Event Text Message Templates: SMS Reminders, Updates and Alerts

Text messages are read quickly and almost always on a phone, which makes them right for a small set of messages: anything time-sensitive on the day, and anything someone needs while walking or driving. They are the wrong channel for long details, attachments or routine marketing, and every unnecessary text makes people likelier to opt out before the one that matters.

Most events use all three: email for the record, the app for people on site, and text for the few messages that cannot wait. Plan texts alongside your event reminder emails so each message has one job and nothing is said three times.

Two or three texts per event, plus changes, is a sensible ceiling for most audiences. If you also send app notifications, decide which channel carries each message so nobody gets the same alert twice.

Texting rules are stricter than email rules in many places, and penalties can be large. What follows is general background, not legal advice. Rules differ by country, by state and by the kind of message, so check with your SMS provider and your counsel before you start a texting program.

• In the US, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the wireless carriers' own rules govern business texting. Marketing texts generally need prior express written consent, and informational texts about an event someone registered for generally still need their consent
• Collect consent with its own unticked checkbox and clear wording. A phone number typed into a form, or printed on a badge, is not consent to be texted
• Say who will text, what kind of messages, roughly how often, that message and data rates may apply, and how to opt out
• Honor STOP and similar replies straight away, and answer HELP with who you are and how to reach you
• Keep a record of when and how each person agreed
• Avoid texting early in the morning or late at night in the recipient's time zone. US telemarketing rules have long limited contact to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time, and some states set narrower windows
• In the US, carriers expect businesses texting from ordinary 10-digit numbers to register their brand and use case, often called A2P 10DLC registration; your provider will guide you through it
• Outside the US, laws such as Canada's anti-spam legislation (CASL) and the electronic marketing and data protection rules in the UK and EU apply their own consent tests

Ask your SMS provider for the exact wording it recommends; providers often require specific disclosures before they approve a sending number. Your event registration form is the natural place to collect consent, as long as the box is optional and unticked.

A single SMS segment holds 160 characters from the standard GSM-7 character set. Add one emoji, a curly apostrophe pasted from a word processor or certain accented letters, and the whole message switches to Unicode encoding, where a segment holds only 70 characters. Longer messages are split into segments and rejoined on the phone, and providers usually bill per segment.

• Start with the event name and a colon, so the reader knows who is texting before they open it
• One message, one job: the time, the entrance, the change or the link
• Use straight quotes and apostrophes, and skip emoji unless you have checked the segment count
• Use a branded or provider short link rather than a long URL; generic public link shorteners are sometimes filtered by carriers
• Write times with the day and am or pm, such as Sat 9am, since a text may be read hours later
• Include STOP wording in the first message, and periodically after that as your provider advises

These templates assume the person agreed to texts. Most fit in a single segment once the bracketed fields are filled with typical values, but check the count in your SMS tool.

A confirmation text should point to the email, not replace it; our registration confirmation email guide covers what that email needs.

On the day, texts answer the questions people would otherwise ask at the door or by phone: where to park, which entrance, and what has moved.

When something changes, say what changed, what stays the same and what the reader should do. Send the correction to everyone who received the original message, and update the app and printed signs at the same time.

Emergency texts follow your event safety plan and the instructions of venue staff and emergency services. Prepare the wording in advance, agree who may send it, and test that the sending account works before the event. In an emergency, texts go out alongside public address announcements, staff instructions and app notifications, never instead of them.

Follow any emergency text with an email once the situation is settled. Our event cancellation email templates cover the full notice, and our crowd management guide covers moving people safely on site.

A single text the day after, with a short survey link, often gets answered by people who would never open the survey email. Keep the survey short enough to finish on a phone; our post-event survey template has questions to start from.

The next-year text is promotional. Send it only to people whose consent covers marketing messages, not just event updates. For the fuller follow-up, use our event follow up email templates.

• Texting everyone whose number you collected, rather than only the people who agreed to texts
• Leaving out the event name, so the text looks like spam from an unknown number
• Sending a bare link with no context, which looks like phishing
• Using emoji or pasted curly quotes that double the cost of every message
• Texting at 6 a.m. because the organizer's time zone is three hours ahead
• Sending the same message by text, app and email within minutes
• Continuing to text someone after they replied STOP
• Letting several staff send texts without one owner, so contradictory updates go out