What is an SMS Fragment?
When you send an SMS through Pharmlogic, it may look like a single message to you and the patient, but SMS messages are actually sent in segments called fragments.
A fragment is up to 160 characters, including spaces and special characters. If your message is longer than 160 characters, it will be split into multiple fragments.
Your SMS usage and costs are based on the total number of fragments sent, not the number of messages shown on screen.
What does this mean for you?
At Pharmlogic, we want to help customers keep SMS usage as efficient and cost-effective as possible.
To do that, it’s important to reduce unnecessary fragments wherever we can. SMS remains a highly valuable channel for patient communication, but costs can increase quickly when messages are longer than they need to be or when SMS is used in situations where a comparable alternative is available.
By improving efficiency, we can help make patient communication more sustainable without compromising reach or impact.
If you use emojis or other non-standard characters, your message may use more than one fragment and cost more than expected. This is because emojis and any characters outside the Latin script are sent using Unicode, which can reduce the number of characters allowed in each fragment.
What is Pharmlogic doing to help?
We are focused on two main areas to help optimise fragment usage:
In-product
We are continually reviewing product changes that can help reduce unnecessary fragments based on how messages are created and sent.
This may include:
shortening built-in templates
reducing avoidable automated messaging
combining links where possible
improving message design to keep communications concise
Out-of-product
We also want to help Pharmlogic users make better-informed decisions about SMS usage, so they can manage fragment use more effectively in day-to-day communication.
Over time, our aim is to expand communication options that are less dependent on SMS where appropriate, while still supporting reliable patient outreach.