Published: Apr 07, 2020
Last update: Oct 21, 2022
Education Marketing SMS services

What is SMS Marketing and how does it help when communicating with students?

Students sms
What is SMS Marketing and how does it help when communicating with students?
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Surely, the last time you have heard about SMS Marketing and about mobile publicity. This is a way of communication that is at any company’s hand that has a numeric database and wants to reach their clients/ users in a rapid, economic way.

In this post, we will try to explain what SMS marketing is, what you need and you can create fluid communication with Master or Postgraduate students. 

SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing is a technique that consists of sending SMS messages to users in a database to get in touch with them. Different from email or social networks, SMS doesn’t need the Internet to be received but works through a network called GSM.

SMS Marketing requires clear and precise marketing objectives that guide the sending of SMS. And these objectives can be transactional, that is, only informative or persuasive: offers, promotions, participation…

Are you ready to create your SMS marketing plan?

To create an SMS campaign, no matter its objective, it’s important to know if your contacts have given their consent to receive SMS. 

This type of message is direct and efficient but requires you to have a regulated database by the law and that fulfills every rule and norm. 

Create a database with your past students

So, if you have a regular database, you can just use it. If you don’t, you’ll need to create one. Knowing how to create a good, optimized database can guarantee great management and deserves a lot of attention.

To create an updated database it is worth the time to gather all the info of students that went through the institution because they will surely have signed the consent form. You need to be careful every step of the way to guarantee that the mobile database has the following characteristics:

  • Safety and data protection. 
  • Data influx that can be updated in real-time.
  • Quick results.
  • Organized structure.
  • Duplicate deletion.

 Create and grow an original database

During the process of database creation, you need to take into account that the document format needs to be compatible with the SMS sending platform. It also needs to have the necessary parameters, which are the username (if you want to personalize the message) and phone number. The more detailed and careful the design, the better the quality of the database. And, as you have already defined the purpose of the database in SMS marketing, the more detailed it can be when you create it.

Once you create an original database, you can then add new and interested people. This means to gather leads from mobile calls to get interested in courses, masters or postgraduate degrees. You can also do this through the button of information on site or another database gathering process

 SMS Gathering Campaign Creation 

With the database ready, you can create your first engagement campaign through SMS. When creating the message, you should add a link so that users can click and get in touch with the company to get more information.  

For this, you need to have a commercial service or a call center to make the necessary calls. These campaigns need to be sent gradually so as not to saturate the service. 

SMS Marketing

Usage of SMS to communicate with students

Once you talk to them for the first time, you can periodically inform them using SMS. So, you can send them reminders or notifications about courses or other interesting things for them, like offers and discounts if you matriculate before a certain time. 

Another way to communicate with clients is to send SMS for them to pay using a link or a payment platform. In this, it’s easier to control who’s paying and who isn’t and users can do it when they can or have time.

Other usages include attaching a link in an SMS, a PDF file or a document with all the topics of the course, or even an informative video about the program, its objectives, practical applications, and more.