Appearance

Messaging Overview ​

Your contacts already get your emails. Messaging adds SMS and WhatsApp on top of that, so you can also reach people on their phone — from a campaign, from an automation, or straight from a shared inbox your team answers together.

NOTE

This feature requires FluentCRM Pro. See what's included →

What makes it different from email is that people write back. When they do, their reply arrives in FluentCRM on that contact's record, sitting alongside everything else you already know about them.

That opens up messages email was never much good at. A delivery update gets read within minutes instead of sitting unopened. An appointment reminder can be confirmed with a single word. And when someone has a question, you can just answer it, right there.

Both channels live in the same module and share the same inbox and activity log. Run SMS, run WhatsApp, or run both — whichever suits how you actually talk to your customers.

Enabling the Messaging Module ​

Go to FluentCRM → Settings → Messaging and turn on Enable Message Module.

There's a second door to the same switch, if you happen to be in the add-ons screen already. Go to FluentCRM → Addons, find Message Module under Advanced Features, click Settings, tick Enable Message Module, and save. It's one setting behind both — turning it on in either place turns it on everywhere. The Configure button on that same row takes you straight to the Messaging settings.

Back in Settings → Messaging, two tabs appear once the module is on — SMS and WhatsApp. Each has its own switch and its own provider fields, so turning on the module doesn't commit you to both channels.

The module on its own doesn't send anything. Each channel needs a provider connected first:

What You Get ​

Once a channel is active, Messaging appears in the top navigation with everything the module adds.

  • Inbox: Every SMS and WhatsApp conversation in one screen, where you read and reply. See the Unified Inbox guide.
  • SMS Campaigns: One-off text broadcasts to a segment of your contacts.
  • WhatsApp Campaigns: The same, for WhatsApp. See WhatsApp Campaign.
  • Templates: Reusable message bodies for both channels.
  • Activities: A log of every message sent or scheduled, across both channels.

Only channels you've switched on appear here. A site running WhatsApp alone never sees an SMS Campaigns entry.

Campaigns ​

A campaign sends one message to many contacts at once. You pick the audience the same way you do for email — by list and tag, by dynamic segment, or with the advanced filter — then review and send or schedule it.

Templates ​

Templates hold message bodies you reuse. Both channels share one screen, with a channel filter to narrow it down.

The two channels treat templates differently. An SMS template is just saved text — write it and use it. A WhatsApp template has to be approved by your provider before it can be sent, so it carries a category, a language, and an approval status. WhatsApp Templates covers that side.

Activities ​

Activities is the log of everything the module has sent. Filter it by channel, search it, and resend anything that failed.

Each row shows the contact, the message, its Source (the campaign it came from, or n/a for a one-to-one message), its Type, its Status, and the Channel it went out on.

Messaging Elsewhere in FluentCRM ​

The module also shows up outside the Messaging menu:

  • Automations: Send an SMS or WhatsApp message as an automation action, so a message can follow a purchase, a form submission, or a tag.
  • Contact profiles: A Message tab on each contact holds their conversation history and lets you message them directly. See the Contact Message Tab guide.
  • Segmentation: SMS Status and WhatsApp Status rows in the advanced filter let you build segments around who you're actually able to reach.

Each channel tracks consent on its own, separately from email. A contact who opts out of WhatsApp keeps getting your emails, and a contact who has never been messaged is treated as reachable.

A conversation carries one of four statuses: Subscribed, Unsubscribed, Pending, or Bounced. Anyone who isn't subscribed on a channel is skipped when a campaign sends on it — which is why a campaign's final count can land below the estimate you saw at the recipients step.

Contacts set this themselves by replying. STOP opts them out and START opts them back in — and FluentCRM understands a range of alternatives for both, so a contact doesn't have to guess the magic word. On WhatsApp an opt-out gets an automatic confirmation reply; see the full keyword list.

You can also change a contact's status by hand from the Unified Inbox or their Message tab.

WARNING

Consent is your responsibility, not the provider's. Only message people who agreed to hear from you on that channel — WhatsApp in particular will restrict a number that collects blocks and reports.

What's Next? ​

FluentCRM – Marketing Automation for WordPress

© WPManageNinja. Need help? Get support at wpmanageninja.com