How to add a virtual contact card to a flow message

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You will learn

Learn how to add a virtual contact card to an SMS message in a flow so that customers can save your brand’s contact information.

Note that the inclusion of a virtual contact card will convert the SMS message to MMS, which is only accepted by United States and Canadian numbers and will use more credits than SMS. MMS is not available for UK, Australian, and New Zealand numbers.

Also note that you cannot back-populate flows, which contain a message with a virtual contact card.

Before you begin

If you have not already done so, you must enable virtual contact cards. Navigate to Account > Settings > SMS to review and modify your company’s contact information that will be sent with the contact card. See our guide on how to set up virtual contact cards.

Recipients must have texted your number previously in order for virtual contact cards to appear properly. For this reason, we recommend using double opt-in for your SMS lists or custom keywords to ensure that your customers have texted your number in order to subscribe.

Recommended flows for virtual contact cards

You do not need to add virtual contact cards to every SMS message in a flow nor do they need to be in every flow.

We don’t recommend adding an SMS message to your main welcome series flow, since anyone who previously opted in for email wouldn’t get the SMS if they sign up. Instead, we recommend setting up a separate SMS only welcome series.

In an SMS welcome series, it is recommended that you add virtual contact cards to the first SMS message, as this will likely be the first time a customer receives an SMS marketing message from your brand.

Flow triggered by 'When someone Consented to Receive SMS' with only SMS actions in the flow

Add a virtual contact card to a message

  1. In the flow builder, add an SMS action to your flow or edit an existing SMS action.

  2. Click on the SMS action and in the left sidebar click the Configure Content button for new SMS actions or Edit button for existing actions.
    SMS action selected with the Edit button shown in the left sidebar
  3. Click Add Media on the left within the message box.
    Add Media button highlighted at the bottom of the SMS editor Message Content box
  4. Select the Virtual Contact Card option.
  5. From here, you can click Edit Information  to modify the content included with the contact card or click the Add Contact Card button to add the card to the SMS message, converting it to MMS.
    Virtual contact card modal showing company information and a callout to use double opt-in

Once added, the contact card will appear as an image at the bottom of the message, which a subscriber can click to save your contact information to their phone.

Example of a virtual contact card appearing at the top of the SMS preview

Additional resources

Learn how to test your flow message once it has been set up in our guide on tools to test and preview flow messages.

Learn more about using SMS and MMS:

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