Contents
- Introduction
- Messaging Options
- Send a Text/SMS or MMS Message
- Send Voice Messages
- Message Billing
- Send Push Notifications
- Troubleshoot Common Issues
Introduction
As a ChMeetings Owner, Admin, or Group Leader, you can send text, SMS, MMS, and voice messages, as well as push notifications to people in your congregation right from within your account.
There are three options you can use to send text, SMS, or MMS messages via ChMeetings:
- Purchase a credit package. Using the ChMeetings mobile app, you can send messages using your phone plan. Push notifications are free.
- Directly from your mobile phone: You can use our mobile app to get someone’s phone number and messages them using your own phone number and SMS plan. You can use this option to text approximately 20-30 people, depending on carrier restrictions.
- Using our integrations to send bulk messages. This is a free service, though you will be billed by the third-party service you integrate. You can integrate these services via Settings > Integrations > Bulk text/voice service.
Messaging Options
Message an individual person
You can message an individual person by going to the People module, accessing their profile, and clicking on the message icon underneath their profile picture. It is possible to message people from anywhere you can access their profiles, not just the People module (e.g., Contributions, Users & Roles - both accessible to Owners & Admins).
Message one or more people in one go
To send a message to one or more people in one go, follow these steps:
- Go to the People module,
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Select Text to send a text, SMS, MMS, voice message or Notification to send a push notification to everyone on your list. To send to specific people, use the checkbox next to their profile picture to select them.
Message the people in a group
You can send messages to everyone or part of the people in a group by following these steps:
- Go to the Groups module,
- Select the Group you require,
-
Select Text to send a text, SMS, MMS, voice message or Notification to send a push notification to everyone in the group. To send to specific people, use the checkbox next to their profile picture to select them.
Message event participants
You can message the people who have registered for an event by following the steps below:
- Go to the Events module,
- Select the required Event, If you are working with a recurring event, please also select the occurrence.
- Click on People,
- Select all people or just those you want to message,
- Click More Actions,
- Select Text to send a text, SMS, MMS, voice message or Notification to send a push notification to all participants. To send to specific people, use the checkbox next to their profile picture to select them.
Message people from the Follow Up module
You can message someone (or more than one person) you need to follow up with right from within your list of Follow-ups.
- Go to the Follow-Up module,
- Select all follow-ups or just those you need,
- Click Bulk Actions,
- Select Text People to send a text, SMS, MMS, voice message or Send Notification to send a push notification.
Send a Text/SMS or MMS Message
You can send a text, SMS, MMS, or voice message from any area mentioned above. When accessing the Text People section, you will be shown an editor window where you can configure and compose your message.
Please note that MMS messages can only be sent using ChMeetings Credits and within the United States or Canada.
To send text or MMS messages, configure the following:
- Choose the message Type as Text Message or MMS Message.
- Choose whether to communicate with everyone or just with children or parents. This option only displays when texting multiple people and if they are part of both categories.
- Search for and select the people to send the message to.
- Choose whether to send the message using credits or your phone plan. The Send from Mobile option can only be selected if you send the message from the mobile app. This option is only available for text messages. MMS can only be sent using Credits.
- Add Merge Fields to your message from under Add to Message.
- Edit the Message Body.
- Buy Credits if you need to. This takes you to Payments and Credit, where you can complete the purchase.
- Schedule the message for later. You can cancel scheduled and unsent texts by going to Reports > Text History Report.
- Click Send when you are ready to send your message.
Send Voice Messages
You can send a voice message from any area mentioned above. When accessing the Text People section, select Voice Message as the message Type to configure the following:
Please ensure that your microphone is correctly installed and connected and is not being blocked. When prompted, please allow ChMeetings to use your device microphone.
Once ChMeetings has access to your microphone, you can record your message and then choose to schedule it or send it immediately. You can cancel scheduled and unsent texts by going to Reports > Text History Report.
Message Billing
Please see the dedicated Message Billing guide to learn more.
Send Push Notifications
You can send push notifications from any areas mentioned above (People, Groups, Events, Follow-Ups). The steps the reach the feature are the same as for text/voice messages, but you need to select Send Notification from the Bulk Actions menu.
Push notifications are free to send and receive.
Notifications can only be sent to people who have installed the mobile app and are logged into it.
In the Send Notifications window, you can configure the following:
- Choose whether to communicate with everyone or just with children or parents. This option only displays when texting multiple people and if they are part of both categories.
- Search for and select the people to send the message to.
- Add Merge Fields to your message from under Add to Message.
- Edit the Notification Body.
- Attach files to the notification. You can attach multiple files of a maximum of 2MB in size.
- Schedule the message for later if needed. You can cancel scheduled and unsent notifications by going to Reports > Notification History Report.
- Click Send when you are ready to send your message.
You can edit and delete scheduled notifications under Reports > Notification History Report.
Message Billing
Please see the dedicated Message Billing guide to learn more.
Troubleshoot Common Issues
Churches sometimes experience issues when sending messages, especially texts; such as their messages not being delivered or consuming more message credits than expected. Here are a few ways to mitigate them:
Text messages consume more credits than expected
This occurs because your messages get encoded to Unicode rather than GSM and use up more than one character per letter/symbol. (See Message Billing for more details)
- Exclusively use GSM characters. You can find a list on Wikipedia.
- Avoid using special characters like quotation marks, currency symbols, or stylized characters that may increase message length. For example, a standard apostrophe, as in
uses 1 character; while a stylized apostrophe, as in
uses 2 characters. You can avoid Unicode encoding by following these tips:
- Avoid pasting text from external applications or text editors as these may format it in a specific manner and may lead to using more characters than necessary.
-
While typing, pay attention to the character count under your message text. This tells you how many message segments (so how many credits) you will be charged for the text.
Text messages are not being delivered
This can happen if your messages are too long or if they get marked as spam by your carrier.
- Keep messages under 320 characters. Longer texts may be rejected by the carrier.
- Avoid sending messages with short links; especially using services like TinyURL or Bitly. Your carrier may mark these as spam. If significant spamming occurs, your ChMeetings account may be blocked and relevant charges will still be applied.
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Pay attention to wording as carriers commonly mark some terms or expressions as spam or as suspicious activity. We recommend doing your own brainstorming on this, but here are a few examples that are relevant to churches:
- Free
- Lowest price
- Risk-free
- Buy now
- Limited time offer
- Act now
- Don’t delete
- Order now
- This won’t last
- Call now
- Urgent
- Instant savings
- Apply now
- Account suspended
- Verify your account
- Security alert
- Password expired
- Update your info
- Click below
- Access now
- Unsecured
- Dear friend / member (too generic)
- Click here
- Visit the link