SMS for Coaches & Sports
Preparing teams goes beyond coming up with training routines for games and getting ready for the competition. Whether you’re a coach or athlete at a youth, amateur or professional sports team, effective communication can win a game. Textedly provides texting for coaches and teams. Bring your team together this season using a SMS sports message solution.
Uses for Sending Sports Messages
Here are some ways coaches can send group sports messages to communicate with the team and everyone involved:
(855) 396-6679
Hey team,
How awesome was last week's win? Check out the full photo album from the game: https://bit.ly/2PN1cro
Text STOP to end
Share Photos: Just won an amazing game? Share pictures with your team and others involved.
(855) 396-6679
Hey there team,
The deadline for this season's dues of $125 is Thursday, April 2nd, 2020.
Text STOP to end
Collect Payments for Fees: Send an image to the corresponding parties only with a link and directions to make their payments. You can even add specific balances due per recipient by using custom fields on your text template.
(855) 396-6679
Hey guys,
Just need a headcount for tonight's event - reply Y if you will be in attendance.
Text STOP to end
Collect RSVPs: Hosting a fundraising event? Send a message to guests and/or volunteers reminding them to RSVP.
(855) 396-6679
Announcement:
Tomorrow's game has been pushed back from it's original start time of 5:45PM to 6:30PM.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Text STOP to end
Send Updated Game or Practice Schedules: Last-minute change on the schedule? Instead of calling everyone one by one, send a group text. Sports text messaging is an efficient way to communicate timely with your team.
Benefits of Team Text Messaging
Sports and team text messaging provide many unique benefits, including the following:
- Your text is guaranteed to be read: SMS open rates are as high as 98 percent.
- Reach your team anywhere, anytime: Send messages to large groups in a matter of seconds when you’re on the go.
- Ensure higher response rates: Text messaging replies take, on average, 90 seconds to 90 minutes.
- Streamline internal communication: Automated sport text reminders and alerts make it easier to communicate efficiently and effectively with the team and anyone else involved.
Text Messaging for Coaches
Group text messaging for coaches is more than just letting players know if a practice is canceled. With the right SMS tool, you can send links to games schedules, collect payments for fees, request information and communicate new or emergency information. Even better, you can do all of these simultaneously to already pre-set groups of recipients.
For example, let’s say you only want to send messages for collecting fees to parents, not players; but at the same time, you want to send the season’s games schedule to both parents and players. The right tool, like Textedly, allows you to do this with ease at the click of a button. All you’ll have to do is sign up, create your groups of recipients and set up message templates according to the types of communication you’ll be sending.
Texting for Coaches and Teams: Key Terms
A sports team communication tool like Textedly allows coaches and team managers to do more than just draft a message to players. Here are some key terms and features that will help ensure you’re getting the most out of our service:
SMS
SMS stands for Short Message Service which allows you to send plain text messages to recipients.MMS
MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS allows you to send various multimedia combined with text. These include photos, videos, audio clips and more.Keywords
Individuals can text specific keywords related to your campaign in order to opt-in. For example, you can send a message to parents of your team’s players that says: “Text COACH to 123123 to receive a free team t-shirt during the next game.” Then, parents would text the keyword to participate in your campaign.Campaigns
Campaigns are used to market specific products, services or even a brand. SMS campaigns are similar to those sent via email but they normally receive a higher and faster response rate. Text campaigns are also less expensive and more time-efficient since they don’t require any creativity, only a 160-306 characters text message.Subscribers
You can only text those who have subscribed to receive messages from you. As a coach, it’s important to ensure all players and key recipients have subscribed (or accepted) to receive texts from you.Segments
Segmenting your subscribers by specific traits allows you to send out highly targeted text messages. For example, if you only want to reach players who need to be reminded to sign up for the next season then you can segment your mass group of recipients by those who haven’t clicked the registration link. Other ways you can segment your recipients is by area code, whether they have joined via a keyword, when they became a part of your sports team, etc.Templates
If you send the same type of communication often, like game reminders or pep talks the day before a game, templates will make this a lot easier. Have templates scheduled with the generic information and add custom fields like [first name] to ensure each message is sent personalized to your recipient.Autoresponders
Out of town? Set up autoresponders to let parents or players know you have received an SMS from them, but you will reply when you are back in town on a certain day.
Examples of Coach and Team Text Messages
Here are some examples of coach and team text messages that can be highly useful as a coach for your team:
Emergency Message:
(855) 396-6679
Attention Lions Team,
practice has been moved to field 2 at 4PM today.
See you there!
Games Schedule:
(855) 396-6679
Hi Cubs,
our season is almost here and our college game schedule is now live.
Please click the link below to learn more about these season’s games.
Collect RSVPs:
(855) 396-6679
The Tigers’ annual fundraising is taking place next Monday, June 9th with the purpose of gathering funds to attend this year’s state-wide games.
If you would like to attend please reply YES.
Payment Reminders:
(855) 396-6679
Dear Mr./Mrs. [last name],
our 2020 season is ready to kick off on June 1st. You have a balance of [outstanding balance] due by May 1, 2020 to cover the season’s participation. You can make a payment today by clicking the link below or give us a call at 888.422.4242.
Thank you!
Sending Sports SMS With Textedly
Textedly makes it easy to send sports and team texts to anyone related to your team. Best of all? It’s as easy as clicking a button. All you have to do is set up templates and a mass list of recipients that you can later segment for more targeted SMS campaigns. Try a 14-day free trial when your sport’s season begins using Textedly.