Tip 13: Use spare time to improve your contactability
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Now it’s more important than ever to reach your students and families electronically. No matter what communication tool you use, your messages aren’t going to end up in the right hands unless your contact data is correct.
Our very first daily tip featured schools using social media to encourage parents to correct their contact information. Although still a great tactic, this can only go so far, as it only reaches parents with internet and those who are social-media-savvy.
At Fortune Schools, some administrators (who usually would be working face-to-face and handling on-site activities) now have spare capacity — and they’re using this time to tackle the project of improving the accuracy of their contact records.
If you find yourself (or other administrators) with some extra time on your hands, get to work on digging deep into your data and trying your best to reach 100% of your community by fixing bounced messages and undeliverable contacts. Here’s what Fortune Schools is doing to clean their Student Information System (SIS):
Pull a list from your communication tool of all failing contacts
Divvy up between administrators — tackle the project together
Correct blatant typos manually
Not sure what’s wrong? Check against any other internal records
No contact info, or still can’t figure out what’s wrong? Reach out to another guardian or the student
Sample message:
I hope you and your family are healthy and well. As we transition to remote learning, we are putting in our efforts to make sure we have a strong, open line of communication with all of our families. We noticed that we have no contact information for Rosa Smith, would you be able to provide her phone number and email address?
We want to make sure we are able to reach everyone with important school information and updates in this rapidly-evolving situation. Thank you.
Try to make sure you have at least one point of contact for at least one guardian of each student.
❗❗ Also, it’s important to note that, if you have drastically increased the number of messages you are sending, email and text providers might be marking your messages as spam. ❗❗
Ask parents to save your school phone number and email address (if your school uses ParentSquare, that would be donotreply@parentsquare.com) to their “Contacts” so their phone/email service providers know it’s OK, ensuring that your messages get through.
K-12 Remote Tips
We send out an email with each new remote communications tip for K12. Some examples use ParentSquare, but these tips will work with any comprehensive communications tool. Sign up to receive them straight in your inbox.
We’d love to know what you are doing — what great examples or ideas would you like to share with other schools? Simply comment below or submit your tip via our web form.