Sending Your First Blast

A Blast in Phound Wave is a one-time SMS broadcast. You pick your audience, compose a message, and send — either immediately or scheduled for a specific time. Blasts are perfect for announcements, reminders, and quick check-ins that don't need multi-step automation.

This guide walks you through sending your first Blast in under 5 minutes.

Before You Start

Make sure you have:

TCR approval. Your carrier registration must be approved.
An audience. At minimum, a Collection or a list of tagged contacts.
An available Message Pack. Confirm you have segments available on your plan.

Step 1: Start a New Blast

Open Wave at wave.phound.app or in the desktop app.
Click New Blast (usually the primary button on the Blasts tab).
Give your Blast a name. This is internal only — your recipients will never see it. Use something descriptive like "Spring Sale Announcement" so you can find it later.

Step 2: Pick Your Audience

Choose who receives the message:

Select a Collection — The most common path. Pick from your saved static or dynamic Collections.
Filter by tag — Build a one-off audience using tag rules.
Upload a CSV — For a one-time send to a list you have not yet imported into Wave.

Wave shows a live count as you refine your selection, so you know exactly how many recipients will get the message and roughly how many Message Pack segments it will consume.

Tip: Audiences between 50 and 500 work well for most one-time Blasts. Smaller audiences barely benefit from broadcast features, and much larger audiences often need the pacing control of an automated campaign.

Step 3: Compose the Message

You can write the message from scratch or pull from your Templates:

Click Use Template to pick an existing one, or just start typing.
Use merge variables ({first_name}, custom fields) to personalize.
Add an MMS attachment if you want — photo, PDF, etc. — from your Assets library.
Watch the segment counter. Under 160 characters = 1 SMS segment per recipient.

Preview

Below the editor, Wave shows a preview with real contact data from your audience. Cycle through a few to make sure merge variables are resolving correctly and the message reads naturally.

Tip: Send yourself a test message first. Most composers include a option to preview and test your message before sending.

Step 4: Schedule or Send

Choose when the Blast goes out:

Send now — Fires immediately. Expect delivery within a few minutes depending on volume.
Schedule for later — Pick a date and time. You can also enable timezone-aware delivery, which staggers sends so every recipient gets the message at, say, 9am in their local timezone.

For anything time-sensitive (sale countdown, event reminder), scheduling prevents early-morning texts to recipients in distant timezones.

Warning: Avoid sending SMS before 8am or after 9pm in the recipient's local timezone. Many states have laws (TCPA in the US) restricting commercial texts outside those hours. Timezone-aware delivery is the easiest way to stay compliant.

Step 5: Review and Launch

Before the final send, Wave shows a review screen summarizing:

Audience — total recipients
Estimated segments — how much this Blast will consume
Send time — now or scheduled
Message — the actual text that will go out
From number — your Phound number

Click Send Blast (or Schedule Blast for future sends) to confirm.

Monitoring Your Blast

Once launched, you can watch it unfold from the Blasts tab:

Delivered — messages successfully delivered to carriers
Failed — messages that bounced (invalid numbers, opt-outs, etc.)
Replies — inbound responses, which flow back into your normal Phound inbox
Opt-outs — contacts who texted STOP during or after this Blast

Click into any Blast to see the full recipient list, per-contact delivery status, and every reply received.

Handling Replies

When recipients reply, the replies come back into your regular Phound inbox as normal conversations. This is what makes Wave feel personal instead of transactional:

You can respond one-on-one like any other text.
The conversation history is tied to the contact, not just the Blast.
STOP replies are handled automatically and the contact is opted out.

Tip: If you expect high reply volume, coordinate with your team. Everyone who has access to the sending persona will see the replies come in. Assign someone to own reply triage so no message goes unanswered.

When to Use a Blast vs. a Campaign

Use a Blast when:

You want to send one message, one time.
The content is time-sensitive (event reminder, flash sale, weather alert).
Every recipient should get the same (or merge-field-personalized) message at roughly the same time.

Use a Campaign when:

You want a sequence of messages over time.
The messages should trigger based on contact behavior or dates.
You want different branches (e.g., if-reply-yes-then…).

Still need help?

If you couldn't find what you were looking for, our support team is ready to assist. Contact Phound Support and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.