TextPower Voting Solutions

Transcription

1 TextPower Voting Solutions TextPower now offers voting and sweepstakes solutions on all its shared short codes. These services are also available to be set up on dedicated short codes at the user s request. Table of Contents TextPower Voting Solutions... 1 Definitions... 1 Voting... 2 Sweepstakes... 3 Setting up a voting/polling event... 4 Running a sweepstakes... 8 Running an event... 8 Web Site... 8 SOAP Interface... 9 Using your own Keyword or the Do Not Require A Keyword option... 9 Results via SMS More information Definitions Voting and Sweepstakes services allow the TextPower customer to conduct polls and sweepstakes contests very easily with results tabulation and winner selection. Each service allows you to use up to 5 options, with your own keyword or using a borrowed Page 1 of 10 12/2/2014

2 keyword. Using a keyword is a common option where you ask your users to enter a vote or contest entry as a numeric attachment to one of your keywords. Voting A voting service is one in which you wish to conduct a poll and collect the results for display. All possible responses are treated equally. As an example, assume that you want to run a voting scenario for a political election and you have your own keyword, which we will assume is CHFIVE. You might advertise a campaign like this: Channel 5 is conducting a poll on the governor s race. Indicate your preference for the election by texting: CHFIVE 1 for John Smith or CHFIVE 2 for Mary Johnson. To Message and Data Rates may apply TextPower has special proprietary technology allows you to temporarily borrow special voting keywords so that your participants are not required to precede their vote (e.g., a b, c or 1, 2, 3, etc.) with a keyword. If you choose to run your vote event without a keyword you could promote it like this: Channel 5 is conducting a poll on the governor s race. Indicate your preference for the election by texting: 1 for John Smith or 2 for Mary Johnson. To Message and Data Rates may apply We will explore the reasons that you might want to use a customer keyword or not require a keyword at all later. Page 2 of 10 12/2/2014

3 Sweepstakes A sweepstakes is very much like voting except that there is a correct answer and one or more wrong answers. Usually, you will select some subset of the correct answers to win some kind of prize at the conclusion of the contest. Please note the following: To comply with carrier regulations and state gambling rules, all sweepstakes must have a skill element involved and the prizes must be of nominal value and be merchandise or services, not cash! Sweepstakes can also use both keyword or borrowed keyword options but we will only illustrate a borrowed keyword example here. Our example involves a contest at a minor league baseball game announced over the public address and or the Jumbotron. Answer our contest with the correct answer for a chance to win 2 free movie rentals from President Video. Which team won the 1984 World Series? Text one of the following to to enter. Winners will be notified via text message. 1 for New York Yankees 2 for St. Louis Cardinals 3 for Detroit Tigers 4 for San Diego Padres Message and Data Rates may apply The TextPower system will conduct the sweepstakes, provide you with the set of correct answers, allow you to pick some subset as the winners and then notify them via TextPower. Page 3 of 10 12/2/2014

4 Setting up a voting/polling event All voting and sweepstakes events work on a reservation basis. You must reserve an event ahead of time for a specific time frame. Reservations are taken in blocks of one half hour for a total duration of one half to 3 hours. You make your reservations using the TextPower Voting Manager web page found here: After logging in go to the Setup Events tab and you will see this screen: To set up a voting/polling event or sweepstakes/contest enter the following in each of the labeled fields and follow these steps: Page 4 of 10 12/2/2014

5 1. Event Name: Create an event name (the Event: dropdown menu will show past events in case you want to change an existing event or review the data for an event that has already concluded). 2. Voting/Sweepstakes Question: This will form the title of the page displaying the results. You may ask your question of participants however you wish when you display it in print, state it verbally or display it on a screen. This field only determines how the results page is titled. You do not need to enter a question mark as one will be entered for you. Example: What is your favorite city is correct. What is your favorite city? is not correct (no need for the question mark). You could also simply enter Favorite city and the results page will display Favorite City? 3. Start date and time: Start times are available in increments of 15 minutes. Remember that you have set your time zone on the login screen (the My Account tab of the VotingManager web page) and any times that you select here are in accordance with that time zone. 4. Duration: Select the event duration in half hour blocks. Event durations are available in 30- minute increments up to 3 hours, then hourly increments after that. You can also select a duration of days if the event is designed to last that long. 5. Vote With: You may choose numbers (1-5) or letters (a-e) as the way your participants vote, but unless the occasion specifically calls for it we strongly recommend numbers. If, for example, your voting keyword is music then participants would vote by texting music1 or music2, etc. 6. Total Valid Responses The number of answers to your question. If you are assigning numbers to your keyword to vote (e.g., music1, music2, etc.) then you should select the number of valid responses equal to the number of choices that you will be giving to participants. If, for example, you are asking participants to vote on their favorite city and you are giving them a choice of Rome, Paris, London or New York (four choices) you Page 5 of 10 12/2/2014

6 would select 4 in the dropdown menu for this field. 7. Name Responses: A box will appear with a number of blank fields equal to the number of valid responses your selected from the dropdown menu in the previous step. You can name the responses by entering Rome in one field, Paris in the next, etc. 8. Correct Answer: If you are conducting a standard vote or poll there is no correct answer as participants are choosing one of the valid responses by texting in one of the available responses (e.g., 1 for Rome or 2 for Paris, etc.). There is only a correct answer if you are conducting a contest or sweepstakes (e.g., a trivia contest) and there is only one correct response. 9. Individual Vote Limit. By default, all votes are accepted (the default for this dropdown menu is set to 0 so as not to limit the number of votes). If you wish to limit voters to one vote simply select 1 from the dropdown menu. Our system will recognize that mobile number and will reject any votes after the first vote from that individual number. You can set whatever limit you prefer. 10. Show Raw Numbers On the Voting Results tab results are always shown in percentages. If you wish to show the actual number of votes received in each category in addition to the percentages check the Show Raw Numbers box. 11. Do Not Require A Keyword TextPower offers the ability to conduct a vote without a keyword. You can conduct a vote allowing participants to text in either a single number or a letter (e.g., 1 instead of music1 ) or a, b, c, etc. Because no keyword is associated with this vote it is possible that other companies may be attempting to conduct a vote at the same time using this process you should always click the Check Availability button to see if the time slot you are requesting is available. If it is not you can either change the time of the vote or simply use your voting keyword instead of selecting the Do Not Require A Keyword option. 12. Correct/Valid response: As an option you may want to reply back to a participant when they submit a vote by texting it in. In cases like that you can enter two different replies one each for a correct response and one for an incorrect/invalid response (see below). When a valid response is sent, or in the case of a contest/sweepstakes the correct Page 6 of 10 12/2/2014

7 answer is sent, you can have a reply sent back to the participant saying something like Thank you for your vote. Please see our monthly newsletter for the results of this vote. 13. Wrong/Invalid response: If you have created four acceptable answers to the What is your favorite city example, then if someone sends in a vote (either with a keyword or without, depending on whether you have selected the Do Not Require A Keyword option) with the number 5 or higher it would be considered invalid. For sweepstakes, this answer is sent back both for invalid entries and incorrect entries. If you want to disable this operation and send back the same message for all results, simply make the two messages the same. Page 7 of 10 12/2/2014

8 Running a sweepstakes Running a sweepstakes is mostly like running a voting event. The main difference is that at the end of the event, you will need to pick your winners. For sweepstakes, be sure to mark one of your choices as the correct one on the setup screen that you used. After the event, you pick your winners using the Pick Winners sub-tab on the Voting tab. Presumably you do not want to declare all the entrants who had the correct answer as winners so enter the number of winners you want and click the Pick Winners button. The winning cell numbers will then display on the screen. At this point, just enter the message you want to send to the winners and click the Notify Winners button. Here is a screen shot of what the Pick Winners sub-tab on the Voting Results tab looks like: Running an event Web Site The most comprehensive way to run an event is from the TextPower customer web site. There are five pages used to conduct events. 1. Event Reservation Page. The Event Registration Page is where you reserve and set up your events. 2. Current Results (Popup). This page is a popup page with the results displayed on it. You would use this only if you want to display the results in real time on an external device such as a Jumbotron. 3. Current Results (Inline). This page displays results on a regular TextPower page. Page 8 of 10 12/2/2014

9 4. Results Test Pattern. This page is a static version of the results page. Use it to set up an external display device prior to the event. 5. Pick Winners. Used only for sweepstakes events to select and notify winners. SOAP Interface You may use one of the TextPower SOAP interfaces to download your event data and event results so you can create custom results displays if you wish. See the Application SOAP interface documentation for complete details. Using your own Keyword or the Do Not Require A Keyword option In the earlier examples, we referred to two ways to run an event, with customer keywords or without requiring a keyword, technically referred to as borrowing a keyword. This section will clarify when and why you might choose either option. The vote words 1-5 and a-e are technically keywords but they are not keywords that you own. They are TextPower keywords that are dynamically loaned to you for the duration of an event. As such, you cannot use them before or after the event. So if you want to entice people to enter a mobile club or group so you can send them follow-on messages, the dynamic loan method will not do that. If you just want to run a vote or contest, the dynamic keywords (i.e., not requiring the participant to send a keyword at all) are a good choice because they are extremely easy to use and explain. So the basic rules are: 1. If you want to form a client group that you can send to later, you must use a customer keyword. The response format for your users will be KWn where KW is an alphabetic keyword and n is a number from 1 to If you don t want nor need a client group that you can send messages to later, you can use the 1-5 or a-e formats. Common uses for this format are: a. Television or radio voting where the primary purpose of the event is viewer or listener participation and/or sending a promo message in the response message. b. Customer feedback polls. c. Contests to promote the organizer of the event. Contests at sporting events by text message are becoming increasingly popular and are usually sponsored by a local merchant. Page 9 of 10 12/2/2014

10 Results via SMS To get your results in real time, remotely or without having an Internet connection, you can use request the results via SMS. Text VoteStatus to the short code that your event was on followed by the SMS code that appears after the event selector on the Event Reservation Page. For the example, you would text Votestatus 50-8 to Your results might be: Event 50-10: 1(nn, 47%), 2(mm, 38%), 3(kk, 19%) Where nn, mm and kk are actual vote counts. Note: You cannot pick and notify winners in a sweepstakes via SMS. You must use the TextPower customer web site to do so. More information For more information on TextPower voting services you can view a helpful video here: Existing customers may consult an additional FAQ. After logging in to the administrative page, click on the tab at My Account FAQ Reader. Finally, we are always ready to assist you by phone or . Reach us at , extension 2 for support or send to Support@TextPower.com. Page 10 of 10 12/2/2014