Engagement and retention are two biggest challenges, and strategic communication is the key to the achieve perfect connect.

1. 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

2. steering committee meeting.”
The Long Walk
To 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 Epiphany
With 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

3. 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

4. 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 Win
Fast 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