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7 min read

12 Mass Texting Service Tips for Choosing the Right Service

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There are more channels to use to communicate with your audience in today's fast communication era than you can count. However, as businesses undergo their digital transformation, social media platforms, email inboxes, and blogs are becoming noisy and saturated. Among these channels, there is one that stands out: mass texting.
With a whopping 98% opening rate, mass texting is a much faster and reliable communication channel than emails, which suffers from a low 20% open rate.

So, finding a mass texting partner is essential to enrich the communication with your audience - but not just any partner will do. Be mindful when selecting your provider, as the text messages will be the voice of your company!

Below, you will find the mass texting service tips you need to guide you in choosing the best provider for your organization's needs.

What Should I Look for When Choosing a Mass Texting Service?

Text messages are not new, but their full potential has never been leveraged - until now! Mass texting services allow you to reach your audience in a second while boasting some of the higher open rates and engagement across all communication channels. 

Not only 98% of text messages are opened by the receiver, but 90% of text messages are opened within 3 seconds of receiving them due to the wide spread use of mobile devices. These are essential statistics to consider when you need your communication to be fast, safe, and efficient. Here are the features your provider must have!

1. Ease of Use

Whether your contact list includes five contacts or 500,000, your mass text messaging service must remain straightforward and easy to use. Small organizations might have a single person in charge of communication, while larger institutions might count on a whole communication team. 

In any case, your time and focus should go towards crafting a message that resonates with your audience and clearly delivers valuable information - not towards figuring out how your mass text messaging platform works!

Important features that can increase ease of use include automation of contact details and recognition of phone numbers across databases. 

From business recruiting to healthcare notificationsText-Em-All stands out for its ease of use thanks to features such as:

  • Easy broadcast setup by filling a tested template
  • Ability to upload your contact list from contacts, saved files, or clipboard
  • Availability of templates and space for personalization
  • Preview options
  • Record sending times that range from 0.5 seconds to 8.3 minutes for 25,000 messages

Thanks to unparalleled ease of use, you can ensure that the information is received in real-time when it matters the most!

2. Learn About Their Customer Service

If something goes wrong with the communication between your business and your audience, it is paramount to find a fast solution. And, your mass text messaging provider's customer service is what makes a difference in such an emergency. 

Some of the features to look for in your experience as a customer include:

  • No waiting times:

    There is nothing worse than being on hold with customer service when trying to resolve a pressing issue. Ensure to check your desired provider's customer service standards before committing.

  • Availability 

    Issues don't always happen during business hours, so make sure to find a provider that offers 24/7 support.
  • No outsourcing

     Outsourced customer service team might be convenient for a company but can affect the customer experience. Your provider should have an in-house team of experts who are passionate about the goal and knowledgeable about the product.
  • Accountability and authenticity

     Mistakes are bound to happen, but they are resolved easily when acknowledged and addressed. Check out customer reviews to know more about how your chosen provider will act when an issue arises.

3. Check for Templates and Scheduling Options

Personalization is essential to text messages to drive more engagement and catch your audience's attention when delivering important information. The power of personalization goes from an increase of 4%-12% in text messages response rate to a 72% engagement rate. 

Whether you are looking to deliver the time and date of a healthcare appointment or looking to inspire devotees to keep up their faith before the next mass, personalization will increase the chances of opening the message and engaging with the information. 

Some of the features you need to look for in a mass texting service include:

  • Ease of personalization of templates with simple fields such as "insert the first name."
  • Text messages templates with custom fields
  • Scheduling options to deliver the message when your audience is available
  • Availability of media options such as picture messaging 

4. Ensure That It Is Easily Scalable

All large organizations were born small! Your business or institution might just be moving its first steps in the market, but it won't remain small for long! In turn, the size of your audience is bound to change, and you might find yourself having to contact over 50,000 phone numbers as one. 

When this happens, it is crucial to support a mass text messaging service provider that is easily scalable and performs at high levels even when dealing with last contact lists.

5. Leverage Free Trial Options

Don't commit to a product before trying it! While a mass text messaging provider might be suitable initially, it might not be the best match for what your organization is trying to achieve. Before committing, please make the most of any free trial period the company offers to create your profile and verify that it is easy enough for you to use. 

Free trial periods should make available to you all the integrations and features from which paying users benefit. So, make sure you are testing all the different elements and check that they are suitable for the kind of messages your company wishes to send out.

6. Learn About Real-Time Delivery Reports

A mass text messaging provider's job does not end when you press "send." Indeed, performance indicators such as open rate, responses, and engagement level are essential pieces of feedback that you should know. Thanks to this information, you can craft more relevant messages for your audience and understand what catches their attention. 

Alongside storing text delivery receipts, you might also benefit from reports on the messages' responses and open rates. Real-time notifications can also make you aware of any reply you receive and handle that conversation directly in no time.

7. Ensure Security and Privacy – For Your Business and Contacts!

The sharp rise in cybersecurity attacks and malware incidents have caused many companies to rethink their cybersecurity strategy. However, many underestimate one of the most significant risk factors for protecting your company from cyber attacks: third-party vendors.

Your mass text messaging provider can be a powerful ally, but they will have access to contact lists and customers' personal data. Ultimately, it is essential to partner with a provider that follows the industry's best practices and is transparent about cybersecurity measures in place. 

8. Explore Possible Integrations

As your list of contacts grows and expands, you might need to reach users across the nation. Therefore, it is essential that your messaging service works with the most popular carriers and can deliver your information - regardless of your customer's phone contracts!

Additionally, it would help if you also looked for any integration that the messaging service offers. Software integrations are essential to combine multiple tasks, speed up the communication channels, and create a seamless experience for customers and staff. In some cases - such as when you need to send out the date and time of an appointment or a personalized message - integrations can help you automate the messaging process. 

With Text-Em-All integrations, you can integrate the system with your staffing and recruitment software or cloud system.

9. Availability of Flexible Payment Plans

As well as scalable, a mass text messaging service should also be flexible. And, flexibility in payment plans can make a difference when searching for a long-term partnership. Indeed, at first, the messages you send out might be limited in number and to a shorter list of contact. 

In this case, a monthly membership can weigh on your budget, while a pay-as-you-go option might be more suitable. Nonetheless, as your organization grows, you might find yourself needing a more convenient monthly fee that does not make your budget fluctuate as much. 

Always learn about the payment options that a provider offers - and ensure that there are no hidden fees for larger contact groups!

10. Create Valuable Conversations

Messaging your audience might seem like a one-way system at first, but you will soon realize that users engage with and respond to personalize messages. So, why miss out on an opportunity to strike a conversation with them and improve loyalty and engagement?

With the right mass text messaging provider, you can benefit from the Conversations Feature, which allows you to engage in a one-to-one conversation with a contact. This feature can truly enhance your communication strategy and enables you to speak directly to your audience. Download our new Conversations app on your mobile devices. 

11. Take Time To Read Their Mission Statement

A provider's mission statement says a lot about the values that the company upholds - and the service you can expect from them! A mass text messaging provider can have impressive power over the kind of messages and information a broad audience receives. Ensure to check their reputation, reviews, history, and manifesto before committing to a particular provider. 

In particular, a responsible use policy allows you to know that your audience is in good hands. And, considering that your brand is about to be associated with a messaging service, you should pick one that you are proud to showcase!  

12. Understand Your Organization Goal

Lastly, when selecting a mass text messaging provider, it is worth looking into the goal your organization wishes to achieve. SPAM, promotional, and marketing messages might be part of your marketing strategy - but they don't always create value for your audience. 

Conversely, organic communication is necessary to update your users about appointments, issues, and events that can be essential for your business to run. It is always recommendable that you find a mass text messaging provider that aligns with your organization's values and goals.

What Is the Best Mass Texting Service?

Mass text messaging is becoming more popular, and an increasing number of providers have started to sprout. However, when searching for the best mass text messaging service, you should start by understanding your business goals and the kind of relationship you wish to have with your audience. 

At Text-Em-All, we have been providing mass text messaging services for over 15 years, and today we are honored to be serving over 44,000 organizations. 

From healthcare to schools, universities, and religious organizations, we have been helping institutions feel closer to their audiences - and vice-versa! Thanks to our work and values, we have been awarded six G2 badges and nominated as one of Forbes Small Giants.

Thanks to our extensive experience, we don't only offer fast and efficient service, but we have also made it extremely simple to use, scalable, flexible, and versatile. 

How Do I Set Up Mass Text Messaging?

Whether you need to send messages for business or your local community, sending messages has never been easier. With Text-Em-All, you will only need to follow a few simple steps:

  1. Start by setting up your broadcast, including sending time and number.
  2. Upload a list of contact from your computer, clipboard, or contacts
  3. Craft your message and add custom fields such as "enter first name" or "enter date."
  4. Review your message to ensure that it appears as you want it to be
  5. View all the results in real-time and strike up a conversation with anyone who has replied to your messages

 

Selecting Your Mass Text Messaging Partner

Finding the right mass text messaging partner can be intimidating, especially if you have never approached this communication channel before. Here at Text-Em-All, we understand how important it is to find a mass text messaging platform that matches your needs and a provider who is there to help you along the way. 

That is why we have offered flexible pricing plans, free trials, and an in-house team of experts ready to support you in your journey. We know that mass text messaging has an even greater potential than the one we leverage today - get in touch to find out how it can serve your organization and start sending messages today.