27. July 2012 12:00 by Chet in
Families, Groups, Development Two of the foundational values of ME2U are accountability and safety. We are determined to provide a solution to the all-to-often found problem of parents and group leaders being kept "out of the loop" when it comes to the messages that are being sent amongst their families and groups. Because of that, many of our groups are made up of teenagers and children from whom we seek parental permission in order to get them signed up. In all reality, we are asking them to jump through a few "hoops" to get everything set up. Once this layer of accountability is set up, though, parents and group leaders have a layer of accountability and safety that is firmly established and will also allow communication to flow easily between group leader and members.
Because of this, we offer a number of ways to "invite" group members and their parents to get signed up. Today, we wrapped up the coding so that you can now send an email to a list of addresses to get them signed up. This allows a simple cut and paste from a list of email addresses or even a spreadsheet; the system will automatically "extract" any email addresses from the text pasted into the system. This means our system now provides X ways to invite members... our goal is to make is as simple as possible, yet still provide all the layers of accountability that we need.
Here's a screenshot of our "invite" page within the Group Management system.
As you can see, there are 4 ways listed here to invite guests:
- Social Media: Easily share links via Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus
- Direct Link: A direct link that can be included in promotional materials or other media created by the group leader
- Email Invite: A bulk email sent to group members' parents.
- QR Code: A nice little graphic that can be included in promo materials that will quickly take many smartphones or tablets to the group's landing page.
- It's not listed here because we're not completely done with it yet, but we also offer post cards with a link to the group's page as well as a personal invitation from the group leader. Contact us for more information about these.
All in all, joining a group is a pretty simple process. We believe (and are seeing) that many parents TOTALLY "get it" once they catch a glimpse of the features that ME2U offer that add real VALUE to their families lives.