Senati: Streamlining student enrollment with two-way SMS

Challenge

Senati’s primary goal, at the beginning of a student’s journey, is to guide them through the application process. The marketing team is responsible for making sure that all available spaces are filled at the time of online enrollment.

The institute communicates application deadlines, exam registrations, and exam results through email. Most of these notifications are time-sensitive and require students to respond by a certain deadline.

However, since a significant number of Senati’s applicants come from lower-income households, many don’t have access to the internet, or their email, on a regular basis to receive or respond to time-sensitive information. This made it challenging for Senati to communicate the value and benefits of the institute to their target audience.

Solution

Senati decided to implement a new communication channel which majority of their applicants had access to – SMS.

Recent research shows that while not everyone has a smartphone with internet access, 5 billion people in the world (about 65% of the current population) can send and receive SMS messages. This number is expected to grow to 6 billion (about 78% of the current population)by the year 2025.

For this reason, Senati decided to create a comprehensive customer journey via SMS messaging to ensure important enrollment information is still accessible to students with little or no internet access. This was also introduced as a new channel to those who have regular access to internet, however, prefer to communicate via text message rather than email.

Using Infobip’s two-way SMS solution, Senati now enables applicants to:

Now, Senati can also communicate their value proposition along with new initiatives to keep potential students updated and motivated to enroll in their programs.

Result

A total of 800 students enrolled as a direct result, and for every S/.1 (Peruvian sol) invested in the campaign, Senati saw a return of S/.5 in enrollment and tuition fees – a 400% ROI.

Plans are now in place for Senati to work with Infobip on the build of a complete omnichannel communication system that includes Infobip’s email and voice services. This way, applicants have the option to receive messages on the channel that suits their preferences most. Senati aims to continue enhancing the enrollment process with relevant, contextual communication channels.