Frequently Asked Questions
What is GroundSource?
How does it work?
Who owns the data?
Why did you build with SMS / mobile messaging?
How do I get set up with a phone number?
What is a short code and how can I use one with GroundSource?
Do you support integration with FB Messenger and other chat apps?
What are some of the best ways to get people to text into a phone number?
Does GroundSource integrate with Slack and other enterprise platforms?
Are you GDPR compliant?
What are my data export options?
Do you support voice mails / memos?
GroundSource is a platform newsrooms and community organizations use to build and scale two-way relationships with audiences and communities via mobile messaging and voice. It’s also a service that helps those organizations imagine and implement new ways to reach communities, build trust, and becoming more responsive to their constituents’ needs and interests. GroundSource is in service at dozens of newsrooms, civic organizations, and non-profits across the U.S. and around the world.
When you first signup with GroundSource, you'll get a unique phone number that sources will use to contact you. It’s easy to import a list of sources if you already have one. Otherwise, share your number and invite your community to get in touch by texting or messaging a keyword, like HELLO. You pre-build conversations that you can start by texting or messaging your sources. Or your community can use a keyword to launch those conversations.
GroundSource accommodates your need for gathering specific information with those pre-built conversations while still giving you an open channel of communication with your community with one-on-one texting or messaging. You can gather insight and perspective for a story by asking your community probing questions. And you can keep your ear to the ground by encouraging people to send a quick message whenever something's on their mind.
We know that one of the most powerful things a person can give is their story. We make it easy to send replies and follow-ups to those stories, ensuring that your audience stays engaged by feeling heard.
As your community interacts with you, GroundSource can automatically build detailed profiles for each of your sources by occasionally asking them demographic questions. We tag and organize your audience as they interact with specific questions and topics, allowing for easy follow-ups and advanced segmentation.
There are a few ways to answer this. When it comes to the personal information, including phone numbers and demographics of your sources, you do. You can request that information be downloaded, shared with you, and deleted from our servers at any time.
We reserve the right to analyze and monitor the aggregate data on the platform, including the questions you’re asking and the answers people are sharing. That’s both to ensure the smooth functioning of the platform and to better understand what kinds of interactions yield the most valuable responses.
For a much more detailed consideration, please read our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
SMS has been around for more than 25 years, but most organizations have no way for their constituents to text them. That limitation made sense 10 years ago, as texting was still not a widely accepted way to communicate. But that’s changed.
Today, many people now prefer texts to calls. And people increasingly expect to text and message with companies, not just friends. That’s good for companies. Texts have a 98 percent open rate. They are more intimate and personal than emails. And texting is ubiquitous, letting you reach under-served and under-heard audiences and communities.
We think texting is one of the most engaging — and underutilized — channels for organizations to communicate with and listen to communities.
Setting up a phone number is part of the onboarding process. We’ll help you choose a local phone number for inbound text, and a toll free number for outbound texting. Using toll free numbers allows you to text at scale, with a send rate of at least 40 msgs / second for regular SMS, and around 2 msgs / second for MMS (multimedia messaging).
We’ll need to work with you to acquire a number, drop us an email at info@groundsource.co or join our Slack community.
Yes! With a little setup, you can communicate through Facebook Messenger just like you do via SMS.
As for other chat apps, we can integrate with any chat app that has an open API. WhatsApp is not among those.
ONLINE SIGNUP FORMS: One of the best ways to build your list of texters is to embed a signup form on your website, like this one from GroundSource customer Mississippi Today. You can easily build one of these with code on your team settings page.
EVENTS: There’s nothing like having a captive audience to convert people into texters. Our clients have consistently had success projecting a phone number on a screen, or on a big poster, in front of an audience, asking them to take out their cell phones and text in a keyword to a phone number.
BROADCAST: If you have large on-air audience, broadcast the keywords over TV or radio. Make sure your call to action is specific (“Sign up for our daily news alerts by texting HELLO to (xxx) xxx-xxxx;” “Get weekly updates from our education team by texting EDUCATION to (xxx) xxx-xxxx”, etc.
PRINTED MATERIALS: Flyers and posters have worked for a few of our clients but as a general rule, they’re not very effective at driving signups UNLESS they are urgent, or have a specific incentive.
Yes! We have some simple instructions for setting up Slack integrations, so you can read all of the responses to your conversations where your company already operates. We’re working on allowing you to respond and tag responses from Slack, too!
As for other integrations, we have a very flexible API that enables all kinds of integrations. Get in touch with us at info@groundsource.co to discuss.
We are GDPR and CCPA compliant. Sources (your contacts) can request to have their information deleted forever, please forward all such requests to info@groundsource.co. We put privacy and control over your data at the heart of our promise to our customers and their communities.
All of responses to conversations can be downloaded as a CSV. You can also export all of your sources’ phone numbers, the last SMS delivery status, the number of messages you have sent them, and other data points to help you monitor the health of your relationship with your community.
Yes, we do! When people call your 10-digit number, they can get automated messages prompting them to respond to choose-one questions by using their keypad and to open-ended questions by leaving a voicemail. You can record your own questions and messages and upload them using the “Upload MP3” button in the conversation builder.