Impactive's texting features (Peer-to-Peer, Broadcast, and Automated) all allow users to send response scripts to contacts, to continue the conversation. Response scripts (also known as canned responses) are typically answers to frequently-asked questions, additional information to send to contacts who are interested in learning more, etc.
Response scripts are available for any kind of texting, and users can access them via their inboxes on either web or mobile:
Writing Response Scripts
Admins can write response scripts when they set up their texting actions:
The response script editor is the same as the initial script editor:
Scripts require a name; this name is particularly important for response scripts, because it's how users will know what a response script is for (ex. "More Info on Org" or "Early Voting Info"). Contacts will not see the script name, it's only for internal use by admins and users.
You can use dynamic variables to customize response scripts.
The script writer shows script type (SMS/MMS), script length in segments (for SMS) and character count.
Note that response scripts also incur billing charges, just like initial scripts; check out this article for more on budgeting for your texting actions.
There's no limit on the number of response scripts that you can create.
Remember, you can always duplicate actions and their scripts (Manage > Copy from the action's individual page) if you'd like to write a large set of response scripts once, and then re-use those in subsequent actions.
Advanced Response Script Options
Apply Tags and Custom Fields
Response scripts allow you to set tags and custom fields that should automatically be applied to the contact if a response script is sent. For example, take a response script for "Early Voting Info" - if a user sends that response script to a contact, it presumably indicates that the contact said they're going to vote early, so you may want to apply an early voting tag or custom field accordingly.
Automating tags and custom fields means that your users don't have to remember to apply certain tags and custom fields in addition to sending their response scripts.
Broadcast/Automated Texting Only: Auto-Trigger Response Script from Keyword
This feature is currently only available for Broadcast Texting and Automated Texting, not Peer-to-Peer Texting.
For Broadcast and Automated Texting, you can set up a response script to send automatically (not manually sent by a user) in response to a specific keyword sent by the contact:
Within the response script editor, designate a keyword that will trigger this response script. Keywords must be a single word (no spaces or hyphens); they are often expressed all in caps, like "RSVP" or "JOIN", but note that this feature is not case-sensitive.
To use this feature, you'll likely want to share the keyword with your broadcast/automated text recipients in the initial script. Here's one example of a back-and-forth:
Note how the contact was told in the initial script that they could respond with "RSVP"; upon doing so, they received an automated reply.
This automated-response feature means that you can set up a full "chatbot" for your contacts to interact with; you can create as many layers of keyword-automated response scripts as necessary, if you keep inviting contacts to respond with a new keyword in each subsequent response script. Each keyword must be unique.
Broadcast Texting Only: Store Contact's Reply to a Response Script
This feature is currently only available for Broadcast Texting, not Peer-to-Peer Texting or Automated Texting.
For Broadcast Texting, you can set up a response script to automatically collect a contact's reply to that response and store it as data on their contact record:
You can designate the destination of the data that the contact sends - either basic contact information (like ZIP code, etc.) or a custom field. Here's one example of a back-and-forth:
In this case, the response script was "I can help you find...", and "99019" would have been automatically stored as that contact's ZIP code in Impactive.