Understanding the Options for Church Texting with Caleb Miller Ep3.8

Caleb Miller  [00:00:00]:

Just recently, we introduced what we call our notes pages. And what that is is a landing page that you can send people to to include that long form content. So if you're doing a Bible study, you want to give a lot of information on an event that's coming up. Maybe it's summer camp and you got to go through. Here's everything that the kids need to bring. Here's the checklist, everything like that. You can use our notes pages to put all of that stuff in. And then when you're building your text message, you can choose that notes page to go into your text message.

Jeanette Yates [00:00:35]:

Welcome to the Tech in Church podcast, where we talk to everyday church communicators who use simple tech tools to go from frazzled to focus. I'm your host, Jeanette Yates. And while my co host, Nina Hampton is out on maternity leave, we still believe you should spend less time worrying about technology and more time doing what you love in your ministry and in your personal life. Today's episode is a very special edition of the podcast. Joining me is guest favorite Caleb Miller. He's also the chief experience officer at Text In Church. He joins us every season on the podcast. We love having him are according to him, and I think a lot of people do.

Jeanette Yates [00:01:11]:

He is our most popular guest, and I'm going to be talking to him today about the most common tech tool we use, our cell phones. And listen, I have a lot of questions for you, Caleb. We're going to be diving in today. I need to know about short codes. What's the deal with that? What's going on with this verified number business? Are 800 numbers even still a thing? How do cell phone carriers affect and impact our ability to send messages to our church community? Caleb, you're going to break this all down for us today so that we can confidently communicate. Is that right?

Caleb Miller  [00:01:42]:

That is right. Yeah.

Jeanette Yates [00:01:43]:

So there has been a lot going, you know, those of you who are just in the weeze in the church space, you don't get as much technology news as Caleb and I do being in the texting field. But there's a lot going on with cell phone carriers. Things are changing. You may know this as a church leader, like, you're getting a lot of text messages. There's all this stuff going out about security and safety and all this. We just want, Caleb, you to tell us as church leaders what we need to know about cell phone carriers and how they're affecting our phone numbers and what we need to do to make sure that our most important message is getting out to our church community. So let's dive in. You ready? All right, question number one.

Jeanette Yates [00:02:32]:

Tell me about this verified number situation. We are having our members verify their numbers. What does that even mean?

Caleb Miller  [00:02:40]:

Yeah. So this has been coming down for the last couple of years. This specific process is called a to P Ten DLC. And what that means is application to person, ten digit local code. So if you are going to be sending from an application like text in church or any other texting application, not using your own personal cell phone, using an application, sending it to a person with a personal phone, you have to register with the carriers to be able to do that. And why they're requiring this is, well, it's annoying that you have to do it because we know that you're not sending spam messages. But what the purpose of this is that in the past few years, spam text messages, especially phishing messages, have become really prevalent. So your bank account has been compromised, clicked here, those kind of messages that are causing the problem.

Caleb Miller  [00:03:31]:

And unfortunately, when you have like a free trial of a texting program or anything like that, people will, spammers will take advantage of that, sign up for it and then just start blasting out spam messages and it happens before you can stop it from happening. The messages go out and people have been attacked that way. So what cell phone carriers want to do to protect their members is be able to register so they know who is actually sending these text messages. So they know the First Baptist Church in Georgia is the one actually sending these messages so that you're verified. Okay, these are good people sending good messages. We're going to let them through. Now, it's not only on the side of protecting their consumers. So at T's customers, it's also beneficial to you as the church to register as well.

Caleb Miller  [00:04:28]:

Well, now you have to, you don't really have a choice. Your messages will not go out if you don't. But there is a benefit that we didn't have before. Your sending speeds are faster and the message deliverability is really high. Before, in the past, when they would try to filter out spam messages, it was kind of like shot in the dark. Well, maybe this is spam. We're not going to let this one go through. Or we've even had times where they will block a message and then not tell anyone and actually say that this message was delivered even though it didn't happen.

Caleb Miller  [00:04:58]:

So this kind of formalizes that process to where there's rules, regulations, guidelines that you can follow and make sure that your messages are always delivered. Yeah.

Jeanette Yates [00:05:07]:

So we can all relate to having those situations where we're getting text messages to our personal phones that we didn't ask for. We don't want all those things. This is a way for you to know as a church, hey, I'm going to verify this number. The cell phone carriers are going to recognize this and my messages are going to go through. And my church members, you're also protecting your church members. That way you can say, like, we've got this verified number. If you see a message coming from us, it's from know all that kind of. So I have a question here.

Jeanette Yates [00:05:46]:

A lot of our members ask this, and a lot of people in our Facebook community, we talk about this a lot. We hear about the idea of using either a toll free 800 number or short codes. People are like, what about short codes? What about 800 numbers? So let's take these in two separate questions. Tell me about an 800 number. Can you even still use an 800 number out there in the world? What's the deal with 800 numbers? Caleb, break it down.

Caleb Miller  [00:06:12]:

Yeah. So 800 numbers are still a thing. You can still use them. The only problem with the 800 numbers is that you cannot send a link in an 800 number without it being verified as well. It's a very similar process, but the process actually takes longer. So to get registered for A to P ten DLC takes between five to eight days. To do a toll free number, it takes about 14 days on minimum 14 days. So you could send, but you won't be able to send links.

Caleb Miller  [00:06:41]:

And that's not really helpful. So they are viable. I personally, and what we've seen, we've been doing this for nine years now as a company, 800 numbers just feel inauthentic because it's like the infomercial.

Jeanette Yates [00:06:54]:

It sounds like an infomercial.

Caleb Miller  [00:06:57]:

Yeah, exactly. To call, to get the CD set. You always call the 800 number, Caleb.

Jeanette Yates [00:07:01]:

Don't tell people how old we are, for goodness sakes. That's true.

Caleb Miller  [00:07:06]:

That's true. That's true. Sorry about that. But, yeah, so it is an option. It's just not the best option. Just for the personalization.

Jeanette Yates [00:07:17]:

Right. So at Text In Church, when we meet with churches, when we work with them one on one, I just got off a live training just a few minutes ago with some of our members. The whole point of using texting is that it's a great way to have a personal connection. So while. Yes, of course, sometimes you're going to send out that all blast. Caleb, we live in Florida. There's a hurricane coming. Right.

Jeanette Yates [00:07:40]:

We got to tell everybody one blast message. Right. But for the most part, you're using texting to engage in conversation, touch base with people throughout the week, that kind of thing. And for that you're going to want to use that local ten digit number that you verified and all of those things. 800 no, go get your CDs in the middle of the night. Right. All right. A lot of people want to know about short codes too.

Jeanette Yates [00:08:07]:

And so short codes used to be more popular than they are now. But every now and then we still get questions about that. Can you talk about what's going on with short codes?

Caleb Miller  [00:08:15]:

Yeah. So that is a completely different subject even than 800 numbers and A to P ten DLC. So short codes. Right around the same time they were introducing A to P Ten DLC, they said that shared short codes. So if Text In Church bought a short code and then let all of our members use it because we used to do that, if you do that, you're no longer able to do that anymore. They don't want shared because it goes back to the spam compliance of when 1500 people are sharing this one short code, they don't know who was the one who actually sent a spam message. If it did go out, there was no identification piece there when sharing it. So short codes are still available and actually you can get one through Text In Church.

Caleb Miller  [00:08:55]:

They're just very expensive. They do exist, but they cost about between like $10,000 a year. And you'll see this with any texting company, they'll probably provide it and it'll all be about the same price. Everyone just does pass through fees on those. So those are not anything. No one's making money on shortcodes. They just cost that much. So if you can afford it and that's the route you want to go.

Caleb Miller  [00:09:19]:

Absolutely. You can come talk to us. We'll be able to set that up. It does take a lot longer even than a to P ten DLC or toll free. It's like 45 days to get that set up. So you're looking at a really long setup time. Plus the fees. They do have higher sending speeds though.

Caleb Miller  [00:09:32]:

So there is the plus side on that. So it is available. It's just, I would say, not as accessible to most people, most churches.

Jeanette Yates [00:09:40]:

That's right. One of the things I've always told people when talking to them on our trainings and things is it seems like, so the short codes are typically five digits and people are like, but five digits is so much easier than ten digits and it's like, okay, that does sound like a lot. Five to ten, that's five additional numbers that somebody has to remember. But remember that it is your local ten digit number, which means those first three numbers, they're going to already know. Everybody already knows their area code, so really you're talking about exactly seven to five, and that doesn't sound so bad. And then, of course, we have ways that you can share the phone information so people can save it in their contacts so they're not even having to remember it. Right. Or they can use a QR code so they don't even have to type it in the first time.

Jeanette Yates [00:10:30]:

So if you have any questions about that and want to reach out to us, we can walk you through all those things, but we highly recommend that ten digit local phone number because that's the way that's just more personal. You all, that's what people want to get a message from. Okay, so we've kind of talked a little bit about this next question. So if there's anything else that you want to tell us about how we can have a great message, we can put it in, we can send it out. Is there anything else that we need to know about how cell phone carriers manage the texting and how it might impact our ability to send messages as a church, is there anything else that we might need to know?

Caleb Miller  [00:11:12]:

Yeah. Even when you're registered for a to P ten DLC, there's still always a chance that they may block your message. I mean, it's much lower of a chance since you're registered because you've pretty much been verified at that point. But it's still always best to follow best sending practices. So send during the weekday hours, keep your messages less than 160 characters. I know it's really tempting, and sometimes you can't get it just over the edge. You have to do two parts, keep it as low as you can because that's going to be easier to read. It's going to go through, it's not going to get broken up into multiple parts and then just kind of sticking to always including your name in the message.

Caleb Miller  [00:11:52]:

There's even more benefits for including your name iPhones if that person doesn't kind of going back to talking about having your contact information. If you always include your name, either your church name or your name specifically in the text message. When an iPhone gets it, it'll use series predictive software and it will say, I actually got it this past weekend. It said maybe Pastor Josh on one of the messages that I got because I hadn't saved it. So following best practices that carriers encourage also have other benefits than just not getting your message blocked. They have other benefits like that.

Jeanette Yates [00:12:26]:

That is so true and I did not even think about that. But you're right, that's such a great point that the more personalization we can even add to the message increases the deliverability. Now, you did mention something about the best practices as cell phone carriers love 160 characters. However, sometimes, Caleb, we as church leaders, as ministry leaders, as pastors, as devotional leaders, sometimes the message that we feel called to share is going to be longer than 160 characters. And this is something we talk with churches about all the time. Now, of course, we have a system in place inside Text In Church that our system, the pricing is done by outgoing message only. So we do have a way that even if your message does sneak into that two message segment, potentially because we don't know if the cell phone carrier is going to break it up or not, but if it's potentially that two messages or three, our system is only going to charge you for one message. But there's another way that churches can get their message out, even if it's a long message.

Jeanette Yates [00:13:30]:

So I want you to go through our new notes feature and then we'll talk about that last one. We'll hold that for the last one. But tell us about the notes feature, inside Text In Church and how it can help if somebody really does have a long prayer or some sermon notes they want to share. Tell us how they can do that inside Text In church.

Caleb Miller  [00:13:46]:

Yeah. So just recently we introduced what we call our notes pages and what that is is a landing page that you can send people to to include that long form content. So if you're doing a Bible study, you want to give a lot of information on an event that's coming up. Maybe it's summer camp and you got to go through. Here's everything that the kids need to bring. Here's the checklist. Everything like that. You can use our notes pages to put all of that stuff in.

Caleb Miller  [00:14:08]:

And then when you're building your text mesSage, you can choose that notes page to go into your text message. So you have your hey, Summer camp is coming up and then you can click the link to view more information. So you can put that in there. Your message is super Short and sweet. They can click the link and go to it. One of my favorite features of the notes pages is that we have a call to action button at the bottom of every page to where you can then link it to other things so if you wanted to string together, maybe you wanted one notes page to have a Bible verse on it because you didn't want the page really long. You could have it then go to, they could click a button and then go to your devotional of that verse so you could string these pages together. The other good thing is you could actually string together connect cards and notes pages.

Caleb Miller  [00:14:54]:

So then once they read that, maybe it is Summer Camp, you're ready to sign up, click the button and then it can be strung to a connect card. That is a seamless experience to then fill out that connect card after they get done reading.

Jeanette Yates [00:15:05]:

Yes. And the notes pages, I just love them because like I said, we work with pastors all the time and sometimes it's that prayer that they want to send somebody. Right now you're talking about a message you might send to a lot of people, but sometimes you want to send a message to just one person, but you're going to pray over them and that may be longer. And so you might want to send that notes page. That has a way, but there's also, now you get to talk about it. There's another way that pastors can use the Text In Church system or any church leader can use the Text In Church system to send a personalized message. And that's through our video pages. So we just talked about notes, which is like basically y'all.

Jeanette Yates [00:15:49]:

You can put a five paragraph essay in there. I think it'll fit those notes pages. But there's the video pages, too. And that allows you, well, I'm going to let you tell them. You tell them, Caleb.

Caleb Miller  [00:16:02]:

Yeah, you're good. Yes. The video pages is very similar to nose pages, except obviously you can put a video on it. So when sending a video through a text message, the video file has to be really small because with SMS messaging, it's not like iMessage between two iPhones. Like when you have the blue dots in your iPhone that's going through the internet. So sorry, I'm nerding out here with some.

Jeanette Yates [00:16:24]:

He's getting into it. That's okay. That's okay. We love it.

Caleb Miller  [00:16:28]:

So when you're texting between two iPhones, that's through the Internet. So you can send huge, massive files, 15 pictures, three videos. You can't do that through SMS text message which goes through cell phone towers. So what we've done is we've made video pages that you can send that in a link so you can have the high quality video, the really long text, but include it in the shortened version with a link to click on. And those video pages have reactions on them. So you'll be able to see if somebody thumbs up your video or hearts it. And they also have the call to action on those pages as well, to where you could string together all three if you wanted. So you could string together, you could have them read a bunch of information, watch a video, and then move on to a connect card.

Caleb Miller  [00:17:07]:

You can string them in all different ways that you want. You can also string them to outside sources as well. I know before I had mentioned it was all connect cards, you can actually string those things together with outside content as well. So if you want to send them to your website, send them to your giving page, whatever you want to do. If you're having a, like you're raising money for a building, you can send them a link to a video to watch. Here's why you should give to our building project with a link then to give. So I'm super excited about these. I think it really enhances the way you're able to message people and connect.

Jeanette Yates [00:17:37]:

With, you know, video pages is something that we've been excited about for a long time. And now to see them in action is so love. Rachel O and I, whenever we do a training, we love to always try to record something like in real timE. Because that's another thing that you can do is, yes, you can have a video that you've put on YouTube or recorded through your phone and put it in there, but you can also just from your desktop, record the video right there and then it's ready to go. So it's really easy to use. And even somebody who's not like a filmographer, I don't know, a film person can do it. Oh my God.

Caleb Miller  [00:18:19]:

The ability to record those videos is, I think, really cool because you could add it as a part of your guest follow up sequence. You could send yourself a reminder message in the automated workflow. Hey, go record this person a personalized video. You go then record it and send that person that video. So I think it's a super great way to connect with people in a kind of a different way.

Jeanette Yates [00:18:38]:

Yes. Again, we started talking about the personalization way at the beginning of the podcast, and then you were still talking about that because ultimately it's the connection that's going to make the most difference. Right? It's not the magic words in the text or the email, but it's the connection that you make with your guests, with your members, with the people on your leadership team that's going to make the lasting difference. Caleb, I want to know, is there anything else? Do you have any other tidbits that you can share with our people before we head out today? Any other exciting a you can say.

Caleb Miller  [00:19:15]:

Yeah, that's a great one. I'll kind of let everyone in on a little bit of a secret project that we've been working on. So this is a feature that is coming very soon that people have been requesting for a really long time. We'll soon be able to have the draft section or what we're calling quick replies to where you can write your messages ahead of time and then be able to access those whenever you're messaging. So to make, if you need to send out recurring messages and you want to make them really short and you can't remember the wording, you'll be able to have those, you'll have some stuff like that. So we're trying to make the process of sending messages easier and quicker along with getting you registered and giving you all these tools.

Jeanette Yates [00:19:56]:

That is so great because, you know, what I do right now is I have my Notes app and that's where all of my saved replies for any text that I send out, that's where I house them. So now I know I will be able to do that inside the Text In Church, which guys I kind of did already know, told, he already told me ahead of time. But just so you know, you may be doing that, you may have a doc or a Google Doc or a notes app or something that you're using right now. Well, now we've got you covered and that's going to be coming soon. They've been working on that, so I'm really excited about that. I know we've got a lot of other things coming up, but I always love having you on the podcast again. You are one of our favorite guests and we appreciate you. I'm sorry Nina couldn't be here today, but she's kind of busy on maternity leave, so we're sending her all the best until she's able to join us again.

Jeanette Yates [00:20:47]:

Thank you so much, Caleb. That's a wrap on today's show. We would love to hear from you. Head to the comments of this video and share your tips or questions. And if you want to learn how to use more tech in your ministry so that you can spend less time worrying about technology and more time doing what you love in your ministry and your personal life, be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening to this episode so you will not miss our future episodes.