Email inboxes are crowded. SMS is not. The opening rate for SMS campaigns is estimated at around 98%, with most messages read within minutes of receipt. Brevo brings SMS marketing into the same platform you're already using for email — same contact database, same automations, same reporting dashboard — which means you can run coordinated multi-channel campaigns without managing separate tools or duplicate lists.
This tutorial covers everything you need to get your first Brevo SMS campaign out the door: enabling the feature, purchasing credits, building a compliant SMS contact list, writing within the character limit, scheduling your send, and reading the reports that tell you whether it worked.
Step 1: Enable SMS and Purchase Credits
Brevo doesn't include SMS in its base plans as a fixed monthly allowance. Instead, SMS is a pay-as-you-go add-on available on all plans including the free tier — you buy credits in advance, and they never expire.
To purchase credits, click the account dropdown in the top right of your Brevo dashboard and select My Plan. Under the SMS & WhatsApp messages section, click Buy credits. Credits are sold in packs of 100 minimum, and the cost per credit varies by recipient country. You can calculate your exact cost per message using the estimator directly on the My Plan page before you commit.
A few things to understand about how credits are consumed:
One SMS = 160 characters using standard GSM encoding. If your message exceeds 160 characters, it splits into multiple segments — each segment uses 1 credit, and the character limit per segment drops to 153 (due to concatenation headers). A 320-character message costs 3 credits per recipient, not 1.
Special characters and emojis reduce the limit from 160 to 70 characters per segment, which can multiply your credit consumption quickly. Brevo displays a live character count and credit estimate as you write, so you'll see this before sending. If your message uses emojis or non-Latin characters (Arabic, Russian, etc.), toggle on the Special characters option in the campaign editor to prevent characters from being replaced during delivery.
MMS (image messages) are available for US-based senders registered with a toll-free number via Telenyx. One MMS is equivalent to 2.1 SMS credits.
Step 2: Register a Sender ID
If you joined Brevo after March 13, 2026, you're required to register a Sender ID for each country where you send SMS messages before your first campaign can go out.
A Sender ID is the name or number that appears in the "From" field on your recipient's phone. For US and Canadian senders, this means registering for a toll-free number through Brevo — a process that can take 4–6 weeks for carrier review. Start this early. You'll receive status updates in your Brevo notification center and by email.
For other countries, Sender ID requirements and formats vary. Brevo's country-specific guidelines cover what's supported and what's restricted in each market. Some countries require a numeric sender; others allow an alphanumeric brand name up to 11 characters.
To begin registration, go to Settings > Senders, Domains & Dedicated IPs > SMS Senders and follow the registration flow for your target countries.
Step 3: Build Your SMS Contact List
This is the step most guides rush past, and it's also the step that determines whether your campaigns land in inboxes or get your number blocked by carriers.
Keeping SMS and email consent separate
Your existing email list is not an SMS list. Under GDPR (EU), TCPA (US), and most regional equivalents, email opt-in and SMS opt-in are distinct consent requirements. A contact who signed up for your newsletter has not consented to receive text messages. Treating email subscribers as SMS prospects without separate consent is a compliance risk with real financial consequences — TCPA violations carry fines of $500–$1,500 per message.
How Brevo stores phone numbers
In Brevo, phone numbers live in the SMS attribute on each contact record. Every number must include the country code with a + prefix (e.g., +14155552671 for a US number). Brevo will reject numbers that aren't properly formatted. Phone numbers are unique identifiers — you cannot have two contacts with the same number in your database.
There are three ways to get phone numbers into the SMS attribute:
Manual entry works for small lists. Open a contact record from CRM > Contacts, click to edit, and fill in the SMS attribute directly.
CSV import is the right approach when migrating an existing opt-in list. Go to CRM > Contacts > Import contacts, upload your file, and map the phone number column to the SMS attribute. You'll be prompted to select a country code — this is applied to any numbers in your file that don't already include a country code. Brevo deduplicates automatically during import, so contacts with the same phone number won't generate duplicates.
Signup forms are the best long-term approach. Brevo's form builder lets you add an SMS field to any signup form. When a contact submits the form, their phone number is stored in the SMS attribute. This is also where you collect consent — more on that below.
Collecting compliant opt-ins
Your signup form or opt-in mechanism must make the following clear before a contact submits:
- That they're agreeing to receive marketing text messages from your business
- Your business name
- How frequently messages will be sent (e.g., "up to 4 messages per month")
- That message and data rates may apply (required for US audiences)
- How to opt out (text STOP to unsubscribe)
Double opt-in is not legally required in most jurisdictions for SMS, but Brevo supports it and it's worth enabling for list quality. When a contact submits the form, they receive a confirmation text to verify their number. Contacts who complete double opt-in have the DOUBLE_OPT-IN attribute set to "Yes" in their contact record — which you can use as a segment filter.
In Brevo's form builder, enable the GDPR fields option to automatically include a consent checkbox and GDPR declaration block. For US audiences, ensure your form copy includes the FCC-required disclosure language before the submit button.
Building your SMS-specific segment
Once your contacts have phone numbers in the SMS attribute, create a Segment in Brevo that targets only SMS-consented contacts. Go to CRM > Contacts > Segments > Create a segment from scratch and apply the condition: SMS subscription status > is subscribed. Save this segment — you'll select it when setting up each SMS campaign, and it updates automatically as new contacts opt in.
Brevo's segmentation supports layering additional conditions on top of this: location, purchase history, contact attributes, email engagement behavior. This is where targeting gets useful — a flash sale SMS sent only to contacts who have previously purchased in a specific category performs better than a broadcast to your entire SMS list.
Step 4: Create Your SMS Campaign
Go to Marketing > Campaigns and click Create campaign. Select SMS, then name your campaign with something that will help you identify it in reports later (including the date and purpose is a good habit).
Writing your message
The SMS editor shows a live preview on the right side as you type, alongside a character counter and the number of SMS credits the message will consume per recipient.
Keep it under 160 characters. Not because you can't go longer — you can chain up to 5 segments (765 characters total in standard encoding, 402 with special characters) — but because you pay per segment, and most high-performing SMS messages are under 160 characters anyway. Brevity is the medium.
A strong SMS message structure looks like this:
- Brand identifier — lead with your business name so the recipient knows immediately who's texting them. US carriers require this; it's good practice everywhere. Example: "BrightCo:"
- The offer or hook — one clear, specific statement. Not "Check out our new collection" but "30% off all orders today only."
- A single call to action — one link, one instruction. Brevo can shorten your URL for tracking purposes (though for US and Canadian sends, disable the Automatically shorten links option and use a custom domain shortener, since shared public domains like bit.ly can impact deliverability).
- Opt-out instruction — Brevo handles this automatically with the
[STOP_CODE]variable. Insert it at the end of your message and Brevo replaces it with the appropriate unsubscribe phrase for your recipient's country when sending. US carriers require the STOP keyword to appear at least every 5 campaigns — Brevo's compliance toggle enforces this.
Example of a well-structured SMS under 160 characters:
"BrightCo: Flash sale — 30% off sitewide until midnight. Shop now: brightco.com/sale — Reply STOP to unsubscribe."
That's 100 characters. It has a brand ID, a specific offer, a deadline, a link, and an opt-out.
Personalization
Brevo's SMS editor supports contact attributes as merge tags. Type {FIRSTNAME} in the message body and Brevo replaces it with each recipient's first name at send time. You can use any attribute stored in your contact database — useful for location-based messages, past purchase references, or account-specific information.
US compliance toggle
If you're sending to US recipients, activate the Manage compliance for the United States toggle in the campaign editor. This ensures Brevo enforces the required carrier compliance formatting. If you try to send a US campaign without this toggle on, Brevo will suspend the campaign with an error message.
Step 5: Select Recipients and Schedule
In the To section of the campaign editor, select the SMS-subscribed segment you created earlier. You can refine further by layering additional segment conditions here — targeting by region, purchase behavior, or list membership.
Timing matters
SMS messages arrive on a device that a person typically carries on their person. Unlike email, where a message sits in an inbox until opened, a text message interrupts. Most best practices suggest avoiding early mornings, late evenings, and mealtimes. For promotional messages, late morning (10–11 AM) and early afternoon (1–2 PM) in the recipient's local time zone tend to perform well.
Brevo's Optimize send time feature (available on Standard plan and above) can schedule individual messages at the optimal time for each contact based on their historical engagement data. For a first campaign without that history, schedule manually.
Some countries have legal restrictions on when marketing SMS can be delivered. France, for example, restricts marketing SMS to weekdays between 8 AM and 8 PM and prohibits sending on Sundays and public holidays. Check Brevo's country-specific guidelines before scheduling to markets with regulated sending windows.
Send a test first
Before scheduling to your full list, click Send a test in the top-right of the campaign editor. Enter a phone number from your contact database (test recipients must be existing contacts with an SMS attribute). The test SMS deducts from your credits. If the message looks wrong, fix it before the real send.
Step 6: Read Your Campaign Reports
After your campaign sends, navigate to Marketing > Campaigns and click Report next to your SMS campaign name. Brevo's SMS campaign report (updated since January 2024) shows the following metrics.
Delivered is the number and percentage of messages that successfully reached the recipient's device. A high delivery rate indicates a clean list with well-formatted, valid numbers. Soft bounces are temporary failures (carrier routing issues, full inboxes); hard bounces are permanent failures (invalid or deactivated numbers). Brevo shows a breakdown by bounce reason.
Clicks (when you include a tracked link) shows how many recipients tapped your link and how many times — distinguishing between unique clicks and total clicks. The Deliverability Breakdown by Lists section shows click performance segmented by the contact lists that were included, which helps you identify whether certain segments are consistently more engaged.
Unsubscribes shows how many recipients replied STOP or used another opt-out mechanism. A high unsubscribe rate typically signals one of three things: the message wasn't relevant to the audience, the frequency is too high, or the recipient didn't expect the message (consent issue). Unsubscribed contacts are automatically blocked from future SMS sends in Brevo.
Reasons for bounces or skip categorizes delivery failures by cause. Reviewing this section after your first campaign tells you whether your number formatting is clean and whether any carriers are filtering your messages.
Deliverability breakdown by lists shows performance by the contact lists within your send. If you included contacts from multiple lists and one list underperforms significantly on delivery, that list may contain stale or improperly formatted numbers worth cleaning.
Note that Brevo's SMS report does not track opens — unlike email, SMS has no mechanism for open pixel tracking. The estimated open rate for SMS campaigns is around 98%, but this is an industry figure and can't be measured per-campaign. What you can measure and optimize is delivery rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate.
Step 7: Set Up SMS Automations
One-off campaigns are useful. Automated SMS sequences are where the channel earns its keep.
Brevo's Automations (under Automations > Workflows) let you trigger SMS messages based on contact behavior. The same workflow builder used for email sequences supports SMS actions natively. Common setups:
Welcome SMS — triggered when a contact is added to your SMS list. Build a workflow with the entry point Contact is added to a list (your SMS opt-in list), add a 2–3 minute delay (so the message doesn't feel instantaneous and robotic), then add a Send an SMS action. Use this for a welcome discount, a confirmation of their opt-in, or a set of expectations about what they'll receive.
Abandoned cart SMS — triggered by a website event when a contact adds to cart but doesn't complete checkout. Combine with an email step for a coordinated multi-channel sequence.
Re-engagement SMS — triggered when a contact hasn't opened an email or clicked an SMS in 90 days. Use a segment condition in the workflow to only fire on dormant contacts, then send a specific re-engagement offer.
All SMS automations consume credits the same way as campaigns. Monitor your credit balance in the Usage section of your dashboard.
Compliance: The Rules You Can't Ignore
Here's the compliance summary you need before sending a single message.
Opt-in is mandatory in every country. Brevo's terms require it and the law in virtually every market requires it. Do not send SMS to contacts who have not explicitly opted in to receive text messages from you.
The STOP opt-out must be included. For US senders, carriers mandate including the STOP keyword at least every 5 campaigns. Brevo's [STOP_CODE] variable handles this automatically and inserts the correct language per country. Don't remove it.
Your business name must appear in every marketing SMS sent to US recipients. This is required by US carriers and Brevo's compliance feature enforces it.
Don't use public URL shortener domains (bit.ly, tinyurl.com) in US or Canadian campaigns — carrier filtering treats these as spam signals. Use a custom domain on a shortening service, or link directly to your full URL.
GDPR (EU): Consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. You must also be able to demonstrate that consent was collected — keep records of when and how contacts opted in.
TCPA (US): Express written consent is required before any promotional SMS. The FCC's one-to-one consent rule (effective January 2025) means consent obtained for your brand cannot be shared with or transferred to marketing partners. Honor opt-out requests immediately.
Brevo SMS at a Glance
SMS marketing through Brevo is a direct extension of your existing contact database and automation workflows — not a separate tool to manage. Once your Sender ID is registered and your opt-in list is built correctly, the channel runs largely on autopilot: automations handle welcome sequences and behavioral triggers, campaigns handle time-sensitive promotions, and the reporting dashboard shows what's working.
The constraint that makes SMS effective — 160 characters, one clear action, one link — is also what makes it the clearest test of your copywriting. If a message can't earn a click in 160 characters, it probably wouldn't earn one at 1,600 either.
Start sending SMS campaigns in Brevo →
Brevo's free plan lets you explore the platform and purchase SMS credits without committing to a paid subscription. Paid plans start at $9/month (Starter) for additional email volume. SMS credits are priced per country and available as a pay-as-you-go add-on on all plans.
About Fareed
Marketer and full-stack engineer with 4 years of experience across tech, software startups, and digital growth. He currently co-founds a sales-focused SaaS product and writes about the strategies, tools, and decisions that shape how software companies grow.