I'm with Tim and all the others that have asked for this feature -for a long time it seems-

Young people and older people seem to respond best to text (SMS) messages. Is there a way we can connect with a text service and blast quick messages out?

Cheers

Graham

There are several key areas this would/could be used for:

1) Event Reminders

2) Documentation due dates

3) Special discounts

4) Alerts

Bottom-line: Folks react to SMS-blast in 5 minutes - email could take days.

Regards,

Tim

Trends?

Lets face facts - folks are not taking calls, not reading emails, and staying out of pocket until they must act on the above. This is simply a trend that has come about because we are to busy.

What is getting through? Simple - shot - text - messages or SMS:

Short Message Service (SMS) is a text messaging service component of phone, Web, or mobile communication systems. It uses standardized communications protocols http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_protocols to allow fixed line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_line or mobile phone devices to exchange short text messages

Note: Based on reports - folks will read a SMS message within 5 minutes of receiving same.

Given this trend and the need for us to be able to reach members quickly, I would like to see this feature added to our WA tool chest.

Please advise.

Thanks!

Tim

Not planned. All our plans are available at http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Product+roadmap

This message is 8 years old! Have you since had a zillion requests? We need this for last minute swim meet updates, pool cancellations due to last minute weather changes, etc. When is this planned? I'd hate to have to go to another solution like Constant Contact...

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Mostly for reminders

i.e:- Reminders on events

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.

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.