New year, new CRM? Transform your admissions efforts in 2021

Does your admissions process need a revamp? Marketing and Admissions departments are busy places and with so many enquiries coming in, it can be tricky to give the personal approach that your prospective students deserve. Let us share some of the benefits of implementing a new CRM system.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems have been around in the business/sales world for a while but have you considered a using one to streamline your admissions processes for education?

As the education market continues to grow ever competitive, and students/parents have higher expectations, it is a good time to ditch the spreadsheets and move towards a more collaborative approach - like using a CRM for school marketing and admissions. 

Here are some of the benefits to using a CRM system in your school, college or university:

• Improved collaboration
  The communication between your marketing/admissions/administrative/senior leadership teams is more important than ever. In today's instant, digital world, your prospective students are led by convenience and feeling valued.
  
  A good CRM system will allow you to log every communication that your organisation has with an individual. When they call and speak to a receptionist, a note can be left about what was said. When they attend an Open Day, your marketing/admissions team can note down any details of conversations that took place during their visit. When your prospective family enjoy a tour of the school and meet with your Head or Principal, notes can be made on their 'profile' and very quickly your collaborative approach will lead to building a clear picture of who your prospective student is. 
• Tracking capabilities and email integration
  Many CRM systems will integrate fully with your email provider to ensure that each email is logged within your prospective student's record. No more digging around in your sent items to see when you last contacted an enquiry that has gone quiet.
  
  Some intelligent CRM systems, such as HubSpot, also show when an email has been opened, how many times it has been viewed and whether any links contained in the email were clicked. It is very helpful to have an awareness of engagement when trying to identify whether or not an enquiry is likely to convert or if they are no longer interested. 
• Better reporting
  By stepping away from the huge spreadsheets of the past, reporting using a CRM system will save you valuable time and effort. Generating lists of active enquiries for the following academic year, lead scoring depending on engagement level of enquiries and identifying easily which of your marketing efforts are having the biggest impact - all really simple with a clever CRM system.
  
  No more time spent trawling through spreadsheet to data crunch for reports to hand to your senior leaders or governors. Let technology do the work for you!
• Templates and snippets to save time
  Some CRM systems do much more than just maintain a contact record for your prospective students. HubSpot saves you time in lots of other ways, such as allowing you to build email templates and snippets of text that can be applied to emails in  couple of clicks.
  
  In a world where your competitors are just a Google search away, building good customer relationships is more important than ever. By using templates and snippets, you can create personalised emails without every sentence being a manual task. Drop in some personalisation tokens from the CRM (name, child's name, year group, for example), some of your frequent sentences or paragraphs as snippets, or start from a template, and save hours of your time spent writing emails!
• Automate your way to enrolments
  Embrace technology to streamline almost any marketing and admissions process. Using some intelligent automation (available in HubSpot Marketing Pro), you can build workflows that will do the hard work for you.
  
  A great example I have seen in education is email communication around Open Days. A prospective student can register for your open event online, they will receive a follow up email immediately with details of their registration. Then one week before the event, they can automatically receive an email with more information that will be useful when they attend. One day before your event, they can automatically receive an email reminder of the event and perhaps a link to some exciting content to keep them engaged. On the day of the event, those who attended can automatically receive an email thanking them on their visit and explaining next steps, those who registered online but did not attend can automatically receive a different email: 'Sorry you couldn't make it, would you like to arrange an individual visit?'
  
  All emails can be personalised with the recipient's name and other details (course of interest, year of entry...) and you don't have to manually do a thing! Better yet, the workflows can be cloned for future events so the emails and automation only need to be built once!

Implementing a good CRM system has transformed education marketing and admissions departments, led to significant growth in enrolment numbers and led to many happy students. Is it time you improved your processes with technology?

Get in touch to discuss your growth goals, ask any questions you may have and arrange a HubSpot demo. If you choose to implement a system like Hubspot, we can help you at every step of the way. From winning over your senior leadership team to onboarding, and content creation to automation building.