Set Yourself Up For A Good Conversation

The power of P2P texting with ThruText is the ability to engage in real conversations with your audience at scale. But what does this really mean? With any texting tool, whether automated or P2P, you’ll find the features that let you template initial texts and replies. In ThruText, these features are enhanced by the ability to customize them with unique merge fields on a per-recipient basis, and the ability to tweak the pre-created replies on a per-conversation basis.

The Initial Message

When thinking about setting up your scripts and training your team to have real conversations, you’ll want to start with a rock-solid initial message that will go out to everyone on your campaign. We recommend starting by asking an actionable question about something your audience cares about. But don’t stop there. You may have a diverse audience, so don’t be afraid to segment, segment, segment and tweak that initial message and subsequent recommended replies based on the unique interests of your different groups.

Hi Ray, this is Sierra with the National Aquarium. Thanks so much for making a gift to support marine conservation last year. Our annual gala is coming up in May, would you be interested in attending?

Encourage Real Conversations

Creating thoughtful scripts is just one piece of the puzzle. You’ll want to train and truly empower whoever is sending your text messages to have real conversations. Whether that is staff, volunteers, or student workers, you should start by briefing them fully on all the information they need to know related to the campaign and have a linked FAQ document available for them while they are texting. You could also try to match your message sender resources up to campaigns in which they may have a personal vested interest. For example, when you are setting up a campaign around a particular issue area, reach out to your volunteers and explain the subject matter so that your volunteers can self identify opportunities they are truly interested in. When a message sender can truly connect to the subject matter of a conversation, and has full information and trust on how to engage, real conversations will flourish. 

We’ve created scripting guides for common politics/advocacy and education campaigns and ThruText that can help you get started. But remember, don’t stop here. Make sure the scripts are unique to your audience, and that you don’t forget to encourage real and authentic conversations.