This guide shows you how to send a personal, one-off email or SMS to a lead or contact from their CRM record.
Before you start
- You have permission to communicate with CRM leads and contacts.
- You send from a specific lead or contact record — the recipient’s email address or number is taken from that record, never entered by hand.
- The record must hold a valid email (for email) or phone number (for SMS).
- Recipients who have opted out are suppressed; SMS also consumes messaging credits.
Steps
- Open the lead or contact and open its Communicate panel.
- Choose the Channel — required. Either Email or SMS.
- Complete the message:
- Subject — required for email, up to 255 characters. It is ignored for SMS. (Line breaks and HTML are stripped from the subject automatically.)
- Body — required. Up to 2,000 characters.
[screenshot: the Communicate panel with channel, subject and body]
- Send the message.
The recipient address or number is resolved server-side from the record itself. Before sending, the system checks the recipient has not opted out — an email address that has opted out or a number that has replied STOP is blocked and cannot be contacted. A repeated identical send within the same minute is treated as a single message.
[screenshot: an opted-out recipient blocked from sending]
Result
The message is handed to the platform communication hub for delivery, and the send (or simulation, where live sending is not enabled) is logged on the record’s timeline. SMS sends draw down your messaging credits.