Text invites: how to send event invitations by text (with templates)

Text invites work best as a short message to people who already agreed to hear from you. Include the event, the date, one link or a reply-to-RSVP ask, and opt-out language, then follow up with one or two reminders and a thank-you. This guide covers the templates, the timing, the consent rules and the cost math for businesses, churches and organizations, using Ready campaigns as the worked example.

Email invites still have a place, but they compete with a crowded inbox. A text is short, gets read quickly, and makes RSVPs easy because people can reply "YES" without clicking anything. Texting also has two risks email doesn't: the carrier filtering that hits unregistered business traffic, and the TCPA exposure that comes from texting people who never opted in. Both are manageable if you set things up in the right order.

What makes text invites work (and what gets them ignored)

A good invite text answers four questions within roughly 160 characters: who is this, what's happening, when, and what do I do next.

• Identify yourself in the first words. "Grace Community Church:" or "Hartwell Dental:" so nobody has to guess.
• One action only. Either "Reply YES to RSVP" or a link to an RSVP page. Asking for both splits the response.
• Date and time spelled out. "Sat, Oct 12, 6 PM", not "this weekend."
• Opt-out language on the first message. "Reply STOP to opt out" is short and standard.
• Skip the emoji unless it earns its cost. One emoji switches the whole message to unicode encoding, and the per-segment limit falls from 160 characters to 70. More on the cost of that below.

What gets text invites ignored, or filtered, is the opposite: a generic sender, three links, ALL CAPS, and a URL shortener the carriers have seen in spam. If your messages are registered but still disappearing, our post on content-level filtering after campaign approval goes through the usual causes.

Invite templates you can copy

Swap in your own details. Each template stays under 160 GSM-7 characters with typical names and dates, so it bills as one segment. Check the character count after you fill in the brackets.

Business event invite (the "evite text message")

People who search "text evite" usually want this one: a digital invitation that works without an app.

[Business]: You're invited to our customer appreciation night, Thu Nov 7, 5-8 PM at [address]. Food's on us. Reply YES to RSVP. Reply STOP to opt out.

[Business]: Our fall open house is Sat Oct 19, 10 AM-2 PM. Demos, giveaways, and coffee. RSVP: [link]. Reply STOP to opt out.

Church invitation text message sample

Grace Community: Join us for our Fall Festival, Sun Oct 27 after the 10 AM service. Games and chili. Reply YES if you're coming! STOP to opt out.

Grace Community: Our new Wednesday small group starts Oct 9 at 7 PM in Room 4. All are welcome. Reply YES to save a seat. STOP to opt out.

Grace Community: Christmas Eve services are Dec 24 at 4 PM and 7 PM. Bring a friend! Details: [link]. STOP to opt out.

Workshop, class or nonprofit event

[Org]: Free first-time homebuyer workshop, Tue Nov 12, 6:30 PM at the library. Seats are limited. Reply YES to reserve yours. STOP to opt out.

One rule applies here if the event is a fundraiser or political. Under our acceptable use policy, donation appeals and texts to voters need Ready's written OK first. Email support@tryready.com before the first appeal and wait for our reply. Signing up and registering is not enough on its own for these.

RSVP-by-reply: how the flow works

"Reply YES to RSVP" gets more responses than a link because it takes one tap. Here is how it plays out on Ready:

1. Send the invite as a campaign to the contacts who opted in, sorted into a list or tag such as "Fall Festival invitees."
2. Replies land in the Inbox, one thread per contact. You'll see YES, NO, "can I bring my sister?" and the occasional question about parking.
3. Sort and tag the YES replies so the reminders only go to people who are coming. GoHighLevel users have the replies synced into each sub-account and can tag YES replies with a GHL workflow. Teams on the Ready app tag them from the inbox.
4. Answer the questions by hand. Ready's AI message writer can help you draft a reply, but Ready doesn't send AI replies on its own. For an invite, a person answering "is there parking?" is the right call anyway.

STOP is handled automatically. Inbound STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE replies are honored, and the opt-out applies across all your campaigns, so that contact won't get the reminder or next month's invite.

One cost detail to plan for: replies are billed like a sent text, at the per-segment rate plus the carrier fee. A 300-person invite that gets 120 one-word replies adds 120 segments to the bill.

Reminder timing that doesn't annoy people

Send fewer messages than you think you need. This schedule works for most events:

That's three to five texts per person at most, and the people who said no or never replied get only one or two. Two other points on timing:

• Send during waking hours. A Tuesday or Wednesday late morning is a safe default for invites. Our post on the best time to send SMS marketing breaks this down by industry.
• Quiet hours are enforced for you. If a scheduled send would reach someone outside permitted local hours, Ready holds it and sends it later, and you're only charged when it actually goes out. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one, scheduled or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent. Still, schedule with intent. A day-before reminder landing at 9 AM reads better than one sent at 8:59 PM.

Reminders for a single event are a lot like appointment reminders. If you also send those, appointment reminder SMS templates and timing has more wording to borrow.

Reminder templates

Grace Community: See you tomorrow at the Fall Festival, right after the 10 AM service! Parking is in the north lot.

[Business]: Reminder: customer appreciation night is tomorrow, 5-8 PM at [address]. Can't make it? Just reply and let us know.

Thank you for attending: follow-up texts

The thank-you is the message most organizers skip, and it's the easiest one to get a reply to. Keep it short and give people one thing to do.

[Business]: Thank you for attending last night! Here are the photos and the promo code we mentioned: [link].

Grace Community: Thank you for coming to the Fall Festival! We'd love to see you Sunday at 10 AM. Reply with any prayer requests anytime.

[Org]: Thanks for attending the homebuyer workshop. The slides are here: [link]. Reply with any questions and we'll get back to you.

Send it only to people who came. Thanking someone who RSVP'd yes and didn't show is awkward. A separate "sorry we missed you" text works better for them, if you send anything at all.

Consent: who can be on your invite list

This is where event texting goes wrong most often. The rule is simple: text people who gave you their number and agreed to receive texts from you.

Usually fine:

• Members who checked a "text me updates" box on a connect card or signup form
• Customers who opted in to texts at checkout or booking
• Past attendees who agreed to event texts when they registered
• People who texted your number first and asked to be kept in the loop

Not fine:

• A purchased or rented list
• A church directory or member roster that never asked about texting
• Numbers scraped from a website or copied from a sign-in sheet with no text consent

For cold outreach, use phone or mail, and save texting for people who said yes. TCPA damages run roughly $500 to $1,500 per text, so a 300-person invite to an unconsented list carries real exposure.

What Ready records and what you need to keep yourself:

• Your attestation, per send. Each campaign and API send records your opt-in attestation: who sent it, to how many people, and when. Through the API, that's the consent_attested field on POST /v1/messages or POST /v1/messages/bulk (up to 100 recipients per call). See the bulk messages docs.
• The per-contact consent record is yours to keep. Ready doesn't store when each recipient opted in, the wording they saw or the page URL. Keep that on your form or in your CRM. A keyword reply alone doesn't create one. (A contact who signs up on a Ready-hosted opt-in page is the exception: Ready stores that sign-up, with the time, IP address and exact wording, and support@tryready.com can send you a copy.)
• Optional scrubbing. The TCPA and DNC litigator scrub checks numbers against known TCPA-litigator and DNC-complainer lists. It costs $0.005 per contact when run standalone, or $0.003 extra per segment when it's switched on for an account. It reduces risk. It is not a substitute for consent, and compliance stays the sender's responsibility.

Registration and cost: the worked math

Carriers filter business texts sent on unregistered 10DLC numbers, so register before you send a real campaign. On Ready, brand and campaign registration happens in the app. There's no setup fee: you pay $25 at submit for the first month, then $25/mo for registration and $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, so register at least a week before your first invite goes out. For event invites to opted-in members, choose a use case that matches what you actually send. Picking the right campaign use case explains why that choice matters.

Sending runs $0.0075 per segment on the Standard rate, plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. That all-in figure excludes the optional compliance surcharge for scrubbing and landline validation ($0.003 per segment each, both off by default).

Worked example (assumptions: a 300-person opted-in list, plain-text messages under 160 characters, a 40% YES rate):

• Invite: 300 × 1 segment = 300 segments
• RSVP replies: assume 150 replies total = 150 segments
• Day-before reminder to 120 YES replies = 120 segments
• Thank-you to an assumed 100 attendees = 100 segments
• Total: 670 segments × $0.0075 = $5.02, plus 670 × $0.0045 in carrier fees

Add one emoji and the math changes. A 150-character invite with a 🎉 becomes 3 unicode segments, so the invite alone grows from 300 segments to 900. The 10DLC cost breakdown covers the registration side in more detail.

On free texts: the first 20 texts are free, and they only apply to one-to-one sends. Campaigns are paid from the first text, and to send any text you need a card and a number ($2 a month, the first month charged when you get it). The free texts end as soon as a registration is paid for, so use them to test your wording on your own phone before you register.

The practical takeaway

Build the list from people who opted in and keep your own record of that consent. Register a week or more before the event. Send one clear invite with a single action, remind only the people who said yes, and thank the people who came. Leave out the emoji unless it's worth roughly three times the segments. If you want to try it, create an account, send your 20 free one-to-one texts to yourself and a few teammates to check the wording, then register and schedule the real invite.

FAQ

What should a text invite say?

Your organization's name, the event, the date and time, one action (reply YES or a single link) and "Reply STOP to opt out." Keep it under 160 characters so it bills as one segment.

Can a church send invitation texts to its whole member list?

Only to members who agreed to receive texts. A directory or roster doesn't count as consent. Add a texting opt-in to your connect card or signup form, and keep the record. Fundraising appeals need Ready's written OK first (email support@tryready.com).

How many reminders should I send before an event?

One or two: a day-before reminder, plus an optional morning-of note with logistics. Send reminders only to people who said yes. Non-responders get at most one follow-up invite.

Is a "text evite" different from a regular invite text?

Not really. "Evite text message" usually means a digital invitation delivered by text instead of email or paper. The same rules apply: consent, a clear sender, one action and opt-out language.

When should I send a thank you for attending text?

The same evening or the next morning, while the event is still fresh. Send it only to attendees, and include something useful, like photos, slides or a next date.