Email to SMS allows you to send SMS messages directly from your email account(s).

How to set up Email to SMS

To send SMS messages from your email, you can follow these simple steps:

1. Go to your MessageBird Dashboard, and on the left panel select SMS → Email to SMS
2. Click on ‘+Email’ on the top right and enter the email address you would like to send SMS from then click ‘Add’; repeat this step for additional email accounts

If you want to change settings like: your default originator, send your message in the email subject, send special characters, message status updates

1. Configure the settings by clicking on the edit icon on the right of your registered email address or email domain.

   1. Select ‘Edit settings manually’

   2. Now you can change the settings:

      a. Default originator: Define this if you would like to use the same originator for every send.

      b. SMS in subject: The text in the email subject line will be sent as the body of the SMS.

      c. DLR status: Choose whether you want to receive a status report and which report you would like to receive.

      d. DLR email address/ Error email address: Specify to which email address you would like to receive status/error reports.

      e. Voice or SMS Message: Let us know if you want to send SMS or Voice messages from this particular email/domain.

      Now you’re ready to send the message from your email!

       

How to send an SMS message from your Email

1. Sending to a single number

   1.  In your email client, compose a new email.

   2. Configure your email as per below screenshot

   3. Send your email

   4. The SMS message will arrive like this:

2. Sending to a group
   1. You can also send SMS messages to a group of contacts
   2. Contacts need to be added to a group in your Dashboard
   3. The group name can not contain any spaces or special characters.
   4. To send SMS to contacts in a group from your email, send the email to <groupname>@sms.messagebird.com

Best practices to keep in mind

1. We can not support additional recipients in the BCC field. To send to additional recipients, either use a group or add multiple recipients in the TO or CC field.

2. When sending an email to be converted into an SMS, the receiving email address needs to be formatted like this: <number in international format>@sms.messagebird.com.

   • For example, to send to a UK number, the email address should be formatted like this: 447512345678@sms.messagebird.com

3. If you do not want to send all the content in the email as a text message, but only a part of it, you can do that by marking the beginning and the end of the text message in the e-mail with the following markers: --begin and/or --end.

   1. Example email:

                 2. How it will arrive as SMS:

4. You can also configure your settings to receive replies and forward these to your email

1. Make sure to set your Email to SMS settings to use the originator in the subject line

2. To send out with your own Dedicated Number, just put your dedicated number in the email subject as per below:

3. To send out with the Shared Number, type: ‘inbox’ in the subject line. If you have a default originator in your email settings in your MessageBird account, save it there.

   

4. Now go to the Flow Builder in your account and set up a flow to forward replies to your email address.

    

   

   Learn How to forward incoming SMS to an email with Flow Builder in our step by step guide.