When is the best time to integrate a CRM system into your school website

Around this time of year many school marketers seem to be faced with the end-of-term craziness. As the much-needed summer break hits, many schools begin reviewing their overall marketing strategies and online materials ready for the next academic year, as we creep into recruitment season. Coming from an independent school background ourselves here at HubGem, we know one of the most daunting and stressful updates of all is... *trigger warning... relaunching your school website.  

This mammoth task can seem not too dissimilar to when you decide to spring clean and declutter your entire house. You stroll into the task, sleeves rolled up bursting with enthusiasm and then 2-hours in you’ve lost sight of why you started and admit defeat to any other plans for the foreseeable future (or at least until you can see your floor again).  

So, when we state that this is one of the most perfect times to introduce HubSpot, it’s probably hard not to spit your coffee across the table at the idea of piling even more work on your already overflowing desks. 

One of the biggest pitfalls for school marketing and admissions teams is that they are often using a multitude of platforms across two departments, leading to a disjointed system of hectic processes, and miscommunication, losing lead opportunities along the way. 

Student recruitment information all in one place 

There is a common misconception that the sole thing for your marketing department to focus on is relaunching your website - which is of course understandable. After all:

•  Your website is the first point of call for around 80-90% of enquiring and current families
• You may be committed to working with an external agency for your website revamp, and then plan to focus on any other areas afterwards that need developing.
  
  

  Makes sense, right? But one huge key aspect in this is that you should be relaunching a website that aligns with your overall student recruitment strategy and communications processes. 

When should I start using CRM software?

Surprisingly, to a lot of education marketers, the perfect time to introduce HubSpot CRM to your school marketing and admissions process is during the revamping of your school website.

At HubGem, we work alongside external website developing agencies as well as our own in-house agency connections, as they build school websites from scratch, adding our own strategic input in the overall design to ensure the website is continuously supporting the school’s growth and engagement, and presenting as many opportunities for capturing prospective student's information as possible.  

We find this an effective way to also gain real insight from your internal teams and to identify your current challenges, goals and clear customer journeys to help support your student recruitment goals and enrolment rates. 

Your website should be seen as a shop window for your site visitors, but also as a window for you to find a whole array of insights into your audience and their interests and behaviours. These insights will allow you to personalise your inbound marketing to each individual prospective student on an automated basis. The way HubSpot works with websites allows you to easily identify areas of improvements and successes, the pages that hold your prospects attention the longest and those that have the highest bounce rates. 

Seeing the student recruitment journey from an admissions, marketing and technology perspective really helps in understanding the enrolment journey of your prospects whilst keeping the school’s clear vision and branding in perspective. 

Is a CRM system right for school marketing and admissions?

No school, college or university is the same. With this in mind, our HubSpot onboarding services are available in a variety of formats so our clients can find an option that best suits the setup and current digital skills of their student recruitment staff. We show school marketing and admissions teams exactly how they can utilise HubSpot CRM to gain real insights and understand their audience from a much earlier stage using inbound tools, automation, analytics and website forms. All of these aspects help you to understand your audience much better and provide the information they need. 

The first point of call when looking at potential schools is this point. 

Rather than blindly and manually sending out emails to current and prospective families with low engagements, we find a way to identify the exact areas of interest of your audience right from the beginning. This personalised, inbound approach leads to a much higher engagement rate and it all begins with your website.  

So, a concept that at first seemed more than just a little bit daunting, is in fact a huge solution and time saver for you and your team, giving you more time for the fun marketing fluffy stuff! 

Here are a few more reasons why HubSpot CRM aligns perfectly alongside a website revamp: 

• Cut your time in half - Weekly marketing reports, social media scheduling and upcoming event sign-ups... all of which are now available to embed from one, easy place in HubSpot. 
• MIS Integrations – Admissions teams often work from one, or in some cases, multiple MIS. But what if we were to tell you we can export all current data into HubSpot and create a process that works for both your marketing and sales teams? 
• Tracking and analytics – Gain a real insight into what your website visitors are clicking on and reading on your website, so when you contact them or they engage with you, you are instantly able to provide them with the information they have been looking for. 
• Forms – Adding something as simple as a quick form on your website can instantly help to capture leads at a much earlier stage. Forms such as submitting interest or something as simple as a blog subscription or gated content. Once you have a submitted form, this prospective individual automatically becomes a contact on your CRM system. 
• Personalised Experience – you can work with the development of a new website to decide where it is best to insert a chatbot pop up – creating one to one support from your audiences first interactions with your site.
• SEO – SEO support is built into HubSpot, so when you’re writing a blog post, it will tell you hints and tips to produce the most effective content from an SEO perspective. 
• Website templates – which can be edited and branded to fit your school. Templates for landing pages, contact pages, knowledge pages etc. 
• Blog - you can host and post directly onto your website blog from HubSpot, grouping tour content together arranged by campaigns such as 'Junior school' or 'Senior Sports' campaigns, which is a great tool for analytics insights, tying in your social media in the process. 
• Live calendar bookings  - this is great for enquiring families to book with your admissions teams directly from an online calendar that is connected to your staff outlook calendars.
  
  

  If you would like to explore more specifically how HubGem can provide onboarding for your team with HubSpot CRM, alongside your website relaunch, book a demo below.