How to send an SMS text to multiple recipients or contacts with Google Voice plus get a free Google Voice invite (supply limited!)

By TMC Admin on October 19th, 2009

I’m taking a break from the usual Talk Money Cafe routine to address some things about Google Voice. Plus, there’s a potentially free Google Voice invite in it for you (see the end of this blog post for more details). We live in the age of communication and, as you know, communication is an extremely valuable tool in our personal and business affairs.

People have been saying that Google Voice should have the ability to send SMS texts to multiple recipients at the same time. Until Google Voice comes out with this feature, I have discovered a temporary workaround for this. It might seem a little cumbersome, but it works nonetheless. You can send an SMS text to multiple recipients simultaneously using Google Voice!

Instructions on how to send an SMS text to multiple recipients or contacts with Google Voice:

1. First of all, after logging into your Google Voice account, make sure that you have the Forward SMS messages to my e-mail box checked. Go to Settings -> Voicemail & SMS tab -> SMS Forwarding section to find this. (See Google’s official post about this here: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/receive-and-reply-to-sms-messages-by.html)

2. Send an SMS text in Google Voice (not from your e-mail client) to your contacts that you would like to group together for future multiple texts … you could say something like: “Hey, please reply back to this text when you get a chance” or “Hey sweet thang, want to do some shopping at Victoria’s Secret later?” I don’t recommend using the second line heh … but say something that will at least get them to reply to your text.

3. When each contact replies to your text, you’ll get a notification in your e-mail inbox. You’ll notice a reply e-mail address … this is the same exact e-mail address you can use for future texts to this individual. This e-mail address contains a unique code for each individual and contains both your number and the other contact’s number.

As a quick hypothetical example, let’s say that my Google Voice number is: (424) 234-1363. Let’s say that the other contact’s number is (424) 555-1212, and he/she replies to my text. The e-mail address for me to reply to will be of the format: 14242341363.14245551212.{random sequence of letters, numbers, and characters here which are unique to each contact}@txt.voice.google.com

Let’s say that I have another contact whose number is (424) 555-1213, and he/she replies to my text. The e-mail address for me to reply to will be of the format: 14242341363.14245551213.{another random sequence of letters, numbers, and characters here which are unique to this contact}@txt.voice.google.com

4. To send an SMS text to multiple recipients or contacts simultaneously, simply compose an e-mail and send it to as many of these e-mail addresses as you wish to.

For example, in the To field (when composing an e-mail), you might separate these multiple e-mail addresses by commas: 14242341363.14245551212.AbC1234567@txt.voice.google.com, 14242341363.14245551213.DeF7654321@txt.voice.google.com, … etc.

That’s it. As I said, this might seem a little bit cumbersome, but this method of sending an SMS text to multiple contacts works with Google Voice. It’s obviously easier to send an SMS to multiple recipients without Google Voice heh … but I figured that I would outline my discovery just in case anyone is curious enough to try this.

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Ok, onto the part where you have a chance of getting a free Google Voice invite. The first two (2) individuals who completely follow all of the steps listed below will get a free Google Voice invite.

Note: As of October 22, 2009, all invites have been given away! Thank you for your participation.

1. Register at the Talk Money Cafe forum. [Click here to register an account for the forum.]

2. Leave a comment on this blog post stating the user name that you chose when registering an account for the Talk Money Cafe forum. [To comment on this blog post, visit this link: http://www.talkmoneycafe.com/?p=807#disqus_thread]

If you are the first or second person to complete the two steps listed above, then I will PM (private message) a Google Voice invitation link to you in the forum.

Categories: Technology
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BlessedAndFit

Good Morning I registered with user name blessedandfit. Thank you for this great information and I look forward to using Google Voice and your tips.
Regina

talkmoneycafe

Great - I just PMd you the invitation link in the forum.

Ok, one invite is left.

Ryan Elliott Turner

Just registered on the forum! Invite pleeeaseee

talkmoneycafe

I e-mailed you the Google Voice invite. Enjoy!

Ok, all invites have been given out as of October 22, 2009.

Wireworks

Great post! Very informative and helpful… I can see that you put a lot of hard work on your blog, I'm sure I'd visit here more often. Maybe, you want to come by my site too. It's mainly about Do it Yourself Credit Repair . I'm sure you'd find it useful. thanks!

talkmoneycafe

Thank you for your kind remarks. :)

Carl

Would love to know if you can generate that email address yourself. What are those random numbers and how are they generated?

talkmoneycafe

That's a great question - I don't know the exact algorithm that they use to generate the random sequence of characters after the two phone numbers.

Also, it should be noted that you can only reply to these e-mail addresses from the e-mail where your SMS texts are forwarded to. For example, if your SMS texts are forwarded to youremail@gmail.com, then you can only reply from youremail@gmail.com. You cannot go ahead and reply from another e-mail, such as yourotheremail@gmail.com, yourotheremail@yahoo.com, yourotheremail@hotmail.com, etc. (although, technically this might work with the "Send as" feature in Gmail ... I've never tried that before though ... and I don't want to confuse anyone any further haha).