Every single higher education institution that I have spoken to want to have text messaging in their communication plan. I am sure you do too. Many pieces of research also revealed that while most students don’t receive calls from unknown numbers, but they almost always read texts. Here are a few statistics that reveal the same as well:
This gives a completely different channel to the admission teams for follow-ups with prospective students, schedule meetings, send reminders and so on to the prospective student. That being said, a mobile inbox is way more personal than the email inbox, which is both good and bad.
If a text message comes across as spam, it can hurt you much more than an email abuse. That’s why a student needs to opt-in first to receive text messages from you, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that a text message marketing, if used properly can be much more potent than even email in student enrollment process.
I hope this convinces you of the power of text messages.
Text Message Marketing Best Practices for Enrollment
The best practices of using text message marketing for your enrollment and recruitment efforts are very much similar to the best practices of email communication, other than the fact that the message length is much shorter the basics remain the same. You might like this very cool post by my colleague, Shibani, about what she learned after sending a million emails. A good text message will have the following qualities: 
Integration of Text Messages with CRM
Today an average student is savvier than most of us, and it is important to retain their mindshare with all the possible channels like – Social, mobile, emails and text. We saw all the stats of how powerful a text message can be in all of the statistics discussed above. Therefore, not only should text be an important part of your communication strategy, but it should be mapped it to your CRM and student outreach workflows. Here’s an example of a typical student enrollment workflow where text messages are involved. 
You can use LeadSquared to create many such student recruitment workflows to communicate with prospective students over text message, email, and even social media channels.
You can take a 15 day free trial here
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