2-way Texting (SMS / MMS)
Give a more human feel to your church engagement and guest follow-up with the most effective form of communication: 2-way SMS. Using personalized 2-way SMS, you can send and receive texts, picture messages (MMS) and even attach files—knowing 90% of those messages will be read within 3 minutes.

Are you looking to get information to your ministry in a way that people pay attention to?
Sending texts is one of PastorsLine’s core features and should be one of the main tools in your digital communication strategy. Here’s why:
High engagement and fast response rate with both SMS and MMS
As we know, people read 90% of text messages within 3 min. of receipt, and there is a 90-second response rate on avg.
67% of all cell phone owners find
themselves checking their phones
for messages even though they don’t
notice the phone ringing or vibrating.
Once, using mobile phones and texting for church communications was seen as sort of irreverent, even disrespectful. Today, it is so ‘second nature’ to most of our audiences that if you’re not tapping into that potential, your church is losing out on an important way for your members to become more connected to their families and Jesus.
Communicate 1:1 or in bulk
Mobile texting, comprising Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), is the #1 form of mobile digital communication in use today. With the human feel of personalized bulk texting, you can reach 1, 100s or 1000s of people in a non-intrusive way. Added features make bulk texting not only economical but reliable. PastorsLine offers 2-way texting--from you to them and from them to only you.
Link other files for more communicative power
Go even further, and enrich your communication by attaching a variety of files. PastorsLine automatically stores these files and creates links as needed. Easily and quickly attach your weekend sermon notes, welcome videos to your guests or PDFs such as an application to summer camp without always needing to store it on Dropbox or iCloud. If you are attaching links, your limit is 1600 characters (roughly 10 messages worth of characters). Via the PastorsLine file picker, almost any file type can be attached and sent as links.
Examples:
Automation capabilities save you time
Including PastorsLine’s automation module with your texting allows your ministry to “check-in” and avoid your people from falling through the cracks. You can use our template campaigns or create new ones. Set up your messages, include a trigger via keyword or external action via our integrations, and almost “forget it”. Once your people reply with questions or comments, you can “jump in” and answer those as well.
Create “once and done” repetitive texting of all all sorts such as:
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Automated conversations that capture needed data, e.g. first-time guest follow-up and campaigns.
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Personalized birthday wishes on their special day for “human touch” communication.
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Scheduled feedback polls let you know whether you are meeting your ministry’s needs...or not.
Use templates to conserve more resources.
Schedule your texts according to your needs: evergreen campaigns, date-based, or even link several campaigns together via keywords. More about automation here.
Smart, budget-friendly messaging
PastorsLine automatically standardizes NON-GSM FORMATTING to keep your texting costs down. Some punctuation / special characters in your text messages (known as Unicode or non-gsm characters) could be raising your costs. So, your 160-character text could actually be charged at 2 or 3 times the price. PastorsLine automatically scans every text message, changing the non-gsm formatting into gsm formatting to save you money.
Logs: for communication that arrives at its destination
PastorsLine reports and analytics keep track of your communication, so messages do not fall through the cracks.
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FAILED MESSAGE REPORTING because your texts should be reaching their destinations, and if not, you need to know. PastorsLine’s failed message reporting is now more transparent via our failed message badge. We alert you in your Inbox, your Logs, and take out the ‘wondering why’ by showing you the reason, so you can follow up.
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PastorsLine FAILSAFE MESSAGING REPROCESSING keeps delivery percentage as high as possible. Mobile carrier filtering to reduce spam means that some safe messages are flagged and not sent. Most of the time, PastorsLine receives the error code and automatically reprocesses via another number. Your audience should not get confused by the new number because we include your original sender's number in the message.
You get this feature and so much more...
(All features are included.)

direct, automated data capture via phone from those interested

mobile keywords to opt in to different church campaigns

automatically create and manage groups

gather information via online forms

polls and surveys

personalized, bulk text messaging

personalized birthday wishes

contests

create and schedule a series of automated messages

2-way integrations with CCB and Planning Center (MailChimp is next)
Information to get you started
Related article
With PastorsLine, you can send text messages to many people at one time. You can’t do this with your normal phone service. Group texts are possible, but if you want to tell 500 people that your weekend service has been canceled due to weather, this is not going to be practical with just a group message. You need a complete system to keep track of your contact list and to send out your messages. With our system, your contacts can also opt out of receiving messages if they change church membership, due to school enrollment or just loss of interest in that specific communication.
The PastorsLine platform is a church-driven, bulk texting platform developed and managed by church ‘insiders’. We know churches intimately. We’ve attended them, been part of their management teams and worked with them for many years. Our goal is to serve you by helping you spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. We’ve positioned ourselves to be your in-house, IT team for solutions to your communication issues. In addition to everything our platform can do, our partners love our responsiveness to their needs and fast tech support.