If I need to get a hold of a student on campus and I happen have their cell phone number, I have to text them…they answer right away. If I call and leave a message on their cell, they never get the message, because they don’t bother to listen to their voice mail.

Things changed quickly and now, we in higher education must embrace the social media sites as a way to communicate with this generation and I think that texting is the next way we will be communicating with this generation and others!

1. Texting is much cheaper than making a call with the cell phone. For instance, our daughter pays $10 per month for unlimited texting. For calling she gets a limited number of minutes per month and would have to pay 45 cents a minute over that.

2. Texting is more convenient than email, especially for brief messages. I do agree that as the new generations of cell phones with e-mail capability permeate the market, e-mail usage may replace some of the text messaging. But, texting a brief message is still more convenient.

On our campus, we do use texting but only for emergency notification (as one of three ways of mass notification). I would personally refrain from using texting to recruit but would certainly consider use it to notify admission decision. Our younger daughter was accepted to a medical school this year and someone from the admission’s office called her on the cell phone the day before Thanksgiving. Needless to ay, she had the best Thanksgiving day of her life!

In my experience, prospects see texts from an institution as intrusive. Texting is how they communicate with their friends. The fact that they text as much as these numbers suggest may actually be more evidence to that point. They’re getting so many texts already– are ours going to be even more unwanted and bothersome?

As for SMS ‘alerts’, we’ve utilized Twitter rather than texting, though we recognize that its numbers with teens aren’t huge. But the ‘opt-in’ nature makes it so much less intrusive, and they can choose to receive updates on their phones if they want.

Any good examples or suggestions of how institutions can integrate texting into an overall communications plan without becoming an annoyance? Or am I way off base and do prospects WANT us to text?

SMS is an intriguing channel, and kids are definitely there. The challenge is coming up with useful, relevant messages to send them via SMS.

Allowing them to sign up for SMS sports alerts, fine arts alerts, etc., seems somewhat useful since they can segment themselves out to messages relevant to their interests.

I look at these numbers and don’t think SMS as much as I think about the future of e-mail marketing: 1. Kids carry mobile phones 2. Mobile phones/plans increasingly have Web and e-mail capabilities 3. E-mail is far from dead, but for some it is going mobile. Plan accordingly.