Gloo Messaging Platform Onboarding Guide

What's up, everyone? My name is Austin. I'm here with my colleague, Kylie, and we make up the success team here at Glue. Thank you for joining us for our messaging onboarding over the course of the next half hour or so. We are going to get you up to speed on all things messaging for you and your congregation so that you in turn can connect with them via text. So we're going to jump right in here. I'm going to share my screen. And when you log in. you are going to be taken to our Discover tab. And this is what we call, in Dearly, our content library or our resource library. And it is filled with a bunch of different resources that are available to you as a ministry. We have partner-specific channels, and we call them hubs here. And they're filled with these resources that are going to come alongside you and really supercharge your ministry. I just want to make you aware. briefly of a few that we get great feedback from here. And the first one is The Chosen Hub, the one on the historical drama based on the life of Jesus. There is a bunch of different resources here available to you, seasons one through three, things like episode clips and sermon resources, reading plans, devotionals, etc. So I'd encourage you to check this out. The other one that I want to mention to you as well, is our friends at the American Association of Christian Counselors. They actually make a scholarship available to you, ministry leaders who have an account here at GLU. So you can become a certified mental health coach with AACC. It's 42 hours of self-paced online coaching. And by the end, you are certified mental health coach with them. So I would definitely encourage you to check them out. And while you're at it, check out all of these hubs. We believe that there are... resources here that would help you. Certainly not everything would resonate with you, but there certainly are things that would, no doubt. And then very briefly, I just want to mention our Glue Marketplace as well. This is going to significantly get an upgrade in the next couple months, but it's something we're really, really excited about. We actually just acquired outreach here. So we are excited to offer a lot of their offerings, things like church supplies and banners and direct mailers. So we would encourage you to check that out. And the best part is that you're going to save some money while you do it. All right, before we dive into our messaging here, we are going to go over the all-important account settings here to make sure that everything is up to speed with your Glue account before you get started in texting your congregation. So to get to account settings here, I am going to click my initials here, and we're going to start under this account settings tab. This is going to be information. in regards to your specific ministry. So you've created your account by now. Now it's time to implement your information. So things like your name, your website, your email address, your number, your address, and make sure that you do this promptly. And as any of this potentially changes, we ask that you keep this up to date as well. What this does is that this makes sure that you are who you say you are, that we keep bad actors and spam and bots off the platform. So- Again, be sure to fill this out after that account creation. And for those of you who are taking notes, you've done those first two things. The next thing that we are going to have you do is a claim your free toll free number here. So you can see this is our demo account here and this is our toll free number. But if you have not done so yet, it is going to have a green box here and it'll say claim my free number. You're going to click that. You are going to follow the prompts. And within a matter of 48, 72 hours, if not sooner, you will get issued a free dedicated toll-free number. And that where dedicated means that it is just yours. No other ministry, no other church has that number. That is the number that your congregants are going to see when you text them. Next, we're going to go under my profile. So we're going to go over just in one second that you can add team members to your account. And each and every one of them are going to have their own unique profile that is dedicated to them. Things like their name, their number, their email. It's going to ask you to verify your number. We've all done it with the six digit code there. So you can go in there and verify your number. You can always change your password. And then I'm clicking this notifications tab here. And this is really, really important. You this is where you can customize your alerts on your account on how you get alerted when there is activity happening on your glue account. So, for example, when there is a prayer request that comes in or a message that comes in, you can get a email, you can get a text message or you get a push notification. And that is in regards to our free app that we have on the Google Play Store. It's available on the Apple App Store as well. We get great feedback from it. It has great user interface. And we believe that ministry is on the go, especially here in 2024. So we don't want you to have to be at a desktop in order to respond to your folks. You can do so right from the app. And keep in mind that when you respond from the app, it is coming from your toll-free number. It is not coming from your personal cell phone number. It's coming from that Glue-issued toll-free number there, which is a good thing, obviously, to protect your personal number there. And then one thing I want to make aware as well is these customized notifications, these are going to be unique to you and your profile. So they're not account-wide. So everyone on your staff. your team members can have their own customized alerts. Speaking of team members here, this is where you are going to add those team members. I'm guessing that you are gonna wanna have an army to respond to your congregants, to send out messages, et cetera. And this is where you're gonna do so. So whoever created the account is gonna be listed as an admin. And that just simply means that they have unlimited permissions on the platform. They can send out texts, they can change settings, etc. But say you wanted to have someone who you just wanted to have access to the prayer request inbox, for example. We're going to go up here and click this green invite members button. We're going to put their first name, last name, email. If you'd like them to be an account admin, then you would just simply click invite user. But if you wanted to give them customized permissions, you would toggle this off. And in that example about the prayer request inbox here, we could toggle all this off. We'd keep that prayer request inbox one on. We click that invite user button. They in turn are going to get an email saying, hey, you've just been invited to create a profile under our Glue account. They're going to click join account, create their profile. And when they do so successfully, they are going to have their own name here and their own profile on your team members page. All right, that is the account settings here. So again, if you're taking notes here, you've created your account, you have verified yourself, you've inputted your account settings, and you have created your customized notifications, and you've invited your team members. The next step that's also equally important, if not more important, is adding your people into your Glue platform here. And to do so, we are gonna go under this My People. And I'm gonna start here under Integrations. So there's really... three main ways we're going to go over today on how to add people to your glue account and the first one is through integration with a church management system so glue integrates with seven church management systems here and these are the seven listed planning center and church community builder being the most popular of course but you would click this configure button it'd take you to this page you would click which church management system you use you would follow the prompts And then you would integrate your folks that way. And it could potentially take upwards of a couple hours, potentially, depending on how many folks you guys are uploading. And the good part is, is that we actually have a dedicated help center article for each and every one of these church management systems and how to integrate on our help center, which Kyle will talk about on how to access that there at the end. But we have these help centers, help center articles, I should say, to guide you step by step. on getting your folks integrated. Now you could say, Austin, that's awesome that you integrate with that, but we don't have a church management system or we use one that you guys don't integrate with. Not to worry, the second step here, the second option I should say, is going to be importing via a CSV file. And to do so, you're going to click this import button. You're going to see the CSV template link. You'll click that and it will download a CSV Excel file to your computer. and then you can manually input your folks in each column. So for example, you'd put their first name in one column, you'd put their last name in another, just follow the prompts. It's very simple. Just one thing to note there is that on the headings, you're going to want to keep those headings titles stagnant. You don't want to mess with those. It's going to mess up the integration. So make sure that you keep those the same there. So that is the second option. And whether you do a church integration through a church management system or with a CSV. When you do so successfully, we're going to go to my people here. And this is where your folks are going to live. They're each going to have their own unique persona icon here. And you can click them and you can see any information you have on them. Things like their phone number, their email, their address, any interactions they've had on the GLOO platform, which we'll go over here in just a second. And then on this page as well, you can search, you can filter, you can sort, you can see at the top right here, you can see how many people you have uploaded. You can export your list, your people as well. And then the third way that you are able to add people is manually through this add a new person button at the top right. You put in their first name, their last name, their phone number, their email address. And we're going to talk about this here in a sec, but you can assign them to a specific group. you would click create person and when you do so successfully they're going to have their unique persona icon here as well so those are the three ways uh really really important now to further segment your audience we're going to go to groups here you guys can create groups if you'd like if you want to further segment your audience in order to just text a specific group you can do so by creating your group at the top right naming it setting that description Click and create. And then once you do so, you can view it. And this is where you can add, subtract, edit people. So we definitely encourage you to start creating groups. So that is the account settings. That is getting your people uploaded. And I'm actually going to turn it over to Kylie and she's going to dive into some of the main features of our messaging. Awesome. Thanks, Austin. Really appreciate it. Like Austin shared, I'm going to go ahead and walk you through the inbox, outbox, tools, and then I'll finish off with just a couple of resources that we have available to you if you do ever have questions. So let me go ahead and share my screen here. Full screen. Awesome. So to get to the messaging part, you'll, of course, want to come to the messaging tab here. And then I'm actually going to start off in the outbox. So the outbox is, of course. where you'll send out any messages. And the first feature within the Outbox is called Broadcast. And Broadcast is really just our fancy term for sending out a text, whether it's to your entire congregation, to groups of people, or even specific individuals. And the great thing about our texting platform is all of our texts appear as a one-to-one message. So it's not a group chat or anything like that. It really does keep things very simple and organized. And the nice thing is if you send a message to your entire congregation and one of your church members responds, none of the other church members can see that response. You are the only one that can see that response. So like I said, keep things very organized. And to create a broadcast, you would come to the upper right hand corner here and click create new broadcast. And then from there, you'll actually see that you have the option to choose between sending a text. or an email. We've done a lot of research on our end where we know the open rate and response rate for a text is about 98 percent, so that's why it will default to a text. And then from there, in this box, you'll just write out what you want to say in that message. So this could be an announcement, just information you want to share out, anything that you want to say, and you'll see you can even upload a video image, and then you can also add user data. So this has really helped. helpful if you want to personalize the message, you could input their first name. And then when the message gets sent out, it automatically inputs that person's first name without you having to do it manually. So just a nice way to personalize the text message. And then you'll also see you can even add in an emoji as well. And then as I move down, you'll, of course, choose who you want it to go to. So send to everyone would be everyone within that my people section that Austin was just showing earlier. and then any groups that you have set up and then you'll also see each specific individual listed out right here so then from there of course you'll just choose if you want to send the message now or you can even schedule it for later and if you do decide to schedule it for later you'll see we have a scheduled tab right here where you'll see all of those texts listed out right here so that is the broadcast feature moving now into the next feature and this is called series And series is an awesome feature. It is just one that's really, really helpful. And what this does is this allows you to send out a string of text messages based on whatever theme you'd like. So multiple text messages that are going out. You can see these are just a couple of examples to give you some ideas. And the first example that I want to talk through is the daily devotional for September. So this is one that we just created from scratch. And when you're creating a new series, you have to give it a name. So that title, whatever you want it to be, it's just internal for you to know what this series is about. And then from there, you'll also have to set up keywords. So we set up these four different keywords. And the keywords are very important because that's actually how people will subscribe to then receive this series. So there's two ways. The first one is what I just mentioned, where they can send in a keyword and then they would automatically be subscribed to then receive all of the messages within this series. The second option, you can come here and click on these three little dots, and then you can just add people to this series manually without them having to do it on their end. So you have those two different options there, but once someone has subscribed, they're automatically going to get a message. This is the message that we typed out, just something to thank them and to give them an idea of how many messages they're going to receive in this series. And then from there, you can see the series messages that are listed out. And I did want to highlight, you can see these ones are being sent out on specific dates. So September 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so forth. And that's because this is what we call a fixed series. So you'll see the type listed out right here. We set it up this way. We chose that it was going to be a fixed series. And a fixed series is where the messages are being sent out based on the date that the church member subscribes. So as an example, if Austin was to subscribe to this series on September 3rd, he's of course only going to receive the messages moving forward. He wouldn't receive the first two messages that went out on September 1st and the 2nd because that date has already passed. So keep that in mind when you are setting up a series, you get to choose how you want it to be set up. Basically, you can choose the type. And then from there, just choose, or excuse me, you would type out the description of what this series is about. So that is a fixed series. And then the other type I'm going to show you with this new attender follow-up series for guests at your church. And this is actually what we call a rolling series. And you can see with a rolling series, the messages are actually being sent out based on the day that the church member subscribes. So you can see right here, day two, day four, day six. And so that's really nice because regardless of when the church member subscribes, they're still going to receive all of the messages within this series here. So you can think of rolling as continuous versus fixed has a hard stop where it's based off of that date. So that is series. I do now want to pause and I'm going to show you where we have some templates. But again, if you do want to create this series from scratch, you can come right here to the upper right hand corner and click create new series. But now to show you some templates, you'll go to discover and then filter by type, select a series. And then you can see these are all of the templates that we've already written out for you that you can utilize. So I encourage you to check these out to browse through. If you find one that you really like, you can actually just click on it and then you can see how we've set everything up. You can then change it, edit it, make it your own. Really, this is yours to do with it what you'd like. And then if you are ready to use it, of course, hit save. And then once you hit save, this series is going to automatically show up within that messaging part, the section that had the series. So you won't have to worry about copying this over. It's going to automatically show up there. Like I said, feel free to browse through and check out those templates. One other template that I did want to show you as well is actually a broadcast template. So kind of switching gears here to that one-time text message. And this broadcast, it's called your church's first broadcast. This is an awesome template. This is one that I really encourage you to utilize once you have your account set up and you're ready to roll this out to your congregation. I always recommend first making an announcement at the end of church, just to let your church members know, you know, hey, we're using a new texting platform. You know, tell them your glue phone number and then tell them that you're going to be sending them a message. So then they are aware. And then this is the message that I would send. So you can see right here, you know, kind of just gives them more insight, tells them to save your phone number. And then it also tells them what they can do with it as well. So that is an awesome template. Again. The templates are found within the Discover part of the platform, and then just filter by type. So now going back into the outbox, the very last feature that I want to talk through is called keywords. And keywords are awesome. These are a great way just to share out information about an upcoming event, share out details, really about anything. You can see here we've set up a couple of different keywords for you to get some ideas. But to create a new keyword, you'll come to the upper right-hand corner here and click this button. and then you'll have to name the keyword this name is just for you internally to know what the keyword is about and then from there you'll have to set up the keywords and something to remember when you are setting up keywords is they are very rigid in the sense that they have to be texted in exactly how you have them set up here so that's where you can see with this mission trip example i want to show you this you can see we actually set up five different keywords and then you can see we also even spelled one wrong In case someone has a typo, really just to capture as many people as possible. So then once you've set up those keywords, you will, of course, type out what you want to say. So then whenever someone texts in a keyword, this is what they would receive, whatever you have in this box right here. So like I said, a great way to share information or details. And the nice thing about our keywords is you can have an unlimited number. There's no limit on that. So that is the outbox. I'm now going to move up into the inbox. And the inbox here is, of course, where, you know, if you send out a message to your entire congregation and someone has a question and they send back a response, this is where you'll see that. So this is where you would come in here to reply to them. You can see this actually looks very similar to an iPhone, an iOS system. However, it is not iMessage. This is SMS texting. So just keep that in mind. But like I said, this is where you'll reply to any of your church members that, you know, send in a message. And then from there, you also have the option to assign a message to team members. So if you have a team of people at your church that are going to help out with sending out these messages or anything along those lines, you can assign it. So as an example, if Jeff is a part of the youth group and Austin is the youth group leader and Jeff has a question about something regarding the upcoming youth group event, what I'd want to do is come in here and I can actually assign this to Austin. So then he is aware that he has a message that he needs to come in and respond to. And you can see Austin would get a email notification letting him know about that. So. This assign button just really allows you to stay organized. It helps make sure that nothing's falling through the cracks as well. So that's an awesome feature to use if you do have team members. And now I want to move into the prayer request section. So this is where if your church member wants to send in a prayer request, they can easily do it by texting your GLU phone number, which is actually listed out right here in the very bottom. And all they would have to do is say something along the lines of, you know, pray for my family. I need prayer for my dog, whatever it might be. Our system is going to automatically recognize that that is a prayer request because they're saying the word prayer. And all of those prayer requests would come right here. So this is really a log of all of the prayer requests that you've received. And you can see these are just some examples to give you an idea of what that will look like. And you'll see you have that same option to assign the prayer request to a specific team member. So this is great if you have a prayer team or prayer warriors or anything like that at your church. You can actually assign it to one of those members. And then they would also get an email notification letting them know. And then from there, you'll see we have this checkmark right here. This just allows you to mark the message as prayed for. So really nice just to close the loop and let that person know that you have. prayed for them. And you can type in a message right here if you want to type out something custom, or you can also see we have this message you've just been prayed for. That's just our default. So that is the prayer request section. That is the inbox. And like I said, I'm now going to move into tools. So there's two different tools that I want to show you. And the first one is the texting simulator. And this is an amazing tool. This is great. For, you know, you once you've gotten your account set up and you want to test things out and see if they're working how you want, come to the texting simulator. This allows you to try things out and see it as if you are a church member. So if you wanted to try out a keyword, you know, that mission trip keyword that I was just showing, you could try that. You can see, oh, OK, this is what they would receive. So, like I said, just a nice way to see it from the perspective of the church member. And I also do want to point out, you can see that this message right here, basically this is so if this person is not stored within the My People section, our system is going to automatically build out a profile for them. So that's why it's going to ask for their full name. It would build out that profile. And then you know who you're texting with in the future without having to build out the profile yourself. So check out the texting simulator just to try things out without actually sending out text messages. And then the very last feature that I want to talk through under tools is the QR code generator. So this is awesome. It is foolproof. I think after COVID, everyone knows how to utilize a QR code. And so what this does is if you were to download this and put it in your bulletin and someone was to scan it, it's going to automatically pull up your. blue phone number when they scan this QR code. And then you can even take it a step further, and you'll see we have this pre-populated text message prompt box that can be found underneath the download button. And so let's say as an example, you wanted to gather prayer requests. What you can do is you can type in the word pray for. You can see as I type that, the QR code did change. And then you could download this, put it on a flyer, and on that flyer, you could say, you know, if you have a prayer request. please scan this QR code and text us your prayer request. And then from there, when someone scans it, you can see Austin showing right now, it's going to, of course, automatically pull up your blue phone number. And then it's also going to say pray for in that text message part. And then they would just need to finish texting out what they want prayer for. So that is something that's really nice. Like I said, just to prompt people, if you do want to have them text in certain things or a certain keyword. So that is the tools section, and I'm now going to go ahead and show you some resources. The first resource is our Help Center, and you can find this by going to the lower left-hand corner here. It has a question mark with the word Help under it. When you click this, you'll be taken directly to the Help Center. And this is an amazing resource. I truly cannot recommend this enough. We have tons of articles with step-by-step instructions, articles with pictures on how to set things up. And then we even have best practices in here. So check this out if you have questions nine out of ten times you can find the answer to the question right here in the help center. And then from there I also encourage you to check out glue university. We have how-to videos, you know, kind of just to give you some advice, tips, tricks. So check out these videos as well if you want to learn a little bit more. And then very lastly from there, I wanted to show you our Success Center. This is an amazing resource that we have. And this is great if you have questions, you couldn't find the answer to your question in the Help Center. You can actually register for our office hours. This is time with the success team to talk strategy, to ask questions. And we offer these every Monday and Thursday at 2.30 p.m. Mountain Time. And then we also have another group onboarding. So you are in the messaging group onboarding right now, but we also have our Explorer Connection group onboarding. So if you want to learn a little bit more, I definitely encourage you to register to attend this Explorer Connection onboarding. This is on Tuesday at 11 a.m. And then we also offer them on Thursday at 11 a.m. So check that out. Keep those resources in your back pocket if you ever have questions. questions, but that is everything for our messaging onboarding today. Awesome. Thanks, Kylie. Well, on behalf of Glue and the success team, we are so grateful that you joined us. If you have any questions, come hang out with us in office hours or shoot us an email. We're here for you, but we thank you for joining us again. Have a great day. Thanks so much. Have a good one.

What's up, everyone? My name is Austin. I'm here with my colleague, Kylie, and we make up the success team here at Glue.

Thank you for joining us for our messaging onboarding over the course of the next half hour or so. We are going to get you up to speed on all things messaging for you and your congregation so that you in turn can connect with them via text. So we're going to jump right in here. I'm going to share my screen.

And when you log in. you are going to be taken to our Discover tab. And this is what we call, in Dearly, our content library or our resource library.

And it is filled with a bunch of different resources that are available to you as a ministry. We have partner-specific channels, and we call them hubs here. And they're filled with these resources that are going to come alongside you and really supercharge your ministry.

I just want to make you aware. briefly of a few that we get great feedback from here. And the first one is The Chosen Hub, the one on the historical drama based on the life of Jesus.

There is a bunch of different resources here available to you, seasons one through three, things like episode clips and sermon resources, reading plans, devotionals, etc. So I'd encourage you to check this out. The other one that I want to mention to you as well, is our friends at the American Association of Christian Counselors.

They actually make a scholarship available to you, ministry leaders who have an account here at GLU. So you can become a certified mental health coach with AACC. It's 42 hours of self-paced online coaching. And by the end, you are certified mental health coach with them. So I would definitely encourage you to check them out.

And while you're at it, check out all of these hubs. We believe that there are... resources here that would help you. Certainly not everything would resonate with you, but there certainly are things that would, no doubt.

And then very briefly, I just want to mention our Glue Marketplace as well. This is going to significantly get an upgrade in the next couple months, but it's something we're really, really excited about. We actually just acquired outreach here. So we are excited to offer a lot of their offerings, things like church supplies and banners and direct mailers. So we would encourage you to check that out.

And the best part is that you're going to save some money while you do it. All right, before we dive into our messaging here, we are going to go over the all-important account settings here to make sure that everything is up to speed with your Glue account before you get started in texting your congregation. So to get to account settings here, I am going to click my initials here, and we're going to start under this account settings tab. This is going to be information.

in regards to your specific ministry. So you've created your account by now. Now it's time to implement your information.

So things like your name, your website, your email address, your number, your address, and make sure that you do this promptly. And as any of this potentially changes, we ask that you keep this up to date as well. What this does is that this makes sure that you are who you say you are, that we keep bad actors and spam and bots off the platform.

So- Again, be sure to fill this out after that account creation. And for those of you who are taking notes, you've done those first two things. The next thing that we are going to have you do is a claim your free toll free number here.

So you can see this is our demo account here and this is our toll free number. But if you have not done so yet, it is going to have a green box here and it'll say claim my free number. You're going to click that.

You are going to follow the prompts. And within a matter of 48, 72 hours, if not sooner, you will get issued a free dedicated toll-free number. And that where dedicated means that it is just yours.

No other ministry, no other church has that number. That is the number that your congregants are going to see when you text them. Next, we're going to go under my profile.

So we're going to go over just in one second that you can add team members to your account. And each and every one of them are going to have their own unique profile that is dedicated to them. Things like their name, their number, their email. It's going to ask you to verify your number. We've all done it with the six digit code there.

So you can go in there and verify your number. You can always change your password. And then I'm clicking this notifications tab here. And this is really, really important. You this is where you can customize your alerts on your account on how you get alerted when there is activity happening on your glue account.

So, for example, when there is a prayer request that comes in or a message that comes in, you can get a email, you can get a text message or you get a push notification. And that is in regards to our free app that we have on the Google Play Store. It's available on the Apple App Store as well.

We get great feedback from it. It has great user interface. And we believe that ministry is on the go, especially here in 2024. So we don't want you to have to be at a desktop in order to respond to your folks. You can do so right from the app. And keep in mind that when you respond from the app, it is coming from your toll-free number.

It is not coming from your personal cell phone number. It's coming from that Glue-issued toll-free number there, which is a good thing, obviously, to protect your personal number there. And then one thing I want to make aware as well is these customized notifications, these are going to be unique to you and your profile. So they're not account-wide. So everyone on your staff.

your team members can have their own customized alerts. Speaking of team members here, this is where you are going to add those team members. I'm guessing that you are gonna wanna have an army to respond to your congregants, to send out messages, et cetera. And this is where you're gonna do so.

So whoever created the account is gonna be listed as an admin. And that just simply means that they have unlimited permissions on the platform. They can send out texts, they can change settings, etc. But say you wanted to have someone who you just wanted to have access to the prayer request inbox, for example.

We're going to go up here and click this green invite members button. We're going to put their first name, last name, email. If you'd like them to be an account admin, then you would just simply click invite user. But if you wanted to give them customized permissions, you would toggle this off.

And in that example about the prayer request inbox here, we could toggle all this off. We'd keep that prayer request inbox one on. We click that invite user button.

They in turn are going to get an email saying, hey, you've just been invited to create a profile under our Glue account. They're going to click join account, create their profile. And when they do so successfully, they are going to have their own name here and their own profile on your team members page.

All right, that is the account settings here. So again, if you're taking notes here, you've created your account, you have verified yourself, you've inputted your account settings, and you have created your customized notifications, and you've invited your team members. The next step that's also equally important, if not more important, is adding your people into your Glue platform here.

And to do so, we are gonna go under this My People. And I'm gonna start here under Integrations. So there's really...

three main ways we're going to go over today on how to add people to your glue account and the first one is through integration with a church management system so glue integrates with seven church management systems here and these are the seven listed planning center and church community builder being the most popular of course but you would click this configure button it'd take you to this page you would click which church management system you use you would follow the prompts And then you would integrate your folks that way. And it could potentially take upwards of a couple hours, potentially, depending on how many folks you guys are uploading. And the good part is, is that we actually have a dedicated help center article for each and every one of these church management systems and how to integrate on our help center, which Kyle will talk about on how to access that there at the end.

But we have these help centers, help center articles, I should say, to guide you step by step. on getting your folks integrated. Now you could say, Austin, that's awesome that you integrate with that, but we don't have a church management system or we use one that you guys don't integrate with.

Not to worry, the second step here, the second option I should say, is going to be importing via a CSV file. And to do so, you're going to click this import button. You're going to see the CSV template link.

You'll click that and it will download a CSV Excel file to your computer. and then you can manually input your folks in each column. So for example, you'd put their first name in one column, you'd put their last name in another, just follow the prompts.

It's very simple. Just one thing to note there is that on the headings, you're going to want to keep those headings titles stagnant. You don't want to mess with those.

It's going to mess up the integration. So make sure that you keep those the same there. So that is the second option. And whether you do a church integration through a church management system or with a CSV. When you do so successfully, we're going to go to my people here.

And this is where your folks are going to live. They're each going to have their own unique persona icon here. And you can click them and you can see any information you have on them.

Things like their phone number, their email, their address, any interactions they've had on the GLOO platform, which we'll go over here in just a second. And then on this page as well, you can search, you can filter, you can sort, you can see at the top right here, you can see how many people you have uploaded. You can export your list, your people as well. And then the third way that you are able to add people is manually through this add a new person button at the top right.

You put in their first name, their last name, their phone number, their email address. And we're going to talk about this here in a sec, but you can assign them to a specific group. you would click create person and when you do so successfully they're going to have their unique persona icon here as well so those are the three ways uh really really important now to further segment your audience we're going to go to groups here you guys can create groups if you'd like if you want to further segment your audience in order to just text a specific group you can do so by creating your group at the top right naming it setting that description Click and create. And then once you do so, you can view it.

And this is where you can add, subtract, edit people. So we definitely encourage you to start creating groups. So that is the account settings. That is getting your people uploaded. And I'm actually going to turn it over to Kylie and she's going to dive into some of the main features of our messaging.

Awesome. Thanks, Austin. Really appreciate it. Like Austin shared, I'm going to go ahead and walk you through the inbox, outbox, tools, and then I'll finish off with just a couple of resources that we have available to you if you do ever have questions.

So let me go ahead and share my screen here. Full screen. Awesome.

So to get to the messaging part, you'll, of course, want to come to the messaging tab here. And then I'm actually going to start off in the outbox. So the outbox is, of course. where you'll send out any messages. And the first feature within the Outbox is called Broadcast.

And Broadcast is really just our fancy term for sending out a text, whether it's to your entire congregation, to groups of people, or even specific individuals. And the great thing about our texting platform is all of our texts appear as a one-to-one message. So it's not a group chat or anything like that. It really does keep things very simple and organized. And the nice thing is if you send a message to your entire congregation and one of your church members responds, none of the other church members can see that response.

You are the only one that can see that response. So like I said, keep things very organized. And to create a broadcast, you would come to the upper right hand corner here and click create new broadcast.

And then from there, you'll actually see that you have the option to choose between sending a text. or an email. We've done a lot of research on our end where we know the open rate and response rate for a text is about 98 percent, so that's why it will default to a text. And then from there, in this box, you'll just write out what you want to say in that message. So this could be an announcement, just information you want to share out, anything that you want to say, and you'll see you can even upload a video image, and then you can also add user data.

So this has really helped. helpful if you want to personalize the message, you could input their first name. And then when the message gets sent out, it automatically inputs that person's first name without you having to do it manually. So just a nice way to personalize the text message. And then you'll also see you can even add in an emoji as well.

And then as I move down, you'll, of course, choose who you want it to go to. So send to everyone would be everyone within that my people section that Austin was just showing earlier. and then any groups that you have set up and then you'll also see each specific individual listed out right here so then from there of course you'll just choose if you want to send the message now or you can even schedule it for later and if you do decide to schedule it for later you'll see we have a scheduled tab right here where you'll see all of those texts listed out right here so that is the broadcast feature moving now into the next feature and this is called series And series is an awesome feature.

It is just one that's really, really helpful. And what this does is this allows you to send out a string of text messages based on whatever theme you'd like. So multiple text messages that are going out. You can see these are just a couple of examples to give you some ideas.

And the first example that I want to talk through is the daily devotional for September. So this is one that we just created from scratch. And when you're creating a new series, you have to give it a name. So that title, whatever you want it to be, it's just internal for you to know what this series is about. And then from there, you'll also have to set up keywords.

So we set up these four different keywords. And the keywords are very important because that's actually how people will subscribe to then receive this series. So there's two ways.

The first one is what I just mentioned, where they can send in a keyword and then they would automatically be subscribed to then receive all of the messages within this series. The second option, you can come here and click on these three little dots, and then you can just add people to this series manually without them having to do it on their end. So you have those two different options there, but once someone has subscribed, they're automatically going to get a message.

This is the message that we typed out, just something to thank them and to give them an idea of how many messages they're going to receive in this series. And then from there, you can see the series messages that are listed out. And I did want to highlight, you can see these ones are being sent out on specific dates. So September 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so forth. And that's because this is what we call a fixed series.

So you'll see the type listed out right here. We set it up this way. We chose that it was going to be a fixed series.

And a fixed series is where the messages are being sent out based on the date that the church member subscribes. So as an example, if Austin was to subscribe to this series on September 3rd, he's of course only going to receive the messages moving forward. He wouldn't receive the first two messages that went out on September 1st and the 2nd because that date has already passed.

So keep that in mind when you are setting up a series, you get to choose how you want it to be set up. Basically, you can choose the type. And then from there, just choose, or excuse me, you would type out the description of what this series is about. So that is a fixed series.

And then the other type I'm going to show you with this new attender follow-up series for guests at your church. And this is actually what we call a rolling series. And you can see with a rolling series, the messages are actually being sent out based on the day that the church member subscribes. So you can see right here, day two, day four, day six. And so that's really nice because regardless of when the church member subscribes, they're still going to receive all of the messages within this series here.

So you can think of rolling as continuous versus fixed has a hard stop where it's based off of that date. So that is series. I do now want to pause and I'm going to show you where we have some templates.

But again, if you do want to create this series from scratch, you can come right here to the upper right hand corner and click create new series. But now to show you some templates, you'll go to discover and then filter by type, select a series. And then you can see these are all of the templates that we've already written out for you that you can utilize.

So I encourage you to check these out to browse through. If you find one that you really like, you can actually just click on it and then you can see how we've set everything up. You can then change it, edit it, make it your own.

Really, this is yours to do with it what you'd like. And then if you are ready to use it, of course, hit save. And then once you hit save, this series is going to automatically show up within that messaging part, the section that had the series.

So you won't have to worry about copying this over. It's going to automatically show up there. Like I said, feel free to browse through and check out those templates. One other template that I did want to show you as well is actually a broadcast template.

So kind of switching gears here to that one-time text message. And this broadcast, it's called your church's first broadcast. This is an awesome template. This is one that I really encourage you to utilize once you have your account set up and you're ready to roll this out to your congregation.

I always recommend first making an announcement at the end of church, just to let your church members know, you know, hey, we're using a new texting platform. You know, tell them your glue phone number and then tell them that you're going to be sending them a message. So then they are aware.

And then this is the message that I would send. So you can see right here, you know, kind of just gives them more insight, tells them to save your phone number. And then it also tells them what they can do with it as well.

So that is an awesome template. Again. The templates are found within the Discover part of the platform, and then just filter by type.

So now going back into the outbox, the very last feature that I want to talk through is called keywords. And keywords are awesome. These are a great way just to share out information about an upcoming event, share out details, really about anything.

You can see here we've set up a couple of different keywords for you to get some ideas. But to create a new keyword, you'll come to the upper right-hand corner here and click this button. and then you'll have to name the keyword this name is just for you internally to know what the keyword is about and then from there you'll have to set up the keywords and something to remember when you are setting up keywords is they are very rigid in the sense that they have to be texted in exactly how you have them set up here so that's where you can see with this mission trip example i want to show you this you can see we actually set up five different keywords and then you can see we also even spelled one wrong In case someone has a typo, really just to capture as many people as possible.

So then once you've set up those keywords, you will, of course, type out what you want to say. So then whenever someone texts in a keyword, this is what they would receive, whatever you have in this box right here. So like I said, a great way to share information or details.

And the nice thing about our keywords is you can have an unlimited number. There's no limit on that. So that is the outbox. I'm now going to move up into the inbox. And the inbox here is, of course, where, you know, if you send out a message to your entire congregation and someone has a question and they send back a response, this is where you'll see that.

So this is where you would come in here to reply to them. You can see this actually looks very similar to an iPhone, an iOS system. However, it is not iMessage. This is SMS texting. So just keep that in mind.

But like I said, this is where you'll reply to any of your church members that, you know, send in a message. And then from there, you also have the option to assign a message to team members. So if you have a team of people at your church that are going to help out with sending out these messages or anything along those lines, you can assign it.

So as an example, if Jeff is a part of the youth group and Austin is the youth group leader and Jeff has a question about something regarding the upcoming youth group event, what I'd want to do is come in here and I can actually assign this to Austin. So then he is aware that he has a message that he needs to come in and respond to. And you can see Austin would get a email notification letting him know about that. So.

This assign button just really allows you to stay organized. It helps make sure that nothing's falling through the cracks as well. So that's an awesome feature to use if you do have team members. And now I want to move into the prayer request section.

So this is where if your church member wants to send in a prayer request, they can easily do it by texting your GLU phone number, which is actually listed out right here in the very bottom. And all they would have to do is say something along the lines of, you know, pray for my family. I need prayer for my dog, whatever it might be. Our system is going to automatically recognize that that is a prayer request because they're saying the word prayer.

And all of those prayer requests would come right here. So this is really a log of all of the prayer requests that you've received. And you can see these are just some examples to give you an idea of what that will look like.

And you'll see you have that same option to assign the prayer request to a specific team member. So this is great if you have a prayer team or prayer warriors or anything like that at your church. You can actually assign it to one of those members.

And then they would also get an email notification letting them know. And then from there, you'll see we have this checkmark right here. This just allows you to mark the message as prayed for.

So really nice just to close the loop and let that person know that you have. prayed for them. And you can type in a message right here if you want to type out something custom, or you can also see we have this message you've just been prayed for.

That's just our default. So that is the prayer request section. That is the inbox.

And like I said, I'm now going to move into tools. So there's two different tools that I want to show you. And the first one is the texting simulator.

And this is an amazing tool. This is great. For, you know, you once you've gotten your account set up and you want to test things out and see if they're working how you want, come to the texting simulator. This allows you to try things out and see it as if you are a church member. So if you wanted to try out a keyword, you know, that mission trip keyword that I was just showing, you could try that.

You can see, oh, OK, this is what they would receive. So, like I said, just a nice way to see it from the perspective of the church member. And I also do want to point out, you can see that this message right here, basically this is so if this person is not stored within the My People section, our system is going to automatically build out a profile for them. So that's why it's going to ask for their full name.

It would build out that profile. And then you know who you're texting with in the future without having to build out the profile yourself. So check out the texting simulator just to try things out without actually sending out text messages. And then the very last feature that I want to talk through under tools is the QR code generator. So this is awesome.

It is foolproof. I think after COVID, everyone knows how to utilize a QR code. And so what this does is if you were to download this and put it in your bulletin and someone was to scan it, it's going to automatically pull up your. blue phone number when they scan this QR code.

And then you can even take it a step further, and you'll see we have this pre-populated text message prompt box that can be found underneath the download button. And so let's say as an example, you wanted to gather prayer requests. What you can do is you can type in the word pray for.

You can see as I type that, the QR code did change. And then you could download this, put it on a flyer, and on that flyer, you could say, you know, if you have a prayer request. please scan this QR code and text us your prayer request. And then from there, when someone scans it, you can see Austin showing right now, it's going to, of course, automatically pull up your blue phone number.

And then it's also going to say pray for in that text message part. And then they would just need to finish texting out what they want prayer for. So that is something that's really nice. Like I said, just to prompt people, if you do want to have them text in certain things or a certain keyword. So that is the tools section, and I'm now going to go ahead and show you some resources.

The first resource is our Help Center, and you can find this by going to the lower left-hand corner here. It has a question mark with the word Help under it. When you click this, you'll be taken directly to the Help Center.

And this is an amazing resource. I truly cannot recommend this enough. We have tons of articles with step-by-step instructions, articles with pictures on how to set things up. And then we even have best practices in here. So check this out if you have questions nine out of ten times you can find the answer to the question right here in the help center.

And then from there I also encourage you to check out glue university. We have how-to videos, you know, kind of just to give you some advice, tips, tricks. So check out these videos as well if you want to learn a little bit more.

And then very lastly from there, I wanted to show you our Success Center. This is an amazing resource that we have. And this is great if you have questions, you couldn't find the answer to your question in the Help Center.

You can actually register for our office hours. This is time with the success team to talk strategy, to ask questions. And we offer these every Monday and Thursday at 2.30 p.m.

Mountain Time. And then we also have another group onboarding. So you are in the messaging group onboarding right now, but we also have our Explorer Connection group onboarding. So if you want to learn a little bit more, I definitely encourage you to register to attend this Explorer Connection onboarding.

This is on Tuesday at 11 a.m. And then we also offer them on Thursday at 11 a.m. So check that out. Keep those resources in your back pocket if you ever have questions.

questions, but that is everything for our messaging onboarding today. Awesome. Thanks, Kylie. Well, on behalf of Glue and the success team, we are so grateful that you joined us. If you have any questions, come hang out with us in office hours or shoot us an email.

We're here for you, but we thank you for joining us again. Have a great day. Thanks so much. Have a good one.

Transcript for:Gloo Messaging Platform Onboarding Guide

Transcript for:
Gloo Messaging Platform Onboarding Guide