Syniverse, TalkingPoints Unite to Enhance Messaging Between Educators and Families

May 21, 2024 at 09:00 AM EDT

Prioritizing and increasing security for messages sent from school to home

Syniverse, the world's most connected company^®, has joined forces with TalkingPoints, an education technology nonprofit that improves student outcomes by facilitating effective partnerships between families and their children's schools. This collaboration prioritizes delivering critical SMS and MMS messages and boosts security by separating communication streams or campaigns.

The TalkingPoints Universal Family Engagement platform enables teachers, staff, and administrators to build stronger relationships with families through instant two-way text messaging in more than 150 languages. Teachers rely on TalkingPoints to deepen connections with their students’ families through everyday collaboration about student needs, learning, and development.

Occasionally, schools and districts must send families urgent, classroom-wide, or district-wide messages. Syniverse is working to institute dedicated short codes to ensure carriers prioritize those messages, leading to a higher delivery rate. Additionally, TalkingPoints can now monitor security threats more closely and instantly shut down a compromised messaging thread without impacting others by having its communication delivery split into separate streams or campaigns.

Syniverse is also helping TalkingPoints leverage 10-digit long codes (10-DLCs) and remain compliant with carriers' codes of conduct. This includes guidance on number pools and other best practices that help TalkingPoints effectively manage the messaging ecosystem.

The combination of short codes and 10-DLCs allows messages to be delivered quickly and without being flagged as spam.

"Our work with TalkingPoints provides teachers and parents with greater peace of mind because they can trust that any messages about a child's education and well-being will be delivered quickly and securely," said Harry Patz, Jr., Chief Revenue Officer of Syniverse. "This small but impactful step helps TalkingPoints continue to overcome barriers to engagement for families and further ensures that children of all backgrounds have an equal opportunity to thrive."

As part of its professional services consultancy, Syniverse has connected TalkingPoints with an aggregator partner to handle the distribution of its SMS and MMS messages. It also continues to provide ad hoc support related to 10-DLC messaging.

"Families feel better equipped to support their children's academic success and development when they can have a meaningful relationship with their teachers and schools," said Stephanie Kaufman, Head of Product at TalkingPoints. "But without the skills and tools to support that relationship, it can begin to break down. That's why Syniverse has been such an effective partner: Its considerable messaging expertise and technical know-how help us ensure families can effectively partner with their child’s teachers and schools, regardless of their background or the language they speak at home."

To learn more about how Syniverse can lend its messaging expertise to your SMS and MMS outreach, visit https://www.syniverse.com.

About Syniverse

Syniverse is the world's most connected company. We seamlessly connect the world's networks, devices, and people so the world can unlock the full power of communications.

Our secure, global technology powers the world's leading carriers, top Forbes Global 2000 companies, and billions of people, devices, and transactions every day. Our engagement platform delivers better, smarter experiences that strengthen relationships between businesses, customers, and employees.

For over 30 years, we have accelerated important advances in communications technology. Today we are an essential driver of the world's adoption of intelligent connectivity, from 5G and CPaaS to IoT and beyond. Find out more at https://www.syniverse.com/.

About TalkingPoints

TalkingPoints is an education technology nonprofit that drives student success by removing critical barriers to equitable family-school partnerships, such as language, time, mindsets, and capacity. Ten of the country’s twenty largest school districts trust TalkingPoints to create a district culture where all families, no matter their background, can engage with their schools. Our simple, intuitive Universal Family Engagement platform offers the highest-quality human- and AI-powered two-way translated communication available — in 150 languages and counting. Named by Common Sense Education as “the best overall family communication platform for teachers and schools”, TalkingPoints leads to higher test scores and lower absenteeism, as shown by rigorous causal research that meets the ESSA Tier 2 standard of evidence. To learn more, view our TED Talk or visit talkingpts.org.