The alternate message is a secondary auto responder message that you can choose to have returned to a person that texts into a keyword more than once. This is a great way to help prevent coupon fraud and multiple redemption, by one person, of a free offer.
Example
The Bagel Shop is giving away a free bagel to new text subscribers. When a customer texts the word Bagel to their phone number they will get an auto responder back:
What a great day! The customer is in the store, shows the message to get the free bagel and it on his merry way. Next week, he visits the same store and sees the sign again, “Another free bagel,” he thinks. So he texts the word Bagel to the number again. Only this time he gets back the alternate message:
The alternate message prevents the same person from repeatedly getting your coupon offer over and over.
Other uses
The alternate message can also be left blank so that if someone is texting in to a specific word repeatedly, possibly to try and increase the number of votes for a particular person or item, the system will check to see if the number is already in that group and will not return the auto responder every time – saving you a lot of wasted messages for multiple votes that wouldn’t have been counted anyway.
