How to Make 75 Verbal Parent Contacts in Under a Minute
Until Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking tools are more prominent with our current generation of parents, there are excellent free voice blasting services that offer an excellent alternative for teachers wishing to make effective and consistent parent contacts.
Voice blasting can send thousands of phone messages by sending a pre-recorded message to a list of selected contacts. It’s like sending a mass text message, only you’re using your voice to send the message instead of your fingers. Many school districts already use these services to broadcast major school announcements, such as school cancellations and delays. However, this is often restricted for administrative purposes. This is understandable since the service your district is using likely costs money. Monthly costs for your district would skyrocket if they had to foot the bill for announcing every single teacher’s upcoming tests, projects, and due dates. But for individual teachers, there are free options available for those wishing to integrate voice blasting into their classroom.
Using free voice blasting from Phonevite, I am able to deliver effective communication to all of my students’ parents while respecting my free time outside of the classroom. The alternative for making verbal parent contacts would be to individually call every single one, which would end up taking quite a while, especially if I’m just intending to get a quick message across. Although there is a premium version available, the free version will suit most teachers just fine. The free version is limited to voice blasting two messages every 30 days, with a maximum capacity of 25 people per call. So, that equates to 50 calls per month… but hang on, it’s possible to utilize free voice blasting to call more than 50 parents per month.
Another notable free service that offers free voice blasting is DialMyCalls. Although lacking in the free extra features that Phonevite offers, DialMyCalls still offers a great service that allows you to contact 25 people per week. Both services have the following restrictions for the free version, but I don’t really think it’s that big of a deal:
Free version restrictions of Phonevite and DialMyCalls
- Ad-supported
- DialMyCalls is limited to 30 seconds; phonevite is limited to one minute
- DialMyCalls has a broadcast limit of 1 per week at 25 calls each (25 per week, 100 per month); Phonevite has a broadcast limit of 2 per month at 25 calls each (50 total per month, but can be placed within the same day)
So, if you have a class of 75 students, you can combine the two services together to contact the most parents possible in the least amount of time possible, all for free. Here’s the strategy:
- Use DialMyCalls to contact 25 parents
- Use Phonevite to contact 25 parents
- Use Phonevite again to contact another 25 parents
What if you have more than 75 parents? You’ll have to plan ahead a little more and strategize the timing of your messages. A week from the first day you used DialMyCalls, you’ll be able to place another broadcast to another 25 parents. That does require a little more planning, but keep in mind that an ounce of preparation will save you a ton of time! If it turns out to be too difficult to coordinate your messages, then you may be interested in checking out their premium services, which have reasonable rates.
You can learn more about PhoneVite and DialMyCalls by clicking their respective links.
These are two free voiceblasting companies that I’m aware of. Do you know of more, or do you have any questions? Feel free to comment below.
