You can either follow the step-by-step guide below or scroll to the bottom of this page to watch the recorded video training (click here).
This article will walk you through how to collect a contact's first and last name by prompting them to reply via text—and have that information automatically update their contact record. This is especially useful when your contacts come in without names, and you want to personalize future communications.
✅ Prerequisites
The user sending the text must have texting enabled as part of their user account.
You should already be familiar with creating a Series (learn about Series here) and using Text Templates (learn about Texting here).
1. Create a Text Template With Name Capture Enabled
Video timestamp: 1:08 – 3:17
Go to the Communication tab.
Hover over Text and click on Templates.
Click Create New Template or edit an existing one.
In the message body, clearly ask the contact to reply with their first and last name only. For example:
“Hi! To help us greet you properly, please reply to this message with your first and last name (just your name, please).”Toggle "Enable name capture on reply" to ON.
(Optional) Add a success message that will automatically be sent after they reply with their name (e.g., “Thanks! Got it.”).
Save the template.
2. Set Up a Series That Uses Your Name Capture Template
Video timestamp: 3:17 – 4:30
Go to the Communication tab.
Click on Series.
Either create a new Series or edit an existing one.
Add a step with the "Send Text" action.
Choose the text template you created with name capture enabled.
Save the Series.
3. Launch the Series to a Contact With No Name
Video timestamp: 4:30 – 5:52
Go to a contact record that has a phone number but no first or last name.
Click the More dropdown in the top-right of the contact record.
Choose Launch Series.
Select the Series with your name capture step.
Click Preview Series, then Start Series.
The contact will receive your message, and if they reply with their name, their contact record will be automatically updated.
The success message (if configured) will be sent to them as confirmation.
Watch the Full Video
Want to see it all in action? You can watch the full recorded training session below:
Transcript
Transcript
0:00 Today we're going to talk about name capture via text as a part of a series.
0:11 So what does that mean? It means this allows you to send a series that includes a step in that series, that is a text, that asks people for their name, and then it can have them reply to that message and update their contact record for you, assuming that the contact record doesn't have any first or last name in it. It'll update the record giving you their name, all automatically and seamlessly. And it's actually really pretty easy to do, you just do need to make sure that any user who's going to be doing this has a text subscription as a part of their user account.
0:56 So, let's take a look at how you can do this. So, if you're using series already, this is going to be really easy.
1:08 All you need to do is just have a step in the series that's going to be a text that explains to the recipient exactly what is happening.
1:16 So we're gonna go straight here to text templates and then after this we'll take a look at how this all fits into a series and then send an example series as well.
1:26 So, you get to your text templates under the communication tab underneath the drop down for text and then you click on templates.
1:35 So we have an example text template right here that in the name has name capture just to make it really clear what is going on here.
1:46 Now in the message of the text template that's going to be going out, you want to kind of handhold people through the process here.
1:56 So in this example, we're saying, you know, welcome, welcome to business name to help us to better greet you please respond to this text with your first and last name.
2:08 And then in parentheses it says, just your name, please. So they can in fact just reply with say like their first name and this will work exactly the same or of course they can send their first and last as well.
2:22 And I definitely recommend And including in here a suggestion to the, or an instruction to the recipient telling them to only include their name because if they include any other stuff that could throw things off a little bit.
2:38 Now The key thing right here is using this toggle that says enable name capture on reply. So make sure you turn that on.
2:48 We've got a couple of additional instructions right here as well. And then at the bottom you can optionally draft a message that will automatically be sent to the recipient after they've successfully completed this step of replying with their name.
3:08 So, a little success message that you can throw in there just so that you're keeping them in the loop every step of the way.
3:17 All right, so now we're going over to our example series that is going to be doing this. So, we're going to go right down over here, still in the communication tab.
3:29 We're going to click on series. And then we got our example series right here.
3:41 Let's click on that. And then right here we can see that we're just simply using a step right here that says send text under the step action and then we've selected our text file.
4:00 And text template right here that's going to be used for the name capture. So, we're just simply telling the system we're going to be using that particular text template that will, uh, be used for updating a contact's name.
4:15 So, let's see this in action right here. Jumping over, we've got a, an example contact right here that has an associated phone number with it, but it doesn't have any first or last names.
4:30 So let's fix that by sending this name capture series to this contact. So looking at the contact record, by the way you can launch this on your phone.
4:40 Um, this series in any number of ways, but since we're looking at a contact record, let's use the simplest way from a contact record.
4:49 So that would be up here, uh, use clicking on the more dropdown, got launch series from that dropdown, and we are going to select our series that has the name capture, click on the preview series and let's start that series right now to this contact.
5:17 All right I have received that text text and I am responding to it. There we go. We can see the notification and actually right here we can even see that our system has already updated the name.
5:32 I'm going to refresh this page and there we go. This contact now has a first and last name. We can see the success message has been sent to the contact and the series right down here is still in progress.
5:52 So that's about it. As you can see it's really pretty easy to use NameCapture as a part of a series to collect the first message.
6:00 First and last name information from your contacts. Thank you so much.