If you’ve been a SimpleTexting user for a while, you’ve probably already taken advantage of our Custom Fields feature, which lets you easily deliver personalized messages to people in your mass text campaigns.

One of the most simple, yet powerful, Custom Fields is our Expiration Date field. 😊

The Expiration Date Custom Field is a custom date that corresponds to the time a message was sent out. You’ll set the field up to auto-populate as a date that is a specific number of days after a message is sent. This is a great way to instill a sense of urgency for offers and promotions.

1. First, create a Keyword, Campaign, and/or Autoresponder. Custom Fields work in all of these. For this example, we'll create a keyword.

2. Write your message then place your cursor at the point where you’d like to add your Expiration Date to appear. Click Custom Field. Let's imagine we want to send an offer that expires three days after someone texts in the keyword "Sweet Deal."

3. Find the “Expires in ___ day(s)” field. Enter the number of days your offer is valid for. Click the "+" symbol.

4. You’ll see %%exp3%% added as a placeholder (also known as a merge tag) in your message. This will be replaced with the correct date in MM/DD/YYYY format when the message is actually sent. 

By far the most popular way to use expiration dates is to share offers with—you guessed it—expiration dates. 😉 These are known as LTOs, or limited-time offers.

Let's take a look at the example above. If you want new subscribers to take advantage of a deal that's only valid for the first 3 days after they receive it, then simply set your expiration date to 3 days. 

You could then market your Keyword like this:

If someone texted in your Keyword on December 26th, the exchange would look like this:

Of course, if the contact had opted in on a day other than December 26th, then the Expiration Date would display as 3 days after whatever their opt-in date was. 🙂

SimpleTexting Tip 💡 Enter a “0” into the expiration date field if you want to auto-populate the date as the same day the message goes out. (Perfect for same-day limited-time deals!)

Now, we want to hear from you! Have you used an expiration date to share a limited-time offer? What other ways have you used expiration dates in your messaging? Tell us by emailing [email protected] or clicking the chat bubble in the corner of your screen.  😃