Enhance Your School’s Communication with SMS Solutions

School communication involves reaching parents, students, and staff efficiently, and SMS automation is a powerful tool for boosting engagement across your school community. Whether it's sharing updates about events, sending reminders, or fostering deeper relationships, SMS text messaging offers reliable, instant delivery with higher open rates than most other communication channels.

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How SMS is Transforming Communication in the Education System

Educational institution communication needs to be direct. Whether it’s sharing an update about a child’s progress in class, addressing a behavioral issue, or notifying faculty, parents, and students about upcoming events, there are many communication touchpoints in the day-to-day educational environment. SMS is a great tool for providing reliable and personalized messaging to your audiences’ cell phones while integrating it into your current communication flow.

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Immediate and High Engagement

SMS text messages get delivered right to your education community’s hands. The immediacy of SMS means high open and response rates. In the educational environment, the immediate nature of texting means it’s a great way to send timely updates for urgent events like weather closures or schedule changes.

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Personalized Communication

Whether you’re sending a message to students or to parents, it’s crucial to include personalization to increase engagement. SMS marketing helps you send the right message at the right time to the right audience, such as reminding students about exams or nudging parents to sign up for parent-teacher conferences.

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Consistent Updates to Build Trust

Building trust with education audiences is about consistency and providing timely updates. Regular SMS messaging can help you consistently engage with your students, faculty, and parents and build trust with each of these audiences in a personalized way.

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Our inbound lead-to-sales opportunity conversation rate has improved by 174%... Our sales representatives use it for initial customer outreach, updates, and general communication. We also use it with HubSpot, which allows us to automate lead nurturing, reminds, and promotions.

Kaemon Maggard

Lead Application Analyst, Appsketiers

5-star

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Use Cases of SMS for Schools

SMS messaging simplifies communication across your school community, enhancing engagement with students, parents, and faculty while streamlining administrative processes. Here’s how schools can use SMS solutions effectively:

  • Event and Attendance Notifications: Share reminders for school events, exams, and assignment deadlines. Send alerts about absences, tardiness, or schedule changes directly to parents and students.
  • Emergency Alerts: Quickly communicate school closures, weather updates, or critical safety protocols with staff, parents, and students.
  • Enrollment and Administrative Reminders: Notify parents about enrollment deadlines, report card availability, or field trip details. Ensure staff stay updated on payroll, HR deadlines, and administrative tasks.
  • Professional Development and Training Updates: Keep faculty informed about workshops, professional development sessions, and training reminders.
  • Internal Coordination and Shift Updates: Streamline staff schedules, substitute requests, and internal event planning with SMS notifications.
  • Feedback and Surveys: Gather feedback from parents, students, and faculty to improve school policies, processes, and overall communication.

By integrating SMS with school management systems, educational institutions can ensure seamless communication, increase student engagement, and foster a more connected school community.

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Features

Key SMS Features for Schools

Take engagement to the next level with these robust texting platform features.

Landline Enablement

Busy parents may prefer texting in all interactions, even if they can speak to an administrator via phone call. Therefore, texting parents from your school’s landline can be valuable, ensuring you’re reaching them how they want to be reached.

Scheduled Messages

Scheduling messages can be a great feature for busy school administrators. SMS text automation enables you to send the right messages to students and parents, such as reminding them about key exam dates or early dismissals.

Two-Way Messaging

Two-way text messaging facilitates real-time, two-way conversations. This can be a crucial feature for quick responses to questions about school events, attendance, or other parental concerns.

Appointment Reminders

SMS reminders are a powerful way to increase customer engagement and satisfaction. With these reminders, your company sends them an automated text with the appointment date and time. These “Reply YES to confirm” messages help to reduce no-show appointments while giving customers the opportunity to reschedule on the spot.

 

Mass Texting for Announcements

Bulk SMS messaging allows your school to broadcast essential updates or urgent messages to different subscriber lists (such as one for students, one for parents, and one for staff). This feature can deliver emergency messages or important school-wide updates to the relevant audience quickly.

Easy Opt-in Processes for Marketing Lists

SMS services like Sakari make it easy to quickly build your subscriber lists for the school year. Utilizing a short code, it’s easy for students, parents, and teachers to quickly opt-in to receive messages. And by setting up multiple short codes, you’ll set up multiple lists quickly. 

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“SMS is truly the simplest way to get participation from a busy client type.
Sakari has allowed us a highly scalable, engaging, and powerful way to connect with customers, store structured data, and bring transparency across teams. We've never been closer to our clients!”

Paul Wurth

Head of Sales, RenoRun Inc.

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Frequently Asked Questions

SMS for Schools FAQs

How can schools and universities benefit from SMS communication?

Reaching students, faculty, and parents in a timely manner can be crucial in education. SMS text messaging services are a flexible, immediate, and affordable way for schools to reach their community. This is partly because text messages have higher open rates and improved response rates than almost every other communication channel.

What are the best practices for using SMS for emergency alerts and safety updates?

SMS is a valuable tool, especially for emergency situations. To ensure best practices, be sure to only send emergency messages in actual emergency situations, craft concise messages, regularly test your emergency texting system, and keep important messages in a single message.

Can SMS help with promoting school events and activities?

Yes, SMS marketing software like Sakari can help your school promote its events and activities. With mass text messaging, you can send bulk messages to the entire school community to remind them of important upcoming events.

What’s the best way to build an SMS contact list for school staff members and parents?

Building an SMS contact list for school faculty and parents may seem daunting, but Sakari offers support to help you quickly build your subscriber lists. 

How can SMS communication integrate with existing school management systems?

One of the biggest perceived challenges is syncing SMS with current management systems. However, Sakari makes it simple. Our API allows you to seamlessly connect SMS marketing with your existing email marketing or CRM platforms.

Are there specific legal considerations for SMS communication in schools?

Generally, the most pressing legal consideration is that SMS messages can only be sent to those who opt-in to receive them. Sakari’s software helps ensure that you’re only sending texts to those who have opted in to receive them and that you’re following TCPA regulations.

Can SMS be used to manage parent-teacher communication efficiently?

Yes, SMS is a great tool to help your school streamline parent-teacher communication. SMS allows you to send individual student updates, progress reports, and student grades directly to parents. Turn to a user-friendly texting service like Sakari to help your school manage parent-teacher communication.

What types of reminders can schools send using SMS?

SMS allows schools to send a wide range of reminders. From field trip payment reminders to schedule changes or cancellations and event reminders, SMS is a flexible way to reach your school audience.

Can I schedule texts?

Yes, SMS text messaging platforms like Sakari allow you to schedule text messages for iOS or Android devices.

Goodbye isolated communications.
Hello Sakari.

Where every message meets its perfect match, right when it matters most.

Get Started with your 14-day free trial

Goodbye isolated communications.
Hello Sakari.

Where every message meets its perfect match, right when it matters most.

Get Started with your 14-day free trial