Mark McWhirter

Earlier this summer, on behalf of my employer I project managed three (and a half) Pride events in London, Leeds, Belfast and Manchester. We had about 180 employees all wanting to be on top of our bus, and this was a huge undertaking. 

Email is great. You can get loads of details into an email which people can refer back to, but it’s falls TL;dr for most people. Some accepted the calendar invite, and then forgot all about it. 

I think SMS is great though, it’s something that I personally feel I can’t ignore. That little red dot in the corner of the message app icon really upsets me. It’s similar to my OCD on Snapchat where I have to see all the stories or I feel incomplete. 

There was no better way for communicating with our attendees that sending out an SMS. It forced them to know the latest details (like in Manchester when we met somewhere that we hadn’t initially planned to meet) and letting 50 people know that would be difficult if it wasn’t for SMS.