See getcloudsms.com for details of the Joy Of Text Pro plugin
The Joy of Text (or JOT) plugin provides a great way of connecting with your customers, blog subscribers or club members. This plugin allows you to send both SMS and text-to-voice messages to a group or to individuals.
To use this plugin you will need:
- A Twilio account. If you don't have a Twilio account, you can sign up for a free trial account.
- A Twilio phone number - either one you've purchased or your Twilio free trial number.
- Your unique 'Twilio Account SID' and 'Twilio Auth Token' - you'll enter these details into the Joy Of Text plugin's settings.
If you're new to Twilio or upgrading your existing account from a trial to full account, you can get $10 credit by using this
referral link.
This free version includes the following features:
- Allows SMS and text-to-voice messages to be sent a group or individuals.
- Creates a default group, into which subscriber names and phone numbers can be added.
- Allows administrators to add, delete and update members from the group.
- Creates a subscription form, allowing website visitors to subscribe to SMS updates.
- Provides merge tags that can be included into the message, allowing the subscriber's name, number or a link to your last blog post to be substituted into the message.
- Provides the option to automatically send an SMS message to new subscribers. You can specify the content of this welcome message, which can include website and media links.
- Allows language preference to be selected for text-to-voice messaging.
- Checks that each phone number entered is valid.
- Has support for a number of extensions.
The extensions available for the JOT Lite plugin are:
- Woocommerce extension - This extension - will send out new order notifications and will let you sync Woo customers into JOT, allowing you to send SMS messages to your valued customer base.
- Message Scheduling extension - The Scheduler extension allows you to schedule messages to be sent at a future date and time.
- Post and comment Notifier - The Notifier will send SMS notifications to your customers, when a new post is added or updated.
- Buddypress integration extension - This extension synchronises your BuddyPress members into the Joy Of Text Lite.
As discussed in this
article, SMS messages have "open rate" of 98%, i.e. 98% of all SMS messages sent, are opened by the recipient. This compares to only 22% of emails sent, so give your marketing a boost, by sending SMS messages from the JOT plugin.
The JOT Lite Admin screens explained.
The "Settings" tab
Within this tab your
Twilio authentication details are entered. Once you have entered your Twilio details, you can select the 'from' number from which your messages will be sent.
You can also use this screen to choose your voice and language preference, which is used when sending text-to-voice messages.
The "Message" tab
Use this tab to construct your messages. First select the recipients of your message, then enter your message. The message can contain the special tags shown below:
- %name% - when the message is sent, this tag is replaced by the message recipients name.
- %number% - the tag is replaced by the recipients phone number.
- %lastpost% - the tag is replaced by the URL of your last blog post.
From this tab, you can also specify a message suffix, that will be appended to all messages.
You can also specify whether your message is sent as an SMS message or as a text-to-voice message. For text-to-voice messages, the text you enter will be converted (by Twilio) to speech, which is played to your chosen recipients when they answer their phones.
The "Group Manager" tab
The free version of the plugin provides one member group.
From this tab you can change the name and description of the group. You can add new members to the group, delete existing members from the group or update their name and number details.
From the "Group Invite" you can construct a form which you can place on your website, to invite your website visitors to subscribe to SMS or text-to-voice message updates. You can also choose whether to send a new subscriber an SMS message containing a welcome message. The HTML for your form is provided on this tab or you can choose to use the shortcode
[jotform]
.
The
Pro version allows an unlimited number of member groups to be created.
For requests, feedback and support please send an email to jotplugin@gmail.com. All feedback appreciated.
Translations
The Joy Of Text Lite is available in English or Vietnamese (thank you to Chuong Nguyen). If you are interested in translating the plugin into your own language, then the
default English translation file is available
here. Thank you.
The Pro Version
A
Pro version is available for sale.
Check out the
comparison of the JOT Lite and JOT Pro versions.
A number of
extensions are available for the Pro and Lite versions. For example, the Pro version can be integrated with
- WooCommerce
- WooCommerce Subscriptions
- Ultimate Membership Pro
- MemberMouse
- MemberPress
- BuddyPress
The
Pro Version has the following features:
- Allows SMS, MMS, text-to-voice or audio file messages to be sent a group or individuals.
- Receives inbound SMS and MMS messages.
- Allows multiple subscriber groups to be created, into which subscriber details, such as name, phone number, email address, address can be added.
- Allows administrators to add, delete and update members from the groups.
- Allows a wide range of merge tags, such as %firstname% and %lastname% to be included into your messages, providing more personalised messages.
- Create one or more subscription forms, using Gravity Forms or the built-in JOT forms , allowing website visitors to subscribe to SMS updates.
- Automatically sends out a "welcome" SMS message to new group subscribers, a great way to distribute offers or voucher codes.
- Support for Twilio SMS and voice messaging.
- Support for advanced Twilio features such as number pools and Messaging Services.
- Creates user groups based on existing Wordpress roles.
- Routes inbound SMS messages to another cell phone number or email address.
- Shows the history of all successfully sent and received messages.
- Shows an Android/iPhone-like "threaded" view of messages sent and received from an individual member's cell number.
- Provides commands that can be issued from an administrator's cell phone, allowing group details to be retrieved and messages to be sent to groups remotely, without logging into the WordPress dashboard.
- Support for Twilio's new Sender ID capability on SMS and MMS messages. This replaces your Twilio number with some text, such as your company name, allowing you to add branding to your text messages. (Not supported by Twilio in the US).
- Integration with WooCommerce, allowing your Woo customers to synchronised with a Joy Of Text group, so you can send them messages.
- Allows "opt-out" keywords to be specified, allowing subscribers to opt-out of receiving SMS messages from individual or all groups.
- Includes an admin and user role and new capabilities for WordPress Multisite users or for making the plugin available to non-admin users.
- Allows a subscription keyword to be specified for each group. People can text the keyword to your Twilio number to be subscribed to the group.
- Twilio number verification and country codes. New numbers entered will be verified by Twilio, to ensure the number is valid.
- Provides a "bulk import" facility, allowing your existing customer's or member's details to be imported into the JOT plugin.
- Allows selection of all media types for MMS messages. Allowing all of the media file types that Twilio supports to be sent in MMS messages.
- Allows members lists to be downloaded into a CSV file
- Support for WordPress multisite networks and cross network activation of the plugin.
- Automatic updates from the WordPress dashboard and a licence key.
- Implementing auto-add groups. Allowing the numbers from inbound SMS messages to be automatically added to chosen groups.
- Support for unicode characters.
- Allows the gender and language to be chosen for text-to-voice messaging.
- Support for the JOT Scheduler extension plugin.
- Support for SQLlite.
- An SMS or email can be sent to an admin user, when new member subscribes to a group.
To download the pro version please visit
here
This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working.
e.g.
- Upload
joy-of-text.php
to the /wp-content/plugins/
directory
- Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
- Click on Messaging-Settings and read through the Get Started guidance.
- Enter your 'Twilio Account SID' and 'Twilio Auth Token' into the Messaging-Settings-Twilio Settings page.