Jan 29, 2013

Using Gather for Ongoing Events

We recently released Gather, an SMS app for event organizers to keep their attendees updated during an event. But what qualifies as an event?

Gather by MailChimp

Gather by MailChimp

Gather events can actually have an expiration date one year into the future. Not many events last for an entire year, but this feature makes Gather really flexible. Some creative users caught on to this fact and submitted their ideas for using Gather. Here are a few of those ideas to get your wheels turning:

Meetup Organizers – Are you running a meetup group? Keep your members engaged with periodic text messages about speakers and venues, or poll them for the next topic leading up to the meetup date.

Sports Teams – Coaches can ask parents to join a team-specific Gather group to communicate about rain delays, schedule changes, or snack reminders.

Schools and Parents – Teachers can use Gather to keep in touch with parents throughout the school year. It’s also perfect for a class parent who’s organizing an event. “Don’t forget, today’s the last day for field trip permission slips.”

Real Estate Agents – Realtors can use Gather to notify colleagues or clients about upcoming homes for sale, price changes, or new listings. You can even have multiple events running at the same time. For example, “Open Houses near 30328″ or “New Listings in 30022.”

What if I don’t have a MailChimp account?

Although Gather is connected to a MailChimp list, you won’t need a list full of subscribers to get started. If you don’t have a MailChimp account, you can sign up for a free one. Create a new list, and then create your first Gather event. Your attendees will have the option to join your MailChimp list when they sign up for your Gather event. (It’s also a great way to build a new list.)

Gather is currently available for iOS on the App Store, and coming very soon to Google Play for Android.

Posted By

Stephen

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Discussion

  • Alana D

    I can hardly wait to use this with my clients.

    02.15.2013

    reply

  • Ricochet

    But honestly, I had to read the entire thing to find out it’s not free. Had to delete the app. If you are a small business that is broke then just like Mailchimp is free some apps like these should have free versions that are limited by the numbers like the Mailchimp accounts. It is a waste of time to think any of these apps are free as Mailchimp is for a small business person…because this has happened too many times to me I now don’t believe any of the useful apps in Mailchimp are free so I won’t bother.

    03.09.2013

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    • Ben

      Because this area (SMS) is new territory for us, we’ve got to be very cautious before offering it free. But just as with MailChimp, we’ll eventually get a better lay of the land, and you’ll see Gather opening up a little more.

      03.11.2013

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  • garethlangston

    I understand the cost of SMS would make this difficult to offer for free but some sort of trial where I could get into the interface and look around and see what the capabilities are would be useful.

    I’m interested in using Gather for an event in the summer but I can’t find answers to some of the things I’m interested in knowing.

    Can I get a bunch of people to sign up to my Gather event and then segment them from there, so that I can have different user types “VIP Customers”, for example, who would get a slightly different message to other people?

    Can I import a list of people ( from eventbrite, or my own mailchimp list ) and send them an opt in message via SMS, or would this have to be via email?

    03.25.2013

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    • John

      Hi Gareth, While there’s not currently a way to segment your Gather attendees to send different types of messages, we’re always listening and looking for ways to improve and add functionality. That being said, I shared your thoughts directly with our Dev team on Gather. When it comes to importing a list and sending them an SMS opt in message, that wouldn’t be possible as they’d already had to have chosen to receive SMS messages from you. What you could do however is include the invitation to signup for your Gather event within a MailChimp campaign. If you have additional questions, you can also reach our support chimps at: http://mailchimp.com/chat

      03.25.2013

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