Text (SMS) communications with attendees, members, etc.
I did not see this on the wishlist in the list of 339, unless i missed it :).
SMS (text) notication option would be great to have as alot of our members use texting on their phones. Email works good too but push text woould be great to have as an option for communication. Thanks.
PureVril
shared this idea
Team Mobile
responded
After initial analysis we decided to remove this feature from 2017 plans. Right now we don’t have clear understanding when this feature will be taken into development.
108 comments
-
Kerrie-Anne commented
Although not ideal, I currently send sms notifications to event participants as a final reminder using an external bulk sms provider. There is a cost, but its pretty small, and it is a manual process, but easy enough.
I simply export the attendees, import them into the other system and assign the relevant fields so I can do a merge - that way the sms is individualised, which is nice.
The system I use also has an api - perhaps one day I'll see if I can make use of this, but for now, I'l just keep on keeping on.
Like others in this thread, tho, I would love to be able to do this from directly within the system. There would definitely need to be the ability to send both automated and ad-hoc blasts in the same way the email works, methinks
-
blaprade
commented
Has there been any consideration to investigating this as a feature? We have a subset of our population that do not use email, however, they have cell phones and text. For important notifications, this would be very advantageous.
Thanks,
Bill
-
blaprade
commented
I could see our organization using this similarly or in addition to email notifications that we currently send. It could also be used to send out immediate notification to specific groups.
-
MattM
commented
yes exactly what PureVril said. This is not to replace the email function for newsletters or longer emails etc., but as a notifier for short event reminders or updates.
Similar notifier systems are used for hospitals to quickly notify staff and web services like Call-Em-All offer this as a product, however it creates double- or triple- entry.
Not all of our membership would opt into this, so say we have 200 members, I would foresee half wanting to be notified this way so maybe review Call-Em-All and offer something like this as an add-on package.
-
MattM
commented
We've found in our organization that older members like a phone call, young members like a text and the middle age groups still prefer email to receive notifications.
It would be great if you could integrate a SMS/robocall service like Call-Em-All and give a notification option where a member can check-box how they want to be notified with multiple ways available to check: email, text, phone.
Otherwise we'd have to maintain 3 databases - one from our national organization, one from our chapter (Wild Apricot), and one from Call-Em-All.
-
gbritto
commented
Mostly for reminders
i.e:- Reminders on events
-
PureVril
commented
We would use this almost the same as we would use email. Mostly though we would use it for sms blasts, reminders and/or last minute changes to events and such. Giving the members the options to choose how they would like to recieve communications is a great option to offer them. We currently only use it for short messages as it was intended for and not like other that use it as a replacement to email.
Hope this helps.
-
Dmitry Buterin commented
You are right, this has not come up before.
What are the situations when you would like to use this? SMS-blasts to groups? Individual alerts about specific situations (e.g. renewal)?
I would appreciate comments from others who consider this to be important.
