How Teachmint Boosted User Engagement by 2X with Multi-Channel Notifications?

Teachmint is a leading platform in the ed-tech space, offering schools and educators a range of tools to streamline operations, from managing courses, and attendance to handling fee payments. Their mission is to make education management simple and effective for everyone involved.

Challenges Teachmint Faced

Teachmint was encountering some hurdles with their alerting process:

1. Manual Report Generation and Delivery: The process of generating and delivering performance reports was manual, labor-intensive, and prone to errors. Customer account managers had to compile and send reports individually, leading to inconsistent timelines and data inaccuracy. Additionally, reports often required multiple revisions to meet specific customer needs.‍
2. Missed or Overlooked Notifications: Users, especially school administrators, missed important updates because they received too many notifications without clear prioritization. There was no central location within the app for users to review these notifications late.
3. Limited User Control: Users could not choose how and when they wanted to receive notifications. This lack of customization was causing frustration and reducing overall engagement with the platform.
4. Development Bottlenecks: Every time Teachmint needed to update or tweak its notification system, it required significant time and effort from its development team. Simple changes could take days, slowing down the team and delaying important updates.

Here are some of the use-cases for which Teachmint sends notifications to its users.

When faced with Build vs Buy decision, Teachmint moved with SuprSend due to the following reasons:

• Leveraging external expertise – SuprSend provides specialized notification infrastructure now and for future.
• ‍Comprehensive multi-channel support – reduced need for additional development efforts for going multi-channel.‍
• Scalable and flexible solution – easily adapted to Teachmint’s growing user base.‍
• Rapid deployment – enabled fast integration and go-to-market for notifications.‍
• Optimized resource allocation – allowed Teachmint to focus resources on core product development.‍
• Cost-effective choice – avoided the high costs and time commitment of a custom-built system.

Rahul Singh, AVP Product at Teachmint, shares his build vs buy decision-making,

"Building a notification system internally would have been too time-consuming and complex. Even if we had prioritised building it, it would have taken a lot longer and wouldn't have been as capable as SuprSend."

Let’s see how they implemented our notification infrastructure in their stack.

The Solution

Teachmint needed a more efficient way to manage notifications—one that would improve user experience and ease the burden on their developers. Here’s how they used SuprSend to tackle their problems.

1. Smarter Notification Management

• Multi-Channel Notifications: Teachmint implemented our multi-channel notifications feature that allowed notifications to be sent via multiple channels—email, push notifications, in-app messages, and even WhatsApp. This ensured users received updates in their preferred channels.
• In-App Inbox for Activity Alerts: To prevent important messages from getting lost, Teachmint added the off-the-shelf in-app inbox where all notifications could be stored. This meant that even if a user missed an initial alert, they could easily catch up later.

"Activity alerts are crucial because they allow business owners to stay informed without needing to check the app constantly. This has given them a sense of control and assurance about their business performance."

2. Giving Users More Control

• Personalized Preferences: Teachmint introduced SuprSend’s Preferences module which allowed users to set their notification preferences. This way, users could decide what types of notifications they wanted to receive and through which channels, reducing the likelihood of notification overload.

• ‍Users converting notifications to Digests: Teachmint started giving control to their users where they could mention whether they want to receive instant alerts or a summary of alerts as a digest at the end of the day. For instance, instead of sending separate notifications for each fee transaction during the day, a single summary notification would be sent, improving clarity and reducing disruption. They could do it in seconds with SuprSend’s workflow engine, by adding the Digest node in their workflow, which otherwise would have taken weeks to develop.

3. Streamlined Development

• Simplified Workflow Creation: With the new system, Teachmint’s developers could create and deploy notification workflows much more quickly. What used to take days now could be done in minutes, freeing up the team to focus on other critical tasks.
• Event-Driven Notifications: Notifications were now triggered by specific events within the platform, such as a fee payment or an assignment submission, which would go to multiple channels. Teachmint’s backend had to simply publish events to SuprSend, without handling any complexity of preferences, templates, batching, and digesting in code. A reliable system that required little or no maintenance. 
• ‍Multiple user alerts: The same event could notify different users (school owner, Teachmint’s account managers) without sending duplicate events.

Results

Teachmint’s efforts paid off in several key ways:

1. Boost in User Engagement:

• Owner Engagement Rate: The number of school owners engaging the Teachmint’s app doubled over three months, indicating a substantial improvement in engagement among key decision-makers.
• Higher Interaction Rates: Following the rollout, user interaction increased significantly. Around 50% of users regularly check their in-app inboxes, with 30% of those users taking further actions like making approvals or reviewing attendance records.‍
• Improved Information Delivery: Critical notifications were consistently received and acted upon, increasing satisfaction among school administrators and parents.

2. More Efficient Notification Management:

• Faster Implementation: The time required to update or deploy new notifications dropped from several days to just minutes. This allowed them to send more types of notifications to engage customers without overwhelming them.
• Better System Reliability: With enhanced tools for monitoring and troubleshooting, the notification system became more reliable, reducing the likelihood of missed or failed notifications.

3. Increased Revenue Contribution:

• Activity Alerts as a Revenue Contributor: The newly released Activity Alerts feature has started contributing to revenue. While the numbers are currently modest, this feature shows promise as a growing source of income.

4. Visibility into Notification Performance:

• SuprSend provided Teachmint with better visibility into the performance of their notifications, allowing the team to understand which types of notifications were most effective in driving user engagement. This data-driven approach enabled more informed decisions on future updates and enhancements.

As Rahul Singh aptly summarizes,

"SuprSend is not just a notification engine for us; it’s an integral part of our product offering. It gives school owners access to critical information in real-time, something that wasn't available before."

Teachmint’s success story illustrates how leveraging the right tools can dramatically enhance user engagement, streamline operations, and drive growth.