Customer Story
Challenge: Keep hundreds of attendees informed and engaged across multiple events
Solution: Use SMS to create personalized, interactive messaging experiences
Results: Dramatically improved event engagement and survey response rates
With a network of more than 10,000 technology advisors, Telarus is one of the largest privately held technology services distributors in the U.S. They’ve curated a portfolio of more than 350 trusted technology suppliers to help advisors and their customers scale their businesses.
Telarus strategically added Sinch to its supplier portfolio to help meet the rising demand for digital customer communication solutions, such as messaging, SIP trunking, Microsoft Operator Connect, and long-distance services.
But soon after partnering with Sinch, Telarus spotted an opportunity to use their solutions for one of its challenges: event communications.
During a typical event, the team needs to send time-sensitive updates, like session reminders, venue changes, and parking instructions.
For their largest annual event, Partner Summit, this means coordinating communications for more than 1,800 attendees across numerous sessions and locations.
Telarus’s team found that on-the-go attendees missed important email updates or forgot about events entirely.
But there’s one communication channel that pops up on attendees’ phones almost immediately — SMS.
“We wanted to see the best attendance and outcomes for our events,” said Bailee Reyes, Event Manager at Telarus. “Texting is one of the best ways that we can ensure that people are seeing the information that they need.”
Telarus began using Sinch’s MessageMedia platform to send text message updates to event attendees.
“We were looking for something that would be easy to use, with the ability to have multiple logins since you don’t always have just one person using it,” said Connie Strouse, Vice President of Events and Field Marketing at Telarus. “Our team needs to be able to quickly load up texts and schedule them, plus import and export information easily.”
They use Sinch MessageMedia to reach attendees:
But it’s not just about getting information out — it’s about building excitement and a sense of community.
“Texting lets us be professional with a dash of fun,” Bailee said. “We can make the texts feel more personable with emojis and adding attendees’ first names.”
As an added bonus, Sinch MessageMedia’s AI feature helps the team craft more effective messages when they’re short on time. They can list out important details they want to include, and the AI text message composer enhances the message.
Telarus is so confident in their choice of Sinch’s MessageMedia platform that they end most text campaigns with “Powered by Sinch.” That way, technology advisors will experience the solution firsthand and recommend it to their customers.
Since using MessageMedia for their event communications, the Telarus team has seen significant improvements in attendee engagement and participation. They can now manage attrition more effectively by sending reminders 48 and 24 hours before events.
“We’ve seen noticeable improvements in attendance because we’re reminding people in advance,” Connie said. “People often reply confirming they’ll be there, which helps us stay engaged with them and ensures they remember they registered for the event.”
The impact has been particularly noticeable in their survey response rates. When Telarus held tech summits in Irvine and Florida in late 2024, they achieved their highest-ever survey response rates for events of that scale.
“We had great success using Sinch to enhance our recent Telarus Partner Summit,” Richard Murray, Chief Commercial Officer at Telarus. “We’re excited to continue using the platform for future events. Their MessageMedia platform is a game changer.”
Richard recommends that all of Telarus’s technology advisors explore Sinch’s messaging solutions — not just for events, but for marketing campaigns, alerts, appointment reminders, billing and payment notifications, and more.