Muhlenberg College increases engagement and responsiveness of families with SMS

If you aren’t reading this article on mobile, odds are your phone is within arm’s reach. That’s why it's no surprise that in our recent survey of more than 6,400 parents, 38% responded that SMS is one of their top preferred communication channels. That number jumps to 50% when you look at the requests of Black, Hispanic, first-generation, and low-income families.

We launched our CampusESP SMS module to enable our partner schools to meet these expectations and better communicate with their prospective and current families. Seeing the opportunity, Muhlenberg College reached out and became our first customer to implement and launch the new texting capabilities — and in the process secured their places as our 2022 Q2 CampusESP MVP!

“Parents want to be informed,” said Tim Black, Director of Student Transitions and Family Programs at Muhlenberg. “By adding SMS, we can ensure they are informed and in a better position to help their students.”

Use texts to nudge the nudgers

The Muhlenberg team has been building their family communications strategy with CampusESP at the core. Knowing the goal for this year was to continue to scale and find more ways to engage and connect, the SMS module made perfect sense.

“For us, the big focus is utilizing parents as partners now,” said Black. “There’s been a shift in student affairs — and in higher ed in general — to allow students to create their own journey, but to also nudge parents when it comes to deadlines and other milestones.”

Black said that with the SMS module, they can be more confident that those timely and often crucial reminders are seen by parents, who then in turn can help keep their students on task.

Bill Keller, Senior Director of Communications at Muhlenberg, added that the channels CampusESP provides give the college a way to welcome parents into the campus community while still giving the students the primary responsibility for their journey.

“It’s a fine line — our students are adults. But this is likely their first time navigating things on their own. They need autonomy, but helping them succeed means tapping into all their support networks, and parents are one of them. The emails and texts we send in CampusESP are a bridge. We are giving parents the access they want and through the channels of their choice.”

Plans for a year of thoughtful messaging

After a super quick set-up (they were live less than 2 weeks after signing the contract!) and getting their first batch of parents to opt-in to communications (they already have 1060 sign-ups, more than half their families!) Muhlenberg dove into the module. The first initiative was to send reminders to families of incoming first-year students on upcoming housing and health services deadlines. Black was thrilled to hear back from the respective departments that they, in turn, saw a visible uptick in responses and submitted paperwork. 

Next up was a reminder about tuition bills on the horizon. Black sent a reminder message with a link to where parents could find more information. The result? 54% click rate … and way more families in the know.

As the upcoming school year approaches, Black has strategy meetings set up with student accounts, academic life, the registrar, and the dean of students to map out the messages they want to send. 

“This round I’m really focused on cutting down the numbers of emails we get saying ‘I didn’t know this was coming up!’” said Black.

Other ideas in the works include using texts to drive participation in and provide updates around family weekend, as well as loop parents into lesser-known programs and events that the college believes would benefit students.

“We have so many high-impact programs and opportunities to get involved, like internship fairs and volunteer fairs and study abroad programs,” said Keller. “They deepen the experience and impact of a Muhlenberg education. We want families to know about them and encourage their students to take advantage.”

Amplify your message through text, email, and portal

While the messages they send through the SMS module will often be time sensitive, Black and Keller both see great opportunity for how they will complement the content shared through the Muhlenberg family portal and newsletters. They also get excited about the potential ahead as they continue to expand their parent engagement strategy.

“Sometimes CampusESP just being there is part of the strategy,” says Keller. “We have the ability to build community, to look at metrics, to measure efficacy. Before CampusESP we were just shouting into the void. We’re still very much refining our approach and thinking how we want to use this product, but now we have a baseline. And we have the ease of knowing that if something is important and needs to be in front of parents, there’s now a place for that to live.” 

“I’m seeing a ton of potential in the platform that I’m excited to implement,” said Black. “I want CampusESP to be ‘that’ tool for us. I want to get parents away from emailing staff and off Facebook pages, and have them go right to the CampusESP portal when they need information.”

Curious about connecting with families via text message?