You can now send SMS text messages with Subsplash Church Management, right from your dashboard.
Text SMS is available to everyone who has a Subsplash One package so be sure to reach out to your client success manager if you're interested in Subsplash One or need to have Church Management activated.
Setting Up Your Country Code
Before sending text messages, ensure your country code is set correctly.
Log in to your church management dashboard.
Go to "Settings" in your account options.
Access the "Account" settings.
If your country code is missing or incorrect, click "Edit" to add or modify it.
Accessing Text SMS in Your Dashboard
To find text SMS in your church management dashboard, follow these steps:
Navigate to the "Management" section.
Within the Management section, select "Communication."
Choose "Text SMS" from the available options.
Composing Messages
To send messages selectively and apply filters, follow these steps:
Access "Communication" and then "Text SMS."
Select "New Text Message."
Select your recipient list manually, or use the filter icon in the top right to apply filters to the page and then select all the contacts.
Compose the actual body of the message. You can add tokens here which will plug in each individual contact's first or last name respectively.
Make sure the "From" field is filled out. It should default to the SMS sender name that is found in Management > Settings > SMS Sender Name.
We will identify Subsplash in all SMS messages by adding "(via Subsplash)" at the end of the message after the From section. i.e. Church Name (via Subsplash)
Sending Messages to Volunteer Team with Filters
If you need to send a message to a volunteer team and ensure they arrive early for a new process, follow these steps:
Navigate to "Volunteers" in your dashboard.
Select "Teams" and choose the relevant volunteer team.
Click the three dots and select "Send SMS"
Compose the message detailing updates or instructions.
Send the crafted message to the team.
If/when someone replies to an SMS text, it will convert the response to an email and send the email to the contact listed on the Church Management account settings!
Please be aware that short links (e.g., TinyURL) are not compatible with our SMS system. To ensure your links are clickable and functional, please use a full, direct URL when sharing in SMS messages.
Limits
There is an SMS text message character limit of 160 characters per message. If this limit is exceeded then the text will be split up and treated as 2 separate text messages. A message is shown to the user explaining this when you exceed the limit when typing the text.
When using the First and Last name tokens, the shown character count does not include all processed first and last names. This can cause the final amount of credits used to be a bit higher than the initial count shown on the SMS modal. For example, if your text is at 159 characters and you are using the first and last name tokens, and a recipient is named Jonathan Williamson, that will push the character count over 160 for that individual message and use two credits rather than one. With this in mind, use the first and last name tokens with caution as they can lead to more credits being used.
The footer "Church Name (via Subsplash)" will not impact credits or billing.
Each Subsplash package that contains SMS texting as a feature also has a maximum monthly SMS text credit limit. See SMS Text Credit Limits for details.
At this time it is not possible to change the number that the SMS/text is sent from. However, that number does remain consistent, so a user can save it to their contacts and title it your organization name if they would like!