Ballincollig GAA Club Texting

Transcription

1 Ballincollig GAA Club Texting Introduction Ballincollig GAA Club has set up a texting system that allows for sending texts to all members and this mini doc explains how to use it and some recommendations for its use. The club uses a company called Send Mode ( to facilitate its usage. It is not designed for use by individual managers to contact their respective players as managing each individual groups would be prohibitive, but more for use by Club PRO s to contact the general membership of the club about major upcoming events, adult championship games, juvenile finals with a view to increasing support for such. There is a cost associated with each text and texting the full membership ( 500-ish memebrs ) will come to approximately 16 euros for 160 characters or less. On top of the cost there is the annoyance factor for the members who have an option to opt out at any point and a generally recognised ignore factor where people who get too many text will not even bother to read them after a while. So keeping the volume of texts low and the information contained in them concise is advantageous on three fronts. Access to the system should also be limited to small group within the club so that when sending out texts the limited number of users can coordinate between themselves about frequency and content. Steps to send a Text 1. In order to get running on the system go to and Login Name and password is available from the Club PRO only.

2 2. After entering the name and Password you will directed to the home page with all the options to manage the the clubs account. To get back to this screen at any point you can always press the Home button on the top of the page. 3 To Keep as simple as possible for those sending the texts there are groups already set up to allow for 3 different groups that texts can be sent to. Senior Section - Members of the Senior Section Only Juvenile Section - Members of the Juvenile Section Only All Members - Memebers of Juvenile and Senior Sections (Duplicates removed) If all you want to do is to send out the texts then click on Send SMS to Customers

3 4 This will bring you to a selection screen where you need to select : Who to Send it to Sender ID and then type the message. A) In order to define who to send it to select from My Groups and choose one of the options. NOTE: If you want to send a test Text to yourself use the number option but be sure to leave out the leading 0 on the number ( ie )

4 B) Select the Sender ID which is the name that will appear on the top of the text of who it came from. Please ensure that we always use the same one for consistency. ( B ColligGAA ) C) Type in the message you want to send in the text box. Please be careful with the size of the message as there are different amount of credits used for each message size. For example sending 160 character text to all members will cost 15 euros but a 161 character text will cost 30 euros as this will use two credits for each text. NOTE: There are options to use templates and things like customers first name or last name etc... but probably best to keep away from them as the database in the background may not be perfect in knowing what the members first names are at the moment because it was hand entered.

5 D) To send the message staright away click on Send or the other option is to schedule it for date ( Click on the calendar icon ) and time ( select the time pop up ) and click Schedule message. E) When the you click on send a popup will jump and click OK and it will be done. NOTE: Be a little bit patient as the system may take a few minutes to send out the texts as it enters a queing system with all other send mode customers... Good Practise Before sending a text please ensure that there is are enough credits to send you text and in general if it goes below 1000 cedits please inform the Club PRO who will have a mechanism to buy more credits. I think we are obliged to inform people on how to opt out of teh texting. There is a cost involved for automatic repliable opt outs so every now and again put this little item at the bottom of your text "to optout goto stoptxt.net" which allows people to go to the internet site and enter their mobile number and be removed automatically from the text list. NOTE:There are other mechanism but require a little more bit more manual work or leaing out Ballincollig GAA as the sender ID inthe text. There are other things that can be done on this system easily like adding new members, creating template texts or creating many different groups ( not advisable at the moment for simplicity sake ) and all this information can be got in the very helpful user guid which can be downloaded at the site.