With text messaging's 98% open rate, using texting as the delivery mode for a devotional is one of the best ways to invest in your people's spiritual growth beyond a Sunday service.
Setting up a sermon series devotional
Setting up a new devotional is easy when using a Gloo Template to utilize our Series feature! The Sermon Series Devotional Template is an easy starting for creating a text series that will keep your congregation engaged and thinking about the topic for the whole week rather than just Sunday morning during the sermon.
Navigate to your Discover menu. Find the Sermon Series Devotional card and click into it.
Select the date you'd want the devotional to begin. Then click Start.
Note: The starting date will typically be the Sunday you are launching the devotional. Unsure what date that is? Don't worry! You can always edit the dates later.
Create keywords related to your sermon series. This is what a user would text in to your Gloo phone number in order to subscribe to the Series. At this time, you are not able to manually add people into a Series- they must text in the keyword to subscribe.
Take time to customize your Series. Our template is a great starting point, but it's always a god idea to make it your own. Make sure to edit any of the [bracketed] content to be relevant to your sermon. Any text in {{curly brackets}}, on the other hand, is smart text that the system will fill in automatically for you.
After editing the content, click Save.
Your devotional Series is ready to go! People can start texting in any of the keyword(s) you set up. Note that you can also manually add people into the Series without them texting in the keyword. To do this, just click the 3 dot drop down menu by your Subscribers and select Add People To This Series.
View the details by going to your Messaging menu and navigating to Outbound -> Series. All Series you have set up will be listed here, and you can click on any of them for details.
Promoting your devotional Series
Here are 3 steps to encouraging people to opt in to your devotional!
Verbally announce the opportunity to text in to the Series during your service. Cast vision as to why you'd like people to text in - to invest in and encourage them!
Make texting in easy by using an SMS QR code. (Check out this guide for how to set one up.) Put the SMS QR code on a slide like this one and make it visible during your announcement.
Make your call to action clear by telling people to "Text [KEYWORD] to [PHONE NUMBER]" and give people time to take out their phone act right in that moment.
Want to create an entirely custom devotional Series?
Already have content created that you want to distribute via text? Create a devotional entirely from scratch using the Series feature! Check out this step by step Series guide to set one up.