Redtail Speak offers advisors the ability to send one text message to multiple clients (bulk text messaging) which display as individual text messages for each recipient. This function is accessible from the Broadcast button in Speak:
When we click the Broadcast button, we see the below:
In this Speak account, only one Broadcast Text has been sent at this point, as you can see in the example above. To send a new one, click the pencil and paper icon in the top right corner of the pane:
We'd then see the below, where we determine who our Broadcast Text will be sent to:
We'll be presented with a list of everyone in our Speak database who has previously accepted our invitation to text (we're just showing a sample portion above with the two top clients listed). We can click our desired recipients here to add them to the list of clients to send the message to. Note: if our list of clients here is lengthy we can, as noted in the "To" field above, "Type a name, phone number, or email" to search for and select them to include in the message.
Note as well: if you want to invite someone not in this list to accept texts from you, you can click the "Broadcast invite" button beneath the "To: field. If your Speak account is integrated with Redtail CRM, you'll then see a list of all your Redtail contacts that you haven't yet invited to text and can select one or more from that list to send a Broadcast Invite to. After making those selections, click the "Send Invitation" button in the top right corner and follow onscreen prompts to send. If your Speak account is not integrated with Redtail CRM, you'll need to manually add contacts and then they'll show up in your list as available for a Bulk Invitation to text.
Below, we've selected William O'Connor and Jordan Word (who are now listed in the "To" area) as recipients for our Broadcast Text and can click the "Next" button to continue:
After clicking "Next", we'd see the below:
In the "Broadcast name" field, we simply name the message something that will allow us to easily know what the message was about without having to open it up later to determine its content. In other words, when we are later looking at our list of Broadcast messages, the "Broadcast names" we enter should allow us to quickly scroll through our messages to find the one(s) we are looking for without having to open them each up individually to determine what they are about.
The "Broadcast message" box is where we enter the actual content of our message. As you can see in the example above, the advisor name (W. Cantrell") auto-populates the message box. If we were sending a message to these two individuals to remind them about an upcoming client event, this screen might look like the below:
As you can see above, we've named the broadcast text something easily identifiable and we've added our Broadcast message. And, just as with individual texts, there is an emoji button we can use to insert our desired emojis (if any) where we would like them within our message.
You should also note the salutation line of the text includes a merge field for the contact's First Name, which will pull from their first name field within Redtail Speak. You can insert fields within the Broadcast message area by:
- clicking the spot within the Broadcast message area that you would like the merge field to go
- clicking the (x) icon next to the emoji icon
- selecting your merge field
Note: your merge field options for Speak Broadcast Messages at this time are First Name, Last Name, Full Name, and Phone number.
Once our message is ready, all that's left to do is click the Send button, which only becomes available after we've added both our broadcast name and our broadcast message.
After clicking the Send button, we'll see a confirmation message:
If we click "Confirm", the message will be on its way.
Once the message has been successfully delivered, our Broadcast message area looks like the below:
Note: if a Broadcast Message fails to send for some reason, you'd see that here as well, along with the reason for the failure:
In the instance above, this message failed to send because it included the Contact First Name merge field and the recipient did not have a first name indicated within Speak.
If we leave this area, when we return to the Broadcasts area we can always bring this information up again by clicking on the Broadcast name in the left hand column.
Of course these Broadcast messages will also display within the individual Inboxes for each of the recipient contacts in the Texting section of Speak:
Character Limits
Note: there is a character limit for texts (320 characters, not including the signature) but Redtail Speak begins displaying a countdown of how many characters you have remaining when you are down to 20 characters:
If your message exceeds those limits, you'll need to reduce your overall character count before you'll be able to send.
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