Club/Team Chat for 199 Followers

Have you tried just Posting a message to your group?

I used to be involved in a large group at work and we announced events by using the Post feature for the group. 

Hi ​@BryanC 

My strava club size is a modest 650 athletes and growing.  The team size for an event such as Bike MS can rise up to close to 200 registrants from amongst the 650 or more athletes.  This number is also based on my affiliation with Trek Bikes Houston who hosts a Bike MS team of 150 participants annually.

To start, I utilize Strava Events to announce to all club members for event registration and participation.  Next, I’ll even create a post with a link to the Strava event to allow general commenting for Q&A purposes to gain interest since Strava events don’t allow commenting.

After club members register for an event, I create a message chat inviting all event registrants to message back and forth ongoing concerns up until the event to stay informed.

More importantly, I message necessary links for training and product sales as needed that I can’t do for posts.  And if I was able to do so it would create relative confusion and frustration with non-participating club members.

I attempted to manipulate a Strava challenge for message purposes amongst up to 199 athletes but the challenges don’t allow link posting.

Furthermore, I use chats to organize my weekly rides by keeping ride leads, marshals, and committed ride participants informed via message dialogue.  I have a chat for each group.  I can’t dialogue well back and forth with a select group with up to 199 club participants via posts alone.

GroupMe allows 5000 participants to chat.  I figured 199 would be a favorable ask considering you allow up to 199 athletes in Group Challenges.  

By the way, it would be nice to lists links in my club posts for club and business purposes but it would need to be approved for verification.  I did apply.  See club link below …

https://www.strava.com/clubs/hbreakerz

That’s a much larger group than we had.  
I think you’ll probably need to ask Strava support if they can advise you more.   I suspect they’ll say that Strava isn’t trying to be WhatsApp or similar. 

I don’t need Strava to be WhatsApp or GroupMe.  I just have the need to effectively communicate with my group of up to 199 athletes which is reasonably within Strava’s limits for club management.

As a club owner and admin, I shouldn’t not have to move across different platforms when I’m attempting to sell athletes on the convenience of solely using Strava. 

This is not an ask for a typical Strava user.  This is an ask for Strava club owners and admins.

By the way, I thought these posts were reviewed by Strava support?

I don’t work for Strava, I’m just trying to help you via the Community Hub.  
To the best of my knowledge putting a request into this hub does not automatically create a Strava support ticket thus my suggestion to you.