Best Practices for Writing Automation Message Templates

Why automated messages need a different tone

A person receiving a manual broadcast knows a staff member chose to send it today. An automated message (a birthday text, a receipt) is expected to feel personal and immediate, even though no one typed it in the moment, get the tone slightly wrong and it can feel more obviously robotic than a manual broadcast would.

Recommendations

• Keep automated templates short, three or four merge fields tends to read more naturally than a long paragraph
• Use @@first_name rather than @@full_name for a warmer, more personal tone in Birthday and Completion messages
• Avoid overly formal language in Event Registration Confirmations, this is often someone's first interaction with your church's SMS

Every automation's template is edited independently under Settings, then Automation, review each one on its own rather than assuming a tone that works well for Giving Receipts will also fit Birthday messages.

Best practice

Read each automated template out loud as if you were the recipient before saving it, it's the fastest way to catch wording that reads fine on screen but sounds stiff or impersonal as an actual text message.