This part of the autumn term typically involves a busy academic calendar.
Firework night, school plays, celebratory lunches and mufti days may be approaching – to name a few. And not only that, but changes in weather may have an impact on your school day.
So, now more than ever, it’s important to ensure your parent communications strategy is optimised.
Modular by design, IRIS ParentMail responds to the needs of both parents and school staff to ensure swift and simple communication between you this season. Here’s how…
1 | Send messages home fast
Temperatures have dropped, and schools must be prepared for the unexpected.
Instances of bad weather can force unforeseen school closures – in which case, parents need to know that their children shouldn’t attend school, and fast.
ParentMail facilitates several message formats, so you can send urgent communications via email, SMS, or in-app push notifications, to ensure they reach home.
What’s more, simple reporting functionality helps you understand who has received your messages and when. So, you can rest assured that your parent community is in receipt of any critical communications.
You can also template these messages – making urgent communications easier than ever before.
2 | Simplify parents’ evenings
If you’re hosting a parents’ evening this season, it doesn’t need to involve the endless admin, manual chasing and reporting that it does all too often.
ParentMail’s parents’ evening module enables you to take your time back this busy season by simplifying your end-to-end event management. Simply set your date and time, and IRIS Parents’ Evening Manager will facilitate your appointment bookings.
Teacher availability and reminders can be set at the click of a button, and for the hardest to engage, you can offer video appointments – all within the app – to guarantee the best response from your parent community.
“We really noticed a spike in engagement once using Parents’ Evening Manager, with more appointments booked than ever before.”
- Ryan Evans, deputy headteacher at Ysgol Nantgwyn
3 | Request and receive payments with ease
Not just easy for you, but easy for parents too.
IRIS ParentMail’s payments system sits within the app so that parents don’t even need to leave to make a payment. And via various methods – with debit, credit, PayPal, PayPoint, Apple Pay and Google Pay all accepted within the system.
Forget manually chasing outstanding payments or flagging low balances, as you can ask the system to send these automatically.
Not only that, but you can also process unlimited refunds at any time, pull simple payment reports, customise your accepted payment methods, and take care of invoicing.
So, managing payments for your festive lunches and other activities this term becomes a breeze.
“We’re really pleased with +Pay. We’re practically cashless as almost all parents pay for school items with +Pay. Our bursar is really pleased with the payment reports; they clearly tell us everything we need to know, making it easy to stay on top of finances.”
- Headteacher’s PA at St Ambrose Catholic Primary School
4 | Get parental consent with digital forms
Hoping to photograph your pupils performing their school play? Or planning to take your pupils on a trip to the pantomime? Digitise your forms within IRIS ParentMail and make collecting parental consent simple.
Waiting for parents to complete and return paper forms can be time-consuming and unreliable. And chasing unresponsive parents adds another laborious task to your already long to-do list.
Our online form collection platform offers a range of inbuilt templates, as well as the opportunity to save regularly used forms for future use. Reports provide helpful data on performance, as well as a clear and handy overview of responses.
And for school administration staff, reminders and notifications chase any parents yet to respond, saving timing and improving your response rate.
“Once we had experienced the benefits of texts and emails with ParentMail, we were very eager to give the online forms a try – and what a huge time saver they are!”
- School business manager at Wistow CE Primary School
5 | Manage event bookings and attendance
If you’re hosting a school event this term, ParentMail can take care of your event management for you.
Simply set up your event in the system and manage communications, accept bookings, and monitor attendance from the platform.
These moments matter, so if you’re considering a new parent engagement platform, choose IRIS ParentMail to ensure your communications reach home. Watch our recent webinar online or get in touch with our team of experts.
Our expertise doesn’t stop at parent engagement – if you’re looking for a smarter way to manage your finances, workforce, or student data, we’ve got you covered. Find out more or speak to us about making IRIS Education your single provider for smarter school management today.
