Service Titan Knowledge Base

Create Recurring Service Campaigns using SMSLast updated on 03/29/2023

With ServiceTitan, you can build campaigns to automatically target and reach out to Recurring Services Customers. This includes automating your booking reminders, follow-ups, and thank you messages. With this feature, your customers can book jobs through SMS messages.

Use the SMS Text Message for Recurring Service Event Follow-Ups feature to automatically attribute revenue to any recurring service reminder campaigns that use SMS. Use the Analytics dashboard to track how campaigns perform throughout their life cycle. You can also manage and keep your reporting in one place.


Things to know

  • Activate the Chat feature to be able to create recurring service reminder marketing campaigns that use SMS text messages.

  • Recurring service reminder campaigns are launched the next day, at the earliest. This allows ServiceTitan to process and queue up your text messages ahead of time, which ensures proper delivery.

  • Campaigns can be archived, unarchived, and cloned. For more information, see Manage Marketing Pro functions.

  • Campaigns can be edited only in draft mode. For more information, see Manage Marketing Pro Campaigns.

  • SMS text messages will be sent to the newest contact number on the customer profile that has the Marketing updates toggle enabled. If the text fails to send to this number, it will then attempt to send to any additional non-landline phone number on the customer profile that has marketing updates enabled.


Create Recurring Service campaigns

You can create a recurring service reminder marketing campaign that uses SMS text messages in four steps:

  • Step 1 Overview: Basic settings for your recurring service reminder campaign. Includes the campaign type, name, description, delivery logic, and adding a unique tracking number.

  • Step 2 Select Audience: Set which of your customers will receive marketing content through SMS messages reminding them about the recurring services.

  • Step 3 Create Text Message: Add and create the SMS message content sent to customers as part of this campaign.

  • Step 4 Review & Submit: Finalize the campaign

Note: You can create recurring service reminder marketing campaigns that use SMS text messages from the Campaigns and Analytics on the Marketing page. For more information, see Use Marketing Analytics.

Step 1: Overview

The Overview includes email campaign details, such as campaign type, name, delivery logic, and more.

  1. Go to the navigation bar and click Marketing > Campaigns.

  2. Click Create Campaign.

  3. Select SMS Text Message - Recurring Service Event Follow-Ups as the campaign category and click Next. Note: The Activate Chat to Continue pop-up appears if you don’t have the Chat feature activated and asks you to navigate to Settings. For more information on this, see Set up and enable Chat

  4. For Campaign Name, enter a unique, brief, and descriptive name for the recurring service reminder campaign. (Maximum of 60 characters.) Optionally, enter a description of the campaign.

  5. For Delivery, enter the following details:

    1. Launch Date: Click the Calendar calendar to select a campaign launch date, or manually enter a launch date. SMS messages will start sending on this date Note: You can launch the recurring service reminder campaign with tomorrow’s date at the earliest.

  6. Stop sending texts when a customer leaves the audience: Select this if the system should stop sending customers marketing content when they leave the audience chosen for this campaign. This option is enabled by default.

  7. Send texts until: Add a delivery condition to stop sending SMS messages to a specific customer once that customer has met the selected criteria. For example, if you want delivery to stop once a customer has booked a job, select Job Booked. Options include:

    1. Call created: A customer calls a phone number associated with the SMS Text Message Campaign 

    2. Job booked: A customer books a job as a result of this recurring service reminder campaign

    3. No trigger: The recurring service reminder campaign will continue sending each SMS message in the campaign sequence until the customer no longer qualifies for the audience or they unsubscribe. For more information on audience inclusion criteria, see Create audience.

  8. For Outbound Phone Number and Tracking, add a unique tracking phone number. The system uses this number to attribute revenue generated from this number to your recurring service reminder campaign. It’s important to not use the same Tracking Phone Numbers across multiple campaigns. Doing this leads to inaccurate reporting metrics, or your reporting metrics will be inaccurate. For more information on how to add Tracking Phone Numbers, see the section Add outbound and tracking phone numbers later in this topic.

  9. When you’re done, click Next. This takes you to Step 2: Select audience.

Add outbound and tracking phone numbers

You can add an outbound and tracking phone number in two ways:

  1. Generate a new number

    1. Local Number or Toll-Free Number: Select Local Number for a local campaign and Toll-Free Number for a regional or national campaign.

    2. Area Code and/or ZIP: (In Local Number only) Enter the area code or ZIP Code you want the tracking number to correspond to.

    3. Contains: (Optional) If you want your tracking number to include a particular set of digits, enter them here.

    4. Click Search Numbers. The Search Results window opens.

    5. Select a tracking number and click Choose Number.

    6. The Set Forwarding Number window opens. Enter the phone number at which you want to receive incoming calls for this campaign, or select to use a default number and click Add Number. Note: Adding new tracking number steps can differ depending on the phone integration you use. For more information, see Add or edit tracking numbers.

    Tip: Make note of the number you select to use as a call to action button in the email template.

  2. Select existing number

    1. Click Select Existing Number and select a number from the Select Existing Number page.

    2. Click Assign Number to add the selected number to your campaign.

Step 2: Select an audience

You can add audiences that will receive your recurring service reminder campaign SMS messages in three ways:

  1. From your audience list, select the audience you want to use for this campaign. Note: Hover over the phone number of the audience to see how many customers are included in each audience.

  2. Select the 30-Day Recurring Services Reminder. Note: This is a list of all active Recurring Service Events generated automatically from the Follow Ups module for the past 30 days.

  3. If you want to create a new audience for the recurring service reminder campaign, click Create new, enter the Audience Name and click Begin to provide information about your campaign audiences. For more information on creating an audience, see Create audiences. Audiences created by the user will be limited to having the Recurring Services and Location filter sets only. All audiences require a recurring services filter applied in each inclusion group. 

After having added an audience with one of the above-mentioned options

  1. Click Next to continue to the Terms of Use page.

  2. Confirm the Terms of Use and click Continue. This takes you to step 3: Create Text Message.

Step 3: Create a Text Message

To build up your SMS text message in sequence:

  1. In Text Message 1, enter the SMS text message you want your customers to read.

  2. Use merge tags to automatically populate information like the customer’s first name by highlighting the tag, then dragging it into the message.

  3. Add the time of day to send your marketing content.

  4. Repeat the steps above to add a second SMS to the campaign. You can include SMS text messages in each campaign by clicking icon-add.png again.

  5. When you're done adding SMS text messages, click Next.

Step 4: Review and submit

Review the recurring service reminder campaign details to send it using SMS. Important! After the SMS Text Message for Recurring Service Event Follow-Ups is scheduled to launch, you can’t make changes to it.

  1. To update a step in the recurring service reminder campaign, go to the campaign section in the Review and Submit step.

  2. Click Edit.  The details of the campaign section open.

  3. To send a test SMS for your recurring service reminder campaign, go to the Text Message Content preview section, click Send Test, and enter the phone number to send the SMS message for the test.

  4. When you’re done reviewing the SMS text message, click Schedule Text Message. The Schedule Campaign confirmation pop-up opens. Note: If you’re not ready to schedule the SMS text message for sending the recurring service reminder campaign, click Save as Draft at the bottom left corner of the screen to save it and schedule it at a later time.

  5.  If all looks good, click Schedule.

  6. Your campaign is scheduled, click View All Campaigns to see a list of all your campaigns.


Job booking by Recurring Service campaign sent using SMS text messages

In the Job Booking screen, you can create a job booking for the recurring service reminder campaign sent using an SMS text message. To help you prioritize and assign the chats you received from the recurring service reminder campaigns, you can see the Recurring Service Booking tag in the webchat.

Note: The tag disappears when your customer books a recurring services appointment within 30 days of receiving the text for the specific chat. If your customer doesn’t book a recurring services appointment within 30 days, the Followup tag appears.


Opt-out SMS message

To stop receiving SMS campaigns, customers can send an SMS message with the word Stop to the tracking phone number. After a customer opts out, they can no longer receive any SMS campaigns from you, regardless of whether the phone number used in the original SMS campaign is used again or a new phone number is used. Additionally, customers can’t receive any messages sent to them by chat. Note: The Stop request applies to all tracking phone numbers associated with your SMS campaigns, meaning they will subsequently stop receiving messages from any other campaigns with the same tracking phone numbers. Tip: If your customer turned off the job notifications they can still receive chat SMS from you.


Opt-in SMS message

To start receiving SMS campaigns again, a customer can send an SMS message with the word Start to one of the following three options:

  • The same tracking number they opted out from

  • Another tracking number from another campaign

  • The default SMS number

This allows them to opt in again and receive SMS campaigns from you.



Important note: Some features may not be currently included in your account and additional configuration may be required. Please contact technical support for details.


Disclaimer: Information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and it should not be construed to be legal advice. Information provided in this article may also not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information in this article to meet any compliance requirements without seeking independent legal or other professional advice.