What is P2P Messaging?
P2P stands for person-to-person (P2P) text messaging. The P2P text messaging channel is unique in that each text message that is sent is manually clicked out by a human. This differentiates P2P from “bulk” text messaging as there is a human intervention component to each message that is deployed. The use of P2P has been commonly used within the political industry as it gives campaigns and organizations the ability to reach people at scale through a one-to-one, conversational manner.
Grassroots Product Overview
Grassroots is purpose-built to enable one-to-one communication via P2P. The technology powering the product allows us to manage client lists, opt-outs, and message content in the platform and then cue the sends to be deployed via human intervention through a cloud enterprise platform partner and eventually through the wireless carriers to the end user.
Client & Campaign Setup
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The client is responsible for building out each individual end client profile in Grassroots
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The client uploads recipient list data that represents the audience of a future text message campaign
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The client uploads lists of phone numbers that are opted out from receiving messages from that particular client and/or text message Campaign (“Campaign”)*
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The client creates a Campaign (SMS or MMS) utilizing the aforementioned recipient list information. The client then inputs the suggested content to be sent out to the recipients.
Once the Campaign is created and ready to be sent to the recipients, it is made available to the staff tasked with executing the campaign outreach.
Campaign Execution
- The individuals tasked with deploying the text messages are assigned as individual users within Grassroots and he/she will operate independently within the platform
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Once the Campaign is ready, he/she will access the Campaign via his/her Grassroots console to begin outreach on the Campaign.
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He/she will be presented with a screen that shows the recipient phone number, the message content, and two key actions
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The ability to edit the message content, if needed
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Send the message to the individual recipient
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The individuals tasked with deploying the text messages will manually repeat this process to send out every message within a Campaign until completion.
Replies & Opt-out
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Grassroots supports the ability for recipients to reply to a Campaign message and stores all replies in the platform so that the client may follow-up as it is necessary to any messages (i.e. opt-outs).
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Handling of Opt-out replies is of paramount importance and Grassroots handles Opt-out management in the following ways:
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Opt-out lists are maintained per sending client profile, beginning with the aforementioned uploading of Opt-out files by the client
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Industry best practice is to include “Stop” language in the message copy and this is strongly recommended to every client that is onboarded onto Grassroots
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Grassroots has the ability to detect keywords -- Stop, Unsubscribe, End, for example -- in a reply and opt-out the recipient phone number from receiving future text messages from that particular end client.
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Grassroots provides the ability to manually review replies and take an action in the user interface to opt-out the associated phone number as an additional layer of oversight.
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If a recipient makes it clear that he/she wishes to no longer receive any text messages from any politically affiliated sender, Grassroots is able to globally opt-out that recipient phone number