Sales SMS that lives on the deal record, not in a separate app.
Outbound texting for sales reps built into the CRM. 1-to-1 from the lead, contact, and deal. Bulk cadence sends with throttling and reply-aware pause rules. Flow-triggered SMS on stage change, score threshold, and first-touch SLA. Templates with merge fields, A/B tests, opt-out compliance, DND windows, local numbers. Strkr Messaging ships on every paid tier, no bolt-on, no per-rep SMS seat.
Sales SMS is the most mislabeled channel in revenue tooling. Half the vendors in the category ship a marketing broadcast tool wearing a sales skin. The other half ship a 1-to-1 chat app that stops the moment a rep wants to send the same follow-up to twelve prospects after a trade show. A real sales SMS surface covers both ends of the spectrum and the engine that ties them to the pipeline. Below are the seven jobs a sales texting module needs to do inside a CRM. If your current tool only covers two or three of them, you have a texting feature with a marketing budget, not a sales SMS platform. The jobs are not optional. Prospecting, follow-up, meeting confirmation, handoff, no-show recovery, high-intent nudging, and reply handling are the texting moments that live in the AE and SDR day today. One module needs to own all seven, with the same owner graph the rest of the CRM runs on, the same consent store, the same number pool, and the same cost ledger.
Prospecting
The first text after a demo request lands fast.
Inbound lead fills a demo form on Tuesday at 2:14 PM. Strkr Messaging fires an opt-in SMS from the owner's local number within sixty seconds. "Hey Priya, this is Marcus from Strkr, saw your demo request, I can hop on in ten minutes if that works." The lead gets a text while the browser tab is still open. The reply lands on the deal timeline and the owner's inbox at the same time.
Follow-up
Post-call texts without a tab switch.
The AE wraps a discovery call at 10:47. They open the deal, click the SMS tab, pick the "post-discovery follow-up" template, confirm the merged fields, send. The outbound hits the contact's phone before the AE opens the next calendar block. The thread, template name, and merge payload all write to the deal activity log and the forecast call sees it next Monday.
Meeting confirmation
Prospects answer texts before emails.
Twenty-four hours before every scheduled meeting, Strkr Messaging sends a confirm-or-reschedule text. The reply ("yes" / "need to move" / "cancel") updates the meeting status on the deal automatically, triggers the reschedule link flow on anything other than yes, and routes a cancellation to the owner's task list. The AE wakes up Monday with a clean schedule, not a mystery no-show.
Handoff
Signed contract triggers a welcome text.
When a deal moves to Closed Won, Strkr Messaging fires a welcome text from the implementation lead's number: "Hey Priya, this is Jordan on the Strkr delivery team, I'll be your main contact for onboarding. We'll kick off Thursday." The handoff feels human from minute zero, the delivery team has a text thread with the champion, and the CRM records the first delivery touchpoint on the project record.
No-show recovery
Missed meeting fires a reschedule text in ninety seconds.
The 11 AM demo is a no-show at 11:04. Strkr Messaging waits ninety seconds for the prospect to join, then fires a soft reschedule text with the owner's link. Three out of five no-shows reschedule inside the hour when the text goes out fast. Zero out of five reschedule when the follow-up is an email at the end of the day.
High-intent nudging
Score threshold fires a text, not a sequence enroll.
Lead score crosses 85 from a pricing-page visit at 9 PM. The owner is asleep. Strkr Messaging fires a time-fenced "I noticed you were on the pricing page, happy to answer anything" text at 9:02 AM the next morning, within the prospect's local DND window. The lead responds before the AE has their coffee and the deal is booked by lunch.
Reply handling
Inbound SMS routes like inbound email.
The prospect replies "sounds good." Strkr Messaging routes the reply to the deal owner's inbox, drops a notification on their rep home, writes the full thread to the deal timeline, and (if the sequence was running) pauses enrollment so the automation does not step on a live conversation. Every reply is a routed event, not a notification the rep might miss in a side-app.
What makes Strkr sales SMS different
The thread, the engine, and the price tag.
Salesmsg bills per-user per-month plus message volume. Heymarket runs the same pattern. Textline sells on a per-user model that climbs past twenty dollars a seat before volume. Attentive is a consumer e-commerce broadcast tool with sales workflows glued on. All four sit outside the CRM. The reps pay a login tax, the data lives in a vendor silo, consent is tracked in a separate system, and reporting has to be stitched together after the fact. The Strkr pattern is different: Strkr Messaging is the module, it ships included on every paid tier, consent and routing and reply detection are first-class, and the reporting lands in the same deal and activity reports as every other sales channel.
On the record
The thread lives on the deal, not in a side-app.
Open any lead, contact, or deal. The SMS tab shows the full thread with the current contact, the owner-of-record for the message, the sending number, the current consent status, and every inbound reply inline on the activity log. No tab-switching, no copying numbers between systems, no "wait, did they already text me" moments. One system of record owns the conversation.
Cadence sends
Bulk outbound with throttling and jitter.
The AE opens the lead list after a trade show. Select the fifty hot leads, pick the "booth follow-up" template, click send. Strkr Messaging throttles the outbound at a configurable rate (default 1 per 3 seconds) with randomized jitter, respects per-number MPS caps, and spreads delivery over the next few minutes to avoid carrier filtering. Fifty texts land in a staggered burst, not a spike that triggers a block.
Reply-aware pause
The cadence stops the second a human replies.
When a prospect replies to any outbound in a sequence, Strkr Messaging immediately pauses every pending step on that record, surfaces the reply on the owner's inbox, and drops a "live conversation" badge on the deal. No prospect ever gets step 3 of a cadence after they already replied to step 1. The guard is on by default and does not require a separate rule.
A/B tests
Split test subject and body in the same send.
Build two template variants for the same follow-up. Assign a weighted split (70/30 or 50/50). The cadence routes outbound by the weights, records variant lineage on every message, and surfaces reply-rate and meeting-booked-rate per variant in the sequence report. Promote the winner with one click. No separate "sms analytics" subscription required.
Merge fields
Templates read the full record graph.
Templates can merge any field on the contact, deal, account, owner, owner's manager, last-activity, or scheduled-meeting. "Hi {{contact.first_name}}, confirming our {{meeting.start_time_local}} call for {{account.name}}" renders correctly in the prospect's local timezone. Preview the merged output before send, catch null fields, and ship texts that read like a human wrote them one by one.
Flow-triggered SMS
The automation engine owns outbound rules.
Any Strkr flow can fire an SMS action. Deal stage changed to Proposal fires a text to the champion. Lead score crossed 85 fires a text to the owner. First-touch SLA breached fires an escalation text to the manager. The same visual builder that handles email, task, and Slack actions handles SMS. No separate "SMS automation" product.
DND windows
Nothing fires outside the recipient's local hours.
Every outbound text is gated against the recipient's inferred local timezone. Default DND is 9 PM to 8 AM local, configurable per tenant, per sequence, per flow. A text scheduled for 9:02 PM Pacific holds and fires at 8:00 AM the next morning. The guard runs server-side and does not depend on the rep remembering the rule.
Local numbers
Local area codes lift reply rates measurably.
Provision local numbers by area code at tenant setup or per-rep. Strkr Messaging routes outbound through the local number closest to the recipient's area code when available, falls back to the owner's number otherwise. Local-match reply rates run 3 to 7 percentage points higher than toll-free across the install base. The routing is automatic.
Opt-out compliance
STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT handled server-side.
Every inbound message is parsed for opt-out keywords (STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, END, CANCEL and the standard variants) before it reaches a rep. A match flips the contact's consent status to opted-out, blocks every future outbound (manual, cadence, flow-triggered) on that number, and fires the TCPA-compliant confirmation reply automatically. The audit log records the opt-out event with the full inbound payload.
The buyer's math
Why native sales SMS beats a bolt-on tool.
The real question a RevOps leader is asking is not "should we text prospects" but "where should the texting live." For a team that spends 90 percent of its day on CRM records, the answer is native. Four reasons compound, and the fifth is cost.
Context
The rep sees the full history before they send.
When the SMS composer opens on a deal, it sees the last five activities, the open-rate on the recent email, the stage, the amount, the owner, and the consent status. The rep sends a text with the full context visible in the same panel. A bolt-on tool opens a thread with a phone number and a name. The second composer costs the rep context, speed, and sometimes the reply.
Consent
One consent store, not two.
Strkr Messaging tracks opt-in and opt-out on the contact record alongside email consent, cookie consent, and marketing-communication consent. A bolt-on tool tracks SMS consent in a separate system that may or may not sync. The rep ends up sending a text to a contact who opted out of email last week and the compliance exposure is on the team, not the vendor.
Routing
Inbound SMS lands with the right owner immediately.
When a prospect replies, Strkr Messaging routes the reply to the current deal owner using the same ownership graph the CRM already runs. A bolt-on tool routes to the last-sender or a shared inbox, which means the SDR who texted a lead six weeks ago gets the inbound reply even though the account has since moved to an AE on a different team.
Reporting
Reply-rate and meeting-booked-rate roll up natively.
The sequence report shows SMS reply-rate per template, per rep, per deal stage, per account tier, in the same report that shows email open-rate and call-connect-rate. A bolt-on tool has its own analytics tab, its own date pickers, its own definition of "reply," and the manager stitches it together before the forecast call.
Cost
Strkr Messaging ships included on every paid tier.
Salesmsg: $25/user/month plus message volume. Heymarket: $19/user/month at the base tier plus volume. Textline: $20/user/month plus volume. Attentive: enterprise pricing with 4-figure monthly minimums. Strkr Messaging: included on every paid Strkr tier with a per-message pass-through at carrier cost plus a thin margin. For a 10-rep team sending 2,000 texts a month, the delta runs $250 to $400 a month on Strkr versus $300 to $600 a month plus the base seat on a bolt-on.
BYO option
Bring your own Twilio if you want to.
Teams that already have a Twilio account can plug it in. Strkr Messaging reads from the connected Twilio subaccount for sending and inbound, writes the thread to the CRM, respects the same consent and DND guards. The team keeps the vendor relationship they want; Strkr owns the surface the rep uses. BYO is the escape hatch, not the default path.
Beyond the simple cases
Approvals, conversation handoff, group threads, cost caps.
Every other sales SMS tool hits the same ceiling once a team scales past 5 reps and 10,000 messages a month. Strkr Messaging was designed from day one for the production scenarios that break lightweight texting tools.
Approval blocks
High-stakes texts pause for a manager.
Any flow-triggered SMS can be gated behind an approval block. A pricing-objection text drafted by a flow pauses on the manager's queue, surfaces the merged body for review, and resumes on approve. The rep gets a drafted, manager-vetted send instead of a half-written text at 4:55 PM. Common uses: discount approvals, legal-sensitive language, large-contract follow-ups.
Conversation handoff
Reassign a thread without losing history.
When a lead moves from SDR to AE, the SMS thread moves with it. The new owner sees the full prior history, the originating owner, every inbound and outbound, and the current consent status. No "sorry, let me catch up" opening text. The handoff is clean, and the audit log records the reassignment with timestamp and the reason code.
Group threads
Loop in the champion plus the economic buyer.
A deal in late-stage needs the champion and the CFO on the same thread. Strkr Messaging supports group outbound to multiple numbers on the same deal, with each recipient's consent status checked independently and each reply landing on the shared thread. The AE runs the multi-party conversation from the deal record, not a side channel.
Cost caps
Per-tenant and per-rep monthly SMS caps.
A rep sending 400 texts an hour triggers a soft cap at 1000 per day and a hard cap at 2500 per day. A tenant-level monthly cap stops runaway spend before the invoice. The caps live on the admin dashboard, show real-time utilization, and send warning emails at 80 and 95 percent. Finance never gets surprised by the bill.
Short links
Click-tracked URLs that are not sketchy.
Templates can embed trackable short links on the tenant's own domain (go.yourbrand.com rather than a random vendor shortener). Clicks write to the deal timeline, roll into the sequence report, and feed the lead score. Carrier filters trust tenant-domain short links more than third-party shorteners, so deliverability stays clean.
Reply triggers
An inbound word can fire a flow.
Strkr flows can trigger on sms_replied with a keyword match. Inbound "price" fires the pricing-page link flow. Inbound "yes" on a confirmation flow updates the meeting status and sends the calendar add. Inbound "stop" is handled server-side before any flow fires. Reply-driven automation is first-class, not a webhook hack.
Compliance and deliverability
TCPA, CTIA, 10DLC, STIR/SHAKEN. The parts most teams miss.
Sales SMS is the most-regulated outbound channel in the US and most SDRs do not know it. TCPA governs consent. CTIA governs messaging content and opt-out handling. 10DLC governs how long codes get provisioned and brand-registered. STIR/SHAKEN governs how carriers verify caller identity. Strkr Messaging handles the compliance surface so the rep does not have to.
10DLC registration
Brand plus campaign registered before the first send.
During setup, Strkr Messaging guides the tenant through the 10DLC brand registration and the campaign registration tied to the sales use case (prospecting, follow-up, meeting-confirmation). The registered campaign unlocks higher throughput and lower per-message cost. The admin tracks the registration status on the Messaging settings page.
Consent capture
Opt-in events timestamped and tied to the record.
Every inbound opt-in (web form checkbox, inbound "START," verbal consent logged by the rep) writes an opt-in event to the contact record with timestamp, source, and the exact consent language shown. Opt-out events do the same. The audit log is pullable as CSV for TCPA defense and will stand up in a plaintiff dispute.
STOP + HELP keywords
CTIA-required replies handled automatically.
Every number provisioned through Strkr Messaging ships with the CTIA-required STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, END, CANCEL (opt-out) and HELP (info) auto-replies pre-wired. The admin can customize the HELP response text. STOP responses are hard-coded to meet CTIA language requirements and cannot be edited for compliance safety.
Quiet hours
Per-state DND for the states that enforce it.
Several states (Florida and Washington leading) enforce stricter quiet-hour rules than the federal baseline. Strkr Messaging looks up the recipient's state from the area code or the enriched contact field and applies the stricter window automatically. Outbound scheduled during a prohibited window queues until the next permitted send time.
Carrier filtering
Content checks run before send, not after a block.
Templates are scored against known carrier-filter patterns before publish. High-risk language (certain finance, pharma, and gambling patterns) surfaces a warning in the editor. The admin can override with an acknowledgment. Blocked sends are logged with the carrier error code so the team can trace deliverability trends.
Audit log
Every text has a 7-year retrievable record.
Outbound, inbound, consent events, opt-outs, approvals, flow-triggered sends, and manual sends all write to an append-only audit log retained for 7 years by default (configurable). The log is CSV-exportable and includes the full merged body, sender, recipient, timestamps, consent status at send-time, and the triggering actor (user ID or flow ID).
How teams actually run it
Six sales SMS motions in production today.
SDR team
Inbound demo request fires a text in sixty seconds.
A demo request on the website fires a flow. If the lead score is above 60, Strkr Messaging sends an owner-signed text to the prospect within sixty seconds of the form submit. Reply-rate on the first-touch SMS runs 18 to 24 percent across the install base. The booked-meeting rate on replied threads lands between 40 and 60 percent. The same inbound in an email-only workflow runs 3 to 6 percent reply inside the first hour, and the booked-meeting rate on an email reply trails SMS by half.
AE team
Post-call follow-up with next-step link.
After every discovery call, the AE clicks the "post-discovery" template on the deal. The merged text includes the mutual next step, the proposed meeting time, and a Strkr-hosted short link to a short recap. Reply-rate on these follow-ups runs 2x the email follow-up equivalent, and the meeting-booked-rate on reply is above 70 percent. The template is editable mid-send if the AE wants to add a one-liner specific to the call, and the final text still writes to the deal activity log with the originating template name attached.
RevOps
Pre-renewal nudge 45 days out.
A flow fires 45 days before a deal's renewal_date. If the health score is below 60, the CSM gets a text draft on their approval queue. If the health score is above 60, the automation sends a renewal check-in text directly. The health-and-text combination lifts renewal reply engagement to 3x email-only renewal outreach, and the manager sees the full outbound history on the renewal opportunity record without opening a second tool.
Field sales
Trade-show list texted inside the booth.
The AE scans badges at the booth, imports the list into Strkr as leads with the trade-show source attribution, and fires a throttled booth-follow-up template to the batch while the badge scan is still warm. The outbound hits the prospect's phone before the next session starts, reply-rate on same-day trade-show SMS runs between 25 and 35 percent, and the booth team walks home with booked meetings instead of a CSV to work on Monday.
Customer success
Low-usage account gets a texted check-in.
A flow fires nightly on accounts with no logins in the last 10 days and a product-usage score below 40. The CSM gets a drafted check-in text on their approval queue by 8 AM local. The CSM reviews, edits, and sends in under thirty seconds per account. The texted check-in produces a response-rate 4 to 6 points higher than the email equivalent and surfaces churn risk a sprint earlier than a QBR cycle would catch.
Partnerships
Co-sell introduction via group thread.
A partner-manager opens a shared thread with the partner rep and the prospect using group outbound. The text intro cuts the standard "please loop me in" email round-trip and lands the three parties on the same thread with the deal record capturing every message. Co-sell deals that start on a group SMS thread close 2 to 3 weeks faster than co-sell deals that start on an email intro, across the install base.
Strkr Messaging ships on every paid tier. No per-rep SMS seat.
Starter includes 500 outbound SMS a month plus one local number. Pro lifts to 5,000 and three numbers. Scale is 25,000 and unlimited numbers. Enterprise is custom. Per-message pass-through at carrier cost plus a thin margin. BYO Twilio supported for teams that already have the vendor relationship.
Marketing SMS runs broadcast campaigns and promotional blasts to opted-in subscriber lists, typically on marketing-contact segments, usually by a marketing-ops owner. Sales SMS runs 1-to-1 or small-cadence outbound from a named rep to a named prospect or customer on a deal record, with reply-aware pause and consent gated at the contact level. Strkr Messaging covers both surfaces: sales texting lives on the deal with the AE and SDR, marketing SMS lives in the Marketing module. Same consent store, same number pool, same compliance guards.
Does Strkr Messaging handle opt-out and TCPA compliance automatically?
Yes. Every inbound message is parsed for the CTIA-standard opt-out keywords (STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, END, CANCEL and their variants) before the rep sees it. A match flips the contact's consent to opted-out, blocks every future outbound on that number across manual sends, cadences, and flow-triggered sends, and fires the CTIA-required confirmation reply. Consent-capture events (opt-ins) and opt-outs write to an append-only audit log retained for 7 years, exportable as CSV for TCPA defense. HELP and STOP auto-replies ship pre-wired on every provisioned number.
Can Strkr Messaging send bulk cadence texts, or just 1-to-1?
Both. 1-to-1 texting runs from the lead, contact, or deal record with a composer that reads the full record graph for merge fields. Bulk cadence sends run from a list view: select recipients, pick a template, click send. The engine throttles outbound at a configurable rate (default 1 per 3 seconds) with randomized jitter and respects per-number MPS caps so carrier filtering stays clean. Reply-aware pause rules stop the cadence the moment a prospect replies, so no live conversation ever gets stepped on by an automated step 3.
What is the cost of Strkr Messaging versus Salesmsg, Heymarket, or Textline?
Strkr Messaging ships included on every paid Strkr tier with per-message pricing at carrier cost plus a thin margin (no base seat). Salesmsg runs around $25 per user per month plus message volume. Heymarket is around $19 per user per month at the base tier plus volume. Textline is around $20 per user per month plus volume. For a 10-rep team sending 2,000 texts a month, Strkr Messaging runs $250 to $400 per month, while the bolt-ons run $300 to $600 per month plus the per-rep base seat. The gap widens as rep headcount grows because Strkr Messaging does not charge per user.
Can sales reps text from their own number, or does every message come from a shared pool?
Both. Admins can provision per-rep local numbers (recommended for AEs and SDRs who want a consistent number across the relationship) or route outbound through a shared pool of local numbers matched by recipient area code. Local-match routing lifts reply rates 3 to 7 percentage points over toll-free. The owner-of-record for every outbound is captured on the thread regardless of which number was used, so attribution and routing stay clean when a prospect replies hours later.
Does Strkr Messaging integrate with the Flows automation engine?
Yes. Any Strkr flow can fire an SMS action using the same visual builder that handles email, task, and Slack actions. Common patterns include: deal stage changed to Proposal fires a text to the champion, lead score crossed 85 fires a text to the owner, first-touch SLA breached fires an escalation text to the manager, meeting booked fires a confirmation sequence 24 hours before start. Inbound SMS can also trigger flows via the sms_replied trigger with keyword matching, so an inbound "yes" on a confirmation thread can update meeting status and fire a calendar add without a rep touching the record.
No sales call, no migration consultant, no four-month implementation. Enter your card, get 14 days of the full Pro tier, cancel any time before day 14 with zero charge. Spin up a workspace, import your CSV, and have something useful before lunch.
We use cookies.
Essential cookies keep the site working. If you accept, we also enable Google Analytics
so we can see which pages help and which don't. Reject to opt out entirely. Details in our
Privacy Policy.
