Today, if there is one thing that students are attached to most of the time is their mobile phones. Mobile phones have become the arch-enemy of parents and teachers. They are perturbed to see their children always clinging to their phone’s text messaging feature over one app or the other all day. This pattern of students being on the phone has made it quite evident that students can’t resist cell phones and, consequently, text messaging.
Higher education has witnessed a grand transformation from the traditional way of sitting in classrooms to sitting in front of a screen, from offline to online. And for this transition to happen so smoothly only because mobile phones jumped in to fill the void. Mobile phones, which were once considered a distraction, have now become the source of education; every student is now learning it online, whatever they used to learn through the classroom form of education.
It’s about time we use this pattern to our advantage. This habit of students always clinging to their phones can also be used to their benefit. We see that smartphones are used more for texting and browsing social media than anything else. Adding two and two, it will make sense if we incorporate conversational text messaging for students to cover recruitment drives, admission purposes, and administration. We have seen the enrollment rate falling for colleges or universities in the past few years, so it has become more crucial for colleges or universities to use text messaging even more effectively to attract and bewitch students.
On average, students receive 3000 texts a month, and almost all of them are read within 3 minutes of receiving. Text messaging is in an embryonic stage as an effective integrated marketing tool. It would still require a strategic implementation so that the interconnection between students and universities or colleges is not abused. Text messaging forms a very personal form of interaction and is often not ignored when used effectively.
Universities often feel helpless when they see that they can’t reach students as they don’t respond to their emails or phone calls. Besides social media, texting is the only way students wish to communicate. However, this should not encourage colleges to drop out of the traditional way of communicating with students. They can now develop a more holistic approach to communicating with students, allowing them to choose from- texts, phone calls, or emails. Communicat-O is one such tool that can make this process easier for higher education institutions.
How can higher education providers use text messaging to recruit and engage more students?
Sharing essential information with potential students:-
Students want everything in a manner that is most convenient to them. Even though students can look up anything from the course structure, fees, faculty, location to the food available in the canteen on the university’s website, it would be more convenient for them to receive all this information in a personalized manner over a text. This makes them feel more connected to the institution. Being said that, too much sugar also spoils the tea; similarly, messages sent should not be overdone, then they’ll feel an instant disconnect.
This might have started to look highly tedious to you already. Still, Institutions can send short messages to students in the most efficient way, listing various reasons to apply for their institution, providing brief comparisons with their counterparts, essential information like scholarship programs, fee waivers, deadlines to use, etc.
Offering real-time assistance:-
Text messaging is more appealing to students because they receive an instant response. While communicating to educational institutions is more of a tedious process, writing an email to one department, forwarding to another, etc. Such streams of communication can be draining as they consume a lot of time, making them less appealing.
With Communicat-O’s automated and intelligent messaging, your institute can be more responsive to students’ queries and offer real-time help and solutions, making a real connection with the institution. To add to this, Communicat-O’s unified inbox makes sure that no message is ever overlooked. This will also act as a catalyst to skyrocket institutions’ engagement rate with the potential students and their students. With a college SMS option available, prospective students will be more likely to send in their questions and, in turn, apply to institutions’ programs.
Scheduling appointments for campus visits:- Every potential student wants to visit campus before actually enrolling in the college. They want a glimpse of all the college facilities, faculty, campus, etc. Scheduling appointments via email or phone is a no-go for today’s youth. This can be patched with Communicat-O’s intelligent conversational property.
Instead of scheduling campus visits via email, students will be more inclined to use a more interpersonal way of communication with Communicat-O. Once Communicat-O is aligned and set up with your Salesforce CRM, scheduling appointments with interactive messaging is something your students can enjoy at their fingertips without any added hassle for the management. Scheduling campus visits via texts also gives an ad on the advantage of personalizing the message and sending reminders for a visit.
Assistance with incomplete applications:-
A decent number of students miss out on getting admitted to the colleges they have applied for. Most of the students are not very elaborate when they are filling out their application forms; they tend to miss out on small details, which in turn, results in rejection of their applications.
Colleges can send a personalized text with Communicat-O without any added effort to students about the missing information in their application and send courtesy reminders for pending documents. This information will ensure that applications are received promptly, and the scope of rejection of applications can be reduced to a great extent. Thus, giving students a chance to not miss out on the college they have applied for. Inculcating text messaging into their recruitment program also gives a helping hand to admission and enrollment staff. This helps them to switch from mass communication to personal efficiently and quickly. All university staff can chime into the same messaging thread to resolve issues faster and make communication effortless. This also helps them reduce their workload of following up on emails transferring emails or calls to the party concerned. Communicat-O powered by salesforce holds the potential to take your communication and strategy to a different dimension altogether, performing functions that are next to impossible to achieve with manual management and providing convenience which might spoil any student on the planet; Communicat-O makes for the best addition you can have to your current strategy.
With the advancement of social media and online-based education, text messaging has become a marketing tool that generates excellent ROI. Communicat-O helps you create great ROI, ensuring higher education text messaging is done right.