Today, I will show you how Vanessa Bascherini, an academic adviser at Sonoma State University, got over 40 percent of undergraduates at her school to sign up for notifications about academic matters via text messaging.

As an academic counselor, Vanessa’s job includes keeping students updated about their majors, deadlines to declare majors, and other academic news. Initially, she relied on flyers posted around campus and emails to get students the information they needed. But students often complained that they receive too many emails from too many different departments to actually read. This led to missed deadlines and dissatisfied students. Vanessa decided she needed a solution that could ensure a higher read rate of important messages, which is why she turned to text messaging.

Step 1) Sign up with Trumpia

First, Vanessa signed up with Trumpia, the leading mobile messaging cloud-based software, and was immediately given a shared short code. This enables her to send up to 200 messages per second.

Step 2) Set up Keywords

Next, Vanessa created different keywords for each major at her university like Psychology, Environmental Studies & Planning, Kinesiology, and Nursing. Whenever a student texted one of her keywords to her short code, they were automatically entered into the distribution group associated with that keyword. This way, students received alerts for only their major.

Step 3) Send Alerts

Now that she has collected student phone numbers, Vanessa is able to send major specific alerts and reminders whenever she needs.

And that’s all it took. Vanessa reports that the feedback from students have been nothing but positive, and she even plans to share this tool with other institutions so they can also better reach their students. Fortunately, you can also take advantage of text messaging. Consider that 98 percent of all texts are read, compared to email’s 22 percent read rate. That gives you an unmatched ability to reach your audience, no matter who they are.

Read the full case study here.

Did you find Vanessa’s story helpful? Have you found similar success after injecting text messaging into your organization? Let us know by leaving a comment below! 

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