How to Send and Schedule Regular Weekly or Monthly Messages to Groups

These are the step to follow if you are interested in sending a weekly or monthly messages to certain groups.  For example if you have a regular tennis clinic for men's 4.0 level that occurs every Friday at 6:00 PM, you can schedule a text message to go out on Thursday reminding the group of the clinic or asking for a reply if they are interesting in signing up.  If you are interested in managing or limiting the number of signups see step 4 below for instructions on that step.

 

Navigate to Messages >Send Bulk SMS, select the group, write your message and select a delivery date and time in the future.

Go to Messages>Groups Message Queue here you will see the message that you have just scheduled to go out. 

If you click on the orange button on the right of the message under action it will copy the entire SMS campaign for 1 week later. The purple button copies it for 1 month later. 

Because this button only copies 1 week at a time, you will have to click the orange copy button on the last one created for every week you want it to go out. This will build the campaign for multiple weeks at once by copying the previous one.  This also allows you to  plan out the weeks and skip weeks where there are holidays or some other reasons the clinic or event will not occur.

You can view or edit all the upcoming SMS campaigns by clicking on the Scheduled Calendar.  All of the scheduled campaigns will be highlighted in "blue".  If you with to edit the campaign click on the "pen" icon and all edits will only impact that specific campaign and not the future ones if they have already been copied.  If you click on the "x" icon it will cancel that campaign on that specific date.

This is more advanced, but if you are interested in getting replies or keeping track of the number of participant for the event you can request that they reply with a keyword that you have set up for the RSVP group.  For example a keyword like "go". This will add the participants to a separate group and will allow you to send a separate text message only to the ones that have confirmed that they will attend. You may want to send them a messages regarding a weather delay or any other updates for the event and by having a separate group you will not be bothering the entire "prospect" group only the "confirmation" group. When the event is over, clean out the group of all names so it is set up for the following week.

 

This is a great way to keep dialog and participation going for regular events and keep you members happy and aware of what is going on.