With summer break ending, schools need to prepare their incoming students for back to school week. Email has long been the standard for communicating with students, but it often doesn't get the results that schools and teachers would want. That’s why schools are turning to a far more effective way to reach their students: text message marketing.

Here are some back to school texting tips to help your students succeed this during this upcoming school year.

1. Text Messaging for Counselor Communication

Texting is simply the best method of communication with millennials, and the power of mass texting allows counselors to communicate with their students no matter where they are. This frees up the counselors to have more time to do what they love doing: helping their students be successful.

Counselors can now text message things like FAFSA or registration reminders or talk to students about upcoming elective choices. Or they can then follow up with new student so see how their schedule is doing and address any concerns before they get too hard to manage.

Yes, I want to improve college communication!

For example, Sonoma State University wanted a better way to reach their students. They saw that their emails were hardly ever opened, and paper adverts were not having an impact. When they integrated a texting provider, they were able to send out updates about student’s majors or FAFSA updates. And better yet, it made a dramatic impact on how many students were actually aware of this valuable information.

Send Text Reminders of Required Books and Materials

Posting multiple text keywords for each class allows professors to sort students into distribution lists to send out relevant reminders to students. Instead of messaging all of their students, they can message their “Wednesday” list to avoid giving their Thursday students the wrong information.

To make the most out of the first day, teachers can send a mass text to each of their classes with a list of materials and assignments they should bring. It can take weeks for books to arrive, so the sooner students order their materials the better.

Most students won’t take the time to look at the syllabus prior to the first day, so they will likely show up unprepared for the class. With an overall read rate of 98%, sending your students the class syllabus via an MMS message will ensure they are familiar with the course description and curriculum.

2. Send Back To School Tips

Send Welcome SMS Marketing Messages to Get Students Engaged

Incoming students are often overwhelmed when starting a new school, as they are unfamiliar with campus culture or starting new classes. To help them transition successfully, send them a welcome message and back to school tips on their first day of school. You can even include an MMS with pictures or send them links to videos of campus events to get them excited about all of your school’s activities.

Text Alerts to Ensure That Class Enrollment Deadlines Are Met

With school life being busier than ever, today’s youth can easily miss their deadlines. But with texting you can ensure that all of your students meet their enrollment dates. By posting a text keyword on advertisements across campus or on your school’s website, you can easily collect the contact information of your incoming students while enabling them to receive text reminders of important deadlines.

Text Message Marketing for School Extracurricular Events

Extracurricular activities are vital to a developing a healthy student body. These activities do an extraordinary job of connecting students with the school, relieving stress, building real-world skills, making lasting friendships, and making them well rounded individuals. But emails simply aren’t being read (less than 25%!), and flyers posted around campus are unreliable, as they get lost in the crowd.

That’s why text messaging is the most effective way to promote extracurricular activities and boost engagement. They are the most immediate and attention-grabbing form of communication there is. Use text messages to send club membership information, sport team signup forms, or new meeting times and places.

3. Text Messaging For Orientation Week

SMS to Increase Welcome Week Attendance

It’s always frustrating when you spend many hours and energy on organizing an event and end up only having a few students show up for it. Not only does that all that hard work fall through the cracks, but students also aren’t taking advantage of the wonderful, fun, or helpful programs available to them, most of the time for no cost to the student.

Often, the main reason these events aren't getting the attendance they deserve is because of ineffective communication. Either email invites aren’t being read, or students are simply forgetting about the event on the day of. Text messaging can effectively solve these problems by first sending out message blasts to let them know about your activities, and then send text reminders the day of to make sure students keep their schedule open.

To get the most traffic to your school events, you shouldn’t focus on a single channel for communications. Instead, you should use an SMS software that has cross-channel communication. This enables you to advertise your school events across all channels including text, email, social media, and voice broadcasting.

Today’s youth often have a preference for how they communicate, so broadcasting across all channels will ensure 100% of your students are aware of your events.

Alert Students of Class Time Changes and Cancellations

Coordination between faculty and students is challenging to say the least. Students are often uninformed of updates in class schedule or other academic news. Two-way texting can establish consistent communication between staff and students to relay this essential information in a timely manner.

Texting is also the most effective way of informing students about cancelled classes. This is especially useful for commuter students, who might make a slog through traffic unnecessarily.

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