However, it’s not all that easy to reply quickly, accurately, and store a record of what they asked for together with your reply.
With Student CRM, responding instantly to students is easier than ever before.
Many of our universities use Event Manager (EVM) for their online events. This is how it works:
The only difference is that you and your team welcome your pre-registered and on-the day visitors to your university’s Live Event webpage, instead of your actual campus.
All registrations go directly into Student CRM.
All touchpoints go out from Student CRM before and after the event.
All activity is saved against each student’s record in Student CRM, maintaining an up-to-date record of ongoing activity throughout the Coronavirus impact.
It is absolutely vital that you get no holes in your data because you go online to manage how the Coronavirus impacts your university’s recruitment events.
We have a FREE one-click integration with Unibuddy.
1. Create the booking form (in Student CRM)
Create an EVM event called ‘Virtual Open Day’, give it a date and start and end times when it will run.
Give it a location of ‘online’ and set the event live.
2. Prepare for the live event (in Unibuddy Live)
In Unibuddy, set up the event to run at the same date and times as in EVM.
Get your team and content ready.
3. Promote (in Student CRM and social media)
Create a segment of all the students you want to invite, and paste the EVM Booking form URL (inc UTMs) into your email and send out the invite emails.
Give the EVM Booking form URL (inc UTMs) to your social media team as a destination URL for all activity promoting the event.
4. Remind with Touchpoints to increase attendance (in Student CRM)
your touchpoints will go out to all students who booked to attend (including details of Unibuddy Live URL), 20 days before, 10 days before, the day before, etc
5. Host it on the day (in Unibuddy)
In Unibuddy, run the event.
See all the attendees arriving in Student CRM automatically.
6. Follow up (in Student CRM)
Find all the students who booked and attended and follow up.
Find all the students who booked and did not attend and follow up.
All forms have hidden traps that make some students abandon halfway through. A badly-worded question, unclear options to choose from, help text that makes no sense - the list is endless. But one thing you can’t deny - if you knew what was broken you would fix it, we all would.
Zuko helps you see and fix the questions that make students abandon your web form. This detail is not visible in Google Analytics but it is in Zuko. Yay!
The answer is simple: As well as Google Analytics tracking, you can now add Zuko tracking to your Student CRM web forms.
Zuko’s web form tracking integrates with Student CRM: Zuko is a cloud-based analytics platform that measures micro-interactions inside your web forms and shows you the pain points and opportunities so you can increase completions.
See which fields users have to return to, spend the most time in and abandon so you can pinpoint potential areas for improvement.
Cost to integrate = free. See how to add Zuko here bit.ly/crm-directory-zuko
A good form builder is hard to find. Almost none are created specifically for Universities, despite claims that you can ‘build whatever you want’. Oh really?
Adding HE-specific fields such as Year of Entry, Course, Subject, Faculty and Campus is slightly more difficult than nailing jelly to a tree.
If you take the bait and valiantly try creating these as ‘custom fields’ in other form builders then you’ll immediately face other issues:
The Builders will often have a confusing UI that doesn’t exactly make it quick and easy for you to create your Form.
You’ll need to configure complex connections and plan out confusing logic just for the simplest of form requests.
Even when you have built your form you’ll face further issues with getting the collected data into your CRM.
You’ll have to rely on unpredictable API integrations, or a painful export and importing of your data.
When you just want a simple form for students to request a Prospectus Request, book onto an Open Day, ask an Enquiry or even Apply online. It can all become a bit too much.
We’ve solved this problem by keeping form-building simple, yet clever.
A quick, easy, drag-and-drop Builder allows you to create a form in minutes. Meaning you can spend more time communicating with your students and less time with the jelly nails.
Student CRM’s Web Form Builder is built for UK universities, meaning you can drag in a Course selector field with no setup.
It’s ready to use, straight out of the box.
Unlike other Builders, Student CRM’s Web Form Builder is fully integrated into Student CRM - meaning all of your information such as your current Year of Entries, Courses, Subjects, Faculties, Campuses, and Events will be pulled directly through to your form without you having to do a thing.
Data captured in a Student CRM Form is immediately sent into Student CRM, either updating an existing student or creating a new record.
Touchpoints that you set up earlier will send emails, letters or SMS to your students, keeping them engaged from the beginning.
When a student makes an enquiry, your Enquiry Officers get notified.
A good Form Builder is hard to find, but you’ve just found the best one - Web Form Builder from Student CRM.
“It’s a solid and affordable option for those looking to get their CRM activities up and running without extensive development work. It is easy to set up and use and continually being built upon and developed, and customer support is excellent." - Ryan Abbt, Customer Relationship Management Officer, Imperial College, London.
This consistently high-performing UK university uses Student CRM for their student recruitment.
Imperial College, London is ranked #3 (Times Higher Education), #5 (Complete University Guide) and #7 (Guardian) in 2020.
At this year’s HELOA conference 2020, Student CRM sponsored the Marketing and Communications Spotlight Award.
This year’s winner was the University of Leicester and the runners up were University of Salford and Bishop Grosseteste.
Well done to Elliot Newstead from University of Leicester and their hugely successful implementation of Unibuddy worldwide.
Student CRM integrates with Unibuddy. Click here to take a look.
In the photo - left to right: Dom Yeadon (Founder, Student CRM), Elliot Newstead (Student Recruitment Manager, Uni of Leicester), Dan Flatt (Senior Student Recruitment Officer, Uni of Leicester), Laura Youens, (Customer Success Manager, Unibuddy) and Emma Froud (Head of Business Development (UK) at Unibuddy).
We use Google Meet for phone calls and screen sharing. Usually, we are on a laptop and we can talk and share our screen with anybody with our Google Meet Link (you will be emailed a Google Meet link that you open in your web browser).
You choose whether to allow Google Meet to access your PC’s camera as well as your microphone. Bad hair day? Just microphone is OK :)
No downloads are required. It is very simple and free. See you there.
Applicant Days
Auditions
Campus Tours
Conversations with Enquirers
Enquirer Satisfaction Feedback
Evening Events
Interviews
Newsletter sign-ups
Open Days
Open Evenings
Parents Evenings
Postgraduate nights
Prospectus Requests
Register your interest (prospectus still being printed)
School Group Bookings
Surveys
Taster Days
Webinars
Our Web Form Manager app is where you get to build the forms you need to improve your student recruitment results, like this Open Evenings booking form for City:
Have you ever had great leads generated from an external website, but been confounded by how to use those leads in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from that site, for organising on your PC, then uploading them into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.
With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as Uni Compare, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.
About: Uni Compare's cross-platform service helps 500k students a month with their university application. Student can search for a course and calculate their Tariff Points in seconds. Their consumer-first mobile approach has enabled the service to reach 250,000 app downloads and over 150,000 registered users. That's why they have been voted 5/5 on Trustpilot.
Benefit: Uni Compare's site and app service empowers students to understand their future university choices. Students can search, create enquiries, prospectus orders and open day bookings. Your university can connect with prospective students as they begin their university search.
Service: This integration allows you to sync the Uni Compare dashboard to Student CRM. This creates a seamless experience for the university for the handling student enquiries and prospectus requests using 'Data Connections' in Student CRM. All you need to do is contact your Uni Compare Account Manager. Integration cost = free.
Have you ever had a great lead-generating FAQ and enquiry system on your website, but been confounded by how to use those leads in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from a dozen dashboards and into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.
With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as The Access Platform, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.
About: The Access Platform was built to empower – empower prospective students to make the right choice for their future, and universities to work with student ambassadors to create authentic content. TAP was made to help universities build awareness, confidence, and a sense of belonging with prospects anywhere in the world. The platform allows prospects to have direct conversations with their peers and makes it easy for universities to curate User Generated Content and student-authored FAQs.
Benefit: The Access Platform (TAP) helps universities attract, engage with, and convert prospective students worldwide, using peer recruitment. Universities increase lead generation, conversion to applicant and enrolment, and gain valuable insights and data about these students.
Service: Our free integration with Student CRM enables automatic transfer of prospect data, collected through the platform, to Student CRM. We can also synchronise conversation transcripts with CRM, and note whether certain elements have been flagged for safeguarding reasons. Request an API key from your Customer Success Manager to get started. Integration cost = free.
Last year, over 40 events in 15 different countries took part in the first World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED). These events, attracting 380 delegates, attempted to find local and global solutions to the problem of unequal access to higher education (HE).
This year, the focus is on encouraging governments, universities and others to make meaningful commitments to provide disadvantaged students with fairer access to HE.
There are nine events (so far) in the UK alone, happening all around the country, and covering a variety of topics regarding access to HE.
Another key facet of helping disadvantaged students is to find out what challenges they face. This research had been highlighted in the Student Voices project, with compelling stories from all around the globe.
If you’re interested in getting involved, or running your own event, take a look at the website for advice and ideas.
Have you ever had a great lead-generating chat system on your website, but been confounded by how to use them in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from a widget and into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.
With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as the Unibuddy Chat widget, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.
About: Unibuddy was founded by a couple of students who needed help with choosing their own university. The challenge for them was getting trustworthy, authentic information about the courses and life at their short-listed universities. They wanted to speak to students who had first-hand experience of the institution and couldn't find that opportunity online. This led to them launching Unibuddy and embedding it where all students visit - on each university's own website.
Benefit: Through Unibuddy prospective students can easily message current student ambassadors through the university's own website. Your university gets new enquiry contacts, improved applicant conversion and unique data insights to understand your students better.
Service: This integration sends Unibuddy students into Student CRM. You can schedule and automatically transfer new contact records with an indication of how engaged they are into your Student CRM using 'Data Connections' in Student CRM. All you need to do is request your university’s unique API key from your Unibuddy Success Manager. Integration cost = free.
Last year, over 40 events in 15 different countries took part in the first World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED). These events, attracting 380 delegates, attempted to find local and global solutions to the problem of unequal access to higher education. From these varied events emerged a crucial research paper, “All around the world – Higher education equity policies across the globe”, the largest global survey looking at policy commitments to equitable access to HE.
From this research and the outcomes of many events from WAHED 2018, NEON and other organisers have collated some central ideas that disadvantaged students face. Armed with these, they’ve been able to provide governments and HE establishments with a better understanding of the challenges faced by students struggling to get into, and remain in, higher education.
On 26th November the second WAHED will take place at universities and establishments around the world. Their focus this year is on encouraging governments, universities and others to make meaningful commitments on providing disadvantaged students with fairer access to higher education. There are already many events planned in the UK, Australia and Brazil, among others, and a myriad of ways you can get stuck in.
Will you be an advocate for disadvantaged students?
University marketing is expensive; by only using anonymous visitor tracking* do you really know how effective it is?
Student CRM's UTM tracker removes the anonymity and connects your marketing to an individual student which means that you can see a list of every student who clicked through from Facebook**. You can now calculate the conversion rate from a Facebook enquiry to an application.
*Google Analytics can only show you anonymous visitors, not real students.
**Not just Facebook, Student CRM also tracks leads created from YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, WeChat, LinkedIn, Instagram and all other social media channels.
We all know that Clearing is a stressful time - for you, for the students you’re trying to help, for everyone involved. That’s why Student CRM’s Customer Support team puts your mind at rest.
We might not be able to pass the tissues, but we can support you in other ways. By discussing your Clearing activities with us early on, we’ll know where, when and how best to allocate resources. Need a form change rushed through, or some advice on a complicated setup? We’ll have the right people in place at the right time to get it all done. So on the day, all you need to focus on is getting that placement for a student who will change the world.
Got an urgent question on Saturday morning? Brain a bit frazzled at 7pm on Monday? Don’t worry - not only is brain-fade normal, but there is someone here in our offices to answer any questions about the system that your frazzled self needs to ask.
Seems like a no-brainer, huh? Don’t do anything that could impact the functionality of a system during an important peak time. And yet many companies still seem to do it, like a commerce site amending an order form during the Christmas run-up. That’s why we’ve made a solemn pledge to never do anything disruptive during the peak Clearing weeks.
Student CRM helped The University of Brighton through Clearing 2019 - without incident.
Interested in how we could help you through Clearing?
The CRM Network HE is an information-sharing network for people within the Higher Education section working specifically with CRM technologies. We’re delighted to announce that Dom will be speaking at the second CRM Network HE Conference on 12th July.
In his session, “How to 10x your student enquiry satisfaction rate with Student CRM”, Dom will share practical tips on how to boost your enquiry satisfaction rate by ten times, while at the same time delighting your Enquiries Officers. Every attendee will walk away with Dom’s “7 University Rules for Enquiry Management Mastery” tip sheet.
Dom looks forward to seeing you there.
Henry Ford was once quoted as saying, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black."
Unlike Mr Ford, we let you pick your own colours and upload your own design to match your university’s branding - in Agent Portal from Student CRM.
When your overseas agents log in, they see every application they have submitted and can submit new applications in seconds. Your colours continue inside the portal too.
Maximise the impact of your university’s branding in Agent Portal from Student CRM.
Interested what a dedicated UK HEI agent management solution could do for your international recruitment numbers?
We’re pleased to be sponsoring the Leeds College of Music Graduation Event this year at the First Direct Arena Leeds on 24 July 2019.
Book tickets here: https://www.lcm.ac.uk/whats-on/graduation/
At a time when hundreds of graduans prepare to graduate in front of proud parents, peers and conservatoire staff, we’re thrilled to be helping make that day a little more magical.
Leeds College of Music put on one of the most creative graduation events around, featuring on-stage, live performances from the very best final year students, in what will be another stunning occasion.
Dom Yeadon, Student CRM founder and Managing Director will be attending the luncheon and the afternoon event, and presenting two special academic prizes.
Inbound emails, online forms, telephone calls, and walk-ins off the street - a good enquiries officer knows a question can come from any direction. Knowing where your enquiries come from helps you plan your resources for different times of the year.
With the Enquiries by Channel report from Student CRM, you can do exactly that. Now you can process seven enquiry channels with ease.
We know that it’s important for your Enquiry Officers to give good advice to those students who come to them for help. You don't want them just rote processing questions from potential students. But how do you keep an eye on the satisfaction of your enquirers?
With the new “Feedback by Category” report from Student CRM, you can get a better idea of how your teams are performing. This report shows you your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score per team allowing you to measure how satisfied your enquirers are.
Think clearer, more collaborative reports would help your enquiries team?
