Category Archives: Technical Information

SchoolReach Wins Gold Award on PowerSchool ISV Campaign

By: clientadmin  |  September 27th, 2012  |  No Comments »

SchoolReach was honored with several Targeted Marketing and Advertising (TAM) awards at the St. Louis Business Marketing Association’s annual award ceremony on Tuesday.

Of special note, our efforts to promote our PowerSchool ISV Partner relationship using eye-catching, large-format postcards won a Gold TAM in the direct mail category.  We are very proud of our PowerSchool ISV relationship and have worked hard to earn the trust of PowerSchool to attan the ISV designation.

To learn more about the SchoolReach-PowerSchool program, click here.

Our goal through the campaign was to promote our ISV Partner designation to convey the following core benefits:

• PowerSchool/Pearson thoroughly vetted SchoolReach
• SchoolReach offers an embedded launch interface within PowerSchool and seamless data integration.
• SchoolReach offers a full range of voice, email, and text notification solutions, including automated absentee alerts.

We also wanted the campaign to be fun and lighthearted to help draw attention and convey that SchoolReach and PowerSchool “go together.”  We used big photos of goofy looking couples to make this point.  We know school administrators and tech directors are busy, so it takes something special to capture their attention.

The program worked! We received strong response and were able to engage schools and districts across the country in quality conversations about SchoolReach, with many leading to new customer relationships!

Thank you St. Louis BMA and TAM!!!!

Social Media Integration Added to SchoolReach

By: Paul Langhorst  |  April 8th, 2011  |  No Comments »

Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being used by education administrators as a means to communicate with parents and their communities. SchoolReach is pleased to announce a new integration with Facebook and Twitter that enables broadcast messages from SchoolReach to be posted to a Facebook “wall” or Twitter account.

The initial set-up process takes just a few minutes. Following each text broadcast, a sender is given a social media prompt which, if accepted, completes the posting. It’s fast, and any parents or others who are your school’s Facebook friends or following your school on Twitter will be alerted to the message. The sender will always have the choice whether or not to post to Facebook or Twitter.

Want to learn more about SchoolReach. Click Here.

Later this year SchoolReach will offer a social media for educators session under our Professional Development Series, so watch the Scoop newsletter or check our Professional Development website for upcoming topics.

Information on the set-up process can be found under the Help section of SchoolReach or by calling 1-800-420-1479.

Caution:  Not all broadcast messages are intended for world-wide consumption, so be careful what you say and where you post it!

Want to learn more about SchoolReach. Click Here.

Lockdown Notification Best Practices

By: Paul Langhorst  |  March 10th, 2011  |  No Comments »

Today SchoolReach launched a FREE Lockdown Notification Best Practices Guide. You can get it HERE. The guide offers 10 tips to help improve school-to-parent notification during a lockdown event. We are also offering a free webinar covering lockdown notification best practices. Just download the guide to obtain your webinar invitation

Parent notification systems, such as SchoolReach, are the ideal solution for rapidly reaching parents with accurate information, direct from a school official. But, there is a right way and wrong way to use a mass notification system during a lock down. Developed with input from school communication experts and safety officials and gleaned from real-life situations, our lockdown notification best practices guide will prepare you for a lockdown.

Its common sense stuff, but when you are in the midst of a lockdown what is common sense may not come to mind. Study our lockdown tips now, and be more prepared for a lockdown at your school.

Click Here for the lock down notification best practices guide.

Want to learn more about SchoolReach. Click Here.

Parent Notification System Evolved from Novelty to Necessity

By: Paul Langhorst  |  December 29th, 2010  |  No Comments »

Eight years ago this November, Joe Palacios and I started GroupCast by holding informal meetings at a local Borders Books and Music store. Since our founding, our company has grown to over 40 employees and supports millions of students nationwide. We have seen the school broadcast notification market evolve from a novelty to a necessity. The early adopters of our parent notification service were true leaders seeing that rapid notification would deliver immediate benefit to school operations.

Now school leaders are not only faced with a variety of response needs, but they are also faced with responding to rapidly spreading news and rumors via Facebook and student texting. School leaders need a communication tool as fast as the Internet itself and systems like SchoolReach deliver just that.

The variety of needs we serve never ceases to amaze me. Now that we are in the winter months, our system is routinely processing nearly 1 million calls before 8 AM as snow and ice impact various parts of the country.  This is to be expected and is one of the “Old Faithful” applications of our system – the snow closing or late-start announcement.

What is not expected are notifications to parents involving Norovirus outbreaks, potential dam breaks, missing students, families in need due to fire, cancellations due to floods, mudslides, alerts of strangers near school, lock downs due to nearby bank robberies, manhunts, rumors of planned school violence,…the list goes on and on. Our client’s response to these issues has shown me that our nation’s school administrators are truly amazing people, faced with the daunting task of both educating our children and protecting their safety. It’s an unfair combination, but one that they have taken on and adapted to with skill and care.

So, all of us at GroupCast and SchoolReah would like to take a moment as 2010 comes to a close to thank the nation’s educators for your care and dedication to educating and protecting our children and express our hope that 2011 is peaceful and productive for your school organization.

Want to learn more about SchoolReach. Click Here.