SMS marketing is on Messages. There is no separate marketing screen for it. Mass Text sends one message to many pet owners, and Bulk Send filters the audience first and personalises each message. The Mass Text card on Marketing Hub opens Messages too, so you are in the right place either way.

Both need Communications Booster, an add-on for Business Pro, Flex and Max, with an active dedicated number.

Every bulk message has a type, and the type decides who can receive it, because each type reads its own consent on each customer. Mass Text and Bulk Send name the same three types slightly differently.

Business updates are things like "We're closed from 23 Dec to 2 Jan", "Updated vaccination requirements from 1 April", "Closed today due to extreme heat, all appointments rescheduled" or "Our second room opens Monday". A marketing opt-out does not stop them.

Trap: Never send promotional content as a business update to reach customers who have not opted in to marketing. Under the Spam Act 2003, a promotional message needs marketing consent, and Petboost checks every bulk message for it before it goes.

Mass Text sends the same message to everyone you select.

A message can be up to 480 characters. Petboost signs it off with your business name, adds Reply STOP to opt out as the footer, and counts the SMS segments the whole message makes. Recipients shows how many of the eligible customers are selected, and the line ending customers excluded lists who is left out: customers who opted out of that type, customers without an SMS-capable phone number, and archived customers.

If you do not have enough credits, the dialog reads Insufficient credits with a link to Purchase a credit pack, and Review Prior to Sending stays off.

After you send, the messages go out in the background and you can close the window. While they send, a bar at the top of the conversation list shows the progress, with View. When the send finishes, the dialog reads All messages sent, or how many sent, failed and were skipped, and its Retry button sends the failed ones again.

Check: Wait for one batch to finish before you send another. While one is still going, the dialog reads A batch is still sending, so customers are not messaged twice.

Bulk Send builds the audience from segments and filters, then sends each customer their own message with their name and pet details filled in. The dialog it opens is titled Mass Text, and its steps are Choose Audience, Review Audience, Compose Message and Review & Send.

Under Narrow it down, select a filter to add it. Service booked, Tags, Birthday month, Pet type, Upcoming booking and Last visit show first; the more button adds Membership, Breed, Number of visits, Total spend, Pet age, Pet weight, Desexed and Number of pets. A filter only appears when your customers have that data, so Tags needs at least one tag, Membership needs at least one member, and Birthday month and Pet age need at least one pet with a birthday saved. There is no suburb filter.

Birthday month starts on next month and lists every month with how many customers have a pet born in it; select more than one month to widen it. Pets with no birthday saved are left out. Pet Name fills in only the pets whose birthday matches, and Review Audience shows each pet's birthday beside the customer. To reach your regular daycare dogs with a November birthday, add Birthday month (November), Service booked (your daycare service, Been in) and Number of visits.

From October to December, Bulk Send offers the Christmas: nothing booked in December segment under Marketing. It finds customers who have visited this year and have nothing booked in December yet, and starts the message for you.

It is a promotion, so it only reaches customers who have opted in to marketing. Each customer gets 1 text, and Pet Name names every pet in the household. A stay that runs into December counts as booked. Cancelled bookings and no-shows count as neither a visit nor a booking. Like the other filters that read bookings, "this year" only reaches back 9 months. Nothing is sent until you select the Send to button.

To tell customers about a closure, or to reach everyone who was in on a day, use Booked on a day under Announcements.

A stay that covers any selected day is included. Cancelled bookings and no-shows are left out. The count covers the last 9 months and the next 6. If the button reads Pick another day, the days are outside that window. Pet Name fills in the pet on that booking. Write the day into the message. Next Appointment is their next visit, which can be a different day, so that insert is not offered for this segment.

Booked on a day is an announcement. It reaches customers who have not opted out of business updates. It is not a promotion.

A customer has to match every filter you add, and the pet filters have to match the same pet. Service booked finds customers who booked a service or who never did, and Tags can include or leave out a tag. Filters that read bookings look at the last 9 months and the next 6, and cancelled bookings don't count. Each choice shows how many customers who can receive this message type match it, and the count updates as you change the selection. If nobody matches, each filter shows how many customers it keeps on its own; select one to remove it.

Include "Reply STOP to opt out" footer is ticked by default. If you untick it, a Spam Act 2003 warning explains that a commercial message must carry a working way to unsubscribe. Leave it ticked unless the message is purely operational.

Each Bulk Send message goes out as its own text and lands in the customer's thread on Messages. While they send, Stop Sending stops the rest, and closing the dialog stops them too.

Tip: Send the message to yourself or a team member before your full list, and avoid early mornings, late evenings and public holidays. A message for a group that needs it tends to land better than a blanket send.

Before a bulk message goes, Petboost's AI compliance check reads it. In Mass Text it runs when you select Review Prior to Sending. In Bulk Send it runs when you select Review my message, and nothing can be sent until it has. It looks for two things: promotional content in a business update, and signs of spam such as link shorteners, words in capitals, pressure language, phishing phrases or a message that is mostly links.

In Mass Text the switch button is Switch to Promotion. In Bulk Send it is Switch to Promotion segment, under Or send as a Promotion instead, and Bulk Send also offers Use our compliant rewrite: select Use rewrite & review to take a rewritten message back to Compose Message.

A Mass Text keeps its own record in Announcement History, with its status, results, message and who sent it.

A send's details show its status, Completed, Partial, Failed, Sending, Queued or Interrupted, and list its recipients under Failed, Skipped and Delivered.

For more detail, see Communication Preferences and Consent.

A send can skip a selected customer at the moment their message is due: when their consent changed after you selected them, when they have already had five texts that day, when their account cannot be found, or when your monthly SMS limit is reached.

A bulk message uses one credit per segment for each recipient. A segment is up to 160 characters, or 70 when the message holds an emoji, and the sign-off and footer count towards it. Credits are drawn in this order:

Both dialogs compare the send with the credits you have before you confirm. For full details on credits, see SMS Credits and Usage.

Petboost builds Australian Spam Act 2003 requirements into bulk sending: