We're so glad you're here!
At Clearstream, we're a product-focused team who is passionate about helping the local church (that's you!) connect with their people. Our powerful texting and email software was built to do just that.
Send mass texts and have two-way conversations with your members, schedule follow-up workflows for visitors, send emails, take live polls, and more — all from our intuitive web and mobile apps.
This guide serves as a springboard to help you get started with Clearstream. But if you don't have an account yet, you can sign up here.
Choosing your number
With Clearstream, you have a 10-digit local phone number for each account and subaccount you create. This number is unique to your account and will be used for texting your church.
You'll need to choose your number and complete your registration (see below) before you can start texting. You can do so by logging in to your Clearstream account and clicking Choose Number in the banner at the top of your account.
Submitting your carrier registration
Wireless carriers (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) require that you register your phone number before sending texts, but don't sweat it, it's easy. After you pick your number just click Register at the top of your account. Once approved, we'll email you, and you can start sending texts. 🎉
💡 If you're a new user on an existing account, this may already be complete.
Adding contacts and growing your lists
We refer to contacts as subscribers, and subscribers are stored in lists. There are four primary ways to add subscribers to your account:
CSV import: Import numbers using an Excel file. Just make sure you already have permission to text every contact on your list.
Integrations: If your church uses Planning Center, Rock RMS, Church Community Builder/Pushpay, or Breeze, you can easily sync your existing contacts into Clearstream.
Keywords: People can add themselves to a list by texting a keyword to your church's number.
Forms: People can sign up through a form on your website (think an email or newsletter sign-up form, but for texting).
You can add your subscribers to lists to easily keep in touch with your people and send out mass texts to different groups or ministries within your church. For example, you could create a list for first-time guests, youth group students, or women's ministry.
Creating a message
Once you have contacts in your account, you're ready to send a message. You can message an entire list, multiple lists, or just one person. Whether you're sending a message to 50 or 50k people, we make it simple.
Click the Messages page on the left menu > Create Message > Type your message > Select your recipients > Choose whether to Send now or Send later > Preview Message > Send Now.
Once you send a message, you'll see real-time metrics showing how many people are receiving your text, opting out, and replying. You can view and reply to any incoming responses in your inbox, which contains all of your individual conversations with people.
Keywords & Workflows
A keyword (Text CONNECT to 775-347-7333) is a word people text to your number in order to join a list and receive a series of automated messages, known as a workflow. Many churches use keywords to follow up with first-time guests. You can invite them to text a keyword (like NEW or WELCOME) to receive a virtual connect card, get more information, or even send in a prayer request.
Following up with visitors is the most common way churches use keywords, but they can also be used to register for events, follow up on new salvations, share giving options, or send out information about small groups. Click the following links to learn how to create a keyword or automated workflow.
Subaccounts
Subaccounts let you create separate accounts under your main account. This is very helpful if you have different ministries that want to use Clearstream, but you want separation between each department (i.e. youth group, prayer ministry, downtown campus). Each subaccount has its own inbox, texting number, contacts, keywords, and integrations. And you can have unlimited people (users) managing each subaccount (and your main account, too!).
You can add a subaccount in your main account by going to your Settings > Subaccounts > Create Subaccount. Your Clearstream plan will have a set number of subaccounts. If you need more, you can add additional subaccounts for $20/mo per subaccount.
Integrations
If your church uses a Church Management Software (ChMS), Clearstream integrates with several of them directly. These integrations automatically push subscribers who fill out a digital connect card into your ChMS and create a new profile for each person. You can set up an integration from the Integrations page in your Clearstream account's left menu.
Planning Center: You can sync People lists directly into Clearstream and even add a person to one of your Planning Center Workflows.
Rock RMS: If you’re texting inside of Rock, we replace Twilio as the SMS transport and give you more functionality and faster throughput. If you’re texting inside of Clearstream, our Rock integration syncs Rock groups and data views directly into Clearstream so you can text them. You can also add them to a Rock Group or workflow.
Church Community Builder (CCB): You can sync CCB Groups and Saved Searches directly into Clearstream to text them. You can also add people to a CCB Process Queue.
Breeze: You can sync Breeze Tags directly into Clearstream to text them. If a person texts in who already has a Breeze profile, you can automatically retrieve their profile data and sync it into Clearstream.
Slack: You can manage your Clearstream inbox from Slack. Incoming texts will automatically go into your Slack channel, where you can view them and easily reply.
Simple Donation: Use this integration to enable text giving on your Clearstream numbers.
Metrics & Analytics
Once you start using your account, you'll see helpful metrics in a few different places. Go to the Subscribers page to see the number of opt-ins and opt-outs. On the Keywords and Messages pages, you can see how many keywords have been used and how many texts have been sent. You can change the date range for each of these graphs and even generate reports that show detailed data for mass texts, keywords, and workflows.
You can also have a weekly report sent each Monday morning at 9 am. Weekly reports show everything that happened in your Clearstream account over the past week. To enable weekly reports, go to Settings > Notifications > Click the toggle beside Weekly Report at the bottom of the page.
Mobile App
Lastly, we have an awesome app for iPhone and Android, making it easy to manage your Clearstream account on the go. Simply go to your app store, search for Clearstream, and download the app.
If you have questions as you're getting started, feel free to reach out. We're happy to help! 🙂