Messenger from SalesLoft

Texting is part of most people's communication these days. So it makes sense to incorporate that into your sales process. SalesLoft Messenger brings the power of SMS into your sales engagement platform.

Sending SMS through SalesLoft allows you to gain the benefits of reaching prospects through text messaging with your SalesLoft number. 

Users who have set up the Dialer and whose admins have the feature turned on will be able to send and receive text messages in SalesLoft. 

When Messenger is enabled, you will see the Messenger icon in the top navigation menu. The icon looks like a speech bubble with the ellipses text inside it. The top navigation menu is consistent throughout the SalesLoft platform, so you can access this icon no matter where you are within SalesLoft. 

In this article, you will learn about SalesLoft Messenger, including: 

• Important Things to Know About Messenger
• How to Start a Text
• Inside The Messenger Pane
• When You Receive a Text
• Send an Outbound Message
• Messenger Activity Logging

Important Things to Know About Messenger

• Access to Messenger requires purchase of a Talk and Text plan. Contact your SalesLoft rep for more information.
• In order to use Messenger, team admins must enable the feature in their Team Dialer Settings.
• Carrier filtering is a possibility when using SMS.
• Messenger will respect both Do Not Contact or the more specific Restrict Messages contact restriction.
• SalesLoft Messenger opts-out when customers respond with a STOP message and will not allow the user to continue sending texts to that Person. 
• Sending SMS to landline numbers: If a text is sent to a number that is a landline, Messenger will attempt to send it to our carrier for delivery. Some carriers will convert the SMS into text-to-speech messages via voice calls.

How to Start a Text

If this is your first time texting someone from SalesLoft, you will begin that text from the Person Profile Quick Actions. 

Using the Quick Actions is a lot like going to a contact in your mobile phone, and selecting the "Message" option. 

To start a text, follow these steps: 

1. Go to the Person Profile page of the Person you would like to text. 
2. From the Quick Actions menu, select the Message icon. The icon will show the mobile number that the text will be sent to. 
3. The Messenger pane will open in the bottom right window of the page. 
4. Send your message. 

In order to send an outbound message to a Person, there must be a number in the Mobile field. Otherwise the Quick Action will be inactive.

You can tell whether the action is inactive if the button is grayed out and says Mobile Missing.

Inside the Messenger Pane

Whenever you access Messenger from the top navigation icon, the Quick Actions, or by clicking a notification, the Messenger pane will open in the bottom right corner of the SalesLoft platform. From the Messenger pane, you may view and respond to any ongoing messages. 

The Messenger pane is broken down into two sections:

List of Message Histories

On the left of the message window, you will see the full list of messages that you have sent/received. Select a message to view the conversation.

The selected message will have a blue vertical bar on the far left of the tile containing the Person's name, time the last message was received, and a preview of the text.

Conversation 

The text conversation is on the right of the Messenger window.

At the top of the section, you can see and link to Person information. This information includes:

• Person name and link to their profile
• Account name (if linked) and link to the Account profile
• Job title
• Salesforce icon: The icon will be highlighted in blue if the Person is linked to their Salesforce Lead or Contact record

The conversation will be represented by text bubbles that contain the message. You will see the following in the bubbles:

• Inbound: Gray bubbles are from the Person you are texting. They will contain the message and time the text was received.
• Outbound: Blue bubbles represent messages you have sent from SalesLoft. The bubble will contain the message and the time you sent the text. 

Finally, the bottom of the conversation section is where you can type and send your messages. 

When You Receive a Text

Inbound messages are matched to a Person in SalesLoft based on the following criteria in order:

1. Most recently contacted with that number 
2. Most recently created with that number

This keeps us from having to move to requiring phone numbers to be unique.

Whenever new messages are sent to your number, you will be alerted by a notification badge on the Messenger icon. The red badge icon displays the number of unread messages.

You will also see a Chrome notification for the inbound message. Select the notification to open the Messenger pane. 

Send an Outbound Message

Sending an SMS message from SalesLoft is very similar to sending the same style message from your mobile phone. So, unless you are holding onto your Motorola RAZR or Nokia and using T9, you're probably pretty familiar with how to send a text. 

Still, for the sake of being thorough, let's walk through the instructions of how to send an SMS message. 

Things to Note:

• Message length is 1,600 characters.
• Currently no GIFs.
• SalesLoft Messenger supports emojis, however; they are not natively in the keyboard. However, you can use Unicode. For instance, on a Mac hit command-control-space to access an emoji. 

 To send an outbound message, follow these steps:

1. Access the Messenger from the top nav, Quick Actions, or an inbound notification.
2. Select the Person you want to text from the Messenger history (if applicable).
3. Type your message in the text box.
4. Click Send or hit Enter on your keyboard.

Messenger Activity Logging

Activity logging happens automatically as messages are sent and received. 

A new activity is created when a new message is sent outbound or is received. As you and your prospect continue their conversation, the texts will be added to that activity. If there is a 1-hour break in the conversation, a new message (sent or received) will generate a new activity. These are visible in the activity feed on a Person. 

Activities are then synced with CRM activities according to the user's specified field configuration.