Whether you have been using Automated Care Messaging for months and want to create messages outside the pre-loaded templates, or whether you’re new to ACM and are about to write your first message to your community; here are some tips and tricks to ensure your community receives (and reads!) the important information you send them.
1. Keep It Short
We all get a lot of notifications these days. Putting the pertinent information at the top of your message ensuring it is received. Any good wishes or non-essential updates should be saved for the end.
Additionally, you only need to type the main content into your message as the boilerplate intro (This is a message from Valleyfield Continuing Care…) and the Call To Action at the end (press 1) are automatically included in any message you send.
2. Know Your Medium
While ACM has a 5,000 character maximum, it is not recommended you use that many characters for voice and text messages. Why? That means a very long voicemail, or five to six text messages to get your message across. If you are sending major updates (like government mandates) frequently, these are best read in an e-mail. Ask resident family contacts to contact you to provide their email for better information delivery.
3. Know Your Audience
It’s likely you are sending out messages of various tones and subjects these days. To help guide your choice of words, think of what you would want to know if you were receiving this information about your loved one. What information is the most important? What words would reassure you? What types of follow up questions might you have for a care team?
By taking a moment to put yourself in your audience’s shoes you are more likely to think of important clarifications and details or to pre-empt predictable questions. Tell them WHAT is changing and HOW it impacts their loved ones.
4. Plain And Simple
Cliniconex only supports plain text. If you are copy and pasting information (such as new government regulations), right-click the content and select “paste as text”. If that option is not available to you, open the Notepad tool on your desktop and paste the information. Your content is now in plain text and you can copy and paste this into the Cliniconex ACM app.
Plain text also means you cannot use pictures or emoji’s 
5. Test, Test, Test
Once you have composed your message, send yourself a TEST message first. Reading or listening to the voice message lets you know if it’s too long, and can also catch spelling errors or odd line breaks you may have missed. Sending a test also allows you to read or hear the boilerplate introduction, your message content and the Call To Action as the one complete message your contacts will receive.
So there you have it! Now you can confidently compose effective messages, ensuring your entire care community will be informed and up to date with the latest news. Happy Writing!
