Last week I talked about using SMS — text messages — to communicate with your applicants using a service called Textmarks. A commenter on that post pointed out another service for using text messages to communicate to a group of people called Tatango.
I’ve only tested it out a bit, but already it looks like an even easier solution than Textmarks to send text messages to a group of mobile users. It works like Textmarks: You create a free account, and then can enroll mobile phone numbers in your group. You can then send one text message that cascades out to all of the subscribers.
Text messages are an outstanding way to communicate to Millennials for several reasons:
- Captive audiences. Unlike email, Millennials aren’t used to filtering text messages for spam like they do with email, so your message will be read.
- Brevity is good. Text messages have to be short (less than 160 characters), so they force you to create a message that is direct, helpful and concise. Just the kind of information a millennial likes.
- Cheap. It doesn’t cost you anything to send text messages this way. You don’t need to ask the IT department to install servers for an email blast system or even call them at all to use this service.
There are lots of ways to use texts to communicate to prospects. Reminders for application deadlines, advertising web chats and recruitment events, admissions decisions, etc. Just remember my golden rule of sending alerts to a group: Keep your messages relevant, concise, actionable and infrequent.
Oh, and Happy texting New Years!
