Transferring From Mobile Text Alerts to LoyalShops Texting
If at any time during this process you have a question, just give us a call. 949-614-5650. We are happy to help out.
Optional Pre-Step A - Importing a fresh customer list that includes phone numbers.
If you have a customer list from previous sales that include email addresses, we recommend you import that customer list. The reason for this optional step is that mobile text alerts don't always include customer names. So, when you do an import of your customers ahead of time and that list has phone numbers, we can use that data to match up customer names and phone numbers.
If you are with LuLaRoe, follow these steps:
Any other company, here are instructions:
Optional Pre-Step B - Setting Up LoyalShops Texting
If you have not done it yet, log into LoyalShops, go to the Texting Menu and choose to Enable Texting from the Top Menu.
Then read the initial startup information and review the LoyalShops Text Messaging Service Terms & Conditions. When you are comfortable with those items, choose Enable Texting
Now choose the Texting Dashboard menu and proceed just below the Texting Stats to "Your Keyword" and "Your Mobile Number".
Your Keyword is a unique "no spaces" name that is used to sign up for your texting service. Either pick the name we have chosen for you, usually a derivative of your name or choose another. As Keywords must be unique inside of LoyalShops texting, you some choices may have already been taken. To find the best one you can that is available and easy for your customers to spell.
To change "Your Keyword", click on the Teal Pencil Icon.
Enter "Your Mobile Number" as well with the Teal Pencil Icon.
Optional Pre-Step C - Post on Social you are changing text providers
Let your current texting List know your Shopping Notifications will be coming from a different number so they are more comfortable when the number arrives. This is just a best practice to post on social in your Page and Group to sign up for your texting program and those that already have, they will start seeing your texts coming from a new 95328 number. Then give it a few hours before you do the actual Text Opt-In. I also recommend doing the opt-in below during daylight hours as it will send a legally required "Welcome to Keyword Shopping Notices" text and you don't want that coming late at night or too early in the morning just out of respect for your customers.
Transferring your texting service from Mobile Text Alerts to LoyalShops:
Previously Mobile Text Alerts had an export customers option, but they have recently removed it. So there are a few ways to get an export list of customers. Option 1 is to call or email them and ask for an export of your customer list as a CSV file. The second option is to follow the instructions below to copy each page of customers out of MTAs. The third option is to contact us directly (949)614-5650 and we will help you do the export. We are happy to help you with the export.
To manually export your customers from Mobile Text Alerts:
1) We have found that a Google Chrome browser works best for this manual export process.
2) Log into Mobile Text Alerts and choose Manage Subscribers from the Subscribers menu.
3) Make sure "Show entries" is set to 100 so as many as 100 customers can be viewed on the page at once.
4) Start with the first contact and Select immediately in front of the first contact data (may be name or phone number), then drag down selecting everything down until you get to the last contact on the page. Stop at the end of the last phone number with you selecting.
5) With just the start of the contacts to just to the end of the customer data on that page, use the copy function to copy that customer information into the clipboard.
6) Open up a new browser TAB and type in Sheets.google.com to open up Google Sheets. If you don't have a Google account, sign up for a free mail account and get one. Or contact us and we can import the list for you.
7) Hit the big PLUS button to create a new Blank Sheet, then go to cell A2 and choose paste. That should place any names, phone number and sign in data into separate columns. Do any clean up that is necessary. They put email addresses and numbers together, so sometimes you have to move the email address over into the next adjacent column.
8) Go back to the Mobile Text Alerts Customer Page and if you have more contacts than one page worth, repeat steps 4-7 pasting the additional contacts below the previous list of customers in the spreadsheet until you have copied all customers out of Mobile Text Alerts. Again do any clean up of moving cells so that name, phone and sign up are in their own distinctive columns then you can log out of Mobile Text Alerts and move on to step 9.
9) Label the columns "name", phone" and 'email" if there are some emails. Check the sheet, sometimes an email address gets combined with the phone number. Please separate them and give email it's own column.
10) Just right of the Green Sheet Icon is "Untitled Spreadsheet", click there and give your spreadsheet a descriptive name.
When completed, the sheet should look something like below:
11) When everything looks good, hit the Green Sheet icon and it will save the sheet.
12) Log into LoyalShops and go to the Customer Dashboard.
13) Choose the Orange Button "Import Google Sheets Customer List".
14) You may need to Login Google.
15) Follow the Steps in our Importer choosing the "subscribers.xls" sheet.
16) Specifically click the "Opt-in to Texting on Import" when you see that option. Read the following Pop-Up and insure you have "Prior Express Written Consent" to send text messages to the list you have supplied. If you do not, please choose "Do not Opt-In". If you do have "Prior Express Written Consent", then choose "I wish to Opt-In" and it will green check that option.
17) Choose Begin Importing. Review the 5 sample data that is shown and ensure you recognize that data as the first 5 records in your spreadsheet. If it doesn't look right, don't import it.
Congratulations, you have invited your customers directly to your Texting Program and they all received welcome text messages.
Note: We try to tie every texting customer with a name and hopefully an email. This way you see exactly who you are texting, you just have one customer record in LoyalShops for that customer for all services and we will use your customer data for you to create smarter services in the future like Text only local customers if you wish.
If you have successfully completed the pre-steps and a customer has a LoyalShops entry with a phone number, then when we do the Opt-in, we can match the phone numbers and just Opt-in that existing customer to your texting (the ideal situation).
If you have an Opt-in List and we can't match a phone number, we will try to match an exact match of First and Last Name. If we find a match, we will Opt-in the customer with that matching First and Last Name. If there are multiple records with the same First Last Name, we will Opt-in the record that has the most recent activity.
Finally, If we can't match an email or a name with a phone number, we will make a customer entry with just Phone Number or Phone and Name if the name is supplied.
Enjoy LoyalShops Texting.
Gary
LoyalShops