SMS

Events delivers announcements by SMS through Twilio. Credentials are resolved at the organization level: if your workspace has tenant-specific Twilio credentials configured on the back end, those are used; otherwise Mercleo's platform Twilio account handles delivery.

Where SMS works

SMS is available on announcements only. Reminder emails do not support SMS: the channel selector on those tools offers email only.

When you create or edit an announcement, a channel selector lets you choose email, SMS, or both. Selecting both does not send to every recipient twice, see the note below.

How attendees opt in

SMS consent is stored on each attendee's identity record. There are two separate consent flags: SMS marketing consent and SMS transactional consent.

Attendees grant consent during registration. You control which consent language they see from Settings, then Marketing consent, an organization-level setting that applies across every event in your workspace. A verified phone number is also required: an attendee who consented but never verified their phone will not receive SMS.

Opting out (and back in) by text

Events honours the standard carrier opt-out keywords automatically. Reply STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, QUIT, or END to any text (as the whole message; a trailing period or exclamation mark is still recognized) and Events turns off both SMS consent flags for every attendee identity that shares that phone number, across every event and every workspace that has texted it.

Reply START, UNSTOP, or YES and Events restores transactional consent only, so schedule-change and check-in texts can resume. Marketing consent is not restored automatically: the attendee has to opt back in from their portal notification settings.

Delivery status

Twilio reports back whether each text was ultimately delivered, and Events records that final state against the recipient. There is no dedicated screen for browsing per-recipient delivery status today: the announcement list shows only that a message went out by text, and the summary you see right after you send reflects Twilio's immediate accept-or-reject response, not final carrier delivery.

Quiet hours

TCPA guidelines restrict marketing SMS to between 8 am and 9 pm in the recipient's local time. Events does not capture an attendee's timezone, so it checks against your own local time when you send a marketing announcement on the SMS channel: if it is outside that window, you get a warning.

The warning is advisory: you can override it and send immediately. You are responsible for compliance with applicable messaging regulations.

Testing SMS

Each announcement form includes a Send test option when SMS is the selected channel. Enter a phone number in E.164 format (for example +16135550123) and the current title and body are sent immediately to that number.

Test sends bypass all consent checks and do not create a recipient record. They are for verifying message content only, use them before sending to your full attendee list.

When SMS is skipped

An attendee is skipped for SMS delivery when any of the following apply:

• No SMS consent on their identity record.
• No verified phone number on their identity record.
• No E.164-formatted phone number stored on their record.
• They registered before the attendee identity system was introduced. Those records have SMS transactional consent defaulting to false and are skipped.
• Twilio credentials are unavailable for your workspace: the send is short-circuited with "SMS is not configured for this workspace."