For not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) who want to make emotional connections but can’t necessarily spend up large on media, that’s a winning combination.   

But what’s the most impactful way to use SMS marketing in your not-for-profit or charity? We look at some super-simple, super-successful examples from four NFPs to get you started.  

1. Getting the word out for a worthy cause  

Camp Quality supports Aussie kids aged 0-13 who have been diagnosed with cancer. The non-profit org delivers a range of innovative programmes and services for these kids in a bid to strengthen their wellbeing – and support their families – during treatment. It’s an incredibly worthy cause that the team behind Camp Quality clearly feels passionate about.   

Thanks to an SMS Salesforce integration (powered by Sinch MessageMedia), the NFP has changed the way they communicate with their audience. Instead of sending event invites and reminders via email or social media, they’ve started sending SMS messages to families in their network. The result: Attendance rates at their events have risen significantly.    

The outcome is positive for a few reasons. First, better attendance means more kids benefit from Camp Quality events and services. Second, having more people means more efficient use of resources like vendors, event staff, and venue costs, maximising the value of donations. Thirdly (and finally), Camp Quality staff can send targeted messages through the SMS platform in seconds, saving significant time on outreach. It’s a triple win.  

Camp Quality is so pleased with the results that they’re planning to implement SMS outreach for their volunteer base next.  

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2. Making giving easy for UNICEF 

From war zones to the aftermath of natural disasters and ongoing conflicts, UNICEF works hard to deliver healthcare, food, clean water, and more to children in dire situations all over the world. And, (not many people realise this) the organisation is fully donor-funded, meaning that fundraising is a crucial part of their work.  

UNICEF Aotearoa used to rely on door-to-door donation drives and big events to pull in funds. Now, they supplement those approaches with modern tech – and that’s where SMS marketing for the not-for-profit comes in. Here’s just one example of the way the NFP uses SMS. 

Back in 2022, UNICEF ran a 24-hour Kickathon event with rugby hero Dan Carter. Donors were asked to support him as he aimed to beat his test career record, with donations going towards safe water and sanitation in the Pacific Islands.  

UNICEF used Sinch MessageMedia to make donating ultra-simple by executing their Text2Donate campaign. As Dan kicked (and kicked and kicked) the ball, Kiwis could text a 4-digit number and instantly donate $3 through their mobile provider. You really can’t make it much easier than that.  

How did it go? The Kickathon raised a huge $500,000, with text donors giving an average of $11 each.  

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3. Reaching young people with SMS marketing as a not-for-profit 

Youth Opportunities Association (SA) is an NFP that runs leadership programmes for young Aussies. The goal is to give participants skills, confidence and motivation as they navigate early adulthood. YOA has worked with an amazing 13,000 young people from 80 schools across South Australia so far.  

Communicating with participants is a key part of the Youth Opportunities Association’s programme. Because they work with young people, SMS tends to be the preferred channel – getting under-18s to answer a call or reply to an email can be a challenge. YOA’s trainers had previously used personal cell phones to text reminders or programme details to participants, but this was slow and inefficient, with no way to record messages or replies.  

With support from Sinch MessageMedia, YOA started using an SMS platform to manage this communication. Instead of trainers reaching out to 50-60 students one by one, they can now simply write one single message and reach all their contacts directly from the software. Messages are saved, along with contact records and any replies, so the NFP has a (virtual) paper trail for all communication.  

The new platform ensures students get all the location, time, and programme details they need, making them less likely to miss a session. And, now that it’s quicker for trainers to text, they can deliver encouraging messages, answer questions, and support their students even after they’ve left the programme. It’s about communicating with young people in a way that works for them – and it’s working.  

Use SMS marketing in your not-for-profit to inspire, motivate, and engage

Looking for new ways to reach program participants, donors or volunteers in your NFP? SMS can drive real engagement at the touch of a button (well, several buttons). If your team is over-extended – as in many NFPs – it’s a quick, efficient way to get results without impacting your other work.  

Feeling inspired? Talk to the Sinch MessageMedia team to find out more.   

The post SMS marketing for not-for-profits: 3 inspiring examples appeared first on Sinch MessageMedia.

It’s why customer service and support matter more than ever.

Yet delivering great customer support is one thing. Offering that support in the channels and places your customers prefer is another thing entirely. You might have the best support crew on the planet, but if customers have to spend hours on hold waiting to speak to them, then it’s all for nothing.

Let’s look at why SMS for customer support has emerged as a clear winner when it comes to delivering customer satisfaction.

Here are four great reasons why SMS shines for customer support

1. It’s oh-so-easy for customers to get in touch

These days, when a customer has a question, they expect an answer, stat. Particularly if they have a problem with one of your products or your brand in general. 

SMS is a reliable, easy channel that anyone with a mobile phone can use. There’s no app to download, no website glitches or internet issues. Just a quick and easy connection via a mobile phone network, in a channel that customers are super familiar with. 

Even better, the customer can reply at their own pace. They can respond at a time that suits them, without risk of losing track of the message chain in a browser window.

2. It has a warm-and-fuzzy human touch

Forget chatbots, automated responses, and website FAQs. One of the biggest perks of SMS for customer service is that your customers will feel like they’re communicating with a helpful human being.  Not only does this help the customer feel valued, but it also breeds trust and familiarity with the brand.

Sure, SMS isn’t the same as a friendly face-to-face interaction. But it’s the next best thing, particularly when you consider that your customers are regularly texting their friends and family. The informal, conversational nature of text messaging makes customer support feel easy and familiar.

3. It’s easy for you to respond fast

One of the worst things about customer support? On-hold music. It’s no surprise that only 17% of customers will recommend a brand that provides a slow but effective solution. If they’re stuck in an online queue or on hold to your call centre, you’re on the fast track to customer dissatisfaction.

With SMS, messages are delivered in an instant and you can have support conversations without delay. Customers don’t need to be online or on the phone – they can continue with their day while you get the information they need.

Behind the scenes, your support crew can handle multiple customer enquiries at the same time. Unlike phone calls, which demand undivided attention, your service reps can be far more productive.

TOP TIP: We integrate with over 75 platforms, so you can send text messages using the CRM you already use. Check out our Integrations Marketplace.

4. It’s a seamless experience for your customers

Finally, adding text messages as a support channel can help you create a seamless, end-to-end mobile experience.

For example, imagine that your customer unboxes a brand new phone and finds a crack in the screen. Using their old phone, they take a quick photo and send it to you via text message. No need to upload the photo to a website or send via email.

Instead of forcing the customer through multiple hoops, text based customer service:

• Keeps all communication on the same platform
• Enables you to resolve the issue in mere minutes
• Has a human touch that customers appreciate
• Allows for customisable queries (e.g. sending in videos and pics (MMS), or getting a personalised call)

By removing the friction from service and support enquiries, you’ll end up with much happier customers.

How Port Networks uses SMS customer support to stand out from the crowd

Port Networks is a fast-growing boutique US telecommunications provider that prides itself on excellent customer support. As the company grew, team members found it hard to handle the increasing volume of customer queries. To fix the issue, they decided to use our text messaging integration: SMS for NetSuite.

The solution seamlessly plugs into their existing system and enables them to initiate text message conversations with customers easily. Now, instead of fielding phone calls, customer representatives can handle multiple queries at the same time. It’s saved them between 8 and 10 hours of call time per week. More importantly, their customer service team cut their support queue time in half.

As an added bonus for their customer support team, Port Networks can now easily send scheduled texts to alert customers to upcoming issues such as downtime on the network. They can also send emergency notifications at the click of a button. Read the full case study.

I realised that a significant portion of our customers would prefer to communicate with us via SMS. And I realised it was easier, cheaper, and much faster than using phone or email.

Hugh Bethell, Founder of Port Networks

Ready to try SMS for customer service?

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The post 4 reasons why your customers love SMS for customer support appeared first on Sinch MessageMedia.

Where once a fortnightly newsletter was adequate, parents and carers now want centres to use more modern technology so they know what their child is doing throughout the day. Some centres even offer video streaming of children for this purpose! This expectation of more instantaneous communication will only increase as tech-savvy millennials make up a larger proportion of parents.

Increased populations and women returning to work in greater numbers are driving the growth in the childcare industry. However, quality of service is still paramount in parents’ minds as they choose a centre for their child.

A robust communications strategy using SMS can help you meet many of these challenges.

Keep up with regulatory compliance requirements

Childcare requires compliance with regulations in many areas, with information regularly required from parents, such as vaccination records, documents pertaining to childcare subsidies, and other forms. Send an SMS to remind parents quickly and easily which information is required when.

Manage vacancies

You can use text messaging to help you maximise capacity. If a space becomes available when a child is away – offer the spot to another family via SMS, which will catch their attention in the busy rush of the morning. Parents can quickly confirm their acceptance, meaning you can quickly fill the space.

To manage more longer-term placements, send a text at the beginning of every year to confirm which children are returning to care to help with planning.

Provide regular updates that keep busy parents informed

A good childcare service not only provides exceptional care but also conveys that to the child’s carers. Parents will love a quick text that confirms that an upset child has settled quickly and is enjoying their day. They will also appreciate a welcome text at the start of each year, or an enquiry about the child’s health if they have been away or unwell.

Raising small children keeps parents busy so they will appreciate any efforts by their childcare centre to help them keep on top of things. Remind parents about incursions, public holiday closures, fundraisers, dress-up days, working bees, and other events.

Simplify communications with parents and staff.

Choose a channel everyone is familiar with – text messaging!

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Cut the burden of administration

Reduce the time your staff spend leaving voicemails or writing emails trying to contact parents.

Automate text message communications to go out when needed or proactively. Not only does texting messaging cut-through, it also, more importantly, encourages responses especially if two-way messaging is used. For many MessageMedia customers, SMS has helped cut down the administrative processes and ensured centres work more efficiently.

Using such a simple system has reduced workloads, especially the administrative burden on staff generating emails or letters to parents or chasing up responses. Staff are not required to make time-consuming phone calls to parents that may or may not be received or returned. A text ‘says it all’ and parents know why they are contacted when they receive them.

Rhonnie Nairn, Systems and Administration Officer, Central Kids

Keep records

Using SMS via a web portal offers even greater functionality. Messages can be sent to all families or just those in a certain group. The portal also keeps a complete record of all communication, which shows both sent and received messages.

Parents love it

Parents love any system that helps them stay organised and keeps them in touch with their children.

For Central Kids, proof of the system’s success is the feedback from the parents, with comments such as: “I feel more connected with the kindergarten and my child knowing they [the centre] can message me at any time”, “The reminders are invaluable”, “Quick and easy, love it”, and “I’m able to reply straight away”.

Give the parents what they want.

Stand above other childcare centres with fast, easy text messaging communications.

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Final thoughts, further reading

Is it time for you to start thinking about adding text messaging to your childcare centre?

Make sure to also check out:

• Why the education sector should take up text messaging in school communications
• How Central Kids Early Education used text notifications to reduce administration and increase efficiencies
• How SMS enhances remote learning for educators

The post 6 SMS tips to drive effective communication in childcare appeared first on Sinch MessageMedia.

Since 2005, the Q Theatre has operated as part of the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre presenting the best in theatre, music and performance with acts both international and local. Q Theatre,  has focused on supporting up-and-comers, people with a disability and trialling innovative experiments in theatre. Their innovative artists and writers were already experimenting with texting, voice mails, robo-calls and many other forms of technology as part of their performances.

We were experimenting with different kinds of techniques or tools that are usually used for marketing purposes.

Nick Atkins

In part, this may be why Q Theatre, could withstand the shutdown. According to New Work Director, Nick Atkins, their team of highly trained and talented writers simply put their heads down to figure out one simple thing – how to now get those performances to their audiences.

‘SMS’ came about as a pilot project with a ‘Spartan’ approach. Settling strictly on using SMS alone meant audiences wouldn’t be distracted. For Atkins, he wanted recipients to really engage ‘with the form for what it is.’ For his writers, he knew that a restrictive or tight brief would play to their creative capabilities.

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Why ‘SMS’ chose text messaging

‘SMS’ is hugely indebted to Atkins for his love of hybridising technology with theatre art. For him, it’s not about one form over the other. Theatre can feel high-brow at the best of times and draw niche audiences, seriously restricting its ability to reach the masses while digital can be easy to ‘sign off’ or distance ourselves from what is occurring right in front of our eyes. Combining the forms (and their advantages), such as receiving a text which forces you to go out into live locations to see something, can be where it is most powerful.

Atkins has a huge interest in virtual reality and other tech and what artists are doing with it. He has maintained a sincere affection however for low-fidelity, or lo-fi, tech because it’s accessible to everyone.

[With lo-fi tech], if you enjoy a story or you hate a story, it doesn’t matter. You can just make your own one.

Nick Atkins

That was in part, how they landed on text messaging as the driver and main medium for ‘SMS’. Access and accessibility to a mobile phone or even texting is universal. Almost 5  billion people in the world now own or use a mobile phone. Texting, as well, doesn’t require the latest smartphone. Almost every mobile is capable of receiving and sending text messages. With a diverse makeup of their audiences, the technology needed to be easy, familiar and without barriers. “We didn’t want [audiences] to have to download an extra application or anything along those lines,” said Atkins, which can often act as a further hindrance to consumption or participation.

I think the reason we went with text to begin with is for its directness with people.

Nick Atkins

Texting, in addition, synced up with certain attributes of theatre difficult to convey with other technological mediums. In Atkin’s mind, text isn’t decided by an algorithm. Instead, it simply conveys small ‘bits’ (160 characters) of information which writers and playwrights must work hard to layer with subtext and meaning. Another reason SMS works in this format comes down to our direct relationship with the simple text message. Streamed theatre has grown in popularity since the advent of COVID but you’re still very aware of the screen (and distance) between you, the performers and the performance.

We love people doing [streamed theatre]. Good on them. But that adaptation feels a little like recreation.

Nick Atkins

With your phone, or even with a simple message, there’s more of an ‘embodied relationship’ there. We’ve all received life-changing news or been desperate to check a text to find out the next part of a friend’s story. The information, therefore, imparted by it is more significant to us and ‘SMS’ plays on that.

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How ‘SMS’ plays out

New performances are scheduled every Friday between 6 – 7 PM and are running for 6 weeks – similar to normal theatre showings. According to Atkins, they wanted to give their regulars a “sense of their old routine.”

After registering for a free ticket, patrons simply have to wait for the allotted time to begin. An introductory text message opens the performance clarifying how it will run. Within the hour, the recipient will receive between 10 – 16 SMS and will end with a concluding text. Setting the tone, and frequency early on with their introductory message was really important.

We wanted to give audiences a really good sense that they know what they’re in for.

Nick Atkins

Managing frequency and timing of the texts was also vital but down to the discretion of their writers ultimately. Their aim was to provide a natural number of texts per the story scenario without spamming audiences’ phones. The timing between the texts was also deliberate with many of the writers forced to “write in the pauses” as well as the texts themselves.

The story, after all, should dictate the timing and make full use of the form. The performance’s first showing is about someone on their first date messaging their friend at home while the second is about a worker waiting for their shift to begin but finding themselves locked outside. If the story told through text doesn’t have a sense of time or an escalation of events, it doesn’t quite work and becomes a “story that’s just spaced out.”

We don’t encourage people to stop what they’re doing. We encourage them to be caught off guard by this.

Nick Atkins

‘SMS’ isn’t meant to be experienced a certain way such as in a darkened room or with friends. It’s not even supposed to get your full attention. It’s described in their marketing collateral as “a small snack that you pack when you’re on the train” or a “sneaky glass of wine before a party starts.” Like theatre, which attracts the same kind of intimacy, it’s supposed to emulate a small private experience – except this one’s just for you. Atkins encourages audiences to go about their day and let the story surprise you when you hear that all-important text alert sound.

What’s the future of ‘SMS’

So far, text messaging is an unexplored forum for much of the theatre world. For Atkins, there isn’t a whole lot of it at the moment which means there’s a real opportunity in Australia for this kind of work. What ‘SMS’ has delivered is a much larger audience for Q Theatre thanks to the accessibility of SMS, both in economic and technological terms. There’s also the fact that many people are stuck in their homes looking for new forms of distraction. In fact, as of its third week, the numbers have stayed strong and consistent.

‘SMS’ has attracted a much larger community outside of their normal locals and regulars. Patrons from Melbourne, Sydney and other communities have flocked to these performances, intrigued by what ‘SMS’ will bring as the future of arts and theatre in a far more restricted and remote world. While Atkins isn’t sure what a far-reaching patronage could mean for now, it can only lead to better and bigger things. He is adamant however that Q Theatre not lose what it means to be a local arts organisation.

For Atkins, the future lies in more interactive models such as chat bots that can simulate a playwright’s tone of voice or keep audiences guessing as to who is the true human or AI. But for now, theatre in all of its forms is helping to add ‘healthy disruptions’ to the same sameness many of us are experiencing every day. The increasing popularity and interest in this project shows a growing fatigue of our regular, on-demand, 24/7 streaming platforms.

If this is just the day where you got a few texts that made you feel a bit special, and it made it feel very different to the day before and the day after, that’s the real win.

Nick Atkins

Whereas ‘SMS’ has a novelty around it. It’s intriguing and demands your time (if not your full attention) in a way that nothing has for many of us over the past year. The original pitch, Atkins said, for this project was simple: to make this day feel a little bit different to the one before.

Given its success, and returning patrons, it looks like they met the brief.

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Final thoughts, further reading

To check out other innovative uses of text during COVID:

• How text helped this COVID non-profit gets PPE to essential workers
• Using SMS as an affordable alternative for contact tracing
• Find out how this remote neighbourhood network kept residents connected during COVID using text messaging
• 4 surprising ways educators can use SMS to enhance learning

The post Play text: Combining high art with everyday tech appeared first on Sinch MessageMedia.