While text messages may no longer be considered revolutionary in the digital age, their potential remains powerful, especially for school heads and administrators looking to innovate their student recruitment strategies. The simplicity and immediacy of SMS, educational institutions can create dynamic and personalized campaigns that not only reach a broad audience but also engage prospective students effectively.
When it comes to recruiting, our (Sozuri)education clients use conversational text messaging to:
- Share information about your programs and curriculum.
- Invite students and schedule campus tours or calls with staff
- Respond immediately to questions or requests.
- Connect prospects with other students in their school of interest program to have personal conversations via messaging and more.
Reach Out With Conversational Text Messaging
Let’s look at how easy it is to reach out and share information with prospective students. Say you’re a university recruiter for the business school. You’ve met a number of high school students you want to entice to your university’s programs.
First, you’d send a message to all of the students you’ve met that you’d like to recruit. The initial message is designed to remind them you’ve met before and ask if they’re interested in knowing more about your university’s degrees for business. It also serves as an opt-in confirmation for your messaging campaign.
When a student replies YES to the first message, they are automatically sent a series of recruiting messages for the business school. (FYI, for students who don’t respond, you can also send a slightly different message to learn what compels them to respond.)
For YES responses, you can send a variety of information in a multi-touch message campaign. For example, you can send:
A personal URL to information on the business school, so you can track when they click to do research.
A video of business school students talking about how amazing your school is and how much they learn, and have fun too.
A link to a well-known professor’s latest book.
Whatever else you think will be relevant and enticing to them
If the student doesn’t respond to your initial information flows, you can send more messages with different content to see what attracts them to take action. All of these sends can be automated by your advanced conversational text messaging solution. You can learn what content compels them to take action, and then focus your campaign on that content.
Schedule Visits and More with Text Messaging
When the student takes action and clicks on a link, watches a video etc., the system automatically triggers a 2nd message a week later, asking if they’d like a personal tour of the campus, or if they have questions they’d like answered.
When a student texts INFO, Rob (your recruiter) is alerted by the Sozuri so he can immediately reply with a personal conversation, answer any questions, send more information or schedule a call.
When the student replies TOUR, they are automatically sent a message that makes it easy to schedule their visit.
When the student schedules a campus tour, Rob is notified via SMS. The student is also sent an immediate confirmation message.
Students are also sent automatic reminders on a regular basis of their tour date. You can also offer them the option of changing their date through the same automated proces
Follow-up to Visits with Conversations
After the tour, Rob sends a personal message to the student. In this case, he also sends a personal link for the student to enroll.
When the student clicks on the link to submit the enrollment form, a new conversational messaging flow begins to walk them through the admissions process.