Ideas
Text alerts for our mailing list feature request
Feature request for a text alert that sends out a link to our headline mailing list (Flex site). Readers, particularly the next generation of readers favor mobile text notifications over email. Our stats are showing that a small proportion of newsletter subscribers see our emailed newsletter in their inbox, even though they subscribed to it. It would help us reach more readers, more quickly. We would use this very day for general news, sometimes multiple times a day for breaking news & weather alerts etc. Different types of alerts would be possible & could effect most staff in several departments - but particularly our content generators in the newsroom.
Hoping others will like this idea so it is considered for a future release.
Answer
Hi guys!
We have a product called SMS List, which functions similarly to Email Reach but uses text alerts instead. You put a signup box on the front page and on user registration pages, and then you send out alerts.
A few caveats however:
1. Your list can use either a local number to send the texts, or a "short code" which can be purchased from the phone companies. Local numbers are inexpensive, but the phone companies limit them to sending 1 text per second. This means that if you have a list of 7,000 text alert subscribers, it will take you almost 2 hours to send a breaking news alert (which would not be acceptable for most breaking news situations). If you had 500 users, it would be more reasonable at 8 minutes.
If you get a short code, it is much more expensive to buy from the phone company, but your text rate goes up to 30 texts per second.
TownNews.com supports both methods, and we also support sharing a single short code across multiple papers. So if you have a group of papers, the expense of a short code may be more reasonable.
2. We do not support scheduled alerts, so if you wanted to send out something like a Daily Headlines email, you'd have to do it manually each day. But, for most Breaking News for regular-sized lists, this would work great.
This product allows a text list to be tied to a specific business, so that the newspaper can send out alerts on behalf of that business as a service.
If you have any questions, you can ask your sales representative for more information. Thanks!
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi guys!
We have a product called SMS List, which functions similarly to Email Reach but uses text alerts instead. You put a signup box on the front page and on user registration pages, and then you send out alerts.
A few caveats however:
1. Your list can use either a local number to send the texts, or a "short code" which can be purchased from the phone companies. Local numbers are inexpensive, but the phone companies limit them to sending 1 text per second. This means that if you have a list of 7,000 text alert subscribers, it will take you almost 2 hours to send a breaking news alert (which would not be acceptable for most breaking news situations). If you had 500 users, it would be more reasonable at 8 minutes.
If you get a short code, it is much more expensive to buy from the phone company, but your text rate goes up to 30 texts per second.
TownNews.com supports both methods, and we also support sharing a single short code across multiple papers. So if you have a group of papers, the expense of a short code may be more reasonable.
2. We do not support scheduled alerts, so if you wanted to send out something like a Daily Headlines email, you'd have to do it manually each day. But, for most Breaking News for regular-sized lists, this would work great.
This product allows a text list to be tied to a specific business, so that the newspaper can send out alerts on behalf of that business as a service.
If you have any questions, you can ask your sales representative for more information. Thanks!