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Send an Automated SMS

Schedule a text to everyone booked for a performance whether it's a pre-show reminder, a "doors in two hours" or a where-to-collect message.                    This article covers building the SMS.                                                        Attaching it to your performances is one more step, linked at the bottom.

Before you start

If flows, steps and the Default Flow are new to you, read How flows work in crowdEngage first — two minutes and the rest of this makes sense.

Build the flow and add an SMS step
  1. Go to Messaging → Flows in the dashboard.
  2. Click Add Flow and give it a name you'll recognise later (e.g "Pre-show message" . One flow holds every message a performance sends, so name it for the performance, not the single text.

    Screenshot 2026-08-12 110342
  3. Click Add step to start the SMS.

    crowdEngage - Flows 2
who gets it and when
  1. Recipients. A step defaults to everyone booked for the performance. To narrow it down to a sating area, a ticket type, an access group — use the Criteria Builder at the top of the step. See Target recipients with the Criteria Builder.
  2. Send time. Set when the text goes out relative to the performance start time. It could be the day before to catch pre-orders, or a couple of hours before doors as a last reminder. You're setting an offset from curtain, not a clock time, so it works across every performance you attach the flow to.

    crowdEngage - Flows 3
Write the text
  1. Click New text message template and write your message.
  2. Add where you want the mobile ticket link — this is what opens the customer's ticket, pre-orders and FAQs. Don't skip it; it's the whole point of the text.

  3. To pull in details automatically — performance name, date, time — use merge tags. They read straight from your ticketing system, so one template fits every performance. See Representing dates and times in your templates and the Merge Tag Reference for what's available.
    crowdEngage - SMS

  4. Click Apply, then save the step.

Add more steps to the same flow if this performance needs more than one message — a reminder, a post-show survey. Each step gets its own time and recipients.

Attach it, or nothing sends

Building the flow doesn't send anything. You have to attach it to the performances you want it to run on. → Attach a flow to an event

If it's not working
  • Nothing sent. The flow was built but never attached to the performance, or it's attached but the send time has already passed relative to curtain. Check the Events page — Attach a flow to an event
  • The wrong people got it (or didn't). The step's criteria don't match your ticketing data. Attribute names must match your ticketing system exactly — see Target recipients with the Criteria Builder.
  • The link didn't work. is missing or mistyped in the template.

 

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