Case Studies

18% increase in admissions and 70% savings in brochure printing and distribution costs through SMSReachOut®

SMSReachOut® assisted Acharya Institute, a leading education services provider, by distributing its course brochures online to probable candidates from remote locations in India and building a database of prospective candidates. Apart from reducing brochure printing and distribution costs, inefficiencies in its systems were also eliminated. The solution improved customer experience resulting in increase in admissions both from India and overseas.

Business challenges

The major challenges faced by Acharya Institute were:

  • Limited work hours and notifications of admissions during holidays and therefore low availability of staff to answer candidates’ queries
  • Receiving responses from remote corners in India and overseas making it difficult for staff to understand the local dialect and record information correctly
  • Limited number of phone lines and operators to attended the calls
  • Inability of operators to do 'sales talk' and hence low conversions
  • Additional cost and time required to build a database of enquiries which was an error-prone process resulting in hampering of the follow-up mechanism
  • Increased costs of printing high quality brochure and posting them to prospective candidates were enormous
  • Difficulty to reach international candidates

The need

There was a requirement for a robust solution that is operational 24/7, automated, eliminates dialect issues, affordable, easy to use by the young generation and is able to build a digital database of leads originating from India and overseas.

The solution

SMSReachOut® was a perfect fit to resolve the challenges faced by the client. All advertisements in the print media and the banners at education expos had a prominent call-to-action: to SMS the course of interest and email ID at the given number in a given format.

SMSReachOut® is an easy to use solution and today's mobile and net savvy populace with their 'always with & always on' mobile phones were quick in putting them to use. Thousands of responses were handled easily and relevant brochures where sent out through email, while creating a tested database of enquiries. Since the solution works 24/7 the candidates could request for the brochure anytime.

The benefits

  • Over 3,800 responses were received out of which 6% were international candidates
  • The institute observed savings of over 70% in brochure printing and distribution costs
  • The automated and error-free database provided valuable demographic analysis and performance of different advertising mediums
  • The number of admissions as compared to the previous year increased by 18%
  • The institute also got hundreds of requests for courses which the management was planning to stop owing to lack of candidates
  • Eliminated the need to carry brochures to international education expos