How to run an SMS campaign step by step (with a timeline)

To run an SMS campaign, register your brand and campaign for 10DLC, import a list of people who agreed to hear from you, and send one short message inside permitted local hours. Then answer every reply quickly, because the follow-up is where the campaign actually pays off.

Most of the elapsed time goes to carrier registration, not to the send itself. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. The writing, list cleanup and testing all fit inside that window, so a realistic plan is about a week from signup to first send. Below is the full sequence of work, the timing for each step, and the segment math so you know the bill before you press send.

The timeline at a glance

Step 1: Register before you plan a big send

Carriers filter unregistered A2P traffic, so registration comes first. That holds even if your copy is perfect. If 10DLC is new to you, our 10DLC explainer covers the basics. The short version is that you register a brand (your business) and a campaign (the kind of messages you send).

On Ready this happens in-app. There is no setup fee. The charge at submit is the first month, $25, and after that the monthly is $25 for registration and $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

A few things matter here:

• Pick the use case that matches what you send. Registering "marketing" when you mostly send reminders, or the reverse, causes trouble later. Our use-case picking guide walks through it.
• Use the free texts before you register. The first 20 texts are free one-to-one sends. They are useful for checking that your number works and that replies come back. They end the moment a registration is paid for, so test first and register second.
• You are not frozen while you wait. An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers, at its normal per-text rate. If you bought your number before registering, you send on Ready's shared registration at the same per-text rate while your own registration is in review. A real campaign to a few thousand people should still wait for your own approval.
• Brand vetting is optional. It costs $79 Standard or $179 Enhanced, one-time. It is only worth it for higher-volume senders.

Step 2: Import a list you are allowed to text

This is the step that decides whether the campaign is legal, so be strict. SMS goes to people who opted in or who already texted you. Cold outreach belongs on the phone and in the mail. A purchased list does not become textable because you scrubbed it.

When you import:

1. Keep the consent source with each contact. Your form, checkout page or CRM should store when and where each person opted in. Ready records your opt-in attestation per bulk send and per API send that sets consent_attested: who sent, to how many, and when. That is an audit trail of your sends, not a per-contact consent record, so the store that collected the opt-in has to keep that record.
2. Normalize numbers to E.164 (+1 and ten digits for US numbers).
3. Drop anyone who opted out anywhere. On Ready, an inbound STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE propagates across campaigns. A contact who opted out of last month's promo will not get this one, and opt-outs are refused up front and not charged.

If you send from your own app instead of the dashboard, the same rules apply through the API. A POST /v1/messages/bulk with a to array, a body and "consent_attested": true is your promise that every recipient agreed to texts. Send an Idempotency-Key header so a retried request never sends twice. The bulk messages docs and the quickstart have the details.

Step 3 (optional): Scrub a list you didn't build yourself

Consent is the foundation, but numbers change hands. Known TCPA litigators and DNC complainers also show up on otherwise clean lists. TCPA exposure runs roughly $500 to $1,500 per text, so a cheap screen before send is good practice. It reduces risk but does not make you immune: compliance stays the sender's responsibility.

Ready gives you two ways to scrub:

• Per segment, on the account. Switch on scrubbing and each segment costs $0.003 extra. Landline validation is another $0.003 per segment when switched on. Both are off by default.
• Standalone, per contact. The TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub is $0.005 per contact. It checks each number against TCPA-litigator and DNC-complainer lists and flags matches. This option suits cleaning a list once before import.

Lists decay, so a scrub from last quarter is not a scrub for this week. Our post on how fast each list source rots covers when to re-scrub.

Step 4: Write the message and do the segment math

Billing is per segment, not per message, so length and characters change the price.

• One segment holds 160 GSM-7 characters. Longer messages split into 153-character parts.
• One emoji or other non-GSM character drops the limit to 70 characters, or 67 per part.
• Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending. Pasting from a doc will not quietly change your count.

Worked example: 5,000 opted-in contacts

Assume a 140-character promo with no emoji. That is 1 segment:

• 5,000 × 1 = 5,000 segments
• 5,000 × $0.0075 = $38, plus 5,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees

Add one emoji and that same 140-character text becomes 3 segments:

• 5,000 × 3 = 15,000 segments
• 15,000 × $0.0075 = $113, plus 15,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees

The emoji tripled the bill. Those all-in figures don't include screening. With scrubbing switched on, add $0.003 per segment: $15 on the plain version, $45 on the emoji version. Prepaid credits run through Stripe, and carrier fees are itemized separately on the bill. Current rates are on the pricing page.

Copy that gets delivered

• Name your business in the first few words.
• Say how to opt out ("Reply STOP to opt out").
• Use one link on a domain you control. Shared public shorteners get filtered; here is why.
• Run the AI message writer's spam-filter check before you send. It catches phrasing that carriers tend to flag.

Step 5: Send the SMS campaign inside permitted hours

The send is the shortest part of the whole process.

Timing. Pick a time your audience actually reads texts. Mid-morning on a weekday, say 10 AM local, is a safe default for most businesses. Our best time to send guide breaks it down by industry.

Quiet hours. Ready holds sends outside permitted local hours based on the recipient's area code. Texts are charged only when they actually go out. A list that spans time zones will trickle out as each zone opens, not all at once. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.

Throughput. A fresh standard campaign with no vetting moves roughly 1 to 4 segments per second. At an assumed 2 segments per second:

• 5,000 segments take about 42 minutes.
• 15,000 segments take a little over 2 hours.

T-Mobile also caps daily volume by brand trust score. The lowest tier is roughly 2,000 messages a day. A new brand texting 5,000 people may see the T-Mobile portion spill into the next day. Brand vetting can raise that cap if it moves you up a tier, but it does not change the per-second rate.

Step 6: Follow up within the first hour

Replies are where an SMS campaign earns its money, and most of them arrive soon after the send. Budget for them too: replies are billed like a sent text, at $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee.

• Work the inbox. Replies land in the Inbox, and in GoHighLevel if your account is connected. A person answers them. Ready no longer lets accounts create AI reply agents, so on a new account a person replies.
• Call the warm ones. For a reply like "yes, send me details", a call from the Ready Dialer pad often beats another text. It is billed at $0.025/min, each started minute counted as a full minute. It is manual click-to-call, not an auto dialer.
• Run one drip campaign to non-responders. Send a single follow-up two or three days later and stop there. Our post on which texts to automate covers where automation helps and where a handwritten text is better.
• Watch opt-outs. A spike after one message usually means the copy, the timing or the list was off. Fix that before the next send.

The practical takeaway

Most of an SMS campaign's calendar is registration. Most of its risk is the list. Most of its cost swings come from segment count. Use the approval week to clean the list, write a one-segment message, and check it for filter triggers. Then send at a sane hour and staff the inbox for the replies.

If you want to try the steps on Ready, sign up and use your 20 free one-to-one texts to test before you register.

If you hold several numbers. Local presence: Ready sends from your registered number closest to each contact's area code, with a listed price of $0.0015 for each segment of a delivered text. It chooses among your registered numbers; it does not bypass registration.

FAQ

How long does it take to launch an SMS campaign?

Plan on about a week. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, and list prep, writing and testing fit inside that window. The send itself takes minutes to a few hours depending on list size and throughput.

How much does an SMS campaign cost on Ready?

$0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee, on one Standard rate. That all-in figure excludes the compliance surcharge of $0.003 per segment each for scrubbing and landline validation, which are off unless you switch them on. Registration adds $25/mo and $2 per number.

Can I use the 20 free texts for my campaign?

No. The free texts are one-to-one sends, and a campaign is paid from the first text. Use them to test your number before you register, because they end once registration is paid.

Can I text a list I bought?

No. SMS should go only to people who opted in or who have texted you. Use phone and mail for cold contact. Scrubbing a purchased list lowers risk but does not create consent.

Do I need 10DLC registration for a small campaign?

An account can send up to 500 texts a month before registering, at its normal per-text rate. Beyond that it has to register. Unregistered traffic gets filtered by carriers, so register before any real campaign.