Education and Mobile Marketing

[Jim Roberts]

Why is a mobile marketing strategy good for educational institutions? Because communicating through a single channel alone is often ineffective and
response rates can be alarmingly low. By orchestrating new media like
Mobile Text, Email, IM, Voice, and Social Media, you can dramatically
increase enrollment, brand awareness, and return on investment. Why, you ask? Because:

1) There are 7 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone

2) It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email, if
they ever read it at all. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to
respond to a text message.

3) 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7

4) 8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011.

5) In 2011, over 85 percent of new handsets were be able to access the mobile Web. In US it is already had surpassed that.

6) Text messaging has surpassed voice calls

7) Text based marketing gets a 4% to 15% redemption rate

Digital communication has diversified and so has audience preference,
making it nearly impossible to reach your entire target group with just
one channel.  Generation X relies more
on instant messaging. Young adults prefer text to email. And now nearly
half the world can't function without social media. The only way to
reach 100% today is to incorporate all channels of communication.
 

There are tons of communication strategies out there: Face-to-Face, Print, Email, Web, Telephone,
Blogs, Chat, Radio, TV, Facebook and even Twitter. But how do teenagers prefer to communicate?


SMS/MMS Texting. It’s simple. It’s immediate. It’s affordable. It gets their attention.

Targeted texting is:

• Helpful – text students to announce events,
  confirm visits, track down missing documents, and remind students of
  application and deposit deadlines
• Simple – immediately reach a specific group of students in under 60 seconds
• Cost-effective – texting is far less expensive than direct mail and much more effective than e-mail
• Preferred – 97% percent of students use text messages as their primary form of communication

Mobile marketing is inexpensive. Campaigns are painless and easy to setup and most of all , you are reaching your target audience. By sending texts, video, audio, mobile e-cards and other techniques, you can definitely create that "touchy-feely" engagement with your prospects and in crease your enrollment numbers. Most off all, it works on almost every phone, no matter how old it might be.

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