Gloo has many powerful features, and understanding the similarities and differences between them can help you craft holistic strategies for communication and engagement with your church. Here is a brief comparison of Rolling Series and Fixed Series.

Both Rolling and Fixed Series are used to send a sequence of messages to people who have subscribed to the Series by texting in the opt-in keyword. Both can be fully set up on the front end by a Gloo administrator with the correct permission level, and both can be edited along the way if content needs to be changed or added.

The key difference between the two types of Series comes in how they are scheduled to go out to subscribers, which makes each type more useful in specific circumstances.

Rolling Series are set up so that people can opt in at any time and they’ll receive the messages for X number of days relative to their subscription date. The day they subscribed is set to “Day 0” and the messages are set to go out on your choice of “Day 1,” “Day 2,” etc. This way you can have people going through the same content at different times, and you can guarantee that everyone who subscribes will receive the full content of the Series, regardless of when they subscribe.

For example, if you go to the Discover tab and set up our pre-written New Attender Follow-Up Series, new guests can text an opt-in keyword at any time to subscribe. If Sally subscribes on a Sunday, then she will receive the welcome message right away (Day 0), followed by the first message on Day 2, which in her case would be Tuesday. Message 2 comes on Day 4, aka Thursday. And so on. But meanwhile, Dave attended a prayer meeting on Wednesday night and subscribed to the series. He’ll receive the welcome message on Wednesday, the first series message on Friday, the second on Sunday… All messages are sent relative to the date each individual subscribed.

This means that Rolling Series are most useful in situations where you want people to be able to opt in at any time and still receive the full content, such as first time visitor follow up, self-paced devotionals, and prayer prompts.

Fixed Series, on the other hand, set specific dates for each message so that you can make sure all subscribers receive the same content at the same time. Rather than messages going out on “Day 1,” “Day 2,” etc, they’ll be set to specific dates like December 1, December 2, etc. Everyone who subscribes will go through the same content at the same time. It’s important to note, though, that if someone subscribes late, they may miss content from the beginning of the series that was sent out before they subscribed.

This means that Fixed Series are most useful in situations where you want everyone to receive the same content at the same time, such as when taking the whole church through a holiday devotional together - like Advent or Lent - or doing a church-wide prayer initiative.

Pro tip: Want to become an expert in setting up your Series? Check out some best practices here!

One misconception is that it is possible to manually add someone into a Series without them texting in the opt-in keyword. This is not true- the only way for someone to receive messages in a Series is for them to text in the opt-in keyword.

Another misconception is that if someone subscribes to a Fixed Series after it has already begun, then they will receive all of the previous messages they missed. This is also not true. If you are running an Advent devotional that has daily messages starting December 1 and someone opts in on December 5, they will not receive the previous 4 messages automatically. The only way to get them that content is to manually broadcast those 4 messages personally to that person.