Text messaging is a helpful way to quickly communicate important messages to students, parents, faculty and staff. Stay in touch regarding important events, reminders, school closings/cancellations, emergencies, and last second updates.
School administrators are realizing that the old way of reaching their student body through flyers, phone calls, letters, and even email are unreliable and inefficient. Everyday, more and more high schools, colleges, and educational institutions are turning to our bulk text message service to stay in touch with students, families, and staff. Use mass text messaging to relay important messages and updates in seconds.
How School Text Messaging Works
Keyword
Getting your school started using text messages for updates is easy. Students and families can opt in to receive SMS text notifications by either texting a keyword to a toll free number or by entering their number on a school’s SMS opt-in website page. You can create different keywords for different messages to keep things organized. You can fully customize text campaigns to your school’s needs to ensure simple and consistent messaging across the board.
Example: Let’s say you manage campus communication for Riverview High School. You want to make it easy for parents to receive optional but exciting alerts about upcoming school events and deadlines. You might select a keyword that is related to the school name or mascot. Then, you can ask parents to text the word ‘RIVERVIEW’ or ‘HAWKS’ to a dedicated toll free phone number provided by Text2VIP. Now, those parents can receive alerts and reminders.
Auto Reply
The auto-reply is an automated response sent to the person who signed up via text message. With an auto-reply message, parents, teachers, or students will be able to confirm that they’ve subscribed to the list. You may now begin messaging this person as well as any other opt-ins you’ve received for this campaign.
School Text Messages to Parents
Multiple Lists and Keywords
To best communicate with your audience, you might want to create multiple keywords that will store multiple lists of contacts. Many schools that use the Text2VIP platform utilize this feature. This allows for better targeting and ensures better communication to everyone who needs your school’s updates.
Example Use Case
Picking up from our previous example, let’s say you successfully created the HAWKS keyword for Riverview High School. Great! Let’s say you deployed that within the walls of the school to the entire student body. This campaign can be used to message all students about the upcoming pep rally, reminder about the dress code, and that school prom is next month.
But, as a school administrator you understand the importance of staying in close contact with students’ parents. You might create a unique keyword and ask them to subscribe to that keyword separately. This way, the school may send a text message to parents reminding them that report cards will be published on Monday for their child’s progress (uh oh), or that this upcoming Friday is an early dismissal.
Similarly, faculty and staff may also have their own text distribution list for inter-office or internal messages. And, the bigger your organization, the more keywords you can create to ensure proper communication throughout your school.
Other Applications of SMS Messaging for Schools
Voting and Feedback
Another common application of Text2VIP’s platform for schools is the use of SMS voting and feedback. School’s stand to benefit from input given by parents. With busier schedules and lives, it’s hard to track down parents and get proper feedback from them.
Utilizing our voting feature, you can easily create and share custom polls with parents directly through texting. There may be no simpler way to solicit feedback from parents than through SMS. Furthermore, the school text message program can send a text message blast to parents which includes a link to questionnaires, team sports schedules, and ticket purchase portals.
Text Blasts
The first and most common need for a school to establish a text message program is to send emergency alerts. Emergency alerts from a student’s school are something parents and administrators alike would hope to never need. However, should the need arise, everyone involved will be grateful for having this critical tool in place as a direct and immediate means by which to convey time-sensitive information.
Why Text Messaging for Schools?
When it comes to affordability, ease of use, and ubiquity, no other communication channel even comes close to the use of text messaging for schools.
According to the Mobile Marketing Agency, in 2020 93% of all text messages received were read within the first 5 minutes, with an overall read rate in excess of 98%.
Parents, faculty, students, and administrators are always within arm’s reach of their mobile devices. Unlike apps that require several hurdles like downloading, checking for updates, and turning on notifications, SMS is easily accessible and the clear choice for a communication channel that is sure to deliver.
Who Can Send SMS Messages for Schools?
SMS messages for schools are an increasingly popular choice by school administrators to organize and inform students, parents, and staff quickly and easily. Since everyone always has their phone this makes it a great way to disseminate information easily to different groups of the education system. Mass text messaging is great for:
- School SMS for School-Parent Organizing
- School Fee Reminders via SMS
- SMS for Students
- SMS to Parents from School
- SMS for Parents
START FOR FREE
Your free trial includes a keyword and 50 messages. No credit card is required and there are no contracts. Get started today or contact us at 888-813-8398 or by using the chat on this webpage.