Recurring SMS campaigns are useful when the same kind of announcement should go to a maintained contact group on a regular schedule. The key word is maintained: each run reads the group's current contacts. It does not automatically remove customers who completed an order, stopped attending a class or no longer need a reminder.
Use recurrence for a defined series with an owner and a stopping point. For a single appointment or event, a one-time scheduled campaign is often easier to review.
Prepare an audience that remains accurate
You need campaign management access, an available SMS sending identity and sufficient spendable balance. Review your group's complete phone numbers, custom fields and communication preferences in Contacts.
Write a membership rule, such as “participants registered for the current four-week workshop.” Name the person responsible for applying that rule before each send. A group called “All customers” usually says too little about who should receive a recurring message.
The subscription checkbox alone does not exclude contacts from current messaging campaigns. Remove recipients who should no longer be contacted from the target group and use applicable blocking controls. Changes to the group affect later runs; they cannot undo messages already queued or sent.
Configure the recurring campaign
- Open Marketing → Campaigns and select the campaign creation form.
- Enter a descriptive campaign name. Choose the SMS Sending identity and the checked Contact Group.
- Write Message, or select a suitable SMS template. Use supported contact substitutions such as
{{name}}and{{cf:venue}}only when those values are populated. Calendar wording such as “tomorrow” must remain true on every run. - Enable Recurring campaign. Choose Frequency: Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Set Every and Time of day. Weekly recurrence also needs at least one Run on weekday; monthly recurrence needs Day of month.
- Enter an explicit Timezone, for example
Africa/Dar_es_Salaam. Use Schedule as a future starting anchor when needed, then inspect the saved next run rather than assuming the anchor is itself a send. - Set a finite Max runs for a limited series. Review Ends on when using an end date, and plan a final check that the campaign stopped as intended.
- Review Send Interval, the estimate and wallet balance. Select Create Campaign only after a controlled test has demonstrated the wording and sender.
For the weekly example below, use Every 1. Before relying on an interval of several weeks, verify the actual upcoming dates with support: the current weekly calculation can choose the next selected weekday rather than skip intervening weeks. Monthly dates beyond a month's length are clamped to that month's last day.
Worked example: four workshop reminders
A fictional training business wants to remind registered participants each Wednesday about Thursday's workshop. Create a group called “October workshop participants,” select Weekly, Wednesday, 16:00, Africa/Dar_es_Salaam, and set Max runs to 4.
Example wording:
Example Training: Your workshop is tomorrow at 09:00 in Room 2. Please bring your registration reference. Contact the training office if you cannot attend.
Use a small group of your own test contacts first. Check the received sender name, text and sending time. Then prepare the intended participant group and review its membership before every Wednesday run. If the session moves to another room or a week is cancelled, stop and correct the plan before the next dispatch.
Do not add an appointment date field and expect recurrence to send separately for each participant's date. This campaign follows its own schedule and sends to the selected group.
Monitor runs and control repetition
Open the campaign details to review recurrence, next run and run history. Inspect individual messages as well as counters: a completed run means processing reached its end, not that every phone received the SMS.
Use Pause ahead of the next planned run when the audience or message needs review. Resume makes a paused recurring campaign eligible again; when its saved next run is absent or past, the application computes a new future occurrence. It is not a command to replay every missed reminder.
Use Cancel to stop future recurrence and inspect the resulting status. Messages already queued may continue, so allow for that when preparing corrections. Restart resets recurring execution counters and calculates a new schedule. It can send to previous recipients again; it does not select only failed recipients.
Diagnose timing and balance problems
If no run starts, check status, next run, timezone and available sending identity. If the campaign pauses for insufficient funds, review Billing, top up as appropriate, then use Resume after checking the audience again. Recurring campaigns can reserve balance for upcoming rounds, so the displayed wallet total is not always the amount available for other work.
Send intervals, queue processing and provider limits can delay individual recipients beyond the scheduled start. Choose a lead time that accommodates the whole audience. For further checks, use campaign delivery troubleshooting and SMS budget planning.