How can I set up an SMS Relay on BigMarker?

Combine the predictability of an evergreen webinar and the interactivity of a live session with SMS relays.

When an SMS relay is active, each chat message and Q&A question submitted by webinar attendees is sent to the host via an SMS text message (as shown below). Hosts reply to the chat message from their phone by replying to the text message. This way, they can field questions without having to join the webinar.

Note: Remember to include the provided string of code before each reply. This ensures that your reply is directed to the right webinar room

New as of June 2023: You can now set up email notifications for Q&A.

This reply appears in the webinar room chat just as any other message sent from guests who are the webinar room would (see below). This responsiveness facilitates more meaningful conversations and more realistically simulates live events.

Now that you've seen how SMS relays create more interactive evergreen webinar experiences, learn how to set up an SMS relay for your BigMarker webinars below:

How to Set Up an SMS Relay on BigMarker

1. Log into your webinar and select the Manage Webinar tab.

2. Stay in the Manage Webinar tab. On the left-hand menu of this tab, select Push Notifications.

3. Under SMS Notifications, select Enable SMS Relay.

4. Under Mobile Phone Number, enter the phone number of the person who will be answering incoming questions from webinar participants. (Note that this feature is only available for American nine-digit phone numbers with +1 international area codes.)

All Q&A questions and chat messages will be sent via text messages to this phone number. Hosts can reply to each question or chat by replying to the corresponding text message.

These replies will appear directly underneath the original message or Q&A question in the webinar's chat. These replies will look virtually identical to messages submitted by people who are logged into the webinar room.

In the next two steps, you'll create a BigMarker "profile" for your host, so that this person's name and photo appear alongside their messages in the webinar chat, just like any other participant's name/photo would.

Under Who Should Replies Come From, upload a profile image for the person answering user questions (recommended image size: 200x200). Under Full Name, enter this person's full name.

Click Save to complete.

How to set up Email Notifications for Q&A

A webinar admin is now able to set an email address(es) to receive notifications when a question is submitted to a webinar. This is especially useful for Evergreen webinars which are always open but don't have a presenter or admin in the room at all times. Email notifications would allow the presenters and admins to interact with their attendees in real time without having to be on-platform.

Setting up email notifications is easy:

1. On your Manage Webinar page, select Push Notifications from the lefthand navigation menu. On this screen, you'll see that you have 3 options for admin notifications: SMS, Slack, and, most recently, email. When one of the notification options is enabled, you'll be notified via your selected channel if a question has been submitted.

To enable email notifications, you'll select Enable Email Relay, then select On.

2. Once you've enabled email notifications, you'll be able to set who should receive the email notifications. This is a dropdown menu, which will display all presenter emails in the webinar to choose from. You can select more than one to receive the email notifications. If this space is not filled in, the notification email will be sent to the person who created the webinar.

Replying to the email directly will answer the question which was asked in the live room.

Note: Only the first 100 chats will receive email notifications.