Rock U - Communications - Communications - Sending SMS

Transcribed Video Content

So let's talk about how to send SMS messages. So the process is very similar to that of an email. So you're gonna start by going to a grid of people and you're gonna hit the new communication. Okay. Instead of doing the email, we're just gonna say SMS this time and we get a few more a few less options. So we're just gonna pick who we're gonna send this from and the message that we're gonna send. You can also do the delay send if you'd . But the key here is this from address. And so let's look at how we configure this from address and then some of the specifics of how SMS messaging work. Okay. So first, you need to have an SMS provider. So the one that's is supported out of the box is Twilio. It's one of the most popular ones out there and it's very inexpensive to use. So the, phone numbers that you will get and you'll get one phone number, for each of the from addresses that you wanna send from is about a dollar a month and then the messages are less than a penny per message. So it's it's very cost effective. Once you have the Twilio account and you have your number purchased, the next thing you're gonna do is go into a defined type called SMS from values. There's a couple ways you can get to this. You can get to this from general settings, define types and then find SMS from values. Also, you go under admin tools, communications, we have a quick link right to that defined type. So in here what you're gonna do is you're gonna provide a value and that value is the the, Twilio phone number that that you were given. So just put plus one and then the phone number that they gave you. Next, you'll put a description of, , what what is that phone number. Is it for a department? Is it for a specific person and then you need to pick an actual person that's gonna be the recipient when those SMS messages come back. So it could be that you're using that phone number for a department, so you might give a description of youth department but we need to know if someone replies back to that, SMS message, who is to receive it? And so that's gonna be the link and it's gonna send it back to their phone and we'll kind of see how that works. So again, the next step after setting up Twilio is to come in and set up these, SMS phone numbers that you want to use inside of Rock. Once we do that and you send your message, you'll get this kind of feature. So in this case, we have, an SMS message that was sent to a group of people And notice that it's been personalized. So inside there, you can put Lava. So we say, hello, Alicia. Hope to see you at the car show tonight. Now because this is very personalized, it's likely that the person's gonna respond back. This is kind of a tendency that when we get an SMS message, especially if we kind of know the context of it is coming from the church, I'm probably gonna respond back especially since it's been personalized just for me. So in this case, Alicia says, I'll be there. Now that goes back to the recipient that was defined on that defined value. And in this case, it's going back to Jenny who is set up on that number. And because it was a bulk SMS, we we, inside of Rock, we're gonna append who that came from. Okay? Because you might send other 200 people. So if someone were to come back and just say, I'll be there, you have you would have no idea who that's actually coming back from. So in this case, we're gonna put, Alicia Marble. We're gonna kind of pre append that for you, put her message and then you'll see that gives you this little short code so you can get a message back to that person. Okay. So Jenny wants to respond back. She says, cool, can't wait and uses the at 671 and that tells Rock, hey, respond back to this message and that would be Alicia's message. And so Alicia gets set and says, cool, can't wait. Now notice when Alicia gets it, we strip off that that little code because that would probably be confusing to her. So from Alicia's screen, Alicia's phone, everything looks very natural it's going back and forth between, , two phones and that there is nothing in between there. But in between these two phones is actually Rock and Rock's kind of relaying these messages back and forth. And it feels very natural and very fluid to Jenny, it gives her, , the tools that she needs so that she can know who she's talking with and make sure that her response gets back to just to that person. So that's the SMS features within Rock. You can do some pretty powerful and cool things with it and so enjoy.