Meet Rob...

Rob is having the worst day of his career. His big strategic communications plan for stu-

dent enrollment, engagement, and retention, which he has been working on for months, has just been thoroughly eviscerated and rejected by a committee of high-ranking university officials.

“Way too expensive and impractical!” said the Finance Director. “Do you have any idea how much expense and effort is involved in setting up a in-house call center or effectively manag-ing an outsourced one?”

“Insufficiently engaging!” said the Dean. “We are already bombarding our students with too many emails that they never open.”

“I am not really seeing a Big Idea here,” said the Head of Marketing. “We need something out of

the box, something that will really differentiate us from every other institution with whom we are competing for students.”

The worst part for Rob is that he has been ex-ceptionally diligent in preparing for his big pres-entation. He has undertaken weeks of research into best practices and success metrics, endless discussions with colleagues, and even more weeks of planning campaign concepts, seg-mentation strategies, and other details for how each campaign will be executed, what concepts will appeal most to students, and how to infuse each campaign with personal touches.

As the miserable meeting comes to a close, Rob’s own boss delivers the coup de grâce: “Sor-ry Rob, your plan is just not going to work. Head back to the drawing board and be prepared to present a revised strategy at next month’s

steering committee meeting.”

The Long WalkTo soothe his dejection, Rob decides to take a long walk across campus to his favorite cafe. As he heads out the door, he nearly crashes into a student who is walking, head down, peering at her phone, rapidly tapping out a message with her thumbs. She doesn’t even seem to notice her near head-on collision with Rob. “Excuse you!” he grum-bles, stomping angrily away.

Before very long, however, Rob’s walk across the beautiful campus begins to work its magic. His anger and frustration give way to fascination as he notices the ubiquity of students traipsing along

with mobile phones gripped in hands, headphones plugged into ears. “How will we ever engage these students,” Rob wonders, “when they block off their hearing and rarely look up from their phones for long enough to even make eye contact with other human beings?”

The EpiphanyWith a tall, hot coffee in hand, Rob settles into his favorite comfortable chair at the cafe and begins to ponder his next move.

All around him students are talking, laughing, and, of course, looking down at their phones. Then and there, Rob has an epiphany: “We need to get our messaging front and center on those screens! Our

students are choosing to communicate this way. We need to learn how to utilize this mobile channel both effectively and cost efficiently.”

Being a Big Idea kind of guy, Rob immediately thinks of creating a custom mobile/social app for students. He begins some research right away on his own phone, but quickly realizes that both costs and development leadtimes would be prohibitive for his school to take on. Ever the optimist, though, Rob says to himself: “There must be another way!”

The Life-Changing Event A week later, Rob departs for a CRM Conference that his boss has asked him to attend. Upon arrival, Rob’s dream of mobile-centric engagement with students is instantly rekindled. Right in his confer-ence bag is a special report extolling the benefits of utilizing SMS text messaging not only as a tool for emergency alerts — already a common campus

usage — but to engage university and college stu-dents throughout their complete student lifecycles — from first contact all the way through graduation and alumni relationship. The report contains in-triguing examples and performance metrics, expe-rience-based advice, and best practices for crafting effective SMS campaigns for students.

The report’s author, Rob realizes, offers a robust SMS platform that is already capable of working directly with his university’s CRM system. After poring through the report, Rob makes a beeline for the SMS provider’s booth to see a demo and obtain more information. What he sees on his visit, blows him away. Not only is the SMS platform ready to plug and play with his university’s CRM system, it is also intuitive and easy to use, highly functional and robust in terms of workflow automation, and, most important, completely in line with his university’s established budget. What is more, Rob really likes

the people behind the SMS platform. He gets the sense they are truly interested in supporting him for the long term. He agrees to run a small pilot test of the tools to generate hard data that he can take back to his committee.

Rob’s Big WinFast forward a few weeks. Rob is back in the board room, presenting the results of his CRM-powered SMS pilot. “Yes, you heard that correctly sir — an 8X response rate when compared to traditional communications channels, with first replies being received within seconds of campaign launch.”

Committee members are now leaning forward in their seats, smiling, and nodding their heads. Rob knows he has them. “And we can segment and tar-get key messaging throughout the entire student lifecycle, from the moment their standardized test scores reach us all the way through campus visits, applications, decisions, enrollments, orientation, attendance, graduation, and beyond. We all know that the more we engage students, the greater the probability they will matriculate and reach gradua-tion with us. Eventually,” Rob adds, “SMS communi-cations will become an industry norm for engaging

students. Competitive advantage, however, will ac-crue only to first movers. The time for us to adopt this technology is now!”

A small round of applause breaks out as Rob’s visibly enthusiastic steering committee sets about considering all the finer details of his plan — much of which he has been able to salvage from his origi-nal presentation. Today is a great day for Rob. Dare we say magical?

Attend a session on SMS Best Practices for Education on Mon-

day July 20, 3:10PM to 4:00PM to learn how SMS can help you

engage with students, followed by an SMS-Magic demo. Drop by

the Screen-Magic booth to claim your free copy of the report that

changed Rob’s life. For a real-world example of how CRM paired

with automated SMS is producing amazing results for institu-

tions of higher learning, we strongly encourage you to attend the

session by Len Lipkin, from Arcadia University, on Tuesday, July 21,

from 1:15PM to 2:00PM.

www.screen-magic.com • CONTACT: 415-366-6645