We are expanding our solutions to help the cities outreach their community. As an administrator, you can invite, inform or drive for actions through SMS texting. This will allow you to reach more people within your community, be more inclusive, and ultimately get more engagement on the platform.
Note: This solution is currently in Beta stage and available only for US. You may face some unexcepted issues while using. To sign up for Beta testing - visit here.
What can you do?
At this Beta stage, US admins can;
Upload a list of phone numbers, separated by commas (,) or copy and paste phone numbers from CSV sheet.
Create short messages & concise messages to invite, inform or drive actions on the platform.
Before sending it, admins can preview the message.
Track which messages are on the way, sent, or failed easily through our dashboard.
How to set it up?
To set up SMS texting go Admin panel > Messaging > then click on "Send SMS". Click on "Create a new SMS" to start.
You can provide the list of phone numbers in the first input box. The numbers are to be separated by a comma (,). You can also copy and paste phone numbers from CSV sheet.
The second input box is to write your short message. We advise to keep it concise and engaging.
You will see a preview of how many phone numbers the message will be sent to and how many characters you have used and how many message segments. After sending ou you can track the status of your message on the dashboard.
Before sending, here are some regulations & etiquettes to be aware of;
Per the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), text communication must occur between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m in the recipient’s timezone. As the delivery time could take up to 5 hours, we advise you to check the recipient’s local timezone and send before 4 pm.
Per the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), the message should not contain misleading header information and prohibits deceptive subject lines.
We also highly recommend that you get proper permission from your recipients ahead of the campaign.
And here are some best practices;
Keep the message short and concise. Your message should contain information that is valuable to your recipient and encourages them to take further action on the platform with the link.
However, URLs should not be shortened as they can be considered spam.
It could take up to 5 hours to send messages, the longer your message and the higher the number of recipients, the longer it will take to be delivered successfully.