Save school money. Give texts the push!
Keeping in touch with parents is vital for schools – but with budgets stretched, the cost of the communication process can be the cause of real concern. But what if there was a way to save school money by using a different approach?
Communication never stops…
How many times a week do you have to contact parents? Maybe there’s a text about the possibility of bad weather and arrangements after a bad snowfall. Then there’s the messages to parents of children who are on their residential visit – keeping them up to date with their adventures. Plus the reminders about parents’ evening, the PTA meetings, or requests for helpers on a visit to the local church.
All of these things take time – yet they are so important for a school to run smoothly. But if your admin team – or person! – worry about the cost of every message, how do they decide which ones are important?
The traditional systems…
With a traditional communications system, text messaging costs can soon add up. For example, a bulk text messaging service might charge from 5p a message. A school with 300 children on roll could be paying £15 for one message to go to all parents.
See for yourself. Try our savings calculator here.
In a busy week – at the end of term, beginning of term and near Christmas (in fact at any time of the term!), this could eat into your budget. Not only that, some suppliers expect you to buy message bundles upfront. When cash is stretched to the limit, your school doesn’t need these costs. There’s also the question – how do you know what size bundle to buy?
And of course, no matter how often contact details are updated, parents change their mobile phone numbers when they switch networks, lose a phone, or change jobs. These ‘lost’ text messages still of course cost your school money.
So what’s the answer?
mySchoolApp sends messages as Push Notifications – and they’re included in the cost of your app! So you can message as much as you like. Choose if the messages go to the whole school, groups or with our Advanced Messaging Booster, individual parents. There’s no limit to the amount of messages you can send. Our linked messaging feature has even enabled some of our schools to go ‘paperless’. Plus, your messages will always reach the phone that mySchoolApp is downloaded to. Therefore when parents get a new phone or switch networks, as long as they transfer their apps, the message will always get through!
Our belt-and-braces approach allows parents to look back on historical messages if they miss them the first time.
So now you can take advantage of our messaging for schools and save school money. Meaning the school football team manager can send out reminders about fixtures. The netball manager can let parents know that the team is has been victorious again and will be on-time for collection. The Music teacher can even send a congratulatory message praising the kids’ teamwork – all at no extra cost to the school.
So we can save school money… Anything else?
mySchoolApp doesn’t just save school money, as well as offering messaging for schools, mySchoolApp can:
- handle absence notifications
- provide a school calendar that is accessible to all App users enabling them to save events to their own personal calendars
- integrate with map functions for directions to events away from school
- offer translations for parents and carers with EAL requirements
- create and share image galleries of events
- upload letters home, policies, the school dinner menu to be viewed on the app
All within your own school-branded interface.
