A broadcast is a one-time email or text you send by hand to a group of contacts, like an announcement or a newsletter. Email and SMS broadcasts work the same way. You choose who gets it, choose the message, and choose when it goes out. Then you track it in Broadcast History. For follow-up that should happen on its own, use an automation instead.
Go to Contacts and select the people you want to reach. To reach a whole group, pick the group, hover over the selection icon at the top of the list, and click All in Group. You can also click All on Page, or check contacts one at a time. The same steps work in other collections too. Once you've selected records, the action bar appears at the top of the screen.
For email, click Email. Quick email opens Simple Mail for a fast message. Choose who it's from in the Send from dropdown, add a subject, and write. Quick emails aren't saved to your messages. To send a saved email, click Choose an email and pick it from the Template dropdown. To write a new one, click New template, and check "Would you like to save this message" so you can track its stats.
For a text, click SMS. Choose Quick SMS to write a new text, or Choose SMS to use a saved one. Then pick your From number. You'll need an Ontraport SMS number. If you text US or Canadian numbers, you also need to register a Sender Profile, or carriers will likely block your messages.
Click Send now, or click Send later to pick a date and time.
Ontraport respects each contact's permissions. Bulk Email Status decides who can receive your email. For example, contacts who've unsubscribed get transactional email only. Texts go only to contacts who've opted in to SMS.
A few cautions. A scheduled broadcast only goes to the people in the group when you scheduled it. If the group keeps growing, use an automation instead. Carriers can filter the same text sent to many people at once, and they may block your number, so for group texts, an automation is safer too. And if you edit an email after scheduling it, cancel the broadcast and schedule it again, or your changes won't go out.
To track your broadcasts, go to Automations, then Broadcast History. If you've turned on other objects, like Companies or Deals, you'll find it under Contacts instead. It lists everything you've sent by hand to two or more contacts, plus single-contact messages you scheduled for later. You can filter by type, like SMS or Quick Emails, or by status, like Pending, Sent or Failed. Quick emails have no name, so look for them by subject.
Hover over the sent column to see how many messages are scheduled, sent or failed, and why any failed. For texts, that number counts contacts, not message segments. To see the opens, clicks and unsubscribes for a saved email, open it from Messages and click Stats.
Sent something by mistake? In Broadcast History, select the broadcast, click Cancel, then click Okay. You can cancel a scheduled broadcast any time before it starts sending, and you can stop a large email broadcast partway through. Texts you send right away to two or more contacts wait in the queue for five minutes, so you have time to catch a mistake.
Broadcasts are for groups. For a one-on-one text conversation, use Inbox, which keeps the whole thread in one place.
So: select your contacts, choose an email or text, send it now or later, and keep an eye on it in Broadcast History. Next up: SMS messaging, and how texting differs from email.