Using HubSpot with iSAMS or SIMS

Schools often ask us about how marketing and admissions teams can use HubSpot alongside existing systems such as iSAMS and SIMS. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions!

What is HubSpot and why do schools use it?

HubSpot is a CRM and digital marketing platform that provides a wide range of marketing, sales, admissions and service tools designed to help you convert more leads, improve your communications and streamline your processes.

When we speak to schools we often find that they are relying on point-solutions and edu-specific systems that do day-to-day school management very well, but communication features are usually limited and they rarely connect to other digital tools. School marketing and admissions teams are often frustrated by the time they are spending transferring prospect data between systems, their reliance on spreadsheets, and a disjointed approach to marketing and admissions.

We have lots of information on HubSpot and why independent schools use HubSpot.

We use iSAMS/SIMS, why would we need HubSpot too?

We are firm believers in finding 'the right tool for the job' and whilst school student management information systems (MIS) are great at important tasks like timetabling and behaviour management, they are usually lacking in connected communication tools and time saving features for marketing and admissions teams (hello automation!).

All of the schools we work with use a dedicated MIS system for their enrolled students and day-to-day school functions; HubSpot is primarily used as a tools for marketing, admissions and communications teams who often have a range of digital tools that they use and want to work in a more connected and intuitive way.

What can HubSpot do that our student management tools cannot?

There's a wide range of tools that HubSpot offers, a few of the most exciting (and most popular with schools) are:

personalised automated emails
intelligent marketing automation
social media management and scheduling tools
ads management tools (Google, Facebook and LinkedIn)
forms to embed on your website to capture data into your CRM
searchable knowledge base to handle your admissions FAQs
live chat and chat automation
landing page and blog hosting tools
pipeline management (admissions teams love this!)
trackable call-to-action buttons
lead notifications (when a prospect engages with your content or emails)
full integration with Gmail and Outlook/Office 365
Automated meeting booking and calendar integration
feedback surveys
SEO and content planning tools
Campaign management tools
... and lots more. We recommend booking a demo to see the platform for yourself.

We don't want to do things twice! How do we use both iSAMS/SIMS and HubSpot together?

As a team passionate about streamlining processes and reducing the workloads for school marketing and admissions teams, we are definitely with you on this one! It is really important that any digital tools you have are working for you (and not the other way around!), there are many ways to manage this relationship, here are a few of the most popular approaches:

Choose a hand-over point in the admissions journey

The simplest and most popular approach for schools is to use HubSpot for the start of your customer journey, then choose at which point your processes switch over to your MIS. Many schools handle all of their marketing and admissions efforts in HubSpot and only move contacts over into iSAMS/SIMS at point of enrolment. Other schools use HubSpot up to application only, others only use HubSpot for marketing... We recommend that you define the journey in the way that best suits your school's unique admissions process and team.

Once the HubSpot part of the journey is complete, data can easily be exported to CSV and added to your MIS system. For most schools this is either a manual exercise, alternatively some MIS systems allow you to pay their development teams to import CSV files for you. The good news is that even if manual, it will likely be a much smaller number of enrolling students than the enquiries/leads you have in HubSpot!

Consider an integration

HubSpot has an open API which means that it can be fully integrated with most systems (in fact, there are hundreds of off-the-shelf integrations in HubSpot's ecosystem and this is growing by the day).

Update: we are working on something exciting! Register your interest in the world's first HubSpot and iSAMS integration! 👀

Most schools get started with HubSpot and factor in a future integration once they are familiar with using HubSpot.

Use two systems simultaneously for communications

If you want to use the HubSpot communication tools and marketing for enrolled families then this is definitely possible. Some schools become so impressed with HubSpot's features that they decide to use it for some of their communications beyond enrolment, either exporting 'current parent' email addresses periodically and importing them into HubSpot or asking parents to opt themselves in to specific newsletters using a dedicated HubSpot form. This is also helpful when considering retention of families.

Is HubSpot just for Marketing teams?

There's no doubt that the tools in HubSpot are perfect for your marketing team to embrace, but we often see a wide range of teams using HubSpot. Below are just some of the most popular multi-department use-cases for HubSpot in schools:

Admissions teams: online application forms, automated follow ups, tours/open day bookings, deposit payments, pupil number reporting and predictions, call handling, FAQ management, live chat, admissions pipeline management, international agent/consultant management, feeder school database management
Admin teams: meeting bookings, call tracking, document management and tracking document open/read rates, shared inbox management, customer feedback surveys and reports
Finance teams: Tracking bursary and scholarship enquiries, revenue forecasting predictions, sales revenue target setting and tracking, quoting, Stripe payments, and invoicing (via QuickBooks or Xero integration)
Commercial teams: venue hire booking management, memberships (such as leisure centre facilities), quoting and Stripe payments, revenue forecasting and target setting, sales pipelines management, stock management
Senior Leadership teams: lead and revenue predictions, reports and dashboards for all aspects of the customer journey, conversion rate monitoring, revenue attribution reports
IT and Technical teams: ticket management, ticket reporting, automated ticket feedback/customer service feedback requests

.... and if you have something more complex or bespoke you could even consider creating a custom object (available in Enterprise subscriptions) that will allow you to handle any data that your school handles. This would enable your facilities team to track minibus bookings, IT to manage staff equipment hire.... anything you can think of!

I'd like to learn more about HubSpot, what next?

We are HubSpot for education specialists and have implemented HubSpot in a wide range of school, college and university settings. We are also Platinum HubSpot partners and inbound marketing experts so are perfectly placed to help you weigh up whether HubSpot is the right solution for your school.

We would recommend booking a demo so you can see the tools for yourself, we can provide you with predicted costs and answer any questions you have at any point in your decision-making process.