Guiding Information Awareness to a Distributed Audience

In this noisy age of information, people are bombarded by the many microcosms of constant media. These days, it’s not enough to send an email if you want to communicate with your audience, because the chances of people going out of their way to open an email are exponentially decreasing. With information incessantly being thrown at people, the strongest and most efficient way to drive an audience’s attention is through a private media channel, such as a mobile app.

Chicago School Used MeetApp to Increase Parent Engagement

For example, an elementary school in Chicago’s south side had issues engaging the students’ parents because, before converting to MeetApp, they were relying on paper letters, emails, and robo-calls to reach parents. Additionally, the school’s administrators also saw that the use of the parent portal was very low. However, once the school began sending push notifications through their app, they saw an immediate increase in parent engagement when it came to communicating school events, initiatives, news, and updates.

Convenient and Available Information Portal

Instead of the hassle of digging through their emails to unearth their parent portal login, the school decided to embed the entire parent portal within the app—making it more convenient and available for parents to access at any time. The school immediately saw an increase in portal usage, which meant that parents were more involved in their students’ progress.

Use App Features to Involve and Engage

Along with better information availability, the school also leveraged push notification, polls, surveys, and text feedback to get parents more involved in school decisions. Parents were more willing to answer questions sent through a push notification than to answer an email or phone call. Typically, audiences are more willing to interact in small iterations where information is easily digestible.

A Mobile App Tailors Your Media to Suit Your Audience

Using a mobile app to reach your audience, as the school did, reduces user friction and lowers the barrier of entry. In other words, apps are simply more effective because people communicate much differently than they did a couple of decades ago—this is important to be mindful of because an event planner, coordinator, or administrator should learn how to tailor their communication style to their audience. In the case of the school, most of the parents were millennials and are accustomed to information coming directly to them without having to dig for it, which is why a mobile app is the most suitable for their needs. Your visibility and audience interaction will increase via a tailored media channel, such as an event app that is as easily personalized as MeetApp.