I reached out to one of our top customers who had been on our beta version of Mass Texting (free) through Text-to-Church. They know the potential of the service from the beta, and are currently doing a cost / benefit analysis of the service now that it is fully operational.
They sent me six insightful questions that everyone looking at the potential for texting in their church should ask. Here are the first three.
- Can we interact with the congregation via text without extra cost? As you know, messages sent through the email version of text are free. Inbound texts received as people text in giving, keywords, and chat responses to your Text-to-Church number are always free. If a teacher, bulletin ad, or message on your website asks people to text a response or keyword, those responses are inbound and free. System generated outbound texts that include giving, registration and redirect links are also free. Only outbound texts sent through Mass Texting, Workflows, and Chat cost. The first 500 are included in your $10 monthly fee. After that, they are 2 cents per text. Chat messages are done one at a time, so they don't accrue quickly. Workflow and Mass Texting are the primary places that you may find your team sending a lot of outbound texts. These are the two areas to review and set up usage guidelines for.
- Can we send graphics/pictures via texts? Emojis are fully supported and a great way to capture attention within texts at no additional cost. You can text links to web pages or images and depending on the link it may show up as a support image in your text app. We are evaluating MMS texting which does allow pictures. These texts are twice the cost so we are waiting for more feedback from customers before developing it.
- Can we personalize the texts without extra costs? One of the advantages of the paid (Text-to-Church) texting is that it personalizes texts for you. This feature is included and does not cost extra. Free texting through email can not be personalized.
Next week, we'll look at these last three questions from this team. See you then.
- Can we send shortened links?
- Can we seamlessly integrate CT registrations into our website?
- What more do you provide compared to Text-in-Church or Flocknote?