Two-Way Texting | The next phase of enhanced Kicksite communications
We’re excited about this one and think you will be too, so we won’t bury the headline:
Two-Way Texting will be available in your Kicksite software starting Tuesday, December 9th, 2025!
Needless to say, this is a big update for Kicksite. While one-way texting has been available in the system since 2019, a lot has changed in the world of texting over the past few years, especially for businesses. Our current text messaging capabilities have provided plenty of utility, but we’re always listening to your feedback and ideas and saw two-way texting as an opportunity to deliver a much-needed (and requested!) feature to your toolset.
But, we certainly have not developed two-way texting in a vacuum. In fact, we’ve been gradually putting pieces in place to create a much more robust, comprehensive communications platform for Kicksite users.
Phase 1 – Prospects List
This effort really started with the August 2025 release of our uplifted Prospects List. We completely reimagined how this tool functions, including the addition of a drag-and-drop, Kanban style board. Hopefully you’ve already taken full advantage of the new Prospects List and know what it’s all about, but here’s a refresher on what that uplift included.
Phase 2 – Two-Way Texting
With this week’s introduction of Two-Way Texting, we add another powerful element to this Kicksite communications overhaul. Now you won’t just be sending a one-way message to a Prospect and keeping your fingers crossed. You’ll be able to kick off an entire conversation, in turn increasing their likelihood to maintain status as a Warm or Hot lead, and nurturing faster movement through your Lead Stages to convert into a trial or sign them up for a membership.
Phase 3 – Automations (Coming in 2026)
But it absolutely doesn’t end there. Weeks ago, we kicked off the first stage of a massive Automations uplift – another vital component of the improvements to communications within Kicksite. While we’ve had some basic automated message capabilities in Kicksite, we’ll be delivering a major expansion that will enable you to nurture prospects and manage your students on a whole new level.
All of these tools – the Prospects List, Two-Way Texting, and Automations – will work in tandem with one another to provide a modern, customizable, and forward-thinking communications platform for Kicksite users. Imagine a world where a Prospect enters your system from a Landing Page, triggers a series of automated messages to nurture them through your custom Lead Stages, and you’re delivered a push notification so you can monitor the text conversation and jump in to manually answer questions as needed. That world is becoming a reality.
Two-Way Texting Features
So what can you expect to find in your account?
- A new Conversations module that allows you to view and interact with all text conversations in a consolidated Inbox, as well as review your SMS Log and Usage Report
- Filters to view only Member, Prospect, or Contact Conversations
- An icon on Student and Prospect profiles that allows you to initiate a Conversation or respond to their individual text messages
- The ability to link (and unlink) Conversations to a Student or Prospect Profile
Why text communications matter
At this point it’s no secret that text messaging is one of the most powerful communication tools for a business. And it’s not just us saying that – the numbers don’t lie:
- Typical text message open rates sit at a whopping 98%. Compare this to email, which generally hovers around the 20-30% range
- 90% of text messages are read within 6 minutes
- Text message response rates are 45%, compared to 10% for email
- Text message click-through rates average 19-20%, while email CTR usually averages between 1-4%
Long story short? Marketing and communications sent via text message are almost guaranteed to be opened, will be opened fast, and are far more likely to get responses and clicks. While we’ll never encourage businesses to fully abandon email (value definitely still exists in email communications), there is a massive, data-backed opportunity with texting.
Questions you might have
Need guidance on how to use two-way texting?
We have resources ready to go!
