Several LeagueApps partners are seeing fantastic results from the new Text Messaging app.

The Text app has been incredibly helpful for league partners needing to send last-minute time/field changes, cancellations or other time-sensitive announcements. This makes sense, considering that text messaging is the most effective way to reach people quickly — over 90% of all texts are READ within the first three minutes (source)!

Informed members are happy members! Just ask our partner Delaware Sports League (DSL). This past season, DSL saw a huge boost in productivity and ease of communications with their members — all from using the Text app. They sent over 50 instantly delivered announcements, reaching over 4,500 people! This resulted in a substantially reduced likelihood of people being unaware of these cancellations, and ultimately greater satisfaction among members.

How Can You Achieve These Results?

The #1 key to achieving successful results is getting your members “opted-in” to receiving texts. Once you have excellent opt-in coverage among your members, the Text app instantly becomes a powerful real-time communication line with your members.

Cell Phone Collection During Registration
To address this, we added a new feature that makes it a CINCH to get your members opted-in — Cell phone collection during registration. Your members are now able to provide their cell phone number at the exact same time they are completing their registration. This ensures that they don’t need to come back later to provide their number, a condition which leads to lower completion rates.

Use Previously Collected Member Phone Numbers
Additionally, we’re offering a special service for partners who have previously collected phone numbers from their members using custom profile fields. In this service, we will automatically opt-in those of your members who had previously provided valid phone numbers in a custom profile field. This service is a one time fee of $150. It also requires that you have been collecting phone numbers using the custom profile fields. If you’re interested in this service, please let us know.

We’re convinced that once you have high opt-in coverage among your members, you’ll see significant value from the Text Messaging app. In case you’re wondering, the best way to see how many of your members are opted-in is to go into the messaging tool in the console (Messaging > Compose a message) and look at the recipient count display on the right side of the page.

What’s The Next Step?

Your first step is to activate the Text Messaging app if you haven’t already done so. To do this, login to your admin console and visit the App Center to get started.

Once your Text app is activated, you can quickly begin experiencing the benefits of having a real-time communication line with your members. Here are the simple steps to quickly get your members opted-in:

• (1) It’s happening automatically as they register for programs. You don’t need to do anything! As your members register, they will get opted-in.
• (2) If it makes sense for you, consider the automatic text opt-in service explained above. Reach out to us to schedule this service.
• (3) You can also promote Text Messaging to your members on your own, and encourage them to opt-in. One thing we recommend is to send an email blast promoting it and asking your members to opt-in. Here’s a helpful blog post that outlines some easy ways to promote this to your members.