Email or Text Message Invites

You can invite people from your address book by email or by text. Email works for anyone with an address. Texting has an extra requirement that catches most people out, so it is worth reading the section below before you try.

Adding contacts

  1. Open your sign-up and click Share.
  2. At the bottom of the share menu, choose Address Book.
  3. Click Add Contact, then paste a list of names and emails straight from Gmail, Outlook or a spreadsheet.
  4. Give the group a name if you want them tagged together.
  5. Select the people you want and choose Invite to an event.

Texting: a phone number is not permission

Having someone's phone number does not mean Lome can text them. This is the single most common reason a message you sent as a text arrives as an email instead.

Before anyone can be texted, they must have agreed to it. There are four ways that happens:

  • They ticked the box when they signed up.
  • They clicked the link in a "can we text you?" email you sent them.
  • They turned it on from the preferences link at the bottom of an email from you.
  • If they have a Lome account, they turned it on under Settings → Contact.

When you write a message, Lome shows you the real split before you send — how many will get a text and how many will get an email. Nobody without agreement is texted.

If most people are getting emails

Two things you can do from the message screen:

  • "Ask N people to turn on texts" — emails everyone who gave a phone number but has not agreed yet, with a one-click link. Expect some, not all, to say yes.
  • "I already have permission to text them" — if you collected these numbers yourself and already hold permission, you can say so. It applies to everyone who has signed up to any of your sign-ups, and it is recorded against your name, so only use it if it is true.

Other reasons a text will not send

  • US numbers only. Anything outside the United States will not send.
  • Ten digits. A number with too few or too many digits is skipped.
  • They replied STOP. That is permanent until they opt back in, and nothing a host does can override it.
  • Your plan. Texting is on Engage and above. On the free plan the option does not appear.

If an email invite does not arrive

  1. Check the address for typos and stray spaces.
  2. Ask them to look in spam or junk, and to add withlome.com to their safe senders.
  3. Check your results — the sharing section shows who it went to.
  4. If a real invitation still has not arrived, write to us with the form name and roughly when you sent it. We can look up what happened to that specific message.

Please do not keep re-sending. If the first one did not arrive the second usually will not either, and we would rather find out why.