Welcome to week five of the digital marketing health check for schools. Today, we are taking a look at SMS marketing. It’s often a little overlooked element of our digital marketing for schools, but I thought it was worth a place in this digital marketing health check series because it’s something that can enhance our marketing efforts dramatically.
We will be going through our 60-point checklist, remember to score your school as we go. It’s perfect timing if you’re planning for your 2019 marketing strategy, this is basically your to-do list for your digital marketing plan.
You can get the toolkit with the checklist on my website, it’s mararoberts.com.au/access-marketing-schools-toolkit/.
Okay, so let’s look at the elements needed for successful SMS marketing for schools.
Build a Mobile Database
The first step in building a healthy SMS marketing platform is to collect mobile numbers. The way to do this is to ask for people’s name, phone number, and email address on opt-in forms. Try to remember to collect the mobile number in international format so that it works across different platforms
Appointment Reminders
The next thing that you can do with SMS is to send appointment reminders. This is something that I learned when advertising our open mornings – to send SMS reminders the Friday before an event so that they could discuss it with family and make arrangements to attend. This step alone dramatically decreased our non-attendance rate.
Campaign Tracking
SMS is a very convenient way to track the effectiveness of our traditional marketing campaigns. When running a leaflet drop campaign, you could include the option to sms the words “book now” to register for an open event. The user will then get another sms to provide their email address. This provides you with both their email address and phone number in a trackable way.
SMS Broadcast
The last way to use SMS is to send out SMS broadcasts to your list. SMS is a very personal and private space, so make sure that you don’t overstep the mark and use this too much. Broadcast sms for one or two big events each year and make sure to include your college name in the message. You can assume that most people have a smartphone so don’t forget to include a shortened URL if needed.
I hope that you are actually using SMS in your school’s marketing strategy. Let me know in the Marketing Mastery for Schools Facebook group. Let me know in the group how you are using SMS in your marketing.
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