Kaitlyn Orred
People use Call-Em-All to deliver important text messages to their contact groups. In some cases, these messages are solely notifications or alerts that don't require a reply. However, messages are also designed to engage contacts. It's no secret that text messages have a high response rate, but what is really shocking is how many replies to the original message go unread. Let's take a more in-depth look at this and explore why you shouldn't ignore responses to your mass text.
Raise your hand if you see a voicemail on your phone at work and think, “Yep, I’ll just ignore that and never listen to it." I'm guessing very few, if any at all, raised their hand. Just like you wouldn’t leave a voicemail unread, you shouldn't ignore your text replies. Those replies could be a meaningful message, like a person telling you they want to take that open job you’re offering, a co-worker who needs to discuss an issue, or a customer you're waiting to hear back from. Plus, raising your hand while sitting in your office alone would be a little weird.
This probably isn't new information for you. I bring it up, however, because each day our team sees Call-Em-All customers who ignore text replies ENTIRELY. In fact, we have over 500,000 unread text replies in our system! Whether intentionally done or not, the end result is always the same:
You're missing out on information that is just as valuable as the important message you originally sent to the contact.
That’s why we always advocate that our users should be on top of their text responses.
Bonus Tip: Be careful with the wording of your message. Always be clear about the action you want contacts to take. If you don't want a response, make sure your message is detailed enough to answer common questions - or don't ask a question when you don't intend to read the answer.
The most common scenario we see are contacts replying back with additional questions. The account shown here had 722 unread replies. Many of them were contacts showing genuine interest in the position being offered, but never received a response.
Texting leads to conversations, which means you have an engaged contact. Don't waste that opportunity!
To see your text responses from within your Call-Em-All account, go to the Conversations tab at the top of your homepage. There, you will see entire text threads of the contacts who responded to you, and you also have the opportunity to respond directly back to them.
Not yet persuaded? I hear you, you could have a million things going on in your day and adding one more isn’t in the cards. But what if I told you that ignoring your text responses could cost you thousands of dollars?
That’s right, ignoring messages can cost you big time.
How? Opt-outs. Everyone knows your audience can respond with the word “stop” to opt -out of future messages. Our system will also review your inbound texts to make sure we’re auto opting- out contacts who don’t want to receive text messages going forward, but what about those who respond telling you not to text them again and aren’t easy for systems to detect?
You and I can infer intent from a text message much better than any machine can, no matter how well we teach it. For this reason, if someone responded with “Cody got a new number, and I don't want your messages!” and our system misses the auto opt-out, and you keep texting them, you’re now sending unwanted text messages.
The fine per unwanted text is currently $500 PER MESSAGE! Now, add up all the unread text replies that wanted to opt-out, but keep receiving your messages. You're going to get fined for each and every one! Pretty expensive, right?
So please, do both yourself and your contacts a favor. If you have unread text replies in Conversations, read them! Who knows, you may be missing out on that next out-of-this-world job candidate, a volunteer who wants to help, or an angry recipient who shouldn’t be getting your messages in the first place.
** Pro Tip: In your account settings, you can also enable text and/or email notifications to alert you to unread replies.**
