COVID-19 has changed campus life for the foreseeable future. Some campuses are welcoming students back, but with a lot more regulations than before. Your teams have to get the word out about these regulations, remind students about them, and ensure they are followed. Compliance can mean the difference between a safe campus or an outbreak. Enter college SMS.
College SMS platforms empower institutes of higher learning to send, receive, and organize student texts. With an open rate of 98%, they’re one of the best ways to ensure students read your most important messages.
Read on to learn how texting for colleges will help your institution manage new COVID-19 campus regulations—and, most importantly, keep students safe.
Reinforce Emails with College SMS Messages
You probably send a lot of information to students through emails. It’s a great channel for long-form content and attachments. But many college students don’t open every single email that lands in their inbox. If they do open your emails, it may take them a while.
SMS for colleges is a great way to ensure students know about key guidelines. The average person will:
- Open 98% of their texts
- Read 90% of texts within the first three seconds of receipt
- Respond, if need be, within 90 seconds
Your college SMS solution will empower your teams to quickly send mass texts to all of your students. Team members simply select a list of relevant students, create or select a template, and leave room for custom fields. Then, they press send. The college SMS platform will automatically insert students’ custom field information into outgoing texts using merge tokens.
SMS for colleges ensures students read critical information right after your team sends it. During COVID-19, when your regulations and rules may be changing constantly, this kind of speedy information dissemination is critical.
Send Regular College SMS Reminders
Your students are balancing studies, extracurriculars, work, friendships, and calls home. They may forget to put their masks on when they walk into the library from time to time. Keep COVID-19 safety on the top of their minds with regular college SMS reminders.
You can schedule out planned college SMS reminders, and send special reminders if your team notices an uptick in virus cases or broken regulations. Consider adding tools like emojis and GIFs to make your content approachable.
A templated message might look like this:
Hello, {{student name}}, hope your Friday’s going well. Don’t forget to wear your mask and stay 6 feet apart during the socially-distanced Halloween Cookie Pickup! 🦸♀️
These kinds of SMS reminders help your students stay on top of COVID-19 regulations, even while they’re balancing all of their other commitments.
Use Texting for Colleges to Enable Reporting
Sometimes, forgetting COVID-19 regulations can be dangerous. While it should be up to your administration to enforce these policies, it’s a big help to have students watching out for violations on the ground.
Ask students to report dangerous violations via texting for colleges. Your teams can ask them to text in with:
- Violation details
- Accompanying pictures
- Location information
Then, your team can step in and send personnel to remind students of regulations. You can even use SMS to connect with campus resource officers or safety officials. Alternatively, your team can create another SMS inbox specifically for your resource officers. They can directly receive incoming reports and immediately respond.
Campus reporting helps your team keep an eye on the ground, even when you’re sitting in your office.
Open Up for Regulation Questions via SMS for Colleges
Your students will probably have some regulation questions. Do you have to socially distance in the cafeteria line? Do masks have to be worn in public restrooms? Offering a convenient channel for regulation questions makes it more likely that your students will ask them and follow the regulations properly.
Let students text your team with these questions. Your team members can:
- See all incoming messages in a shared inbox
- Assign chats to team members or leave them unassigned so everyone gets notifications
- Schedule follow-ups for the future.
Publicize this hotline on your website, emails, and flyers. Ensure students know they can write in with any questions, no matter how small. Depending on the platform you use, you may be able to accept messages from over-the-top channels like Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, Google’s Business Messages, and more.
Offering a welcoming, open-ended hotline is a great way to encourage students to connect with your team and follow your COVID-19 regulations correctly.
Want to learn more about SMS for colleges? Check out our platform.
