach out to new contacts, you can clone the campaign to maintain the original campaign's parameters. If a dedicated number was used for the original campaign, you could use that dedicated number in the cloned campaign to have the messages sent from the same number.


Step 5: Save or Launch your Followup

Once you've built the target list, you can choose to save the followup as a draft or launch it. 

Screenshot of two buttons. On the left is a blue link on the white background, "Save as Draft". On the right is a magenta button with white text, "Launch Followup"

If you want to save your draft followup and finish building it later, you can click Save as Draft. To continue creating your followup later, return to the Campaign Summary page, click the three vertical dots next to your followup, and select Edit.

This image shows the Followups section. In the right most column, there is an Actions column where you can open a flyout menu with options to Launch, Edit, or Cancel a followup.

Step 6: After Launching a Followup

Once the followup is launched, you will see its status change from Draft to Active, and you'll see the Launch date appear above the expiration date. 

This image shows the Followups section with a focus on the Status and the Launch-Expiration.

Similar to launching a campaign, launching the followup queues up the messages to be sent from the messenger. Clicking Launch does NOT automatically send the message to recipients. Make sure that you send the followups after launching the followup campaign. 


If you have senders in the campaign, they will receive an email stating they can send followups. They will be able to send them from the messenger - the same place they sent the initial messages. You can access the user messenger by clicking Messenger from the top right of the admin dashboard.

This image shows where to find the Messenger from the admin dashboard.

As an admin, You can also send them from the admin messenger, which can be found by clicking Conversations and then on a sender's name.

This image shows the Conversations tab on the Campaign Summary page, where you can find the admin messenger.

In the admin messenger, identifiable by its yellow banner across the top, the followups can be found in the followups tab.

An image of the followups tab within the admin messenger.

Best Practices for Followup Messages

  • There should only be one active followup at any given time. Make sure other followups remain in drafts or are cancelled before launching a new followup.
  • Don't forget to click Set Base Segment before you save the followup or launch it
  • Users can Skip a followup for a particular contact or modify the followup in the message editor to better fit the flow of the conversation.
    This image shows the skip button available for followups in the user messenger


Troubleshooting Followups

  • Issue 1 - Launch Error: You click Launch and you see an error that says Unable to launch the followup right now.This image shows the Followups section where you can see a launching error as well as an audience size of 0.This will occur if the audience size for the followup campaign is 0. There are two reasons the audience size may be listed as 0:
    1. 0 contacts: The segment chosen when building your target doesn't include any contacts. For example, if you select contacts who replied at least once to the campaign but there were no responses. You'll need to revise your targeting to ensure it includes at least 1 contact.
    2. Didn't Click Set Base Segment: When building your target list segment, the Set Base Segment button was not selected before clicking Save Followup. Click Edit from the Actions menu, re-add the segment, and then click Set Base Segment to update your target list.
  • Issue 2 - Senders Don't See the Followup: You created your followup campaign, but senders do not see them in the messenger. Check the 3 following things
    In this image of the followups section of the campaign summary page, you can see the status, expiration, and audience size highlighted.
    1. Status: Check that the status of the followup is Active. If it is a Draft, you will have to Launch your followup. 
    2. Expiration: Check that your followup hasn't expired in the column for Launch-Expiration. If it has, click on the three vertical dots under Actions, click Edit, and then change the Expires at time to the future.
    3. Audience Size: If you have trouble launching or you don't see as many followups as you expected, check the audience size of the followup. If it is 0, you won't be able to launch the campaign. If it is lower than you expect, check your segment filters.
  • Issue 3 - Multiple Active Followups: Different followups are being queued for different contacts.

    This can happen when there are multiple followups queued at the same time. Make sure there is only one active followup at any given time. To cancel a followup, click on the three vertical dots under Actions, and click Cancel.
    In this image of the followups section, you can see 3 different followups with three different statuses.
  • Issue 4 - Followup Targeting: Followup campaign doesn't target everyone it should.

    If you create a followup campaign and save it as a draft, the segment will not change unless the targeting is updated. If you have new activity on the campaign, the targeting won't update automatically. For example, you target your followup campaign to contacts that replied at least once, but contacts reply after you create your followup.
    To update your targeted base segment, click the three vertical dots, click Edit, and then click Update Followup. This will update the audience size.
    This image from the ThruTalk Campaign Summary page shows the Followups table and highlights the Edit button from the flyout menu.This image highlights the Update Followup button on the followup wizard