I recently found an article on Mobile Vs. Desktop Usage worldwide.  It confirmed my suspicion that in recent years mobile usage has surpassed desktop usage overall.

Think about how many people spend their working day on a computer.  Then compare that to time spent on the phone.  According to the article, the U.S. population spends 50% of their time online on their desktop / laptop, 46% on their phone, and 4% on tablets.  This trend toward mobile will surely only increase.

In this short series on texting for churches, we've looked at the history of business texting (A2P) and compared free texting to Text-to-Church (10DLC).  In this third post, let's look at the budgeting features built in to T2C to help staff manage their communication budgets.

To start with, texts associated with the following features do NOT count toward your 500 allotted monthly texts or 2 cent overages.

In the last post we surveyed the history of business (A2P) texting. We learned that initially A2P texting was available either for thousands of dollars per month using short codes or free using email.  That left a wide gap for the innovation that rolled out in 2021 called 10 digit long code (10DLC) texting. 

Churchteams provides both free (through email) and paid (through 10DLC) texting that we branded Text-to-Church (T2C).  But, when should you use free texting and when should you use T2C?  Here are some things to consider. 

 As common as it is now, it wasn't until 2014 that texting surpassed calling as the go to method for Person to Person (P2P) tele-communication in the United States. 

But there is another type of texting called Application to Person (A2P) texting. This is commonly thought of as Business Texting.  There are companies that provide this service as a stand alone for businesses or churches.   As technology continues to aggregate, many relational databases like Churchteams have implemented the same A2P functionality in their product.  This is a big win for the end user.

While shopping online I recently found a table that I thought might look nice in our breakfast nook.  It was well after office hours, but there was a number to text.  I sent the text and got an automated message saying they would get back with me the following morning.  They did, and apologized about not responding more quickly.  It was 51 minutes after they opened!  I was impressed.

Last week I introduced the process one of our raving fan churches is going through as their team seriously evaluates our texting capabilities.  I shared three of their key questions and my responses to each one. 

Here are their final three questions and my responses.  They may be your questions too.  

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.

Text-to-Chat is the new environment for exploring creative church communication possibilities.  Last time we we looked at the top three ways roundtable participants thought they would use it.

This week, we'll look at four other ideas we came up with.  These are not as tried and true, but they are a bit more creative and have pretty significant potential.

Last week about 30 of us did a customer and staff Zoom Roundtable on the topic of ways to use Text-to-Chat.  Here is the problem in the words of one participant.

Just this week I received texts from my dentist, doctor, city utilities, a political survey, Verizon, Chase Bank, Honda, and Eddie Bauer.  I can even text my dentist back if I have a question or need to change my appointment and they respond personally!  I bet you've had the same experience. 

The ways churches are meeting at this point in the pandemic are as diverse as the church itself.  I know great churches that haven't met live on Sundays since March of last year.  And I know great churches that have been meeting live since July and now don't even require masks or social distance.  This is the beauty of God's design and the difference in the communities our churches serve.