You can send voice messages (text-to-speech) directly from your MessageBird Dashboard with the same personalisation capabilities as SMS messages.

Go to the left-hand side of your Dashboard screen and click Voice → Send Voice Message.

Step 1: Creating the message

In the two drop-down menus, you can select a range of languages per country, with a male/female voice preference. In the bottom right corner, you see the number of characters that are still available within the message and you can also select how often you want the message to play.

Repeating a voice message can be useful when sending login tokens, one-time-passwords, or when including a number that you’re requesting a call-back on. This can also lengthen the message enough to avoid a possible voicemail catching the message.

Now you can write down the voice message or use a pre-created template (are you planning on sending the same voice message regularly? You can save time by creating a template.)

You can personalise your voice message by setting up variables when you import your contacts. These variables will be automatically imported into the drop-down menu  +Personalise on the right side of your screen.

The message will be automatically personalised for each person as the system associates this information with the contact number of the recipient (the person who receives the message). For example, when the SMS is received instead of "Hello [FIRST_NAME]" it will be displayed as "Hello Laura". 

Step 2: Originator & Recipients

Select an originator

An originator is what you show as the caller ID on the phone when the call is placed. For Voice, it needs to be a MessageBird number and the maximum number of characters is 17.

Select one or more recipients 

A recipient is who will receive the message. To add more than one  recipient, you can choose between:

• Manually add a number: Type a name or number to add a contact from your phonebook quickly.
• Contacts from phonebook: Select specific contacts from your phonebook.
• Groups from phonebook: Select specific groups from your phonebook.
• Submit your own numbers: Write down up to 300 mobile phone numbers manually.

Step 3: Verify and schedule your message

Verify

Go over your message one last time to ensure it's exactly what you want: Are all the settings correct? Are there any typos? Did you select the right originator? Have the proper recipients been added? 

Schedule

If you don't want to send the message right away, you can go to the bottom left corner of your screen and click on Schedule.  With this feature, you can set up the date and time (hour and minutes), and also set a frequency: once, daily, weekly, etc.

If you need to make any changes, you can select Back in the last step without losing the entered information. Keep in mind that the time that you schedule is in the time zone in which you’ve set up your account.