Texting communication Guidelines

The Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs in the Division of Student Affairs is the designated coordinating and convening unit for texting UGA students (and potentially parents and family members). The goal of this designation is to clarify and streamline efforts to strategize, produce, and disseminate text-based communications. Student Affairs does not solely “own” text communications. Rather, Student Affairs serves campus in convening discussions and coordinating initiatives around text-based communications.

Initiative Admins

• Serving as the campus administrator(s) for the platform and liaising with the vendor (Mongoose Cadence) in supporting the following:
  • Administering and maintaining the platform
  • Onboarding and training new units
  • Liaising with the vendor account management and support contacts on behalf of university units.
• Maintaining a functional and accurate list of contact information for current UGA Students
  • A list will be pulled in collaboration with OIR, Admissions, and the Registrar at the beginning and midpoint of each semester.
  • List may be segmented by audience type. Segments will be created and maintained by Initiative Admins based on the participating unit’s audience requirements.
  • List will be maintained using best practices on date security and use permissions, including establishing clear opt-in and opt-out protocols.
• Collaborating with campus stakeholder units with interests in communicating using the platform, including Admissions, Instruction, Auxiliary Services, Development and Alumni Relations, Marketing and Communications, graduate, and professional schools, senior UGA administration, and units within the Division of Student Affairs.
  • Providing final review and approval of Texting Communication plans and ad hoc text communications.

 Unit Texting Coordinators

Each unit will designate one or more texting coordinators to vet, approve, and draft text communications before submitting for approval and scheduling with OVPSA. The unit texting coordinator is responsible for determining the following:

• Whether the communication is appropriate for the platform based on the criteria outlined in this document. While participating units are partners with OVPSA on the platform and have input in this process, OVPSA serves as the authoritative decision maker for this determination.
• Drafting the text communication and facilitating the review and approval of the draft with OVPSA.
• Coordinating with OVPSA and other participating units on scheduling of the communication to avoid conflicts.
• Working with OVPSA admins to ensure the proper student data attributes are being pulled for list segmentation.
• Creating the text withing the platform and notifying OVPSA for final review and approval.

All administrative and academic units should coordinate text communication to students with the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs as well as other participating units to enable coordination with other planned communications from other campus sources as well as to ensure the highest level of quality control. The protocol for creating scheduling and sending texts is as follows:

Texting Communication Plan

This is the default method for creating text communications on the platform.

• Each participating unit will submit a text communication plan for the semester with drafts of all planned texts, the segment(s) they will be sent to, and the planned send date and time to OVSPA for review prior to the start date of the semester.
• The communication plan should also include what student data attributes the unit needs for proper segmentation to their audiences.
• After review and approval by OVPSA, the unit texting coordinator will then create and schedule the texts in the platform and notify OVPSA for a final review and approval of the scheduled texts.
• OVPSA will provide final approval, or denial, of the scheduled texts. If a text is denied, OVPSA will unschedule it until it is either amended or deleted from the system.

Ad hoc Texting

Occasionally, the need for ad hoc communications will arise. The procedure for creating and sending these ad hoc communications will be as follows:

• • Before creating the communication within the platform, the unit’s texting coordinator will send a draft of the text communication, the audience list/segment, and the proposed send date and time to an OVPSA initiative admin for review. They will also review existing scheduled texts in the platform to ensure that there are no conflicts with other previously scheduled communications from other units.
  • Upon approval from the OVPSA admin, each respective unit will craft their communication within the platform and notify the OVPSA communications team for final review. Texts should never be scheduled or sent without review by OVPSA.
  • The OVPSA Communications admin will review the text and, if approved, schedule it for sending at the proposed send date and time and notify the unit texting coordinator.
  • All texts should be input and scheduled in the system no sooner than 1 week from the proposed send date. No texts should be sent on the same day or without unit texting coordinator and OVPSA approval.

Texting is a powerful communications channel with a high click and open rate. Our students receive dozens of texts each day. To ensure our texts have the greatest impact for our students and do not get lost in the stream of other communications they are receiving, text communications will be evaluated by both the unit texting coordinator and OVPSA admins for the following criteria before approval:

1. Scope – will this communication apply to all students or just a handful? If the audience is small, another communication channel may be more appropriate.
2. Importance – Is the communication about a required action that students must complete or purely informative? For example, is this a communication about an important Academic Deadline or is this for a small one-off voluntary event?
3. Timing – is this communication competing or conflicting with multiple other pre-existing communications, or are we in a lull? Will this communication maintain consistency in the frequency of our communications?
4. Precedence – Have other similar communications been approved in the past? Is the communication necessary for continuity and consistency of messaging?
5. Impact – Is the communication likely to generate a significant increase in student engagement for your program or service?

• Text Formatting Best Practices:
  • Keep it concise – Texts on some platforms are limited to 160 characters. While this limit does not apply to Cadence, it is still important to keep the length of your text as concise as possible. 160-characters is a good benchmark to use for evaluating the length of your communication.
  • Be cautious with wording – avoid the following:
    • spam words: “FREE,” “$$$,” “YOU WON,” OPEN NOW!!”
    • Text Speak: “Go2 Joes 2day 4 a gr8 deal!”
    • Any language that could be potentially mis-interpreted: Intonation is not conveyed well via text, so err on the side of earnest rather than cute.
  • Properly identify yourself/the institution – Always ensure that there is no question about the fact that the text is an official communication from The University of Georgia.
  • Personalize it – When possible, specify an individual person that the text is coming from and use merge fields to personalize the text with the student’s name and other data. Research shows a significant increase in engagement with personalized texts over those not.
  • Make it actionable – Always conclude the text with a call to action. When recipients are asked to perform an action, they are much more likely to remember the communication.
• Sending Best Practices:
  • Use your shared inbox – Shared inboxes allow the handling of replies from a centralized location and significantly decrease the sending time for large batch communications. For these reasons, texts should be scheduled and sent from the shared inbox rather than a personal inbox whenever possible.
  • Be consistent with send frequency – While we do not want to over communicate to our students, we do want build familiarity and trust with them as a communication source. Many communicators worry about sending too many communications to their audience, but sending too few communications can also be an issue. If your audience forgets who you are and your messages come unexpectedly, they are more likely to view the communication as unwelcome. Focus equally on the overall number of communications you are sending as well as on a consistent predictable schedule for them.
  • Consider the timing – Ensure that when the students receive the communication, you or your team will have the ability to respond to them in a timely fashion in the hours immediately following. For example, 4:30pm on a Friday may not be the best time to send out a campaign as by the time students would be replying to the communication there would no longer be anyone around to respond to them.
  • Do not communicate ad-hoc – This is a powerful platform with the potential to damage the reputation of this institution if misused. Therefore, we should always strive for a 0-failure rate in terms of communication mistakes using the platform. Planning, vetting, and scheduling text communications with plenty of time for each step of the workflow will help ensure high quality, consistent, error-free communication to our students. Conversely, not allowing enough time for the proper review and vetting of communications before sending will lead to mistakes and should be avoided.
  • Add multiple options for replying – In addition to replying to the text directly, add other options for responding like an email address or phone number for your area to each text.
• Reply Handling Best Practices – Cadence is a two-way communication platform. As such, our communications will often receive replies from students that must be managed effectively. The following are best practice suggestions for handling replies:
  • Use your shared inbox for sending texts so that everyone with access to the shared inbox can see and respond to any replies.
  • Ensure that dedicated monitoring of the inbox is in place by platform admins or users prior to any large sends to ensure quick response times to any replies.
  • Anticipate the most frequent questions related to the context and content of the communication that your students may have. Pre-write replies to those questions for the users monitoring your inbox to use for quickly responding to any replies.
  • Reply as promptly as possible. Studies show that most people expect a response to a text reply within 10 mins.
  • Setting up an auto response for a campaign with specific alternative contact information or direct links to resources is an effective way to handle replies if you cannot directly monitor your inbox.

Segment Titles – utilize a combination of the criteria the segment is based on with the name of the unit creating the segment.

• • Segment Name Examples:
    • “First Year Undergrads – Office of Instruction”
    • “Spring Semester Incoming New Students – University Transitions”
    • “Fall Semester Honor Roll Students – ELS”

Campaign Titles – use a combination of the communication’s content, the date, and the unit creating the campaign.

• • • Title Name Examples:
      • “First Advising Reminder, Fall 2023 – Office of Instruction”
      • “Welcome UGA Initial Welcome Message, Spring 2023 – ELS”

Data Requests

Adhering to applicable FERPA requests and restrictions, UGA student data will be added to the platform at the beginning of each semester by the OVPSA Admins. Data will be updated mid-way through the semester, after the drop/add deadline. Initially, this will be a manual process. However, Banner SIS integration is possible with the platform, and the goal is to have student data continually updated via the Banner API in the future.

Master Texting List

OVPSA admins will maintain an at-the-ready primary text list to all UGA students. This full list will be used sparingly and only for essential announcements relevant to all UGA students. The list will include other student data attributes, defined by participating units, so that proper list segmentation can be performed.

Texting List Segmentation

While there will be one data source for all current students maintained within the platform, OVPSA can create custom segments for participating unit’s communications based on defined data categories in our master data set. Unit texting coordinators should identify and review which data categories (demographic and other student data) they require for list segmentation at the beginning of each semester and include it with their communication plan so that the VPSA admins can ensure that data is available in our main list and create the required segments.

Opting in and Out

To ensure compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the university will utilize an explicit opt-in strategy for student opt-ins as well as best practice methods for opt-out including:

• Explicit text communication opt-in fields on Admissions intake and Athena contact forms.
• Only pulling and importing student data into the platform from students who have explicitly opted-in on the forms mentioned above.
• Sending an initial opt-out opportunity text to students at the beginning of each semester to give them the opportunity to confirm their desire to receive texts.
• Only sending further texts to students who have given us their confirmation on the Admissions/Athena forms and the text confirmation.