Scouts are the UK’s biggest mixed youth organisation. 5th Beckenham South Scout Group are based in South East London and run activities for Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers.
It may not seem obvious for a Scout group to have a marketing plan in place, but it can bring many advantages to the community! SMS messaging makes it quicker and easier for you to contact your Scouts and their families with vital information.
Reminding parents of times and dates for meeting and events has never been easier for you, allowing you to monitor who has opened your messages and see any replies.
The group went paperless, but found that emails tended to be ignored by parents. They also needed a way to communicate with parents when out on a trip to let them know about travel arrangements or delays, without receiving distracting replies to the driver’s mobile phone.
The Textlocal mobile app allows the scout leaders to quickly send messages out to parents of trip participants when out and about. Event specific contact groups mean that it is easy to communicate directly with the relevant parents.
The scout group include links to ‘waze,’ a traffic app, which allows parents to track the location of the bus and see when they will arrive. By including the link in an SMS, it is easy for the recipients to carry this information round with them, so they can get an up-to-date arrival time when they are away from a computer.
Sending an SMS to parents and members when an email has been sent out prompts the recipient to check their email and read what has been sent out. A link to the hosted email is also sent out, so that they can open it using the browser on their smart phone.
Definite increase in prompt child collection by parents
Improved take-up of activities run by the group
It is a fantastic system that has been extremely well designed and runs faultlessly.
—Scouts
