For more information, check out our video tutorial here.
What is it?
Alongside our fantastic WhatsApp messaging service, you can now also use SMS for those hard to reach students. Connecting with those hard to reach students is crucial for increasing engagement with your students.
Using our SMS service increases response rates whilst maintaining a modern approach to contacting students. Instead of you needing to revert to emails or phone calls, Purlos' smart system will automatically send students an SMS if they are not on WhatsApp!
If the student is on WhatsApp and the intended message is received, no SMS will be sent. SMS is only triggered when the student is not using WhatsApp. There is nothing further you need to do to enable this feature, it is automatically switched on!
What difference will it make?
Although the majority of your target audience should be on WhatsApp, there may be a small number of them who don't use it. Using just one channel, these students may have previously not received your Purlos campaign, potentially missing out on key milestones.
How will the student’s messaging experience change?
It won’t! They will follow exactly the same conversational paths, that you have built, as anyone using WhatsApp - it will simply be via SMS.
On your side, nothing will change either.
You will be able to see which students are using SMS vs WhatsApp in the Student tab of your Purlos account.
Additionally, when responding to a Query (in the Queries tab), you will notice ‘Talking on SMS’. This section will display what service they are using to reply to the messages you send.
If the student registers, or deactivates their WhatsApp account for WhatsApp, the conversation can change from WhatsApp to SMS and vice versa. As shown below, if the student initially receives a message on WhatsApp but has since deactivated, the conversation can be continued via SMS.
What is the difference between WhatsApp and SMS?
Different SMS providers format their messages differently depending on how many characters you use. You will see a warning on your campaign page if your template is over 480 characters, as anything over this amount can affect the formatting of the message sent via SMS (e.g. the message will be split up into a few different messages).
So it's good to bear this in mind when designing your templates. For context, our standard Jenni intro message (below) is 338 characters.
Hi {name}, Jenni here from the student experience team at {college name} 👋 We can now connect here on WhatsApp! Thank you for your application for one of our courses. We are delighted that you are planning to join us.
Do you have any questions? I'm happy to help!
1. Yes, I have some questions!
2. Not atm...
Just reply with 1 or 2 to answer
How do I use SMS?
This feature is automatically enabled for you.
Once you send your campaign, it will be automatically sent via WhatsApp. Our system then identifies all of the contacts who aren’t registered with WhatsApp. The exact same message is then sent to the identified contacts via SMS.
There is no extra time or effort needed, everything is automatic!
How do I turn SMS off?
If you don’t want to use our SMS service, you can turn this off on a campaign by campaign basis. Just go to the campaign detail page, scroll down to 'Channels' and edit your channels there.
If you want to turn SMS off for your account entirely, please contact your Account Manager.
To benefit from this new feature, start planning a campaign here!
Or to navigate back to our Help Centre, just click here.