Ron Kinkade
Text to join is a required feature for many companies using mass messaging for marketing and promotion, but did you know that it can be helpful to use the feature even when you’re not sending out marketing materials? With that in mind, we offer a text to join feature, and we want to show you how and when you can use it to your advantage.
What is text to join?
Using a text to join feature is a great way for you to ensure you’re only sending messages to contacts that want to receive your messages, and is also a great way to group your contacts by their preferences. These groups could be your entire contact list, or broken out into narrowed down sub-sets. Learn how a mass texting service is the most effective way to keep people informed when it matters most.
One common example is to have an ‘Everyone’ group that consists of all your contacts. While it’s not required, you can give your contacts the option to opt-in to these messages by sending the keyword “JOIN” to start receiving your messages. This will allow you to collect phone numbers from those who want to receive your messages. Your contacts will receive an automated response to inform them they’ve signed up for your sms text messages. Many companies will use this automated response as a welcome message as this is the first message they receive as part of the opt-in group.
You can also create sub-set groups so that you can send more specific messages to broken-out groups. Instead of responding to your message with only the keyword “JOIN,” you’ll want to have this keyword elaborate a bit further. At Text-Em-All, your custom keyword must begin with the word “JOIN,” so our customers will use keywords such as “JOIN STAFF,” “JOIN HR,” and “JOIN DALLAS.”
When should I use text to join?
If you’re just getting started with mass text messaging, you may be wondering if using the text to join feature is right for your organization. For the most part, the answer to this question depends on your organization.
For example, if you’re part of a church and you’re not sure if the entire congregation wants to receive regular text reminders, you can use the text to join feature to weed out anyone who does not want to receive updates by text. This will limit the amount of opt-outs you receive, and will allow your congregation to choose if they’d like to receive your sms messages or not. Sub-set groups can also be extremely helpful in a church setting. You can easily allow your congregation to subscribe to prayer request updates, volunteer information, or information about missions.
Here are some examples of keywords you could use for these purposes:
- JOIN PRAYER
- JOIN VOLUNTEER
- JOIN MISSIONS
Likewise, in a more traditional business setting, text to join has many uses. You can create numerous contact groups for different teams in your company, which can include groups for the marketing team, HR team, admin team, etc. From here, you can send messages and updates to each team depending on what they need to know. These messages can include notification of meetings or updated performance reports. In addition, if there is an emergency that only affects a certain team, you can quickly send out the alert via group. For example, if a team member has COVID-19 and the entire team needs to isolate, you can easily send out a group text message.
In essence, a text to join service is a simple way to set up groups to contact within your organization, and gives your contacts the autonomy to decide which groups they’d like to be subscribed to. Letting individuals choose which groups they’d like to join also means they only get the information they need, and aren’t swamped with text messages that aren’t relevant to them.
How do I set up text to join?
When you create your Text-Em-All account, you’ll be given a number to text from. To turn on text to join, go to your text settings and enable join reply. From there, you'll write your auto-reply message, and all contacts who send "JOIN" to your number will be opted in. Each auto-reply will cost one credit, and it may be necessary to notify your contacts that message and data rates may apply.
If you want to set up sub-groups, you can do that by following the instructions here. From here, you’ll need to inform your contacts how to join the groups, ensuring that everyone lands in the right list. You can add and edit groups in the Contacts section of your account.
If you need any help setting up your text to join feature, please refer to our support site, or reach out to our support team.