BCfm are a community Radio station based in Bristol UK and serve the entire community with a reach of approximately 250,000 people – mainly those not served by existing stations and those on lower incomes.
They wanted to enable local people to contact them to express their views, enter competitions and give local community information.
BCfm set up a keyword with the name of their station on 60777, and let listeners know about it during radio broadcasts, encouraging them to text in and interact with the show by entering competitions, requesting songs and contributing community information. As messages to Textlocal’s short codes are charged at the standard network rate, it’s a low cost way for listeners to send their thoughts in to the station. The radio station receives notification of incoming messages in an email, so it’s quick and easy to find and respond to them.
BCfm set up an auto response on their keyword, so that whenever someone texts in to the station they’ll receive a friendly message in reply, which reassures listeners that their messages have been received. A link to the website is also included in BCfm’s autoreply, helping to promote the website and drive online traffic.
BCfm have seen a 300% increase in listener interaction since using an SMS short code rather than a traditional 11 digit mobile number.
It was really easy to set up and customer support has been really quick and effective. Anyone needing a short text code should try Textlocal.
—BCfm
