One of the biggest challenges any team faces is producing effective communication and getting it to your legion of athletes, parents, volunteers, and coaches at the right time effectively and efficiently. 

 

Here at TeamUnify, we have been helping teams with communication for years, with a few amazing tools that help thousands of teams. Some you know intimately, others you may want to begin using, but in all these are powerful methods that can really help your team be great communicators.

 

One of the great advantages of running your team communication through the TeamUnify platform is that your families can update their contact information themselves. Either through your annual/seasonal registration or whenever they log in, eliminating the need for you to do it. This includes both email addresses and cell numbers for SMS texting.

 

Let's take a quick look into the different communication systems within your TU SwimOffice site and our mobile app, OnDeck.

 

Email

Everyone likes to stay in the loop. Naturally both SwimOffice and OnDeck give you email ability throughout their various modules. Want to notify people of an upcoming meet, volunteer job opportunities, or upcoming registration? Done. Send a PDF flyer? No problem.

TeamUnify goes beyond that by allowing you to target emails to specific groups. Email just those in the gold roster at the South location, or accounts with a balance who do not have a credit card on file. You can even email kids and it will CC their parents on the message. And if there is more than one address in an account, it will CC all those as well.

 

Even better, the Email Center in SwimOffice allows you to see who has and hasn’t opened the emails you and other admins have sent. The email capabilities of TeamUnify are taking team communication to the next level.

 

SMS Texting

With today's growing usage of smart phones, being able to send SMS messages (text messages) is a must. Parents and kids simply add one or more SMS numbers to their account, then tap a verification text to ensure deliverability. Then you can send short messages to both parents and athletes (also CCing parents) with that same ability to target groups.

 

OnDeck also allows you to define canned messages, such as “Gold practice canceled,” or pull one from our predefined list, then send one at the tap of a button to one account or many. Making text communication a breeze.

 

Push Notifications

OnDeck gives you one additional avenue to message other OnDeck users called push notifications. Choose this method when you want to send a general notification or alert and it will pop up a message on the user’s phone, even if they aren’t using OnDeck at the time.

 

If you need families to declare for a meet, cancel a practice, or send out volunteer job sign up notifications, OnDeck's push notification feature is an extremely powerful and simple tool that makes communication to parents a breeze.

 

News

Do you have team updates that you want to live in a visible feed? Team News is your answer. An easy way to add team photos, updates, news items and voice notes to a ongoing feed that lives on your Team website and in OnDeck.

Even better, you can push these updates to your team's social channels like Facebook! A simple way to keep your families and the general public up to date on team news.

 

In The End

OnDeck and SwimOffice offer a powerful set of tools to build strong communication with your team. These tools are integrated through your team's billing, meet entries, account/member admin, and volunteer administration to name a few.

 

TeamUnify also understands that you don't always want to compose messages. We have built in the ability to automatically send billing receipts, expiring credit card alerts, volunteer job reminders, and meet entry reminders. Helping you to be the most effective administrator possible.

 

What is even better, inside the OnDeck application you can send your messaging through multiple channels (email, text, push) all at the same time, making sure your important communication gets to your members.

 

Don't wait to begin using TeamUnify's powerful communication suite. If you are not a TeamUnify customer yet, come see a demo today to learn about all the benefits of the system. If you are already a TeamUnify customer check out our knowledge base articles on communication using TeamUnify.

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