Challenges faced by Educational Institutions in executing a successful texting Strategy

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Mark’s first day as a Marketing Executive at the university

Mark, a seasoned Marketing Executive, was ecstatic about his new job at an elite higher education university in San Francisco. On his first day of the job, he arrived a bit early and was more than impressed with the magnificent architecture. Groups of students gaily chatting away, lush green lawns and booklovers sitting under the shade of high reaching pine trees made Mark nostalgic.

Observing college students

Mark was quite fascinated with the students on the campus, who were completely engrossed in their mobile phones and were tapping at lightning speed. Mobiles were not so ubiquitous during Mark’s college days.

As he breezed past the classrooms, he heard some voices in the distance. They seemed to come from the admin office. He went closer to find out. He saw some students surrounding the admin officer. The students were putting forth their complaints all at once and the man was trying to pacify them.

Students putting forth their concerns

I am a part of the soccer team but I did not receive any message for the free tickets that the college

distributed for sponsoring the state level soccer match?

The college organized a seminar on ’Careers in wildlife conservation’

and didn’t even inform wildlife enthusiasts?

I have paid my fees for all the semesters in advance.

Why am I perpetually bombarded with fee

payment reminders? It is so annoying!

The distant clock tower struck ten. Mark suddenly remembered about his meeting with the new team. He quickly rushed to find the conference room.

The clock strikes ten

Once there, he was greeted by a young and dynamic looking group of Marketing Executives. The admin officer was also there. After exchanging pleasantries, Rob, the head of the department, started his address. “We have gathered to discuss some urgent issues that have come up. Mark, I will bring you up to speed on this.”

Meeting the new teamWe have all

gathered to discuss some urgent issues that have come up.

Texting for student engagement

“Almost a year ago, our team was looking for ways to meaningfully engage students in order to reduce the student drop-out rate. Besides the multiple channels that we were already using to communicate with our students, we introduced texting, one of the most cost-efficient communication channels around. We were among the first educational institutes to use texting for student engagement.”

Benefits of using texting

On one hand, we were able to reach out to a huge database quickly, on the other hand, the students were quite appreciative of the college’s modernized approach to communication.

Thanks to texting, the university was able to reach out to 10x more number of students with lesser effort.

Students found it most convenient to reply to texts and we could save all the communication into our CRM. This was most helpful in gathering feedback on proposed policy changes.

Automated communication led to an increase in operational efficiency for our staff.

SMS has a 99% open rate. Therefore, we are assured that our texts are being read by the intended audience.

Real-time information sharing on class cancellations and other notifications were welcomed by the students.

Challenges in implementing the texting strategy

The admin officer, Tim, who had been at the direct receiving end of student’s complaints pointed out, “Students feel that we are sending them texts that are not relevant to them for e.g. The simple way to send fee payment reminder is to send a message to all the students and append the message with the statement ‘Please ignore if already paid’. Those who have already paid the fees are finding such texts annoying.”

Although we can see that students are happy with our strategy, we can also see that their expectations have risen

manifold. They want us to know their hobbies and interests and customize our texts accordingly.

Addressing challenges head-on

Mark recounted the student complaints that he had overheard while walking for this meeting. He said “What if we had not missed sending the free soccer ticket related texts to the sports enthusiast? We would have given him a memory of a lifetime and earned his loyalty for the college! I feel what we are going though are some initial challenges in optimally and strategically using texting to get the most out of it.” The team was silent. Looked like Mark had just hit the nail on the head.

See if there are 100 students in a class and only 15 are defaulting in

payment, we are sending irrelevant texts to remaining 85. We are clearly wasting precious

time & resources!

Facing flak from team members

When the admin officer, Tim, asked some pointed questions, Mark enquired “How are we sending these texts to students?” Tim replied “Through the CRM.” Mark said “What if our CRM is periodically updated so that it gives us all the information about student’s interests, hobbies, fee payments etc. We will, of course, have to systematically collect these important pieces of information over a period of time.” Tim looked anything but convinced. He scoffed “Mark I appreciate your enthusiasm on your first day at work. However, what you are saying is easier said than done.”

What you are saying makes complete sense. But how in the world are we supposed

to know that who is interested in Shakespeare and

who is a sports aficionado?

Chalking out a concrete solution

By now Mark had understood that he would have to lay out a detailed plan to convince this team that their ‘One Size Fit all’ approach to texting would not work. He asked for some time so that he could chalk out a detailed plan to find concrete solutions. Rob’s and Tim’s expressions conveyed that they had the least amount of optimism in Mark’s approach. Mark could also see the scepticism in his colleague’s eyes. Will Mark be able to come up with a solution that impresses all. Let’s read his eBook to find out.

Looks like I will have to come up with a detailed plan to convince these

people…Mark has created an eBook to bring home the point that the first step towards creating a successful SMS strategy for Student Engagement is Data Collection, Creation and Segmentation. Do you think that through this eBook, Mark will be able to persuade his sceptical team members and win their confidence? Read your copy to find out.