Introduction
Are you looking for a texting service for your school? Well, let’s get you started!
Did you know that as per a survey, 85% of students completed a task after they received an SMS reminder for the same? The younger generation, as we all know, is glued to their mobile phones all the time. They prefer texting as the mode of communication instead of calling, and schools are definitely realizing the same.
Parents, on the other hand, also prefer text messaging when it comes to interacting with schools. They love it when they’re given timely updates about schedule changes, substitution, school closures, emergencies, billing information, and more.
Texting services for schools make lives easier for everyone involved, whether it is the school staff, the students, or the parents. It is important that you also leverage the undefined power of text messaging to improve communication, both internally and externally.
Get ready to compare the best texting services for schools ruling 2024!
What is texting for schools?
SMS for schools is a way for schools to improve communication, beyond the classroom walls. It is a means for schools to streamline their communication and engage students and parents in a better manner. Text messaging for schools is a great channel to convey important messages, answer questions, and send timely updates. With open rates and response rates as high as 98% and 45 % respectively; using text messaging for your daily communication needs is a no-brainer. A text message system for schools can fulfill all your student communication and engagement needs.
What is a texting service for schools?
A texting service for schools allows you to connect with teachers, students, and parents in real time through text messaging. A text messaging solution for your school can not just automate routine tasks but also share important notifications with your staff, students, and parents. We have curated a list of the top texting services for schools that you can check out and make an informed decision.
Top 8 Texting Services For Schools
- Emitrr
- Modern Campus
- Talking Points
- Text-Em-All
- SimpleTexting
- Textline
- EZ Texting
- SlickText
Emitrr
Emitrr is a texting service for schools that allows you to improve communication and engagement with parents and students. With this school texting platform, you can send enrollment reminders, billing reminders, send emergency alerts, share exam and text results, and engage in seamless communication with the parents and students.
Features of Emitrr
- Share important information like staff details, campus facilities, and curriculum details with prospective students/parents
- Share admission details, payment links, and campus tour videos with the prospective parents/students
- Send automated birthday wishes to your current and prospective students
- Easily integrate your current CRM with Emitrr to automate texting
- Manage your team members by providing them with necessary access to different conversations
- Keep track of all the delivered messages and their responses in a single inbox
- Make reference notes to set a context for every conversation
- Schedule personalized text message campaigns for PTA/PTO meetings, school re-opening, planned events like annual day celebrations, safety drills, etc.
- Send reminders to the staff about required training and certifications
- Use pre-defined templates, and share files, images, or even videos to keep your communication engaging
- Send instant notifications for delays, cancellations, early class dismissals, and emergency alerts
- Automate text messages to save 100s of hours of your office staff
- Text-enable your existing number to send and receive messages
- Set up multi-touch messaging student outreach campaigns
- Monitor your text marketing campaigns and track metrics
- Manage internal conversations through group texting
- Reach out to multiple recipients at once by sending mass text messages
Modern Campus
Modern Campus is a conversational text messaging service for schools that offers capabilities to drive student engagement effectively and efficiently.
Features of Modern Campus
- Personalize student outreach by sending messages tailored to each student
- Schedule text messages to be sent out at later dates
- Automate text message responses for general queries
- Track response rates and overall student engagement
- Streamline workflows by integrating the school texting software with your CRM
- Engage prospective students, alumni, and enrollees via conversational messaging
Talking Points
Talking Points is a texting service for schools that focuses on family communication and engagement to foster better better student outcomes.
Features of Talking Points
- Engage in two-way communication with students and families
- Communicate with parents in their preferred language
- Send group texts for streamlined internal communication
- Send mass text messages to make announcements, share notifications and more
- Track student, teacher, and family engagement data through detailed analytics
Text-Em-all
Text-Em-All is a popular text message system for schools that offers you a blend of capabilities to help improve response times, keep students informed and engaged, and streamline workflows.
Features of Text-Em-All
- Set up autoresponders and keywords to automate routine tasks
- Use two-way text messaging to send messages and manage responses
- Send mass text messages and group text messages
- Use templates to personalize messages at scale
- Text enable your existing business number
- Schedule text messages to be sent out later
SimpleTexting
SimpleTexting is a software that offers text messaging for schools. With this school texting software, you can solve a variety of challenges that you face on a daily basis, right from engaging with students to managing operations internally.
Features of SimpleTexting
- Assign conversations to team members to ensure that no conversation is missed out
- Manage all conversations with students/parents in one dedicated inbox
- Integrate the school texting software with your CRM and other tools
- Personalize your messages at scale by sending mass text messages
- Engage in 1:1 texting with students from anywhere
- Keep a record of all the conversations
Textline
Textline is a popular text messaging service for schools that offers capabilities to easily reach out to parents and students; while also managing workflows with the school staff.
Features of Textline
- Reach a large rgroup of school contacts through mass text messaging
- Track metrics such as delivery rate and failed messages
- Easily access conversation history and monitor responses
- Engage in two-way texting to answer questions, send surveys, and send polls
- Send text message alerts in a timely manner
EZ Texting
EZ Texting is a popular mass texting service for schools that offers texting capabilities that allow you to connect seamlessly with your students and drive more engagement.
Features of EZ Texting
- Manage communications internally with a teammate manager
- Allow recipients to respond using custom keywords
- Launch marketing campaigns and personalize each message
- Automatically follow up with recipients using drip campaigns
- Engage in meaningful conversations with two-way texting
- Send mass text messages and text blasts
- Send automated event reminders, important announcements, or emergency alerts
SlickText
SlickText is a good text messaging service for schools that is built for school administrators and offers compliant list management, flexible segmentation of contacts, and automation tools to ensure seamless communication.
Features of SlickText
- Send personalized messages to contacts through text message automation
- Track metrics such as delivery rate and engagement rate
- Create custom fields for different criteria to send targeted messages
- Subscribe students and staff through text-to-join
- Send mass text messages and text blasts
- Engage in meaningful conversations with two-way texting
Why Should You Use Text Messaging Services For Schools?
Using a text messaging solution for schools is an efficient way for you to share important information with the parents and also reduce excessive workload off your staff’s shoulders.
With a School SMS platform, you can update parents about their wards’ performance in school, share attendance, and also send important event reminders. Here are some reasons why School SMS Services are preferred by educational institutions:
Get faster responses
With a text messaging solution for schools, you can communicate urgent and important information with the students and parents. With open rates of SMS as high as 98% in the USA, it is quite evident that your messages will be read and responded to.
Let’s say you’re organizing a field trip for the senior students and you need the parents to send the confirmations and their consent as early as possible. Instead of calling those 200 parents, you can simply drop a text message giving details of the field trip. Since text messaging is a non-intrusive form of communication, the parents will respond whenever they see a message and your purpose will be fulfilled.
Keep a record of communications
With a school texting service, you get to keep a complete record of all your communications. Every single message that you send and every response that you receive can be stored securely in a centralized dashboard. It means that you can track all conversations whenever required.
Personalize communication
Whether you’re communicating with the students or their parents, every single message that you send needs to be personalized. This is because personalized communication builds engagement. With a school texting service, you can personalize your messages at scale. For the same, you can experiment with different message properties, use templates, and send messages to multiple contacts with a single click.
Better engagement with parents and students
Two-way communication with students and parents is important to ensure that they’re well-informed. A texting service fo schools helps you foster stronger relationships with both parties by sharing timely updates, answering queries, and providing unwavering support.
Automate routine tasks
There are a plethora of daily tasks that you can automate with the help of a texting service for schools. With a texting service for schools, you can set pre-defined triggers and actions which can go to the recipients based on their behaviour. With such triggers, your staff will not have to answer regular questions about attendance, scheduled school closures, event announcements, etc. They can automate these tasks and can dedicate their time and efforts toward more urgent tasks at hand.
Better outreach
The biggest benefit of having a texting service for schools is better outreach. With a school texting service, you can reach out to hundreds of people at once. For example, if you need to make an announcement for the Annual Sports Day, you can create a list of all the parents, type a message sharing the details of the event, and hit send. If you were to call every parent to inform them about the event, it would take you hours worth of time and would also blow up your phone bills. But with a school texting app, you can reach out to many people at once with just a few clicks, without burning a hole in your pocket.
Features To Look For In A Text Message Service For Schools
Two-way texting
Being able to converse with your students, teachers, and staff members in real-time is the highest form of engagement as a school administration. Make sure that your school texting service offers two-way texting, for easy communication and improved retention. With a school texting app, you will be able to connect with your contacts at any point from a single platform for uninterrupted and simple messaging.
Automation
Text message automation is an important feature if you want to send personalized messages without having to spend too much time and effort. You can create lists to segment your audience and set up multi-touch text messaging campaigns. Whether you need to send survey forms, event reminders, or important announcements; you can do it all with automated texting, with minimal human intervention.
Seamless Integration
Your ideal texting service for schools must offer integration with all your important apps and tools so that you can easily streamline your workflows, automate tasks, and reduce human error. With integrations, you can manage your data easily, perform seamless data capture, and sync the data as and when required.
Text-enable existing number
Look for a school texting service that enables your existing business number for text messaging. It means that you don’t need to have separate numbers for calling and texting; you can have your existing number text enabled and send messages to your contacts from that very number.
Drip campaigns
Opt for a texting service for schools that allows you to send a series of text messages to contacts who respond to your marketing communications. With this feature, you can allow your recipients to respond to your marketing texts which go right into your inbox and automatically follow up with them.
Mass text messaging for schools
Mass text messaging allows you to send messages to hundreds or thousands of students/parents with just a few clicks. All you need to do is invest in a good school texting service, import your list of contacts, type your message, and hit send! With school mass texting, you can reach out to a large number of people in a short span of time and also ensure seamless communication.
Text scheduling
When you schedule a text, you relieve yourself from the hassle of sending the message at a particular date or time manually. Scheduling SMS for students is the act of setting timed messages that can be sent automatically at a later date or time. Look for a texting service for schools that offers the ability to schedule text messages for later.
Reports
It is always crucial to track the status of your text messaging campaigns, in order to see what’s working and not working for you. With a good school texting app, you can track detailed metrics such as failed messages, delivery rate, and response rate. With such analytics, you can make changes to your strategies and run campaigns more efficiently.
Keywords
Look for a texting service for schools that allows you to add ample keywords to your list to engage with your contacts. Keywords help you share your message more easily and effectively. Whether you need to announce events and activities, notify students about new opportunities, or communicate scheduled changes; all can be done through keywords.
SMS Templates
If you need to send out messages quickly but don’t have the time to curate a message, you can simply use the templates available in your school texting service. With SMS templates, you save a lot of time, and can easily tailor it according to your preferences. Make sure that the school texting software that you choose offers ample templates to make your life easier.
Use Cases Of Text Messaging Services For Schools
- School closures: Inform students about any sudden school closures with the help of a texting service for schools.
- Severe weather: Use the mass text messaging capability to send a severe weather alert to all your contacts. Just upload your list of contacts, type your message, and hit send.
- On-campus emergencies: Communicate details of any on-campus emergencies with the help of text messaging service for schools.
- Schedule changes: Communicate changes in class schedules and substitute lectures through a mass texting service for schools. Ensure timely delivery of messages and monitor responses.
- Early dismissal: Need to close ths school early for some reason? Send a message to the parents regarding the same in just a few clicks.
- Meeting reminders: Share reminders for parent-teacher meetings with the parents and even set the cadence for those reminders to ensure minimal no-shows.
- Exams and test results: Share examination and text results to the stduents/parents through a text message. Add the link of the student portal in the text message.
- Event announcements: Announce important events without any hassle with the help of a mass texting service for schools. Get people to confirm their presence for the same.
- Billing reminders: Send fee reminders to parents via text message. Set the frequency of those reminders as per your preferences.
- Surveys: Collect important information by sharing links of survey forms via text messages. Curate a campaign using a texting service for schools and send personalized messages at scale.
- Absentees: You can send a text message for absent students to their parents with the help of a text message solution for schools.
Why Is Emitrr The Best Texting Service For Schools?
Emitrr is the best texting service for schools out there for the following reasons:
- Emitrr offers all the features you need to enjoy uninterrupted texting with your parents, students, and staff members. Additionally, it also allows you to send an automated message every time you miss a call, offers end-to-end 10DLC support for A2P messaging, and converts website visitors to text.
- With Emitrr’s capabilities, you can ensure higher response rates, improved retention, and better engagement; without having to spend a bomb on it.
- Emitrr is known for its unwavering support, through phone, chat, live rep, FAQs, and more. A lot of school texting services don’t offer live support.
- Emitrr’s pricing is quite flexible; you pay for what you use; with no annual contracts or hidden fees.
- The texting service for schools is quite easy to use; there’s no learning curve involved.
FAQs Related To Texting Service For Schools
With a text messaging service for schools, you can ensure seamless communication, build engagement rates, ensure timely transfer of information, share important information quickly, improve response rates, and streamline your workflows.
There are two main regulations when it comes to privacy laws for schools: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). According to FERPA, you are required to keep all student information private and only share information with those who are authorized to access the same. As per the TCPA, you need to get express written consent from the recipients before sending them any text messages. Make sure to read the TCPA guidelines of your state to ensure compliance.
To send a mass text message, you need to invest in a mass texting service for schools. With such a service, you can import your list of contacts, type your message, add properties to personalize the message at scale, and hit send. The responses you receive will create separate text message threads.
The price of a texting service for schools depends on the texting platform you choose. While some platforms offer monthly plans, others have pricing plans based on credits. On average, the price of a texting service for schools starts from $39 per user per month. Make sure to contact the support team of your chosen service provider to confirm the prices. Also, make sure that there are no setup fees or hidden charges involved.
Conclusion
A texting service for schools enables you to easily connect, interact, and engage with students, parents, and teachers effectively. Signing up with a text messaging service for schools is the best way to engage your contacts, drive meaningful conversations, and build lasting relationships with them. Are you curious to find out how Emitrr fits your use case? Book a demo to explore the offerings!
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