Getting Started with Messaging
When to use Conversations, Send Message, and Campaigns, and how campaigns give you the tracking, history, and automation your programs actually need
Most organizations start using Telerivet by sending messages. But how you send matters as much as what you send. Telerivet gives you a conversation view for responding to individuals, a quick send tool for one-off situations, and a full campaigns system for reaching your audience with intention. This article helps you understand which to use when, and why your communication programs belong in campaigns.
When you are responding to someone: Conversations
The Conversations view in the Messages tab is where your team handles exchanges with individual contacts. Every message a contact sends you appears here, threaded by conversation, alongside their contact details and group history. When a customer replies to a campaign, when a field worker sends a status update, when a patient asks a question after their appointment: your team responds from here.
This is a human-to-human interface. It is not where you reach your audience at scale.
When you need to send something quickly: Send Message
The Send Message option lets you reach one person, a few contacts, or a group right now. No setup, no campaign name, no tracking. It is the right tool for testing a new route before you build on it, sending an urgent staff alert, or reaching a single contact outside of a scheduled program.
If you find yourself using Send Message to reach a group regularly, that is the signal to move into campaigns. Once you send from campaigns, you will not want to go back.
Why campaigns change what is possible
Every campaign in Telerivet is a named record. You give it a name, send it to a group, and Telerivet tracks what happens: how many people received it, how many replied, how many clicked a link, how many messages failed and why. When you open a campaign after sending, you see the full picture: delivery rate, response rate, click-through rate, cost, errors, and who on your team sent it.
That record is searchable, copyable, and comparable. A wholesaler running weekly product announcements to retailer groups across different cities can see exactly which message, which group, and which timing produced the best response. The next send starts from what worked, not from scratch.
Campaigns also let you save drafts, schedule sends in advance, organize by label, and see everything on a calendar. For anyone managing communication across multiple programs, brands, or locations, the campaign list becomes an operational record of everything that went out, when, and how it performed.
The difference between a team that uses Send Message and a team that uses campaigns is the difference between sending and learning.
Choosing the right campaign type
When you create a new campaign, Telerivet shows two options first: Message Broadcast and Relative Campaign. A link to view more options reveals the full set of five.
| What you want to do | Campaign type |
|---|---|
| Send a message to a group now or at a scheduled time | Message Broadcast |
| Send a voice call to a group | Call Broadcast |
| Start an interactive flow for a group at a scheduled time | Service Broadcast |
| Send a sequence of messages timed to each contact's individual date | Relative Campaign |
| Send birthday, anniversary, or renewal messages automatically every year | Birthday / Anniversary Campaign |
The Message Broadcast is the most common starting point. You write a message, select a group, preview how it will look on SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, or any other connected channel, and schedule it. Under Advanced settings, you can also set rules for what happens when someone responds or clicks a link: add them to a group, flag them for follow-up. A single broadcast can segment your audience based on how they engage, automatically, without any extra work.
The Relative Campaign (sometimes called a sequence) schedules a sequence of steps around a date stored on each contact's record. An appointment reminder that goes out the day before. An onboarding sequence that starts the day someone signs up. A loan reminder that fires three days before a due date. Each step can be a message, an interactive flow, or a voice call, and every contact moves through the sequence on their own timeline.
Sending interactive flows, not just messages
One of the less obvious things you can do with campaigns is start a conversation rather than just deliver one. When a campaign step is an interactive flow instead of a message, contacts receive something that asks them something and responds to what they say.
The organizations using Telerivet most effectively have built a library of these flows: a customer satisfaction survey, a product preference selection, a registration intake, a feedback form, a verification sequence. Each one was set up once and now lives in the account ready to deploy. When a campaign manager wants to follow up after a product launch or check in with a customer group, they pick the relevant flow from a list and attach it to their campaign. They do not need to know how it was built. They just pick it and send.
This is what makes campaigns a platform for programs rather than just a place to send messages. The people who build the flows and the people who deploy them can be different people in different teams. The knowledge stays in the account.
To explore what kinds of interactive flows are available and how to build them, see Getting Started with Automated Services, Understanding Automated Services in Telerivet, and Introduction to Surveys and Poll Services.
What you need before your first campaign
Two things need to be in place before a campaign can reach anyone:
- A connected route. This is the connection between your Telerivet project and a messaging channel: an SMS number, a WhatsApp Business Account, a Viber channel. Without one, messages cannot be sent. See Understanding Routes in Telerivet.
- Contacts in a group. Campaigns send to groups. See Getting Started with Contacts in Telerivet if your contacts are not yet set up.
For Relative Campaigns specifically, you also need a Date-type contact field for the schedule to anchor to. The campaign builder will show you a link to set one up if none exist. See Managing Contact Fields in Telerivet.
For a full breakdown of all campaign types and when each applies, see Understanding Messaging in Telerivet: Messages, Broadcasts, and Campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
Can I send to individual contacts from a campaign, or only groups? Campaigns send to groups. If you need to reach a single contact quickly, use Send Message. If you regularly need to reach a small set of people with the same message, create a group for them and use a campaign so the send is tracked.
What is the difference between Message Broadcast and Relative Campaign? A Message Broadcast sends to everyone in a group at a single scheduled time. A Relative Campaign sends to each contact at a time calculated from a date stored on their record, so different contacts receive their messages at different times based on their individual situations.
What does it mean for a campaign step to be a service? It means that instead of receiving a message, the contact enters an interactive flow: a series of questions, a registration form, a preference selection, a verification check. The flow handles the back-and-forth automatically. The contact's responses are stored on their record and can be used to personalize future messages.
How do I see how a campaign performed? Open any campaign from the Campaigns list and click through to the broadcast detail. You will see delivery status, response rate, click-through rate, error breakdown, and cost depending on the channel. For Viber campaigns, you also see read receipts. The campaign list itself shows reply rates inline so you can compare performance at a glance without opening each one.
Best practice tip
Name your campaigns in a way that will make sense six months from now. A name like "New Year Offer-3" tells you nothing when you are reviewing performance in July. A name like "District 1 Retailers - New Year Bundle Offer - Jan 2026" tells you everything: who it went to, what it was about, and when it ran. Good naming costs nothing and saves significant time when you are comparing campaigns, troubleshooting a send, or rebuilding something that worked.
For guidance on send timing across different markets, see Best Time to Send Messages on the Telerivet blog. For examples of how campaigns and interactive flows work together across real programs, see Three Simple Journeys Every Organization Should Automate.
Need help designing a campaign structure for your program or figuring out which campaign type fits your use case? Our Solution Engineers can help.