Over the years, the flow of communication has increased manifold with the rapid evolution of smartphone technology and mobile networks.
Interestingly, Americans keep calling and texting, as the stats show 2.0 trillion SMS/MMS volume in 2021, which hasn’t been much affected by the instant messengers. It shows the significance of using texting platforms to reach the target audience.
Unlike cluttered inboxes, text messages can cut through the noise and deliver the message right across, enticing immediate response from the target audience.
While emails remain the most relevant form of communication for higher educational institutions, SMS/texting also provides some unique advantages.
By utilizing top higher education texting platforms, schools and colleges can increase engagement and drive meaningful connections with them.
If you’re considering using a texting platform for your school, here’s a run-down of the top 10 texting platforms you should consider.
- ThruText
- Texting Base
- Ocelot
- SMS-Magic
- EX Texting
- Cadence
- TrueDialog
- Simple Texting
- Textedly
- Vidyalaya
Let’s explore each.
10 Best Higher Education Texting Platforms
As communication becomes the top priority nowadays, higher education marketing trends reveal that texting platforms are not only for marketing but to keep communication consistent between teachers, students, and schools.
Let’s explore how each of these texting platforms meets the unique needs of educational institutions.
Platform 1: ThruText
Source: ThruText
ThruText is a peer-to-peer texting platform that offers a centralized system to send thousands of text messages quickly and easily. ThruText makes your message impossible to ignore and provides a trackable system to navigate text status and details.
Best-in-class, ThruText key features include
- Admin tools that send 200 messages per minute
- Robust quality control makes your text precise
- Unparalleled uptime with 7 days of support services
- Offers long-term sustainability of P2P texting
- Extensive QA to ensure data and platform security
Pros: ThruText is a simple software for higher educational institutions at an affordable price that can fit any budget size—a User-friendly dashboard to create text scripts and collect databases.
Cons: With limited SMS in each subscription, you can run out of numbers, and if you buy another package with more SMS quantity, you will be paying extra.
Platform 2: Texting Base
Source: Texting Base
Texting Base is one of the best SMS marketing software that powers text message marketing for thousands of industry-leading organizations. It helps you to effortlessly connect with students and enhance their outreach, ensuring faculty and students stay connected seamlessly.
All-in on innovation, Texting Base offers advanced features that include:
- Drip campaigns
- Emojis
- Triggers automated conversation
- Send out time-sensitive messages
- Opt-in web forms
- International texting
- Message Scheduling
- Multiple user support
- Mobile App
- Built-in shrinking
Pros: Texting Base creates a sense of continuous engagement with students effortlessly with a personalized message option. It helps in developing a deeper connection and making lasting impressions.
Cons: Implementation requires technical knowledge, and mobile apps sometimes become challenging to text from the app, compared to ease from the computer.
Platform 3: Ocelot
Source: Ocelot
Ocelot provides a 2-way texting software to communicate with students, meaningfully encouraging action. Also, with the integration of AI, Ocelot provides an impactful and seamless way to guide students through enrollment and ensure they take the desired action.
Following the education marketing tips, Ocelot focuses on retention, better communication, and consistency. Key features include:
- AI chatbots
- Live chat
- Video Library
- AI workflows
- 24/7 accessible
- Counseling center
- Multilingual texting
Pros: Ocelot offers straightforward documentation and configuration for higher educational institutions. And AI filters questions and answers in multiple languages quickly and effectively.
Cons: In-depth information about all the departments is required so that AI can answer all student questions. Also, third-party integrations need to be improved.
Platform 4: SMS-Magic
Source: SMS-Magic
SMS-Magic offers a conversational-style texting platform to reach students through SMS and engage them using fewer resources. SMS-Magic comes with four different pricing plans and a free trial. Their feature-rich messaging app is designed to elevate the messaging experience and drive engagement.
Key features included in the SMS-Magic platform are the following:
- Unify Multichannel conversations in one inbox
- Promote your college using personalized message campaigns
- Stay compliant with local messaging regulations
- Follow brand guidelines from the template
- Empowers rep to respond to queries via mobile or desktop quickly
- Track end-to-end performance
- Delivers an overall positive experience
Pros: SMS-Magic is a powerful CRM-based texting platform that integrates with other platforms such as Salesforce and Zoho.
Cons: To save costs, you must monitor the messaging costs, which can surpass the selected pricing plan.
Platform 5: EZ Texting
Source: EZ Texting
EZ Texting is the ultimate solution for all your higher education mass texting needs. Whether you have a school, college, or university, EZ Texting is designed to expand your reach, conduct bulk texting, and engage with students through Fastlane communication technology.
With no hidden fees, unlimited contacts, and list growth tools, here are some other key features that make this platform stand out:
- Drip campaigns
- Personalized texting
- Data and reports to optimize texting
- Contact management with custom fields
- Template and design tools
- API & integrations
- Textable number options
- Analytics and Reporting
Pros: EZ Texting automatically adds email/phone numbers and contact names to enhance your marketing initiatives. Easy to use interface and option to send images/flyers.
Cons: Pricing is an issue, as it goes up with the number of texts, and you have to monitor. Also, customer support needs to be improved further.
Platform 6: Cadence
Source: Cadence
Cadence is a leading conversational software that allows school branding with easy-to-personalize and manages communication.
Cadence ensures that higher education institutions achieve increased enrollment, retention rates, maximum event attendance, reduced summer melt, and increased fundraising.
Cadence’s texting platform offers exclusive student journey resources that begin with student recruitment and go beyond alum engagement.
Along with seamless integration with your existing software, other key features include:
- Customized text message templates
- Easy plugins
- CRM integration with Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho & dynamics
- SMS campaigns that convert
- Dashboard and reporting tools
- Mass text messaging through broadcast SMS
- Lead routing with inbound requests
Pros: Cadence’s best part is its easy-to-use feature, staff training services, which allows higher education institutions to interact with the students that interact and engage.
Cons: Needs to include video messaging features for enhanced visual branding.
Platform 7: TrueDialog
Source: TrueDialog
TrueDialog is a highly secure and reliable top higher-education texting platform. TrueDialog caters to small, medium, and large educational institutions to enhance the student experience with text messages. This platform is designed to improve engagement, increase enrollment, and facilitate students throughout their academic journey.
With state-of-the-art team-based technology software, key features include the following:
- Team-to-1 texting solution
- 1-to-Millions mass texting
- Call center SMS texting solution
- Multi-channel alerts
- SMS scheduling system
- Robust API and documentation
- Multi-channel messaging: voice, email, and SMS
- Pre-built ppt-in, opt-out & subscription management
- Database manager & target segmentation
- MMS multimedia messaging service
- Drill-down reporting dashboard
Pros: Easy-to-use platform with minimal training required for the user. Best for quick communication and smooth and effective contact with the students.
Cons: It must include the built-in signature option to be added to the communication. Also, the CRM needs to be more efficient and intuitive to provide better insights.
Platform 8: Simple Texting
Source: Simple Texting
Simple Texting is a leading higher education mass texting software that instantly shares essential messages with students, teachers, parents, and faculty.
Whether it’s an emergency, school alerts, or general information, Simple Texting is the perfect solution as the students, parents, and teachers are never far from their cell phones.
Simple Texting offers everything in one place, and the key features include
- Intuitive tools to make contact management easy
- Connect with students 1:1
- Personalized message
- School branding options for customization
- Fast and straightforward
- No setup fees
- Dashboard for insights and reporting
- Different pricing plans that fit all sizes
Pros: Simple Texting offers an easy, quick, straightforward mass texting setup. It also allows users to track sent and received messages for enhanced communication.
Cons: Customer service needs to be improved as it gets backed up during certain hours, creating user problems.
Platform 9: Textedly
Source: Textedly
Textedly is an easy-to-use text message marketing (SMS) platform that allows higher educational institutions to increase revenue by automating bulk texting. It is a cloud-based platform that provides users with a dedicated toll-free number, and other SMS marketing fundamentals. Also, users can send text over 300 characters long with the link-shrinking feature.
Textedly offers a wide range of features, and some of the key features are listed below.
- Integrations with platforms like Zaiper
- 2-way messaging
- Activity dashboard
- Campaign management
- Auto-responders
- Contact management
- Database management
- Location-based marketing
- Social media integration
Pros: Textedly is a top pick for higher educational institutions due to its scalable and affordable SMS platform. It’s cost-effective and automates the SMS journey for institutions.
Cons: Analytics on how receivers (students, parents, or faculty) respond to the SMS must be added to improve customer service.
Platform 10: Vidyalaya
Source: Vidyalaya
Vidyalaya is a top school management platform that offers complete services for higher education institutions. The texting solution offered by Vidyalaya is based on the latest technologies and extraordinary features. It offers end-to-end communication solutions, particularly during admissions, academic management, staff management, and attendance.
Key features of Vidyalaya SMS software include:
- Pre-defined templates
- Message scheduler
- One-way communication
- Customization as per requirement
- Simple top-up options
- Removal of languages
Pros: It is highly user-friendly and affordable. Also, the database allows you to save your students’ data to communicate effectively and according to their needs. It also enables personalized message that doesn’t requires mass broadcast.
Cons: Vidyalaya offers only one-way communication, which makes it difficult for students or parents to communicate with the school or college.
Final Words
Every higher education institution uses texting software to stay connected with their existing students and reach out to prospective students. Ensure your texting platform is simple to use and offers a seamless experience.
Even the simplest strategy relies on a solid foundation of technology and processes. You can also approach a professional higher ed marketing firm for strategic marketing and promotional tactics to take your educational outreach to the next level.
Now that we’ve shared all the insight into the features, pros, and cons of the top higher education texting platforms, choose wisely!
