AHMI achieved a 56% increase in engagement rates by partnering with Guni SMS during the pandemic

The Client

The Australian Health & Management Institute (AHMI) is a private university based in Parramatta, NSW, Australia. AHMI has always excelled in achieving milestones set for itself. It has been converting its students into creating professionals equipped with sound knowledge and skills. The institution provides a wide array of academic courses across various domains. They have three campuses and has about 3000 graduate and undergraduate students.

When COVID-19 hit the world, governments from across the globe decided that staying at home was the best way to safeguard everyone from the virus. This news affected multiple industries, with also the educational space included. 

The Covid-19 pandemic situation has changed how educational institutions function. With the implementation of e-learning, students, teachers, and parents find themselves in uncharted waters. If ever there was a time when educational institutions need to improve upon their communication and engagement channels, this was it.

The Challenge/Problem

 The issues faced by AHMI were:

• AHMI lacked quality in the engagement that was taking place between the institute and the students. There was no proper meaningful engagement.
•  AHMI started to see a dip in how students rated their overall experience with AHMI. With the coming of the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of E-Learning, the challenge of improving the student experience doubled.
• Conducting classes during the pandemic was getting difficult. AHMI was worried that this could result in an unsatisfactory academic experience. They needed to fix this issue.
•  It feels great when an alumnus gives back to an institute that has shaped their academic life, but with AHMI these numbers started to drop. Lesser meaningful engagement and a below-average education and brand experience impacted the donations, placement & training assistance, boot camps, etc. A student will only make good alumni if he’s happy with the educational experience he got. Meaningful enjoyment has a lot to play in improving the quality of the educational experience.
• AHMI also noticed that their students, alumni, and parents/guardians weren’t as responsive over email as they should be. This raised concerns as all of them were key stakeholders.

One of the trainers stated, ‘’We understand that the COVID-19 situation is stressful, and being at home all the time can lead students to procrastinate. The student’s mental health takes a toll as well. We noticed that students require better engagements to focus better on their studies and push them be on the right track.’’

AHMI understood that the lack of personalized but formal meaningful engagement was the primary root cause of the problem.

Nounou Sritoh (AHMI-Operation Manager) stated, “What we found was that students are not very responsive to or that engaged to an email. They’re almost always using their mobile phones, and we saw an opportunity to meet students where they were. Most of our competitors are using email, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves. We wanted to improve the overall student experience through meaningful engagement. We also wanted to improve upon relationships with our alumni and respective parents/guardians as well.”  

AHMI, like any other educational institution, was looking for a better medium of formal communication that would guarantee meaningful engagement and connection among all its key stakeholders, primarily their Students and Alumni. They tried using email but failed miserably. They also wanted to improve upon their student, parents, and alumni experience utilizing personalized engagement.

The Solution

AHMI was searching for a simple and instant communication medium that could bridge the gap between the institute its key stakeholders. With a limited budget, the institute was on the lookout for a secure engagement platform. After looking at all the alternatives available, AHMI decided to use the services of GUNI.

 One of the trainers at AHMI stated, ‘’ Signing up with Guni was a breeze. The best part was that they provided solutions and use cases based on our requirements and process. The interface of Guni was so easy that we didn’t require many tutorials to get started. Guni focused on meaningful engagement, and that was evident with its features.’’

The consultants at Guni studied AHMI’s communication process and created custom-made use cases for their key stakeholders. The stakeholders were the Students, Parents, and Alumni. They mapped out the whole stakeholder journey individually by looking into the crucial touchpoints and milestones and formulated a blueprint that contains a proper plan of action based on effective engagement and communication. 

Here are a few examples of SMS communication:

One thousand students received this SMS, out of which 80% replied.

 

 

Both parents and the students got this SMS, and the response rate was a whopping 90%.

 

 

This text had a 23% response rate; of those, 86.7% said yes they felt Supported.

 

 

 

AHMI facilitated Covid-19 tests by using Guni as the medium of communication. This initiative helped increase AHMIs brand equity among students and parents/guardians.

 

 

This text had a whopping 65 % response rate. Almost every alumni found this SMS as unexpected and caring.

Impact!

• Within a month, AHMI witnessed a 56% increase in student engagement, which is 2x more than expected.
• AHMI had only had three students opt out of texting the entire 2020 School year (that’s out of almost 1,000 students). Opt-out for emails was 105.
• Email read rates would be about 10%. Text message read rates have held steady at 30-40% for any message.
•  Alumni engagement doubled up in a month by 22 %.

SMS is preferred by students as long as the information is relevant. AHMI Office saw an uptick in response rates to texts as opposed to emails. The ratings given by students based on their educational experience increased. 

A student of AHMI shared her experience stating, “I get a whole lot of emails from professors and employees. It’s usually a block of words, not exciting. But getting personalized SMS communication from time to time has made me feel good. The fact that I could chat back and raise my queries makes it so easy.”

What’s more, is that on an emotional level, the students felt supported.

Parents/ Guardians felt more engaged as there was total transparency regarding their respective children’s educational journey, achievements, and milestones. What’s more surprising were the responses from the Alumni. The individual faculty also vouched for the success of Guni by stating that they felt more connected with students, and managing assessments, classes, and projects were much more effortless.

A representative of AHMI shared their experience stating, ‘’Guni has been our go-to tool now to increase student engagement. It has driven expected results in just three months. All the instant SMS alerts and reminders helped us align our students’ focus and determine them to engage better with their studies. The best part is that the consultants in Guni gave us custom-made solutions as per our requirements and processes. Guni did more than just provide us with an SMS Gateway. They showed us many ways in which we could fully utilize SMS for Educational Institutions. ’’

1. Are you looking to improve upon your student, parent, and alumni experience via meaningful engagement? 
2. Do you want custom-made engagement solutions as per your processes?
3. Do you want to capitalize on the power of SMS Broadcasting which is more effective in engagement and cost?

Add value to your Institution and double up meaningful engagement with Guni for free. Sign up Today!