Send branded, interactive messages that hold students’ attention and drive action.
With Rich Communication Services (RCS), schools can connect more meaningfully at every stage of the student journey, from helping students navigate enrollment, financial aid, and campus life to building more active alumni relationships.
Why Traditional Student Messaging Falls Short
Today’s students favor text messaging above most other channels.
According to data from YouGov, 49% of 18-24-year-olds selected texting as their preferred way to communicate. (Only 19% said mobile phone calls and just 3% opted for email.)And when they’re not texting, young adults use other social messaging apps that offer a more modern, interactive communication experience.
RCS brings together the best of both traditional texting and popular messaging apps.
With this newer messaging protocol, you and your team can easily share PDFs, interactive carousels, customizable buttons, and other rich media so students can RSVP to an event, make a payment, or check a deadline without leaving their native messaging experience.
Five Ways Higher Ed Excels with RCS
Admissions & Enrollment
Get prospective students excited about attending your school and streamline enrollment. Conveniently deliver digital brochures, personalized campus tour invites, deadline reminders, and application updates to keep the momentum going. Send messages from your school-branded RCS Agent, which features your university name, logo, and colors.
Financial Aid
Take the stress out of financial aid. Help students navigate confusing processes with custom FAFSA reminders, due-date alerts, award notifications, and payment notifications, and send documents directly in the message thread. Because RCS messages come from a verified sender profile, students can comfortably discuss these sensitive topics without worrying about their data privacy or security.
Student Engagement & Retention
Keep students engaged and on track. Use interactive carousels to build excitement for campus events, registration deadlines, support during midterms and finals week, student activities and accomplishments, and new course offerings, and send timely check-ins to ensure students don’t fall behind.
Campus Services & Student Support
Connect students with the support they need to succeed. Share videos, documents, and other content about campus services and make it easy for students to schedule academic advisor appointments or counseling sessions with tappable CTAs.
Alumni Involvement & Fundraising
Keep school spirit alive long after graduation. Send visually compelling invites to boost alumni event attendance, bring campus news to life with high-resolution imagery, and tailor donation requests to each alum’s interests.
Athletics
Amplify your athletics program. Share schedules, wins, and accomplishments across football, softball, baseball, lacrosse, volleyball, and more. Make it easier for students and alumni to buy tickets and access know-before-you-go information, behind-the-scenes footage, interview clips with coaches and players, and other enticing sports content.
RCS + SMS for Higher Education
RCS allows universities to connect more deeply through personalized, rich media messages while SMS helps schools deliver short, time-sensitive alerts to every contact. And with TrueDialog, there’s no need to choose between the two.
Our platform combines both standards, giving you the power of modern messaging, the flexibility of standard texting, and reliable SMS fallback if a recipient’s carrier or device doesn’t yet support RCS.
Ready to bring RCS to your student communications?
Discover how TrueDialog helps institutions like yours add immersive, university-branded messaging experiences to existing communication programs. See our user-friendly platform and powerful, no-code RCS Composer in action.
Explore the Complete RCS Guide
