A recent CallFire blog spoke about an interesting case in which a man named Aaron Titus was so angered by a voice broadcast message he received from Prince George County’s School Board, that he decided to plan revenge.
Titus was awakened by a robo-call at 4:33 a.m that fateful morning, informing him that the school would be delayed for two hours due to inclement weather. Titus was outraged however, for two reasons. The first being he was awakened from a relaxing sleep and the second being he already knew about the delayed opening from the night prior. That’s when Titus sprung into action and found a robocall company on the internet and then uploaded the numbers of nine of the school board’s members, its superintendant and general counsel—hoping that they could see how truly annoying this wake-up call had been.
To make sure your voice broadcast campaign intrigues and informs rather than annoys or maddens, CallFire offers some valuable information:
1. Make sure you check your campaign settings, not just once but twice and then thrice. In this scenario, the school’s announcement was sent in the wee hours of the morning because of a human error. This could have been completely avoided, simply by checking over the settings.
2. Always have a Do-Not-Call list handy. It is crucial to keep your internal DNC list that stays within the CallFire interface up-to-date at all times.
3. Add yourself to your own campaigns. CallFire has the capability to send broadcasts at least 50 calls per minute. However, if your own phone number one of those that is first called, and you accidentally set the time incorrectly, you are notified right away and can stop the message before it reaches the masses on accident.
4. Follow best practices. CallFire officials said, “It is essential that you clearly communicate the intent to use your contacts’ phone numbers for broadcast messages.”
5. Opt-out information is an important element that should always be included in your broadcasts. Make sure to end every message with opt-out instructions, such as “To stop receiving phone notifications, call xxx-xxx-xxxx.”
6. Think about using SMS Broadcasts in the future. For any type of message that you need to get out quickly, like this school delay notification, a text message probably wouldn’t have startled people out of their dreams and would have provided them with the same amount of information.
Jamie Epstein is a TMCnet Web Editor. Previously she interned at News 12 Long Island as a reporter's assistant. After working as an administrative assistant for a year, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web editor for TMCnet. Jamie grew up on the North Shore of Long Island and holds a bachelor's degree in mass communication with a concentration in broadcasting from Five Towns College. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Rich Steeves