Broadcasts are mass texts sent to everyone in your account, groups of people, or individuals. Broadcasts are received as if the person is in a one-to-one text message thread from your account's unique phone number, not a multi-person group text thread. Broadcasts can be sent right away, or scheduled for later.
Note: Email Broadcasts are also available.
A status found under each Contact's profile that indicates their ability to message and interact with your Gloo phone number.
The Status of each conversation in your Messaging Inbox, showing whether or not that conversation currently requires a response.
Tips and templated one time messages you can use to start a conversation with an Explorer.
Customizations provide a way to shape every text sent out from your account's phone number. Customizations include: the response sent to acknowledge a prayer request texted in, the default response to a request being marked as prayed for, the text sent to acknowledge an unresolved message, and the onboarding complete text.
Effects are helpful administrative tools. They are additional actions that happen when someone texts the corresponding Series, Keyword, or Quick Response. Effects can add a person to a group, remove a person from a group, remove a person from a series, and/or email team members.
Explorers are people in your community who have seen a message of hope online and responded by filling out a form. They have asked to be connected to a local church and are looking for someone to personally follow up with them. (Learn more about this program here.)
Upon getting matched with your organization, Explorers show up directly in your Inbox so you can start a conversation!
Note: Explorers are not included in every Gloo plan.
A Status assigned to Explorers to show if they are new to your account, been rematched away from your account, or reassigned into your account.
Groups are segments of your people. Groups can be created in Gloo or created via ChMS integration. Groups can have an unlimited number of members.
Note: To add more than 3 Groups to your account, explorer the benefits of Gloo+.
Keywords in Gloo send a single text response when triggered. A Keyword can have multiple words or phrases set up as the keyword someone texts in to trigger it. The words or phrases set up as keyword(s) must be texted in exactly in order to trigger the response.
A Kit is a collection of resources to execute a strategy. They are found under your Discover menu. The resources in a Kit can include:
Links
Downloads
Series Templates
Broadcast Templates
Keyword Templates
Survey Templates
By activating and completing a Kit, your church will have a comprehensive communication strategy for an initiative!
Find the history of every text message a person has received and sent in to your account's phone number in the Messages tab.
Unresolved Messages
Messages flagged with a black dot and marked with the "Needs Response" status indicate that they need a response. Messages get flagged anytime a person asks or says something that Gloo has not been set up to respond to, such as a Keyword or Quick Response. Unresolved messages can be assigned to a team member, responded to, or simply marked as resolved by changing the status to "Served."
The Network tab hosts the Network Portal. The Network Portal gives the ability for you as a Network leader to invite your churches to sign up for the Gloo App through a unique and custom shareable URL. As a result, you will be able to gain visibility into the churches that have signed up connected to your Network and see some of your Network’s activity.
The onboarding page in Settings is where you shape the experience for someone texting in to your phone number for the very first time. The onboarding flow does not apply to people your account already recognizes, such as people added into your account by CSV upload or ChMS integration.
The My People tab shows profiles for anyone in your Gloo account. People are added to your account via manual creation, CSV upload, ChMS integration, or simply by texting into your phone number. Each person has a status of Active, Inactive, Unsubscribed, or Blocked. The number of people shown at the to of the My People tab is the total number of Active people in your account.
Note: An Explorer is automatically added into your People when Gloo matches them with your account, as long as they provided a phone number.
Nothing needs to be set in your account to start using the Prayer feature. Gloo uses natural language processing to automatically capture all prayer requests texted in. Each request will automatically be marked with the Needs Prayer status, and these messages can be assigned to a team member and responded to by clicking Mark as Prayed.
Quick Responses use natural language processing to reply to commonly asked questions. When someone texts a question related to any of the Quick Response topics, Gloo will immediately text back the response you set up. Unlike Keywords, which need to be texted exactly to be triggered, Quick Responses are triggered when the sentiment of the text in is related to the specific automation.
Gloo's QR Code Generator can be used to generate customer QR codes to make it easier for connections to interact with your Gloo phone number. Use the generator to create QR codes that will automatically populate a user's texting app with your Gloo phone number and a message.
A Series is a collection of text messages sent out based on a specific schedule, usually based on a certain theme. Someone opts into a series by texting in the keyword associated with the series. Every series has a first message that is "Sent when subscribed," which is the message sent back to the connection immediately upon opting in with the keyword. The rest of the texts in the series are then sent out based on how they are scheduled, whether rolling or fixed.
Type of Series where messages are sent on certain days based on the subscription date. The day that someone subscribes is considered Day 1, and then the series messages can be crafted to send out on subsequent days after subscription. For example, someone could subscribe on Day 1, and then receive the next messages in the series on Day 2, Day 4, Day 8 and Day 10. No one misses any messages in a rolling series.
Type of Series where messages are sent on specific dates and times. This means every subscriber receives the series messages on the exact same day at the exact same time. If someone subscribes to the fixed series after some messages have already gone out, they will not receive those first messages. For example, a series may start on December 1st and run through December 25th, with a message sent every day. If someone subscribed on December 10th, they would not receive the messages that had gone out prior to December 10th.
Surveys send questions and receive answers all via text. Questions sent out can require the answer texted in to be a number, or they can be open ended questions.
Opt-in Surveys are triggered when someone texts in the associated keyword.
Scheduled Surveys are sent to people at a predetermined date and time.
Team members are administrators of your Gloo account. All accounts can have unlimited team members, each team member has a unique login to the same account, and each team member can have different permission levels.
Templates are pre-written text messages to engage your people, which can be found under the Discover menu. There are Templates for Keywords, Series, and Broadcasts. Since the Discover menu also contains large amounts of resources from partners, it can be helpful to filter the tab to only show texting Templates.
The texting simulator previews the experience your people will have when texting your phone number without actually sending any messages. Use the simulator to make sure you've set something up the way you'd like!
