WhatsApp for EdtTech: Top 6 Ways To Use WhatsApp Business API for Education Industry in 2024
The education industry has been growing, evolving and embracing new dimensions and horizons, owing to technology and consumer demands. It is now a dynamic and highly accessible industry, and we have witnessed its true potential in the post-pandemic climate.
One such crucial and astute change is the adoption of a conversational channel like WhatsApp for Education industry.
What is WhatsApp for Education Industry?
WhatsApp for edtech involves making the most of the message platform’s features to promote educational services. It offers a direct and convenient channel for EdTech companies and educational institutions to interact with students, parents, and educators, facilitating better engagement.
Using WhatsApp for EduTech, companies and institutions can employ a higher level of personalization in their communication, with reminders, updates and targeted messages.
In short, WhatsApp for EdTech uses instant and personalized communication to make education interactive, efficient and accessible.
Why Use WhatsApp for Education Industry?
Some of the key reasons why WhatsApp is picking up as a promising channel for the EdTech companies include:
• WhatsApp enables you to send tailored and personalized messages to both individuals and groups, ensuring relevant information sharing and better engagement.
• WhatsApp Business API facilitates real-time support and assistance, enabling educators to offer immediate guidance and clarification to students.
• WhatsApp API facilitates the sharing of resources, study materials, assignments, updates etc. to students and parents can be carried out on time.
• As a conversational and direct channel for communication, WhatsApp can also help foster a good bond between parents/guardians and teachers.
• A wide demographic of users and ease of accessibility make it simpler for EdTech companies to streamline communication to one platform.
How to Use WhatsApp for EdTech
WhatsApp offers a diverse range of use cases for EdTech, some of which include:
1. Exam Reminders and Notifications
You can use WhatsApp to send out timely exam notifications, study tips, and other reminders to help students lighten their stress, stay organized, and prepare better for the upcoming exams. Keeping them updated and informed about schedules and providing them with crucial study materials and tips will also help improve the overall performance of students.
2. Interactive Sessions
By leveraging multimedia features like videos, audio, and images, you can conduct interactive learning sessions through WhatsApp. WhatsApp for EdTech, also lets you promote active participation from students while simultaneously making classes more comprehensible and enjoyable for them.
3. Real-Time Support and Assistance
Through WhatsApp one-on-one communication you can provide direct, real-time support and assistance to your students and answer any doubts and clarifications they might have.
WhatsApp for EdTech hence allows students to seek answers, clarify doubts, and receive assistance outside of class hours, whenever it is required. Reliable assistance in learning promotes a more personalized experience that helps students move past challenges more efficiently.
4. Lead Generation
WhatsApp is quite a popular communication channel for many marketers, but the educational sector has yet to completely leverage its full potential for recruiting students. The personal nature and convenience of WhatsApp marketing is a perfect way to share info and collect customer data. With a WhatsApp message, you can easily reach out to prospective students/parents directly on a platform that they check daily.
5. Lead Qualification
After you gain a lead, you need to qualify them. You can further engage the lead to gain more details on who the person is, what course they are looking for, and more. You can employ an online form or a live agent to obtain all the required information. With WhatsApp API, you can also leverage WhatsApp automation to do the same as well.
6. Engagement Campaigns
Some of the leads you generate might not be convinced just yet. WhatsApp is a great platform to run engagement campaigns to keep in touch and spark the interest of such potential customers to take up your courses/ workshops/ degrees.
7. Feedback and Surveys
Feedback is a valuable part of any educational service and it is crucial to collect feedback to improve the quality of education that is being provided. EdTech companies can easily gather feedback from students and conduct surveys among them using WhatsApp.
The feedback and survey results can offer much-needed insight into student satisfaction, user experience, the effectiveness of the course etc. which can guide EdTech companies towards improvements in quality.
8. Customer Retention
Like many other industries, the education sector also faces a lot of churn rates. WhatsApp can be the ideal platform to help organizations build good relationships with students and maintain meaningful connections. With personalized services at scale and quality communication, you can ensure that the students feel important and garner more trust.
9. Course Enrollment and Course Related Updates
In many instances, students looking to enroll in courses might miss deadlines without receiving updates about them. You can streamline the course enrollment process for students with WhatsApp.
You can use WhatsApp message notifications to share course enrollment updates, new course offerings, course registration deadlines, and payment reminders. This way the student is always updated about course-related information without missing a beat.
10. Post-Study Re-Engagement
Your alumni are the best promoters you will ever have. This is why it is important to re-engage them after their courses are completed. The achievements of your alumni reflect the quality of education you offer. Close engagement with them through WhatsApp can help you secure clients that are returning, enhance teaching quality from feedback, improve your profile with word-of-mouth marketing and networking,
Examples: Top 3 Ways Schools Can Use WhatsApp Business
There are a couple of different ways schools can use WhatsApp for EdTech. Some examples can be to collect valuable feedback and to provide real-time assistance, both of which we have discussed above.
Schools have to deal with students of a more delicate age and to alleviate the anxiety of parents its important to collect feedback and improve the quality of education. To do this you can send out a WhatsApp message that says:
Hello {NAME}!
We care about the quality of education that we provide to your children and at {INSTITUTION NAME} we are constantly on a quest to improve. This is why your feedback is of utmost value to us. We request you to answer this questionnaire regarding your overall experience with us.
Real-time assistance is also an important tool to ensure your efforts are making a difference for the student. Schools can offer assistance to students via WhatsApp, where teachers can assist them in better understanding topics and concepts the student has difficulty with.
Hello {NAME}!
Exams are nearing and there might be a bit of tension in the air. Finding difficulty in understanding a concept? Feel free to reach out as our teachers are always here to assist!
Here are a few other significant ways in which schools can utilize WhatsApp Business:
1. Form Submission
Schools can use WhatsApp to request important forms or documents for administrative purposes through WhatsApp. Parents or students can simply send this out through WhatsApp as a document or the institutions can request the needed information on their behalf.
Dear Parents
We request that your child {NAME}’s migration certificate along with personal details be sent to us before 30-06-2023. You can fill up the details in the form attached to this message.
Thank You!
2. School Circulars
Important school circulars need to reach the students as well as the parents promptly. You can use a WhatsApp template to share these circulars directly with them, with minimal delay.
Dear Parents
We are declaring a 2-day holiday on {DATES}, to commemorate {EVENT}. We have provided the detailed circular in the pdf attached.
Thank you!
3. Exam Schedules
Schools can also send out exam reminders and exam schedules more efficiently on WhatsApp as the chances of it being missed by the receiver are very low. You can share a message that looks like this:
Dear Parents
{INSTITUTION NAME} will be conducting its annual examinations from {DATE}. We have provided you with the detailed Examination schedule in the PDF file attached.
All the very best!”
Examples: Top 3 Ways Colleges Can Use WhatsApp Business
Some of the ways colleges use WhatsApp include:
1. Admission Process
Colleges can smoothen the admission process for courses and degrees by utilizing WhatsApp to carry out communication and request the needed data and documentation, instead of relying on paper-based processes.
Hi {NAME},
Your admission application is being processed. Please submit the payment receipt for the course within 48 hours, after which you will receive a confirmation message.
Thank you!
2. Lecture Updates
Another way colleges and universities can use WhatsApp for Education industry is to notify them about upcoming lectures so that they don’t miss them.
Hi {NAME},
Your admission application is being processed. Please submit the payment receipt for the course within 48 hours, after which you will receive a confirmation message.
Thank you!
3. Attendance tracking
Students can be notified with alerts and updates on the status of their attendance percentage, to help them maintain attendance above the required figure.
Dear Student,
Your attendance percentage for {COURSE NAME} in October is 73%. Attend more classes to maintain your percentage above the required 75%.
Two Key Use Cases of WhatsApp Business API for EdTech Industry
To use WhatsApp on a large scale for educational purposes, having the WhatsApp Business API is essential. This allows you to highlight WhatsApp as part of your educational service and to leverage key use cases like automation and performance mapping.
Automation
Using the WhatsApp Business API, you can automate custom workflows across use cases in order to make seamless, engaging communication possible wherever it is required. Smart automation can chiefly help in sending updates and providing alerts to students.
Mapping Performance
Mapping performance is a key figure to be tracked, not just to ensure the effectiveness of the campaigns but also to track engagement rates. This is also an important metric in the educational sector and by utilizing the WhatsApp Business API, you can keep track of how well your efforts are performing in terms of student engagement and campaign effectiveness.
Conclusion
The use of WhatsApp for EdTech has turned out to be a highly promising and effective educational communication and engagement tool.
By leveraging the WhatsApp Business API, EdTech companies, as well as educational institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities, can significantly improve the quality and accessibility of education.
WhatsApp can foster and enable personalized communication, streamline resource distribution, provide easy access to educational content and offer improved assistance and support. Institutions can actively engage students with interactive live sessions, exam notifications, course materials and media, and more, all with the set of features WhatsApp Business API can provide.
With a tool like Interakt, the features of WhatsApp Business API can be extended with powerful workflows and smart automation, completely elevating the potential of WhatsApp marketing for EdTech.
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