Text message copy #17
Comments
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I'd suggest the following, aimed at reducing the text message size. Questions - do we still need the safety message somewhere? do we need more instructions, possibly in the signup message? do we need to remind people to delete their profile when they've found a ride? After creating a rideshare link
After saving a profile
Contacted by a driver
Contacted by a passenger
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I think the texts for when you have been contacted could use a little extra text. Something in addition like: "Let them know you're interested!" or some sort of call to action. Why are we making them smaller? I feel like I missed that ... |
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One reason is that a text message is 160 characters or less, so staying under that limit reduces the amount of texts we send (and have to pay for). I also think people may get quite a few messages if they're contacted by multiple people (especially for larger events)... and keeping the wording down and having the event title in all messages may reduce possible confusion. The new sample texts to driver/passenger shown above are 142 chars, which gives 15+ characters of room to fit in one text in case the event, name, or location are longer than the samples. I'd suggest sending a longer signup message (which is only sent once per signup) which has the instructions, and keep the contact messages as short as possible. What do you think? |
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Yeah, if there's no length constraint, longer is friendlier...
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"friendly" message (without the safety warning) is 172 chars. |
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This might be my advertising degree kicking in, but I really do think we should reword the contact messages and include a call to action. That's really important if we want people to act on the message. Otherwise I'm afraid a majority will let it go untouched. |
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Thanks for explaining the character limit too. That really helped me understand. |
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sure, i'm guessing we can reword to keep it as friendly as possible and still have a call to action. Should we remove 'Ridewithbernie:' to save some space? |
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Maybe the intro message could prompt them to save that number as a contact in their phone so they know who we are as we send them updates? |
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We could use 'RWB:' to introduce our texts. That would save some space too. |
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that would save space. want to try and rephrase the messages? |
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Sure, I'll give it a shot. Keep it under 142 char? |
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These are at 160 characters: Contacted by a driver RWB: Sally at (510)123-4567 offered to drive you to Berkeley voter registration, coming from North Berkeley with 2 seats available. Tell her you're interested! Contacted by a passenger RWB: John at (916)123-4567 asked you for a ride to Berkeley voter registration, coming from South Berkeley with 2 total passengers. Tell him you're interested! |
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great. 140 is a good number i think to have some room for long names, event names or location... but depends on the other fields. maybe we can limit the event name in the text message to a certain length with '...' or something to save room as well |
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What if we put a character limit on the name of the event when creating it? |
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Great minds think alike! haha |
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will we use the ''RWB' acronym in the logo or somewhere else? may not be easily understood. perhaps just have 'ridewithbernie' in the signup text? |
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haha yes, we could truncate it to a certain length for inclusion in the text message |
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also, we don't have a gender so would need gender-neutral |
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I think it could be easy to make the acronym known. We could integrate it within the logo and on the app of course. But if we could eliminate those 11 other characters elsewhere in the text to keep the full name, we could try that. Good point about gender-neutrality. I didn't realize that. I'll work on fixing it. |
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we would probably want to only shorten the event title (if necessary), as name and location are important and the full title isn't as necessary in a text. and we don't know how long somebody's name or location will be. we probably won't be able to always limit to 1 text message... but any character we save helps keep our messages down :) |
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Here's some shorter versions, in case we need them even shorter: Contacted by a driver RWB: Sally at (510)123-4567 from North Berkeley offered to drive you to Contacted by a passenger RWB: John at (916)123-4567 from South Berkeley needs a ride to Berkeley
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Also, changed the language a bit... thought it a bit weird for drivers to
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Contacted by a driver 152 char -- RWB: Sally at 510-123-4567 offered to drive you to Berkeley voter registration, coming from North Berkeley with 2 seats available. Are you interested? 144 char -- RWB: Sally at 510-123-4567 offered to drive you to Berkeley voter registration, coming from North Berkeley with 2 seats available. Can you go? 147 char -- RWB: Sally at 510-123-4567 offered to drive you to Berkeley voter registration, coming from North Berkeley with 2 seats available. Tell them yes! Contacted by a passenger 152 char -- RWB: John at 916-123-4567 asked you for a ride to Berkeley voter registration, coming from South Berkeley with 2 total passengers. Are you interested? 146 char -- RWB: John at 916-123-4567 asked you for a ride to Berkeley voter registration, coming from South Berkeley with 2 total passengers. Can you help? 147 char -- RWB: John at 916-123-4567 asked you for a ride to Berkeley voter registration, coming from South Berkeley with 2 total passengers. Tell them yes! |
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@buddhistsforbernie I like your shortened version. I think that'll work really well. |
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Contacted by a driver 112 char -- RWB: Sally at (510)123-4567 from North Berkeley offered to drive you to 123 char -- RideWithBernie: Sally at (510)123-4567 from North Berkeley offered to drive you to Contacted by a passenger 129 char -- RWB: John at (916)123-4567 from South Berkeley needs a ride to Berkeley 140 char -- RideWithBernie: John at (916)123-4567 from South Berkeley needs a ride to Berkeley |
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i would think location would be helpful, at least for people contacted by passengers. if contacted by a driver, you may assume they saw your location and they can travel to get you. or no location and they work it out themselves? |
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Those have locations, don't they? I don't understand the question...
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If they have their number, they could coordinate all that themselves. I've done that in the past when I've given rides to people on a college ride board and it's worked out pretty well. |
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@buddhistsforbernie the shortened versions you sent don't include the locations in the message. |
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sounds good, i created another one - #19 |
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ok i'll leave it a 'ridewithbernie' for now until we have a logo |
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Sounds good |
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Hey all, just my 2 cents: I think ending with a question like "Can you help?" will result in a lot of people just replying directly to the text, instead of copy/pasting the phone number. I'd vote for more direct instructions like "Contact [NAME] at [NUMBER]." Also, Twilio supports concatenated sms messages, which means that on all providers except Sprint, we have an effective 1600 char limit, not 160. More info here. If we wanted to manually break up the text into two messages, that would also be fine. I'd rather be clear than succinct! |
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Thanks for clearing this up. Unfortunately.... I am on Sprint network :/ Probably a good idea to manually break it up then and go with a little more clarity. |
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how do you suggest handling long title/locations? |
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@buddhistsforbernie @clarissa1287 sorry, seems we may not be as limited as i thought. what are your thoughts on the messages given this new info? |
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I agree, clarity is important... I don't do SMS so much myself, so I'm not
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We can truncate long titles to a limit of 30 characters or so. Something like "Berkeley voter registration and tabl..." doesn't look so bad. |
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Oh I'm so glad we've got a larger limit! |
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I'll have to tinker around with the text. What I wrote before was to keep it at a short length, I wasn't in love with the copy or anything. I've got a meeting to go to in a few minutes, so I will think about things a little more when I get back. |
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@clarrissa1287 - This is what is currently being sent. @kyletns suggested not to have a question as it may cause people to respond to the message. He also informed we're not limited by length as most mobile providers combine messages... and if we're worried about important info being broken up, we can insert message breaks. After creating a rideshare link
After saving a profile
Contacted by a driver
Contacted by a passenger
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Does that mean the last two don't have links in them? That seems like it
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What links? from that point they're supposed to contact them by phone/text. |
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These are kind of silly ... but I kind of like the enthusiasm. haha Contacted by a driver Contacted by a passenger |
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After creating a rideshare link After saving a profile |
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Oh, right :P
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I like the first two. For the second ones, should we split them into 2 messages? That way we would be sure that no phone numbers get cutoff on sprint. I also think we need clear calls to action for both. Below, I modeled both calls to action after one of yours. How about we randomly select an exclamation from a list, which picks an exclamation to send at the front of the second message part - 'sweet!', 'awesome!', 'bern!' what do you think? i'm just thinking it may be more fun if somebody gets contacted multiple times to get slightly different messages :) Contacted by a driver
Contacted by a passenger
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Why don't we go with your copy, Chris? Instead of two, we can do one. Or we can split it into two. Contacted by a driver Contacted by a passenger |
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I think 'contact' should be changed to 'call or text' as the app does 'contact' and we don't necessarily want them to go back in and 'contact', we want them to call or text. How's this?
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ha, i think that's similar to how kyle had it originally! |
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Do we really need the phone number in the same text message twice? Just a thought I've got. |
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don't know, it was originally in the call to action. isn't great for sprint when the messages break up over 160 characters, but i think it can't hurt. makes it more direct call to action i think. we can change it if you think its distracting or not needed. |
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We could get rid of the first one instead of the second and keep the call to action the way it is. |
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ok so remove the first phone? ill do that |
Let's discuss when text messages should be sent and what they should say.
This is what is currently being sent:
After creating a rideshare link
After saving a profile
Contacted by a driver
Contacted by a passenger
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