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Colleges: Setting Up Automated Outreach Messages

Automated Messages are available on all packages.

• The Starter plan includes one automated student message for each trigger action

• Growth and Enterprise plans can create unlimited automated messages with segmentation for both students and parents

Automated Messages send automatically when a student or parent (available on Growth and Enterprise plans) takes a specific action in Scoir, like following your college or marking themselves as applying or applied.

After setup, messages send within two hours of the trigger, and you can track performance after they are sent.

How they work:

  • Messages send when a trigger action is completed
  • Messages only send to people who trigger the action after the message is set up
  • If you edit a message, changes only apply to future recipients
Need to send a single scheduled message instead? See Sending One-Time Messages.

Create an Automated Message

Colleges on the Starter plan work with their dedicated Customer Success Manager to create automated messages. They do not have the ability to create or edit messages themselves, and can only view and enable or disable messages created by their Customer Success Manager.

From your Scoir account, go to Engage > Messaging. This is where you’ll create, schedule, and manage all of your Outreach Messages.

At the top of the page, select the Automated tab and click + New Message to open the message creation window

Choose Your Audience

First, select whether you are messaging Students or Parents (available on Growth and Enterprise plans). Then choose a trigger. This is the action that causes your message to send:

  • Following — sends when a student follows your college
  • Applying — sends when a student marks your college as one they are applying to
  • Applied — sends when a student marks themselves as having applied

Messages send within two hours of the trigger.

Click Show Filters to further narrow your audience by Class Year, Academic Focus, Career Interests, and more. 

When messaging parents, filters are based on their student’s information. For example, if you filter by Class of 2026, the message will go to parents of students in the Class of 2026.

Filter options vary by package
Expand for descriptions of each filter
Class Year filters students the current academic year of their graduating class.

Academic & Career Interests filters students by their selected academic focuses and career interests, like Business or Nursing. You can select up to 10 career interests.

Student Life reaches students based on their interests and activities, such as clubs, sports, or school programs.

Demographics filter students based on background information, including estimated household income ranges (based on U.S. Census data and the student’s home ZIP code) and first-generation status.

Legal Sex filters students by the legal sex listed on their profile, with options for male, female, or everyone.

Location filters students by state and community type, such as city, suburban, town, or rural.

High School targets students from specific high schools or filters by school type, such as public or private.

Academic Profile reaches students based on reported test scores, like ACT or SAT, within a selected range.

CRM Status (available on select plans) filters students based on whether they are known to your institution.

• In CRM — the student is a Handraiser (a student who has opted in to share their information with you directly), or is confirmed to be in your Slate CRM via the Slate/Scoir Audience Integration

• Not in CRM — The student is not a Handraiser and is identified as stealth via the Slate/Scoir Audience Integration if it's enabled, meaning they have not been confirmed to be in your instance of Slate.

Without the Scoir Audience Integration, CRM Status is based on Handraiser status only.

Write Your Message

Add a Subject line and write your message in the Body field.

You can also add a Call to Action Button to link recipients to a webpage. Enter the URL and set a label like Learn More or Register Now.

Personalize Your Message

Personalization tokens let you insert recipient information into your message. They are a great way to make a mass message feel personal.

To add a token, click + Personalize in the subject line or the body toolbar and choose Preferred Name.

If a student has not set a preferred name in Scoir, this token will fall back to their first name. When messaging parents, it will always use the parent's first name since Scoir does not collect preferred names from parents.

Here are a few things to know about how tokens work:

  • In the body, a valid token shows a green outline. If a token is edited or broken, it turns red.
  • In the subject, you will see a green “All subject tokens valid” confirmation below the field. If a token is invalid, an error message will appear

We recommend always using the + Personalize button to insert tokens. Typing or editing a token by hand can make it invalid.

Preview Your Message

Before you save, click Preview Message at the top of the composer to see how your message will look. This button becomes active once you have added both a subject and a body.

If your message includes personalization tokens, the preview will show placeholder values so you can see how it reads.

Schedule or Save Your Message

When you are ready, click Schedule to activate your message. Click Save as Draft to come back to it later.

After saving, you can click any message row in the table to preview it at any time.

Set Message Priority

Students and parents can only receive one Automated Message per trigger type. If someone matches more than one message with the same trigger, priority decides which one they get.

Scoir sends the highest priority message that matches the recipient. If there is no match, it moves to the next one in order.

Example: If you have two Following messages (one for Nursing majors and one for the Class of 2026), a student who matches both will only get the one ranked higher in your priority list.

Put your most specific audiences at the top and keep a broadly targeted message at the bottom. This makes sure every recipient gets something relevant.

To set priority:

  1. Go to Engage > Messaging and select the Automated tab. Then, click Manage Priority.
  2. Messages are grouped by trigger. Click the arrow next to a trigger to expand it.
  3. Drag and drop messages to reorder them. Messages at the top have the highest priority.
  4. Click Done to save.

Edit, Pause, Delete, or Copy a Message

Go to Engage > Messaging and select the Automated tab. Click the More Options button (•••) to the right of any message and choose:

  • Edit — Update the content, audience, or trigger. Changes only apply to future recipients. Anyone who already got the message will not see the updated version.
  • Disable/Enable — Pause a message by selecting Disable. It will appear grey in the table. Select Enable to turn it back on.
  • Delete — Remove a draft or scheduled message. Sent messages will still appear in recipients’ inboxes.
  • Copy — Duplicate a message to reuse its content or audience settings for a new send.

Track Message Performance

Once messages are sent, performance metrics appear in the table and update as recipients engage. Messages are sorted by Send Date by default, with the most recent at the top. Click any column header to re-sort.

Here is what each metric means:

  • Total Sent — The number of recipients who got your message
  • Opens — The number of recipients who opened it
  • Open Rate — Opens as a percentage of total sent
  • Clicks — The number of opened messages where at least one link was clicked
  • Click Through Rate (CTR) — Clicks as a percentage of opens
Interactions with your Call to Action button count toward Clicks and CTR.

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Colleges: Sending One-Time Outreach Messages

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