MailChimp Gather introduced, SMS for events

One of MailChimp’s latest introductions has been the MailChimp Gather app: it’s meant as a means of communcating with event attendees during an event.
Ben Chestnut of MailChimp starts out his blog post that email is a great way to communicate with attendees before and after the event, but less so during an event. The app is launching early January: you can sign up to be notified of the launch at the MailChimp Gather app webpage here.
The idea behind MailChimp Gather is as an SMS alert tool during events. The given example is when a certain speaker is stuck in traffic: when you want to alert event attendees of the fact, email is not sufficient enough as a communications channel when it comes to speed: SMS is faster, more direct.
Here’s what the setup of an event looks like on the iPhone:
 

 
The setup includes selecting the MailChimp list which you want to send the invitation to, the name of the event and an expiration date: this last part affects the date when phone numbers will be removed from MailChimp Gather.
After the event creation, the app lets you create a sign up form:
 

This sign up form allows you to give a title to the event sign up, as well as a description.
Finally, the sign up form will look like this for attendees:

 
Sending a text message to the event attendees who subscribed is very straightforward through the app, and works more or less the same as normal texting. Also, the app is intended for use by the event hosts, not the event attendees: all they need to do is fill in an email address, their phone number and their first / last name: from then it’s all systems go.
For more information, read the blogpost on the MailChimp blog here.
 
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