All right. Let's go ahead and get started. Hey, everybody. I am Abby Jarvis. I am so excited that you're here today with me. If you were wondering who I am and why I'm talking to you, I'm part of the Neon One team. I've been working in the nonprofit tech industry for a little over eleven years, and I am fascinated by understanding how donors like to interact with and support the causes that they love and how you can use their preferences to reach them in a really great way. So today's tech circle is gonna touch on some of that. But before we get super into it, I wanna go over just a couple little housekeeping items because we always have questions pop up. First things first. I see a lot of familiar names in here. I know a lot of you are actually Neon One users. If you are a Neon One user and you have questions about how to do any of today's tactics and execute them in the product, let me know. I will try to get you answers. I will try to get you resources. But this is not a session only for Neon One clients. If you are here, you've never even heard of Neon One. Hello. Welcome. Super happy you're here. Everything you're gonna learn today is applicable to you as well regardless of the system that you're using. Little things. Do please talk to me. You've probably picked up that I like hearing from you. Nothing bums me out like talking into a void. So I'll ask you to talk to me in the chat, ask questions, talk to each other, talk to me. I love it. It makes me feel like I'm interacting with real human beings, which I love. That said, sometimes the chat can move pretty quickly. So if you have a question that you would like me to answer at the end, please drop your question in the q and a box. I will keep an eye on that as well as the chat, and that just really helps me make sure that I don't miss your question as the chat box starts going crazy. And, yes, just to reiterate,. I am recording this webinar. You're gonna get an email from me tomorrow. It will include a link to a page. The page will have the recording. It will have, the slides. It will have some other resources for you, and you'll get that from me tomorrow morning. So you can share this with anybody then. Okay. Before we get really into the thick of things, before we really start exploring how you can use text messaging to reach your community, let me know in the chat. How do you feel when you think about actually sending text messages to your community? I always think about I think of, Bob's Burgers all the time. The sad face sad face sad face turd send. Think about that all the time.. Those aren't free in my head. We love Teddy. He can do this in his sleep. And on a scale of. Linda Belcher to Teddy, where are you when you think about actually doing this? I see a curious couple. I see a cautious. Caution is good, especially when you're exploring a new communication style. Let's see. Let me know what you think. Excited? Great. It feels like we're gonna get Michelle. Not sure. We're on the same page, my friend. Great. I'm glad that we have a mix. I love this, Eden. Interested, but, hesitant. Not wanting to bother supporters. We're gonna talk about how you can use texting to talk to people without bothering them. I love the, the excited and hesitant. That's very understandable. I have a hard enough time sending a message to someone. Same. I've been in this industry for eleven years. I still get a little sweaty every time I have to send a mass email. It happens. So those of you who are hesitant, excited, cautious, scared to death, however you are, these templates may help you. There are countless instances wherein you may want to actually send a text message to people. The templates that are in this document are only just a simple handful of selections and suggestions. If you don't wanna scan a QR code, I just dropped a link in the chat. There are three different kind of or I think four different sections. Some ideas for fundraising, some ideas for events communication. If you are like, Elsa and your phone doesn't take QR codes, I did just drop a link in the chat. I'll also include, a link to that on the page that you'll get tomorrow. But these these templates will help get you started or at least help you think through how you may wanna communicate, with your community as you are reaching out to them through text messaging. So they'll just get you started. As soon as you see them, I'm sure you will get tons of ideas about how else you can use it. Okay. All of this set, templates or not, if you haven't used text messaging before to reach out to your community, you may be a little skeptical about it. That's understandable. There's a lot of hype around text messaging. So a common question is does it is it actually that helpful? Does it really work?. And the answer is yes. I wouldn't be talking to you today if it didn't. The reason that this is such a powerful communication tool is because text messages have extremely high open rates. The average open rate for a text message is around ninety eight percent, which is wild to me. Around ninety percent of people will open a text message within three minutes of receiving it. I know I am that way. I hate having unread messages on my phone. I will open it if you send it to me. When you compare these open rates to email open rates, which generally hover between, like, twenty five and twenty seven percent, you start to see the potential for this communication tool. Now those open rates do make this a little bit of a double edged sword. And a lot of you kinda called this out when I asked you how you were feeling about it. You won't you won't bother your constituents if you are sending good text messages, but you do wanna think about text messaging the way you think about salt when you're cooking. A little bit of salt makes your dish kinda pop. Too much salt makes it pretty gross. Text messaging is kind of similar. Sprinkling a few text messages here and there every once in a while can really enhance your communication tactics. But using too many text messages can just kind of ruin the whole thing. You may be like me. If you have ever given a retailer your phone number to get a coupon code, which I do all the time, and then you've gotten a zillion text messages from them after the fact, you know exactly how easy it is to overdo text messaging. So we wanna make sure we're using them judiciously. And we want to do that because texting is very personal. It is an extremely personal communication method. We are connected to our phones. How many my phone is right here by my hand. I assume your phone is next to you as well. We look at our phones on average around a hundred and fifty times a day. That's upsetting to me. I would love to think I don't check my phone that frequently. I would probably do. Our phones are very personal to us. Text messaging is a channel that people use to check with their spouse or roommate to see if they have eggs when they're at the grocery store, or they use it to make plans with their best friend, or they use it to check-in with their mom. So it's it's a very immediate, very personal way to communicate with people. Now a lot of folks will opt in to text messages from you if they're given the choice. Something like eighty one percent of people have signed up to receive messages from a company or an organization they really like. Now when they do do that, they expect two way communication, so they don't wanna just be blasted with messages all the time. And they want that communication to be timely. So we'll go into what that means in a little bit. So what you're going to want to do as you're thinking about sending these text messages is send messages that are very relevant at the time and it makes sure that you are paying attention to people when they reply back to you. So let's just keep those things in mind. So knowing those two things that people will opt into messages from you as long as they are timely and that they expect kind of some two way communication through that channel, you're probably not gonna be surprised on my number one tip for using this channel effectively, which is to send messages that are very relevant to the person or people who are receiving your message and to make them very timely. So today, I'm gonna give you some very high level best practices that will help you do that. When I say timely, this is kind of what I mean. In this example, this is a message I sent myself. So, in this message,. I am telling myself, it's Giving Tuesday. We have the opportunity to buy, and protect this parcel of land. Will you please donate?. That's very timely. Giving Tuesday is a twenty four hour period in which I'm asking someone to take action. So we'll look more at that later. But when I say timely, it's a message that is very relevant at the time, not only to the donor's experiences. So with that in mind, we wanna send relevant, personal, timely messages. Here are six best practices that will help you do that, and you can keep these in mind when you're planning any kind of text campaign. Okay. First thing you wanna do, make sure that it's very easy for people to opt into receiving your text messages. On top of that, and I would argue perhaps even more importantly than making it easy to opt in, is making it very easy for people to opt out of receiving your messages as well. So we'll go in order. One of the most common questions I get when I'm talking about anything relating to phone number is how do I even start building a bank of phone numbers? One of the best places for you to start collecting phone numbers is on your online forms. Regardless of a platform you're using, your online forms are gonna be a really valuable way for you to connect with people who wanna hear from you. Your donation form, your volunteer interest form, if you have a membership program, your enrollment forms, event registration forms, all of the forms, they're all great places for you to capture people's phone numbers. And when you do, you'll be able to use those forms to begin segmenting your lists. Now here's an important thing to remember. There is a difference between collecting someone's phone number and, like, just having it, for follow-up calls. You may already have a field for, phone numbers on your donation form or one of these other forms. There's a difference between that kind of collection and having someone explicitly opt in to receiving text messages from you. You need to be very explicit. But once you have that explicit permission, you can use the form where someone has given you permission to begin segmenting your lists. So you can have an audience for people who have registered for an event on an event registration form and have opted into receiving messages. Your donors can opt in to receiving impact updates. Your volunteers can opt in to receiving alerts about when you have volunteer opportunities come up. This is a really great way for you to ensure that you are sending very personal relevant messages while also following the rules and regulations around having people's express permission to send, send texts. So you can collect messages other places too. So in person events or community gatherings are another really common place to collect phone numbers. Again, you wanna make sure that when you collect their phone numbers, you are making sure that they know they are opting into receiving text messages from you. That's very important. We'll we'll look at that, in a little bit. Another thing that I really wanna emphasize is this last point. You really need to make sure that people know how to stop receiving text messages. It is absolutely essential that they know how to opt out. Someone should receive a message right after opting in that tells them how to unsubscribe from your messages. And if you can, that language should be periodically included in the text you send people in your community. Now you don't necessarily always need to include it in each and every single message that goes out, but you should include it frequently enough that nobody really has to scroll up and down looking for instructions on how to unsubscribe. And the reason I tell you to be very explicit when collecting people's opt ins and the reason. I tell you to be very clear about how to stop receiving messages is because this will help you prevent your messages from being marked as spam, and it generally just creates a better overall experience, for the people who get your messages. Let's see. I'm checking. I work for a speak community where communication needs are very seasonal. Is it possible to make a text opt in a known seasonal time frame? Perhaps, I think the easiest way for you to do that, Nicole, would be to reference that on the form where you're collecting phone numbers and including that language in your opt in language there. So you should be able to tweak the opt in language, and you can just say, like, we'll generally text you between, I don't know, October and March or whatever your season is. I think that would be the best way to do it. Let's see. My clients will be underserved victims of domestic violence with an emphasis on battered men. How can the communication be relayed without endangering their lives? Elka, that is a really important question. And to be very honest with you,. I am not well enough versed in that specific kind of communication to feel confident giving you a safe answer. What I would encourage you to do is reach out to other organizations that do something similar to the work you're doing and share your questions with them and brainstorm with them. That's really valuable important work, and I don't want to put you or any of your clients at risk by giving you an answer. I'm I wish I could be more thorough. Okay. The reason I am emphasizing the importance of building these lists and having opt in messaging and letting it be very easy to opt out is because you only want to send messages to people who have opted into hearing from you on this channel. Messaging people who have not opted into receiving texts from you can, of course, result in spam complaints, but it can also really damage someone's perception of your organization, and you don't want that, especially if you're using text messages to try to build relationships with people. Have you ever I know I have. Have you ever had a friend or an acquaintance share your your phone number with someone that you didn't necessarily want to have your phone number and then have that person text you. I have, I did not receive it well. I was not happy, that they did that. I was kind of rude about it probably. I also have had, like, organizations and businesses text me when I haven't explicitly opted in to receiving messages from them. It did not make a good first impression. So only only only message people who have told you that you can. That's very important. If you need to contact someone urgently and you don't have their permission to text them, but you may have their phone number, use other avenues to get ahold of them. Call them. Leave them a voice mail. Send them an email. You can mark it urgent. Message them on Facebook. Send like, you may even may and this is I can't tell you what to do, because you're an autonomous human, but you may, like, personally message them from your personal number. But you don't wanna you don't wanna opt them into receiving text messages from you in your texting platform. So get a hold of them other ways if they haven't opted into that. Wes, can we recreate text groups like email audiences? Based on the system you're using, yes. I'll show you what that looks like in my system. If you're using something different, it may look a little different. And very timely. Thank you,. Wes. This is a great segue. When you do text people, segment your audiences. Create audiences for your text messages so that you are only sending those messages to the people that need to receive them. There are instances where you may have to text your whole supporter base. I live in Central Florida.. We hurricanes all the time. I was once involved with an organization that had, we took some pretty serious damage to our facility. We had to text our whole community about it. That may happen. As a general rule, though, a lot of your messages are really only gonna be relevant to a specific group of people. You don't need to send an update about your event's location changing to people who have not registered for your event. You probably shouldn't send a call for volunteers to people who haven't ever indicated interest in volunteering with you. That that's kind of what I mean when I say that you want to send very relevant messages. So based on your service that you're using, you can almost certainly segment your your lists so you are targeting the right people. You probably do this already with email. I sincerely hope you do this with email. You segment your email list so you are sending very specific messages to very specific groups of people. Please do the same with text messages. This is an important way for you to engage the right people, people who are more likely to read and interact with your message, people who are more likely to do what you ask them to do. And when you are sending very relevant numbers or when you're sending very relevant messages, people will be less likely to tune you out when they get other messages from you in the future. So if you're always sending me messages about events and I've never gone to your event, I'll be less likely to read relevant messages in the future just because I'm not used to it. So here's an example. Again, this is in my system. If you were using something else, it may look different. This is what it looks like in Neon CRM. So say I work for a nature education organization. I wanna rally my community to sign a petition. I want them to sign a petition that will protect a state park from being developed. Luckily, I've created an audience of supporters who are interested in conservation, and they've supported say say I pull this list, from people who have donated to my, like, conservation programming. This is the group I wanna message about signing a petition about conservation. Now if I had a list of parents who sent their kids to my summer camp, I might choose not to send them this text message at all. Maybe I don't think they're going to sign, this petition. Maybe I've already asked them to do a bunch of stuff lately, or say I did want to ask my parents of campers to sign this petition. Marie, relevant example about Florida parks. I bet you've been reading about what's been going on in Florida. I live in Florida, and. I love conservation. So if I wanted to if I wanted to text my camper parents, maybe I would change the language a little bit. Instead of sending a message about protecting frail ecosystems like I did to my nature conservation enthusiasts, maybe I would send a message that talked about protecting, our parks for future generations. The messaging is different, but the call to action is the same. That kind of targeted communication will make all of your messaging more effective, and it will be more likely to inspire your community to act, and it will just generally bring you better results. Okay. Another tip for you. Be succinct when you're sending messages. You can send really long emails. You can send really short emails. When you're sending text messages, you probably wanna keep them pretty brief. Part of this is because people just don't wanna read super long messages. I have my sister, and she loves to send me very long messages. I skim them because I love her, but I'm you know, if if you sent me a really long text message, I might not. But another part of it is just practicality. A lot of phone carriers struggle with displaying really long messages. It may break them up oddly. It may send errors. It may take time for them to come in. They may arrive separately or in the wrong order. So if you just send shorter messages, you can prevent a lot of those issues. So in in Neon CRM, for example, I believe the limit is if you send a message, it's over a thousand characters. We send it as an send your message. Send your message as an attachment. It's really hard to say. And so what you'll do what you'll get is your your constituents will see, like, a hundred and sixty character preview, and then it'll be a text file where they can look at the rest of the message. We do that just because a lot of carriers do have a hard time with those long texts. So if you wanna prevent that from happening, send shorter message. Now that doesn't mean that you should be using text speak a la two thousand five. I may be dating myself a little here. If you remember t nine word, you can use this little abbreviations. Don't do that. It's twenty twenty four, if we've had a lead in the past. What this does mean is that you do wanna keep it as brief as you can. And then keep an eye on things that may add some unexpected characters to your, to your message. Emojis can be great additions. They can impact how many characters you can use in a message. Same if you're using non. English characters like the Cyrillic alphabet or other scripts. You can probably use those. Again, that will depend on the platform you're using. But when you do that, keep an eye on your character count. I would also encourage you if you do use those special characters, to send yourself and maybe someone else in your organization on a different operating system, a test. Some carriers may have a hard time displaying those special characters, so you just wanna make sure they're gonna work. Another really important point, and I'll dig more into this in a minute. If you can, use a link shortener to create shorter versions of any URL you include in your text so you can stay within those character limits. The service that you're using should do this for you. We do this for you with Neon CRM. Whatever you're using should also do it for you. But what you do want to avoid is you probably wanna avoid using the most, like, the, URL shorteners. Like, there's g o o dot g l.. There's Bitly. There's TinyURL. There are some others. The reason you wanna avoid using those is because a lot of spam messages and phishers will use those. So using those really common third party URL shorteners can result in your message being flagged as spam or even being blocked altogether. So find a text service that does it for you. They'll make everything easier. Now that bit about shortened. URLs is important because another thing you wanna do when you're sending text messages to reach your community is to make it very easy to act if you have asked them to act. Now if you're sending a message saying something about, there's a location change at your event or there's overflow parking or something like that, as a call to action isn't gonna be necessary. But if you are asking someone to donate, if you're asking them to sign up to volunteer, if you wanna do them or if you want to get them to do something like watch a thank you video or read an impact report, whatever it is, it's important that you give them a simple way to follow through. So including a URL is an obvious first step. That's why I'm really emphasizing, some best best practices around URLs there. But you may also want to consider the experience that that person will have after they read your message and tap on that URL. Some pages may not work really well on a mobile device. They may have to pinch and and zoom. It may load really slowly, especially if there's a lot of media on it. And then some some pages or actions that you want people to take may be a little more enjoyable or a little more easy to manage if it's on a a desktop. So if you are sending a really long, survey, that may be something that doesn't work very well on a phone and may be a better candidate for an email campaign. This is definitely something that you can test before you send a message. The biggest takeaway here is that you want your your text audiences to have enjoyable experiences when they interact with you. And so it's best to test not only the text message that you're sending them, but the page where you are sending them, to make sure that they can do what you want to over there. Alright. So that was five best practices. This is my last one, and my last one is really kind of a bonus. I don't know that it's technically a best practice, but my last tip for you is to use text messaging to delight and surprise the people in your community. Very frequently, it's tempting to use text messaging to, inspire action and send urgent messaging and make it kind of business like. But if you are a fundraiser or if you're a nonprofit marketer or if you, like, manage your membership community or really if you just have any any role where you are looking to build relationships with people in your community, using text messaging can be a really powerful way to make personal connections and really delight the people who support you every day. So try sending a happy birthday message or send an anniversary text on the anniversary of someone's, I don't know, first donation or new membership or first volunteer shift with you. Share exciting updates and good news. Those little personal messages can make a huge impact on the people in your community, especially because, let's be honest, if if you I'd do it. If you sign up for text messages from a business or an organization, you expect sales pitches and donation appeals and and little things like that. But you don't expect happy birthday messages and good news and cute pictures and whatever else. So, sending those will deepen your community, like, relationships and your personal relationships. And when people associate getting a message from you with receiving happy news and fun little messages, they'll be more likely to interact with you and your messages, in the future. So I just threw so much information at you in twenty six minutes. I'm gonna take some questions. Before I flip away from this, I do wanna just please do drop your questions. I'm looking at the chat.. I'm looking at the q and a. I did wanna invite you also, to our upcoming educational kind of conference. If you like these little short, brief, educational sessions, you might like Generosity Exchange. We have a ton of cool stuff coming up. Check it out. Check out our confirmed speakers. We're adding them every day. Come hang out with me. I'll be talking. Let's get to some questions. My computer won't let me copy and paste the resources you provided. I had to do it by hand.. I hope I didn't make a mistake. Elka. I will let's see. I'm gonna write your name down, and I will send you the link, the the link that. Carla just sent you. Alright. Excuse my pause. I can't talk and type at the same time. That's really hard for me. That is not the right one. Okay. Great. I just opened it. And, Elka, I will send that to you after after the session. Alright. Jenny, yes. The, recording will be available. Jenny said I would like to use. Neon CRM to text our group. I missed the first few minutes on how to do it. Jenny, good news. I have a resource for you that I can send you. Let me open this up again. If you are like Jenny here and you're a Neon CRM user, you wanna use but, oh my gosh, I can't talk into this either, it seems. Center view. No. It's over here. All screen. Great. Thank you for bearing with me. I have, a resource for you. I will drop this in the chat also, and you can check this out. We do have this link in there. Alright. If you are a Neon CRM user and you do want to learn more about using this, you are welcome to check out that support link that I just dropped in the chat. If you are not a CRM user and you are interested, you'll get a link tomorrow where you can check this out. Alright. Great question from Kira. A large segment of our supporters are sixty five plus years old. Should we consider anything in particular when using SMS with these folks? Kira, I would tell you that as long as they are opting into receiving messages from you, they should be ready and able to use their phones to do so. My parents kinda fall into that that age range. My mom is on the phone all the time. I think it would be useful, of course. I'm trying to think. Would there be any best practices that wouldn't necessarily apply or any best practices you would need to apply to a group, that's a little older? I don't think so. I think, especially if you have the sixty five plus years old, they're probably used to dealing with text messages, and, I really don't know if. I would change anything. One thing I would say is maybe when you're asking people to opt in, just be very explicit in your opt in language. I think in my example, I said something like, yes. You may send me occasional text messages. That way you're kind of signaling to people that you're not just gonna spam them all the time with messaging. But I think I think if they're opting in, they should they should know what to expect. Okay. Let me make sure I scroll back up. In addition to adding the option for text on online forms, how will you know they opted in? Danielle, this will depend on the system that you're using. If you are using I can tell you how it will work in Neon CRM. If someone opts into receiving messages from you, they will show up, in your system as someone who has opted into receiving messages from you. If you're using a different system, it will look a little different, but there should be a list explicitly of people who have opted in receiving messages from you, and you should be able to see the opt in status when you look at their account in your system. Okay. I'm gonna keep scrolling up. Curious to know about the opt in email. Will clients be able to add the text number they want to add in? I believe so. Yes. So when someone gives you their phone number and opts in, that happens on the form. I don't know what you mean about the opt in email. But as a general rule, people will be asked to opt in when they've entered their like, opt in using the phone number that they entered in the system when they filled out the form. So I don't know that there is an email email there. The box for the recipient's phone number is telling me, how can we get hundreds of these in the box? I don't think I I don't think I know I don't think I know what you're alluding to, Elka. The box with the recipient's phone number is tiny. How can you get hundreds of those and stuff? If you're talking about the opt in box, that's just a checkbox that people can use to indicate that you have their permission to text message them. The field where they actually give you their phone number is different. It's longer it has more room for them to enter their their phone number. And then, if you're using a form online, you wouldn't use you wouldn't use one field to collect hundreds of numbers. You would have maybe hundreds of people individually fill out a form and then click the opt in box. So you're not trying to put hundreds of phone numbers in that one checkbox. The checkbox is only for people to indicate to you that you have their permission, to message them. Can we send a link to opt in for existing users, free text setup? Wes, that is a great question that. I don't actually know the answer to. My initial instinct is no. You shouldn't be texting. No. I don't think you can text people who have not opted in. What I would encourage you to do, if you have people who are actively involved with your community and you are interested in beginning to build a text messaging kind of database, what I would do is I would maybe send an email or even post on your social media channels about it, and just tell them, like, hey. We are looking for ways to to build our community. If you would be interested in receiving exciting updates about x, y, and z, here's a simple form where you can give us your phone number and opt in to receiving messages. I'm thinking I don't think most text platforms will actually let you text message large swaths of people who have not opted in. So I would encourage you instead to think of another way to get their permission to message them and then and then start building from there. Danielle, I'm confused whether there's an opt in email that we send out or is it we add a space to our online forms. I would use an online form to to to facilitate that? You can send an email inviting people to fill out an online form, but an email won't let you capture people's explicit opt in permissions. So you want to point them to a form where they can do that. Absolutely use email to spread the word, but, but you're they're probably gonna have to to do that. Carla Ivy. We love Carla. High five, and applause for Carla. Just added some clarifying text. You if you're using CRM, which some of you may be, some of you may not be, you can collect text consent using a form that you send out to your constituents. You would email the form and then use that to to capture them. So we don't want you to text people unless you have their explicit permission. So you can use that account form, send it out via email, and collect their information that way. Okay. I think we got most of or all of the questions if any occurred to you. You're gonna get an email from me again tomorrow morning, usually around ten AM eastern, that will include a link to this reporting and the text templates and some other resources. If you still have questions or if something occurs to you after the fact, feel free to respond to that. I'll see your email, and I will get you the answers if I can. I will be in touch with Elka. You were asking me a specific question, and I was gonna send you something. Oh, yes. I know what. I'm doing now. Okay. I will be in touch with all of you tomorrow morning. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I know how busy you are, and this is such a cool way to learn about some simple best practices, especially around such a cool communications channel. Thank you so much. Message me if you have questions. I'll talk to you tomorrow, and, I hope you all have a really wonderful Wednesday. Alright? Bye.