Most Arya Samaj or Vedic Institutions reach out to members through WhatsApp groups. However, they have the following limitations.
- Over a period of time, multiple whatsapp groups get created, with similar purposes. They end up having significant overlaps. Members may get duplicated in multiple whatsapp groups. Members may also get left out from being included in any of the related whatsapp groups.
- Messages related to other matters start coming in the group which will deviate the purpose for which the group was created.
- There is over dependence on the admin of these whatsapp groups. Adding new members, monitoring the chat on the Groups, ensuring the messages to be sent are sent timely etc., Maintaining and updating groups with new joinees may not happen at regular intervals. Besides, if the admin misses sending a message on the Group, there is no way to check centrally if the admin has skipped sending the message.
- Hence, to overcome these limitations, we find that organisations use whatsapp more systematically. For instance, when you book a flight ticket, you will find messages coming to you from the airline on whatsapp informing you of your travel details. In the same way, we are piloting the use of whatsapp for communication to the members of Arya Samaj.
The main features of this pilot are
- We have created a central database of numbers of members and guests. This database is linked to whatsapp. Now, our messages go through computers in the office directly to all or select numbers in our database.
- Through the program, we are able to track how many people have got the message.
- We can set rules to send reminders to numbers in the database automatically, e.g, birthday wishes, invitation to perform Yagna on special occasions, reminder for payment of fee etc.,
How can you pilot ?
- Share your database of contacts with phone numbers in excel. If you do not have it in excel, we can recommend someone who can type it for you in excel.
- Please share the messages you would like to send to them. These are of two kinds. Prachaar messages to everyone in the database (E.g., informing everyone of the functions in the Samaj) Rule based messages, i.e., sending someone a birthday wish on his / her birthday (the supporting data like the birthday should be in the database).
- We will send those messages and share with you a confirmation of the messages having been sent.
Click this link to fill up your Form of interest to roll out this initiative in your Arya Samaj
