Group texts or SMS is when you use mobile messaging services to reach large or small groups of people at once.
Compose an SMS message of up to 300 characters or an MMS message with up to 1,600 characters.
Sort through your subscribers, using tags to quickly identify recipients.
The number of recipients you’ve selected will show up on the send button. Press it, and wait for the data to come in. Analyze the data to maximize your next round of texts.
A survey conducted by OfficeTeam, a staffing company, showed that employees spend an average of 56 minutes per workday using their cell phones for personal matters. Instead of fighting this statistic, why not take advantage of it to improve internal communication within your organization? And, according to another report, 70 percent of employees think texting should be used for internal communication.
Group texting is beneficial to any business regardless of its size. A Pure360 report on SMS marketing reported that 32 percent of recipients respond to SMS messages. Take advantage and use this tool to communicate effectively with your employees.
Text messaging allows you to create a more efficient communication channel for your business. Depending on the industry you’re in and the nature of your business, there are different ways group texting can come in handy. See some examples below:
Restaurants
Retail
Sports
Real Estate
Churches
Textedly makes it easy to start sending mass texts from your business to its employees or customers. Just follow these steps:
Sign up for Textedly.
Create your message.
Add necessary links or media
Upload your list of desired recipients.
Send your message.
Analyze results and monitor replies.
Even better, with Textedly you don’t have to do this on the spot or set reminders to send a particular message. Instead, you can create templates for common messages and schedule them to be sent out at a specific day or time. You can also create segmented groups of recipients to ensure your mass messages are sent to the right party.
Once you’re ready to start your business’s mass messaging with Textedly get ready to:
Once you're ready to start your business's mass messaging with Textedly get ready to:
Textedly allows users to create segmented groups of recipients and save them in your contacts. This is an extremely beneficial feature to avoid sending information to the wrong contact and limiting the number of group texts you send out.
For example, if you would like to send a mass message to a specific team in your business, you can save team members as a segmented group. You can also segment your internal communication by employees levels from setting up a group for C-levels only, middle-level managers, and so on.
Similarly, if you want to reach specific customers for your business, you can choose to segment them in different ways like by interest levels or purchase history. For example, if you want to reach customers who are top-spenders only, you can filter customers by purchasing power.
There are many benefits that all businesses can experience from using group messaging as a communication tool. These benefits include the following:
Immediate communication.
Not all employees access their email when they are out of the office. If you need to communicate emergency security information, then text messaging is the most efficient tool to do so.
Higher open rates.
Open rate for text messages is 98 percent while emails typically range between 15 to 22 percent.
No extra hassle.
There’s no need for employees to acquire another tool or download another app. Everyone has a cellphone and everyone has access to text messaging features without the extra cost or hassle.
Using keywords and short codes are the two most effective ways to build your mass messaging database. Keywords are specific words you encourage contacts to text to a short code number for a specific incentive.
For example, “Text GROCERY to 242424 to receive weekly coupons.” Grocery is the keyword and 242424 is the short code.
A great way to use this strategy is by pre-segmenting your potential groups. Then, you can assign multiple keywords that are more specific to each group you want to target. Keywords and short codes make opting-in easy for the recipient which makes it an effective way for businesses to encourage contact to sign up to receive text messages.
Businesses can generate feedback and encourage engagement via group texts. Here are some ways group texts can be useful for more engaging internal company communication:
Security alerts.
If there’s a problem in the building you can easily communicate it to all employees at once as well as let them know when the area is safe again.
Employee appreciation events.
Buying lunch for your team? Let everyone know not to bring their own lunch that day.
Ask for feedback.
Need to vote on what to do for a team building event? Group text messaging will make it easier to reach everyone at once and let each employee vote individually and anonymously.
Conference meeting reminders.
Sometimes we schedule meeting rooms and then forget to cancel it if something comes up. A conference room reminder can ask if you still need the room and respond accordingly.
Connect with remote employees.
Text messaging is a great way to keep in touch with employees working outside the office.
When sending mass texts, it’s crucial to understand text message laws and regulations. According to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), all contacts must give businesses “express written consent” before you start sending them text messages.
Furthermore, when asking contacts to opt-in, businesses must let receivers know the purpose of the message, how frequently to expect messages, message and data rates (is there a fee?), the privacy policy and terms and conditions.
Failing to fulfill the above requirements can result in a TCPA violation. A violation can include monetary penalties.
Sending messages to individuals who have not consented to receive information from you can also cause recipients to block your company from their receivers. They can do this by adding themselves to the TCPA’s Do Not Call Registry or by marking your number as spam with their telephone company. Doing this regularly will lead to your business receiving negative reviews and bad word of mouth from potential customers. Texting is useful for business but it’s important to understand and adhere to all text messaging laws for positive results.
Ready to improve your company’s internal communications by using an efficient tool proven to work? Start creating your group campaigns via Textedly today. Our mass texting services allow businesses like yours to communicate with a large number of recipients at once within seconds.
Texts are a fast, easy way to communicate with groups of people, both large and small. With Textedly, you can streamline the communication process.
Group texts go to a group of one or more recipients.
Group texts send the same text to multiple recipients without having to send the text to each recipient individually.
Yes, every Textedly package includes group texting.
With Textedly, you only pay for outbound texts.
There is no limit to the number of people included in a group text.
Log into your Textedly dashboard.
Click on the Subscribers tab.
Type the message.
Use filters to identify the right subscribers and add them to the recipient list.
Name your group texts to quickly identify the subscribers in the future. It could be "managers," "frequent purchasers," or a location name.
If you're not sure how to add recipients to a group text, sort through your subscribers' list using filters like tags or locations. Then, add new recipients to the recipient's list.
From your Textedly dashboard, create your message, including any media or links.
Upload the recipients individually or by creating a segmented group from your subscribers.
Send the message.
By default, recipient information is hidden from other recipients. The text will look like an individual text but actually goes to an entire group.
How to send a mass text without a group—by using Textedly’s tags and filters to sort your subscriber list.
You can remove subscribers from a group at any time. Subscribers can remove themselves by unsubscribing to the list.
We've created a compliance guide with the information and links you need to help you follow communication laws and guidelines.
