SMS for sports clubs — everyone on time in the right place
A cancelled match, a moved training session, an unplayable pitch: in a club, that kind of news has to arrive today, not when someone happens to open the group chat. And not every member — or every parent — is in that chat.
With a text message you reach the whole team, all parents or all volunteers in one go, without anyone having to install an app. For an association that runs on volunteers, that saves phone calls every week.
Where does it go wrong today?
News that does not get through
A message in the group chat only reaches those who are in it and who look.
Players who do not turn up
Without confirmation you only know on the day itself whether you have enough people.
Finding volunteers
Getting the canteen or the transport covered costs a series of phone calls every week.
This is what it looks like in practice
The examples below are illustrations. The parts between percentage signs are tags: you fill them in from an Excel list or through the API, so that every recipient gets their own version.
Saturday's match is cancelled due to an unplayable pitch. New date to follow.
Training on %day% moves to %time% on pitch %pitch%.
Match on %date% at %time%, meet at %meettime%. Reply YES if you are in.
Still looking for 2 volunteers for the canteen on %date%. Reply YES if you can.
Reminder: the membership fee for this season is due on %date%. Pay via %link%
How does a sports club reach all its members by SMS?
Set up your teams
Create a group per team, per age category and one for volunteers, via an Excel import of your member list.
Send per group
Pick the group it concerns, so the whole club does not receive a message that only applies to one team.
Let members reply
Send from a number that can be replied to, so you see attendance confirmations come in right away.
What you use for this
Good to know
A club announcement to your own members is not advertising. If you send sponsor messages or commercial promotions, you do need your members' consent for that.
At SMSBOX you pay per message sent, from €0.06 per SMS to Belgium (excl. VAT). No subscription, no setup costs: a month without any sending costs you nothing. All processing takes place on Belgian servers, within the GDPR.
