Efficient Communication: Exploring the Benefits of Bulk SMS for Seamless Interaction in the Education Industry

Bulk SMS messaging for educational institutions offers a seamless communication platform to communicate with your audience quickly and easily. It’s a cost-effective and efficient way to send your message to thousands of recipients and a very effective way to keep your audience informed on the latest news and events at your school, college, or university. In today’s digital age, educational institutions must leverage technology to innovate to ensure that they can interact effectively with their students, parents, and staff.

SMS messages have an astonishingly high read rate of 98%. Traditionally, texting has always been the most preferred mode of communication to get in touch with family and friends. But all that is changing now. Businesses are now leveraging the power of SMS texting to engage better with customers. So why should the education industry lag?

Bulk SMS Marketing for educational institutions is the most convenient and effective way to send event reminders, admission updates, news and announcements, and emergency information, instantly.

What is Bulk SMS Marketing

Bulk SMS marketing involves establishing a direct and personal connection with your audience.  They can be used for offering deals, updates, alerts, and reminders, and with a bit of automation, can also be used for customer support.

Bulk SMS messages are usually sent via messaging platforms that work in collaboration with cell phone network providers. Schools and colleges must require recipients to subscribe to their SMS messaging system to start receiving messages. 

In today's pandemic reality, with virtual classrooms and working from home becoming a norm, the number of students working while studying has risen, and the number of students with family responsibilities has also gone up. Consequently, it becomes a challenge for educational institutions to send important information to their students when they are mostly off campus. SMS texting can resolve this communication challenge easily by helping you to establish a direct and personal connection with them.

What is the Importance of Bulk SMS Messaging in Education?

Bulk SMS messaging allows schools, colleges, and universities to send text messages to thousands of individuals instantly. SMS messaging gives students, parents, and staff a personalized experience. With one-on-one interactions, you can make your students, parents, and staff feel valued fostering trust and helping to build stronger relationships with them.

Here’s a look at some key benefits of Bulk SMS for the education industry.

Advertise your institution’s services

Educational institutions can leverage Bulk SMS to promote upcoming events, convey program information, update the audience on changes to policies and regulations, and more.

With a high read rate, and the convenience of responding whenever convenient, Bulk SMS is the most cost-effective and efficient way to reach out to students and parents.

Inform parents of their child’s performance

Parents want to know how their child is doing at school, but because of their busy schedules, they may not have the bandwidth to personally attend every parent-teacher meeting.

With Bulk SMS for education, schools and colleges can send timely updates about grades, attendance records, upcoming exams, etc., directly to parents so they are always up to date about any important information related to their child’s education.

Updates on upcoming events, policies, and more

With Bulk SMS, educational institutions can send information about upcoming events such as annual days, fests, sports days or parent-teacher meets. Instant delivery and a high read rate of SMS messages mean students and parents don’t miss out on any important event.

Collect parent feedback

With Bulk SMS, educational institutions can send links to feedback forms to parents to collect data about their child’s performance on a regular basis. This will help institutions to identify students who need extra assistance and also identify the areas where they can improve.

How the Education Industry can use bulk SMS services

Now that we have looked at the benefits of Bulk SMS in education, let’s take a look at how they can be put into practice.

Promote Admissions

One of the best ways to promote your admission season is by using Bulk SMS messaging. Colleges and universities can send text messages to applicants to notify them of the process, guidelines, deadlines, and important dates. With personalized messages tailored to students based on the courses they have applied to, you can improve engagement and boost admissions.

Reduce the communication gap between your institute and parents

With Bulk SMS messaging for education, you can remind parents about important events. You can also send them emergency alerts for any unexpected events like a medical emergency or a disciplinary procedure. In addition, Bulk SMS messaging can also be used for reminders on dues, deadlines, and more.

For key events such as farewell functions, convocations, cultural programs, annual day, etc., you can leverage Bulk SMS so that all parents get notified about them and can be part of these important events.

Share Content

Bulk SMS can be used for sending content via text messages to send relevant information to students, faculty, and staff. And all of this can be automated based on your workflows. You can easily send links to eBooks, documents, articles, videos, etc. as part of information outreach. Faculty can send reminders to students of upcoming assignments, extra classes, and tests and share relevant content via SMS.

Campus News

Educational institutions can use Bulk SMS to keep students updated on happenings on campus. Whether it’s the launch of a new student club, a musical night, or a pizza party, with Bulk SMS, you can reach out to your entire student community instantly.

Guidance

Most colleges and universities have advisors and counselors to assist students with their academic programs.  With Bulk SMS, you can send important information about scholarships, financial aid, specialty courses, and more to your students instantly. And with 2-way messaging, they can enroll for programs of their choice right from their smartphone.

Enrollment

With so many events and activities that students are involved in at the same time, it can be hard for them to keep track of everything that's going on on campus. Scheduled, automated text reminders for important dates like enrolment deadlines can be a lifesaver for students.

Things to consider when sending Bulk SMS in Education

Before you send out Bulk SMS messages as part of your institution’s communication strategy, you need to consider 3 very important things.

1. Ensure compliance with local laws and regulations for Bulk SMS. Additionally, get explicit consent from students, parents, and staff before you start sending messages to them.
2. Establish a clear and strategic plan. Set clear goals and define what exactly you want to achieve through Bulk SMS. Establish how you are going to measure the outcomes. Determine the content of every outgoing message and what you want to achieve with it. You will be sending out a lot of messages, and you need to ensure your message recipients don't get overwhelmed and opt out of your SMS service. Prepare templates for use cases, integrate them with your CRM or other systems, and automate.
3. Choose the right Bulk SMS platform. With GirikSMS, you get a suite of features tailored for education. With GirikSMS’s automation, Chatbot, integration, and reporting features, you can streamline your entire SMS marketing strategy and measure outcomes with just a few clicks.

Girikon is a Gold Salesforce partner with global experience in working with higher education institutions. Having worked with several colleges and universities, we are uniquely positioned to offer you a Bulk SMS messaging platform that works for you.

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About Author

Indranil Chakraborty

Indranil is a technology enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in project management, operations, technology and business development. Indranil has led project teams in egovernance, business process re-engineering, product development and worked with Government and Corporate customers. Indranil truly believes in the power of technology to drive productivity and growth for teams and businesses.