This guide will walk you through how to set automated text (SMS) messages to send to leads in your BoxMate CRM after certain things happen. You will require:

This should take around 20-30 minutes to set up and we will guide you through all steps. It is a quite involved process with a lot of steps but should only need to be configured once and can be a very powerful tool for boosting acquisition rates.

Head to https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio and complete your details to start a free trial, you will need to first verify the account by clicking a link in an email and then using a phone number to verify too, once this is done you will see a configuration page.

Select the above options and then press Get Started with Twillio to be taken to the dashboard where you will see the below welcome screen.

To use Twillio with 3rd party integrations like Zapier and BoxMate you will need to upgrade to a paid account with some starting credit and setup a phone number. From the welcome screen press 'Get a trial phone number' button which will assign you a number and then the button will change to 'Upgrade your account', press this now.

You will be asked for your business address, VAT number (optional) and then presented with the below screen to add initial credit. The minimum is £20 and this will cover over 500 single text messages.

Enter how much you want to add, choose whether you want to enable auto-recharge (to automatically top up when credit is low) and then continue. You will be asked to enter payment details here and then click "Confirm Payment" to continue (This may ask to authorise with your banking app which you will need to do). We should then see the below screen stating we are all set up and ready to go.

To get back to the main dashboard click the back arrow top left next to billing. At this point, you may be logged out and asked to log back in and setup 2 Factor Authentication (Basically associating your account with your mobile number to make your account safer). If it does ask you this you will enter the phone number, wait for a text message then submit it. After this it will give you a code to save somewhere safe (This is a worst case scenario incase your email and phone were inaccessible).

We are done with Twilio for now so leave the tab open but open a new tab at https://www.zapier.com/sign-up

Complete the registration form entering your details and then click 'Get Started Free' which will take you to another page asking for a password.

After entering your details and password you will be asked about your role and the company, complete this and then press 'continue'.

You will be asked to select the apps you already use, you can complete this or skip it for now but you won't find BoxMate in here as you will need a private invite from us. Click either skip or finish setup if you selected some other apps you are likely to use.

Our zapier integration is not fully public yet so for now you will need to click this link or paste it into your address bar to get access: https://zapier.com/developer/public-invite/70531/5d3192f69ff80b5a8c4b6149c7bf6068/

Click Accept Invite & Build a Zap to join our integration which will redirect you to the main Zap dashboard.

It's now time to start building the Zap, click the orange Create Zap in the top left to start configuring our integration.

Enter 'boxmate' in the search box and click the BoxMate (1.0.0) By Invite option.

Now you need to select which boxmate action/event you want to use to trigger sending your text message, for this setup let's choose the bottom one 'New Lead Registered' and then click connect Continue

It's now time to authorise BoxMate as an app in Zapier. For Zapier to talk to other apps it needs to be authorised with each one giving it permission to do things. Click Sign In and you will be redirected to BoxMate.

Inside BoxMate click Authorise to give permission for Zapier to access your account.

You should now be back in Zapier with the BoxMate account showing as connected and you can press Continue.

Zapier will now test the connection by grabbing a Lead from BoxMate and displaying it here to use for the test. If you do not have any leads in the system yet you should go and add yourself now with your name, email and phone number manually in BoxMate to use for this test. When you are ready hit Test Trigger.

You should see a test lead from your account and can then hit continue.

That's the BoxMate side of things all done and it's now time to connect Twilio and tell it what to do. Search Twilio from the actions box and select the app from the list.

Choose the event Send SMS and then click continue.

Click Sign In which will take you to a Twilio page requesting some information from your account.

Here we need to authorise Zapier to work with Twilio and where with BoxMate we simply clicked Authorise in BoxMate here we need some details from the Twilio account. You can find these on the dashboard so open the Twilio tab up from earlier and copy and paste these 2 codes across then press 'Yes, Continue'.

You should now be back in Zapier with both BoxMate and Twillio fully connected and authorised and can press continue to move on to configuring the SMS message that you want to send.

Note: That might have seemed like a lot of messing around configuring and authorising however now that it's been done once, you will be able to create multiple zaps by simply selecting BoxMate and Twilio and they will already be configured.

Click to select the from number, there will only be one in here and it is the one that was auto-assigned when we setup Twilio. In Twilio you can choose a different number which is UK format which is a very small monthly charge but we are going to use a Business Name so this doesn't matter too much.

Alphanumeric Sender ID lets you replace the phone number with your business name. Enter this in here (Max 11 characters so you may need to abbreviate).

Now we need to select the phone number from the BoxMate lead to send this SMS message to. Click To Number then load more and then select Lead Phone.

In the Message box, we are going to write the SMS message that will be sent. You can use the insert data options to pull custom data into the message adding that personal touch. Leave out the option for Media and Large Messages will only need to be turned on if the message is over 160 characters then press continue.

Finally, we are ready to test! Hit test action to run a simulation of this Zap as if a new lead had just registered and you should receive the SMS message to your phone.

And Voila! You should have received a test SMS message just below and can now press Publish Zap to turn it on and it will start regularly checking for new leads in BoxMate. Click top left of the screen to name the Zap then press back to go to the dashboard.

The lead didn't show in the test data -

I didn't get the SMS message -