SMS in Education - Communication best practices for Educational Institutes

Remember days when schools used to send typewriter written letters to notify Parents about their kids’ activities? Go some more years back in time and letters used to be handwritten. Or there used to be Notes in the workbooks (I can talk about this being an 80’s kid). However, in today’s Digital Age, information of any sort is paperless and when everybody from Parents to teachers to even school Kids is always attached to their Smartphones, information is easy to pass on.

Education is a booming sector and is going to be for times to come. With increasing numbers of students and new academies emerging, everyone wants to keep pace with the communication technologies. With this advancement, educational institutes also enjoy a renewed level of transparency. There’s a huge need to distribute vital information to parents, students, and teachers in the moment of need and often at short notices.

OTT apps and Emails are all great but did you know that an SMS has 98% engagement and reading rate. An SMS reaches directly into the receiver’s inbox. SMS has response rate 8 times that of an email. And 90% of the text messages are read within 3 minutes.

Technology is helping us advance, fill gaps and communicate better, no doubt. But when you have multiple options to choose from, picking the best possible medium is essential. Especially for institutions in the education industry where the delivery and transmission of critical information to the right person at right time is critical. 

Let’s understand ways in which educational institutes can make the best of messaging and Keep their Communication Game On:

Updating Students of the Current Events:

In order to keep Students & their Parents updated with the current news and notify them about the time and location events such as annual day, sports day Schools, Colleges or Universities can use bulk SMS services to ensure proper alert and timely update. Almost every school or university has a tradition of annual celebration day or week. Students can be notified about the practice sessions and timings for such events with an easy-to-read SMS at the earliest.

Emergency Notification to Parents:

SMS is the best medium when you want information to be prompt and reach timely. Emergency notifications like the declaration of sudden holiday due to weather conditions, change in a timetable, change in bus timings/route or cancellation of an upcoming event can easily be sent through SMS. 

Attendance and Performance Report to Parents:

SMS is always a good idea to send Parents the accurate attendance and performance reports of their children. An alert when children take an unplanned and without-prior-notice leaves will make them feel informed and cared. This way, parents will also be able to monitor the performance of their children and make improvements.

Due Fees and other Alerts:

In order to ensure timely receipt of fees, and to lessen their burden of remembering fees day and schedules, parents can be notified about the fees due dates with the help of easy bulk SMS services.

Sending PTM Notifications:

The best way to inform and keep Parents updated about parents-teachers-meetings is through bulk SMS. They can be notified about the time, location and purpose of the meet, and changes in the schedule, if any.

Alerting Teachers of their Schedules:

Teachers are a most important part of any educational organization. Communicating amongst themselves is the key to better management. There are multiple occasions when an institute needs to communicate with its teachers related to their Schedules or Pay related information, quick and most approachable way to do this is to automate Messaging to keep them informed and ensure better management.

Announcements of Exam Schedules and Results:

It’s most likely that the students will forget to tell about test/exam schedules and the respective results to their parents. At that juncture, schools can send SMS alerts to the parents about test/exam schedules and the results so that they are updated.

Notifications from Different Departments:

Different sectors of an institute can use messaging for their specific needs. Such as, Library can send information or alerts about issuing and submission dates of books. This way, there’s a lesser chance for a student to pay the unnecessary fine for late book submissions. Sports club can notify students about the timing and schedule of competitions. Even the literary society can send regular inspiring quotes, links to various good articles and blogs to the students via SMS.

Notify Parents to Check their Email:

As the readability of emails is less as compared to SMSes, it is better to send a notification to the parents to check their mailbox if some critical information has been sent via email.

Promotional Admission Alerts:

To the database of recently interacted Parents and students, a promotional message Alerting them about the Admission dates and Some perks such as facilities, fee structure etc. can be sent through targeted bulk messaging. This will make a top of the mind recall and in turn, will lead to an increase in the number of admissions.

SMS is not just a one-way notification option, but it can also help form a proper two-way communication. Educational bodies can form two way communications for having inquiries through Short Code SMS Services. Parents, student, and Teachers would love the idea of being able to inquire for any information just by sending an SMS to a specified number and get the desired response related to course fees, schedule, results, and other information through the simple way of automated messaging.

Education is an uncompromising discipline. Proper and timely update of information to all the stakeholders is the key to healthy management and the ultimate growth.

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