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Most education providers use a comprehensive student management information system (MIS) for their day-to-day student monitoring and central database but more schools, colleges and universities are now moving towards having a separate system for managing marketing efforts and enquiry data.
Education-specific databases that are used for managing on-roll student records when they join you often have great features for managing timetables, medical records and academic reporting, but were not designed with marketing and customer journey at the heart of what they do.
Many of the systems I have seen - and used myself - offer admissions modules. These tend to offer simple ways to update contact properties as students go from enquiries to enrolment and most offer some limited email wizard functionality. More and more providers are now moving their customer journey, enquiry funnel and lead nurturing into more sales-focused, intuitive and full-solution systems, then moving contacts into their student database once they enrol at the school.
Here are some of the reasons you should move your enquiries into a dedicated CRM system like HubSpot:
- One platform for all marketing activity - Most marketing departments are using a wide range of point-solutions for their student recruitment efforts, from MailChimp to SurveyMonkey, Google Analytics to Hootsuite. Using a system like HubSpot allows you to manage everything in one place, making you more efficient and allowing you to deliver the best possible experience to your students and their families.
Read more: HubSpot or Mailchimp? Choosing the right platform for your school - Better enquiry tracking and reporting - Using a system that offers marketing and lead nurturing at the heart (instead of as an after-thought) means that your analytics are built in to every step of a student's customer journey with you. With your website analytics linked to your student's contact record in the CRM, it is easy to see how many conversions you have and what pages specific contacts viewed before they commited to studying with you. Here's an example of a contact record in HubSpot.
- Personalised content and A/B testing - Every prospective student is different and will have their own expectations of you as an organisation. They need to feel valued at every step of their journey; by using personalisation tokens in emails and creating different customer journeys depending on a lead's interests, you can make sure their experience before they join you, is as good as the education you will provide when they arrive.
By using A/B testing, you can show different versions of emails, web pages and call-to-actions to test which ones work best with your audience. Every email sent, page visited, button clicked or form filled in will be logged in your student's contact record. - Automation to save time and provide the best experience - HubSpot has powerful automation tools that will streamline your customer experience for your prospective students. Automate the personalised communications that go out before and after open events, receive automatic tasks on your to-do-list when an action is needed and send your student automatic feedback requests when they have visited for a tour or taster experience with you. By building some clever automation, you can provide the best possible experience whilst freeing up some valuable time for you and your team.
Read more: Automation to streamline your marketing and admissions
Use a CRM and marketing platform like HubSpot to nurture your enquiries and move them into your education-specific MIS when they apply.
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