Hello all,
Are any folks in Australia, NZ or the UK using WordFly's new SMS messaging functionality? If so, and if you're willing to share, I'd love to hear how you're dealing with opting customers it. It would be great to also hear how it's been going for you.
We're very interested in this, as soon as it rolls out in North America.
Steve
Hi Steve,
We had a try of it for a John Williams concert, where, on the morning of a concert, we discovered that a whole box that was supposed to be offsale for a choir suddenly was available for sale ... so we SMSd and the response was terrific.
In terms of opt in and opt out, it's not perfect yet. With regards to opt in, we just treated the permissions as being the same as for phone marketing - if they were happy for us to phone them, then we assumed that we could text them.
Opt outs are more tricky. At this stage, WordFly does not have a system for instant reply opt out (e.g. "Reply STOP to opt out." The current way we are going to do this - which is somewhat cumbersome, but worth it, because of the success of the sales channel - is to put in a message "Text STOP to 04XX XXXX XXXX to unsubscribe" which will go to the box office mobile phone. Someone will then have to look up the customer by searching for their mobile phone in the Tessitura advanced search and we will then add an attribute that puts them as something like "SMS Unsubscribe - Yes".
That's out thinking, at this stage, but happy to hear from anyone else if they have better ideas. But, at least from our first attempt, it's a great sales channel.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi Matt,
Glad to here you had great success with this. We are beginning to look into SMS and the scenario you use is exactly what we are looking for SMS to help with. Especially with the young folk. Would you be willing to share any stats for that, maybe just the % response rate.
So the only issue you are having is opt-out. Was it relativity straight forward to set up?
Thanks
Kelly
P.S. Sorry not to have seen you for a catch up at the Conference.
Hi
We have been trialing SMS as a reminders for those who have booked one of our restaurants. We haven't seen a direct "success" or anything particularly measurable. We have however had a couple of people cancel their reservation rather than just not showing up (I think that is something of a success). These reminders appear to have been a pretty good place to start trialing SMS.
Fortunately someone many years ago included SMS as an option in our Data Protection agreement so we already have a number of opt ins. When contacting people about their restaurant reservation we don't apply any Data Protection as its in direct connection with their booking.
In terms of setup we created a view within our database which pulls out a mobile number (although we had the forethought to capture opt ins we didnt categorise numbers as mobile or landline) then formats it for Wordfly. If anyone would like a copy of the script feel free to send me an email.
Mark
Hi Kelly,
Unfortunately, were not sure what the SMS response rate was because they had to ring in to book the tickets and so there was no tracking mechanism in place. We do know that we shifted most of the tickets that we wanted to move in a hurry, but beyond that, we don’t have exact figures.
In terms of set-up, as far as I’m aware, it’s no more complicated than sending an eDM via WordFly (and probably simpler, because you don’t have to do any visual layout work on an SMS – you just have to count the characters). There might be a bit of work for your Tessitura person in terms of setting up the phone numbers to output properly, but that’s it.
PS Also sorry not to have caught up with you at Conference as well. Hopefully next time!
Hi MarkWe're looking at SMS for fundraising team here at Sage Gateshead. I read your post about having a script to add the international dialling code to mobile numbers. Would you be willing to email me with the script - natalie.heath@sagegatesdhead.com
Natalie Heath, Fundraising Co-ordinator