Make Live Events Interactive with SMS Messaging

Liven Up Your Event with SMS Messaging

• Receive immediate SMS feedback from guests
• Receive real-time questions
• Send announcements or schedule changes
• Do giveaways and announce the winners live

Using sms marketing at your live events is a great way to get feedback, send promotions, run contests, and keep patrons up-to-date with everything that is happening at your event. For the most part, everyone has their cell phone on them all the time and they read their text messages within a matter of minutes. Sending out timely reminders is a great way to keep in touch and let your audience know about any changes, special events, and more.

As you know, each person must opt-in to receive messages before you will be able to send any information to them via an sms message. By having each person text the keyword to the text number they will automatically be added to your campaign and you will then have permission to text them in the future.

How to Use SMS Marketing for Live Events
How you use sms marketing for your live event will depend on the type of event you are hosting and the information you need to get out. If the event requires pre-registration you may want to promote the event and offer a discount off the registration by having them text the keyword to the text number. The autoresponder could then return them a promotion code that they can use during registration to get a discount.

If you have a club that has regular events that don’t require registration you may just be sending a reminder about an upcoming event. Using an sms message to send a reminder a few hours prior and maybe offering a drink special to early-birds can be a great way to keep the event fresh in their minds and bring more people in earlier in the evening.

Using SMS Messaging to Interact with the Audience During Live Events
Another popular way to use sms marketing is to have the audience texting in live responses during the event. This could be anything from song requests to questions for a live speaker or voting on a particular option or preference. Inbound sms messages are free, so it doesn't cost you anything to hear from  your guests!

Running a text poll, sms voting, or giveaway is another fun way to interact with the crowd and keep the event exciting. A simple way to do this is to setup groups and then instruct the audience on how to vote for a specific option. This can be used in a simple format, such as text vote.a, vote.b, vote.c, or vote.d for your choice, or for a giveaway you might set the keyword extension to be win and then you’d have them text event.win to your text number (in this example event is the keyword and win is the keyword extension). You can then use the random select feature to choose however many winners you want to select – the winners will receive a message that you can customize to let them know they are the winner and what they need to do to redeem the prize.

With TXT180 your account comes with one free keyword and unlimited free groups, or with your own dedicated 10-digit number you'll have unlimted free keywords, which will simplify the process even more. This will allow you to group your list by demographics, classes, days, or whatever criteria you choose. You will always have the option of sending the message to your entire database or you can select one or more groups to send the message to.

As you can see, there are many options for using sms marketing during a live event. After the event you can even use the service to send a link to a survey where participants can leave feedback about their experience.  If you have any questions about using text message marketing at your live event give us a call at 877-989-8180, we’d be happy to assist you.

Originally Posted on: September 8, 2021

Posted in: Text Marketing Tips
Tags: live events marketing, sms marketing events, sms messaging