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Text Marketing Auto Responders User Guide

Text Marketing Auto Responders: Revolutionizing Church Communication

Text Marketing Auto Responders are a powerful tool for churches looking to enhance their communication strategies. Whether it's for event signups, group participation, or daily devotion reminders, this feature streamlines communication and ensures members receive timely, automated responses.

How Does It Work?

So, what exactly is a text marketing autoresponder? Imagine sending a text to your church for event registration, small group info, or signing up for daily devotions. You instantly receive an automatic reply with the necessary details. This feature allows church administrators to pre-set keywords that trigger automatic responses, eliminating manual replies.

Key Benefits of Automation

One of the key advantages of this system is automation. By setting up specific keywords, members can immediately receive the information they need or be added to a list for future communication. For example, when someone texts "Baptism" to the church’s number, the autoresponder can automatically send details on how to sign up and the next steps, while also adding their number to a list for future updates. This dual-functionality allows for both communication and organization in one step.

Flexibility and Integration

The flexibility of these autoresponders is another major benefit. They can trigger chatbot conversations, populate phone number lists, and even interact with your church’s management system to track participation or registrations. This integration automates tasks that would normally take hours of manual work.

For instance, if there’s an upcoming event, members can text a keyword like "Fall Retreat" to instantly receive event details while their phone number is added to a list of interested participants. From there, you can schedule reminders and updates without any additional effort.

Popular Use Cases

Autoresponders are perfect for handling group registrations, sign-ups for small groups, classes, and special events. If you’re leading daily devotionals, people can text a keyword to register for daily messages, keeping everything organized and easy to manage.

Note: These autoresponders aren’t designed for text giving—that’s a separate function. For handling donations via text, check out OnlineGiving.org’s guides on text giving.

Setting Up Auto Responders

Setting up an autoresponder in the control panel is simple. Once you log in, you’ll find the "Auto Responders" tab, where you can create, search, or edit autoresponders with just a few clicks. You can fully customize both the keyword and the response message. Once live, the autoresponder will activate whenever someone texts the associated keyword. Managing them is just as easy, with options to search for existing autoresponders, make edits, or delete them as needed.

Tips for Larger Churches

For larger churches sending high volumes of text messages—especially tens of thousands per day—consider getting a secondary phone number just for marketing. This will keep the lines clear for text giving and help avoid any delays, especially during large-scale outreach efforts.

The Text Marketing Auto Responders feature is an incredibly efficient tool for keeping churches connected, organized, and engaged with members. From automated event registrations to populating lists for future communication, it drastically reduces manual follow-up tasks, allowing church leaders to focus more on ministry.

Text Marketing Auto Responders Video Overview

Online Giving Text Marketing Auto Responders Guide

Welcome to the comprehensive guide on the Online Giving Text Marketing Auto Responders feature. This tool helps church administrators manage text marketing campaigns by setting up automatic responses to inbound text messages. Whether you're looking to promote church events, populate phone number lists, or trigger rich chatbot interactions, autoresponders can streamline these processes and make communication more efficient.

This guide will walk you through the key features, setup, and management of autoresponders, ensuring you get the most out of this functionality.

Key Functions:

  • Automated Text Response: Automatically respond to inbound SMS or chatbot messages based on keywords.
  • Phone Number List Management: Build and manage lists for text marketing purposes using autoresponder-triggered keywords.
  • External Integration: Interact with external Church Management Systems (ChMS) and chatbot intents to streamline workflows.

Key Takeaways:

  • Autoresponders enhance text marketing by allowing the church to automate responses and actions based on text message keywords.
  • Keywords trigger custom responses and can populate phone number lists or interact with external systems, like ChMS.
  • Easy management in the control panel allows you to search, create, edit, and delete autoresponders.

Table of Contents

Overview of Auto Responders

The Text Marketing Auto Responders feature is designed to streamline communication for churches through automated text message responses. Administrators can set up a series of text message keywords that trigger custom responses, interact with chatbot messages, and populate phone number lists. This functionality allows for the efficient dissemination of information and engagement with church members, while also integrating with external systems such as Church Management Systems (ChMS).

Auto responders can also be scheduled to send messages based on specific signup dates/times, which helps churches manage marketing campaigns and communications with members more effectively.

Popular Uses of Text Marketing Auto Responders

Churches use autoresponders for a variety of purposes, including:

  • Special Event Information & automatic event registration (for select ChMS).
  • Group Information & automatic group registration (for select ChMS).
  • Baptism Sign-Up and information sharing.
  • Daily Devotions Sign-Ups for those interested in receiving regular messages.

Autoresponder vs Text Giving

It's important to distinguish that autoresponders are for text marketing and should not be used for donation purposes. If you're looking to set up text giving, refer to the Control Panel Funds Guide for detailed instructions on setting up and managing text-based donation services.

Using Auto Responders to Auto Populate Phone Number Lists

A powerful feature of autoresponders is the ability to auto-populate phone number lists. When an inbound message matches a keyword (e.g., "baptism"), the phone number is added to the respective list. Administrators can then use these lists for bulk or scheduled messages.

For instance, if a church wants to build a list of individuals interested in a specific event, they can create an autoresponder using an appropriate keyword. This simplifies list management for marketing and communication purposes.

Limiting Administrative Access to Text Marketing Features

Administrators can manage who has access to the text marketing features. This includes limiting or removing permissions for certain users within the control panel. For more details on managing administrator permissions, refer to the Control Panel Users and Donors Guide.

Inbound Message Processing Order

When a phone number is used for both text giving and marketing, the system prioritizes text marketing autoresponders over text giving codes. If an inbound message matches a text marketing keyword, it will trigger the autoresponder. If not, the message will be processed for text giving.

Auto Responders User Guide

How to View Auto Responders

  1. Login to the control panel.
  2. Click on "Auto Responders" from the left navigation menu.

How to Search Auto Responders

  1. Login to the control panel.
  2. Click on "Auto Responders" from the left navigation menu.
  3. Search by title, message, or text message code (keyword).

How to Create a New Auto Responder

  1. Login to the control panel.
  2. Click on "Auto Responders" from the left navigation menu.
  3. Click the "Create Auto Responder" button.
  4. Fill in the required fields: title, response message, text message codes, and other options.
  5. Click "Save" to commit changes.

How to Edit Auto Responder

  1. Login to the control panel.
  2. Search for the autoresponder you wish to edit.
  3. Click the gear icon and select "Edit".
  4. Update the fields and click "Save" to commit changes.

How to Delete Auto Responder

  1. Login to the control panel.
  2. Search for the autoresponder.
  3. Click the gear icon and select "Delete".

Ministry Platform Special Features

When enabled, any Ministry Platform (MP) portal links in autoresponder messages will be rewritten to use Single Sign-On (SSO), allowing users to bypass the sign-in page if they are registered as text givers.

Event Participation Recording

Autoresponders can record event participation directly into Ministry Platform based on the user's phone number. The system checks for a matching contact and records the user as either "registered" or "interested" for an event.

Group and Group Role Recording

Autoresponders can also be configured to record participation in specific Ministry Platform groups, automatically assigning roles and adding contacts based on the incoming phone number.

Important Notes About Outbound Messages

If your church plans on sending large amounts of text marketing messages, we strongly recommend setting up a secondary phone number for outbound text marketing communication. This will ensure that all text marketing messages are sent from this secondary number, freeing up the main phone number for text giving users. This avoids potential delays in donation processing due to high traffic in text marketing messages. The good news is that setting up a secondary number is free through our system, and a 10-digit phone number from Twilio only costs $1 per month.

For churches planning on sending massive amounts of messages (tens of thousands per day), it’s advisable to consider renting a short-code from Twilio. Although more expensive, short-codes allow for a much higher outbound rate (up to 100 messages per second), ensuring faster message delivery. Most churches, however, will find that a standard 10-digit number suffices for small to medium campaigns, as Twilio automatically manages the message rate to comply with carrier limits.

Lastly, avoid using "shortened links" from popular link shortening services (e.g., Bitly). Cell phone carriers often flag messages with shortened links as spam, resulting in non-delivery. Instead, use full links or create custom short links from your church's website. This ensures that your messages will be delivered and not flagged as undeliverable in the Twilio control panel.

FAQs

1. Can I use autoresponders for text giving?
No, autoresponders are strictly for text marketing. For text giving, refer to the Control Panel Funds Guide.

2. How do I manage permissions for administrators using autoresponders?
You can edit permissions in the control panel by navigating to the user management section. More details can be found in the Control Panel Users and Donors Guide.

3. What happens if an inbound message matches both a text marketing keyword and a text giving keyword?
The system processes text marketing keywords first. If no match is found, the message is routed to text giving.

4. Can I use the same phone number for both text giving and text marketing?
Yes, but consider setting up a secondary number for large marketing campaigns to avoid delays in processing text giving responses.

This guide should provide all the information you need to effectively use the Online Giving Text Marketing Auto Responders feature. If you have further questions, refer to the FAQs or contact support for additional assistance.

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