10 Performance and Impact Features webinar - 31 March 2022

10 Performance & Impact Features

Do you have a remit of:

• Recruitment

• Marketing

• Outreach

• Events or anything else closely linked to these?

Do you have a colleague who doesn't currently use the CRM that does work in these areas?

If the answer to any of these were yes, maybe, sort of or anything else other than "no", then this Webinar is for all of you! Download the slides here http://dhdocs.com/D1RI

Transcript:

Andy Speed: Yeah. So often everyone, um, suffering, we're going to be talking through 10 performance and impact features within student CRM within the system, uh, areas that either aren't being utilized by all or many, um, and things that just will help us understand the system and use things in a different way. Let's say hopefully, um, what I would say is that for the majority of the people on this call, the majority of things we're going to talk about already included in the packages.

That you have some of the features maybe in apps that you don't have. Um, but you can obviously pick and choose which ones you're going to, to utilize, move forwards. And we can talk about those afterwards with those that wish.

We're in the session, the four sort of main steps of the, uh, the session agenda for today. One define what we mean by sort of performance, impact and dates hooks. The second part is looking at the 10 features, hopefully deal that deal with that in 10 ish minutes, hopefully to allow plenty of time for questions and discussion at the end.

I'm very aware. I don't necessarily like to follow my timings very well, so it may be slightly more than 10 minutes. Um, and then at the end quick discussion and questions and next steps from there, sorry, performance impacts and data folks. First of all, to address data hooks, data hooks is an official term that's out there.

I don't necessarily mean it in the official term of data hooks. I'm referencing. The idea of, um, a nice bit of imagery, let's say where we're identifying. Items of information, data, knowledge, et cetera, that we might want to keep poking out a little bit, that we can utilize further down the line for other purposes, to identify or to analyze or judge or, or however you want to terminate it.

Terminology sort of use for that. That's basically why I'm determining bikes or data hooks. All of the features that I'm going to talk through are all ways of creating those books, creating these points of additional data and implement. So within that, essentially, to understand what high-performance or higher levels of impacts are, we need to understand what we're trying to achieve, uh, from, from what, from our activities and our things that we're doing.

The same can be said from this webinar. So to utilize the tools and the tips on talking about, you're going to need to know what you're trying to achieve as a result of that, and that hopefully we make more sense as we've moved around. The survivorship bias plays a part in this, for those that don't know what that is, and don't recognize the image of the plane that's on there.

There was a study that was undertaken during world war two. Um, basically BOMA planes that were returning, um, from there, from their runs and they misunderstood, um, that the, that the weaknesses in the planes that were returning were where the bullet holes were, where the red dots were. And in fact, actually the problem was I didn't recognize that the planes that weren't returning were probably showing areas of, uh, of weakness in the air is different to this one.

And they had assumed that because they survived, that they could understand where the findings were for. Where does that play in terms of this and what I'm talking about? Uh, essentially, what are we measuring? Why aren't we measuring it? What aren't we using, et cetera. And what don't we know, um, uh, my, I guess, point with this and the things that we're going to talk about is.

Why wouldn't you want to do some of the things I'm talking about as we move, move throughout the, the features in a little while, um, in order to have a better, deeper understanding of, of all of our activities and the successes and those types of things. Um, and ultimately if you don't understand where you're going and what you're trying to get to, um, and you don't really know what solutions you don't know what the primary scope of the, of the role is or what you're trying to achieve.

My bigger question. Why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you create these various data hooks that I'm talking about with you, um, for use in the future when, when you have weather out or when you decide you want this, actually you could start building a sort of base of information and knowledge to be used in the future.

Hopefully that will make sense. And hopefully that wasn't too much of a, of a gardener thrown in my own presentation. So onto now, our 10 in 10. Now the first one of these, uh, is probably, uh, it's a little bit of a cheat. And then the first five all relate to this one particular, uh, aspect. But each of them I believe are worth sort of talking about an individual basis.

So I'm going to, if an activity reports in, I would say when I've looked across the. Most providers aren't using this and, or aren't using it consistently, um, for their own success. This for me is the, the sort of the gold element of, of sort of building these data hooks. You're applying multiple. Tags to your data that you create, um, through each of these five things that are on screen there, between the teens, your users, your activities, and your organizations you're involved yourself with and the outcomes, um, to understand basically the value that's coming from these.

And it's as simple as when you clone an event from one of the event apps, because it's available in event matters. Michael have been capture prep can open days, applicant open days, and it's even available when you do a data upload into one of those, those occurrences as well. Um, that you're creating these, these sort of data points.

So when we're talking about understanding sort of group value. So again, when we talk through the, the activity types and using teams, that will make more sense, but it could be around on Samuel sort of staff and team effectiveness. And it could also be around understanding sort of your return on investment from, from the types of activities that you're undertaking.

So activity types is the second feature that we're talking about, that links back to the event activity report. Ultimately, this is a way of comprehensively sort of identifying any activity that leads to students, joining your, your providers, be it recruitment bit, nurturing, bit conversion, whatever types of terminology you want to apply to that.

Um, it's a way of recognizing that your outreach accidents, uh, your international teams work, whatever it is, there's a way of capturing it within. It's as simple as a, as a free text, you create a line, you give it a number and you give it an activity name. You create a bit of a description to provide some sort of continuity and transparency across your teams, across your departments across time so that everyone knows what it was being recorded against that activity at that period of time.

Um, and you can go on infinitum and create these down as many times as you like. What is it? It's essentially, it's just a way of identifying these activities that you're doing. It's found within the student database, um, settings cold. Um, and why. For me, it's all about that continuity element. It's about, uh, providing the opportunity to collect information against these, for example, in this one here.

[00:07:07] So you'd know how many webinars, what success level look like from that webinars, how many leads we were capturing from those webinars? Um, it's, it's a way of having a deeper understanding of what it is that we're doing and judging some value off the back of that and providing that sort of continuity and consistency as well.

On top of that number three, our users and teams. So it's the second part of the event activity reports in. Again, continuity is a big part of this. For me, it comes down to, uh, understanding which people belong to, which teams that link to which activities. And we start to build a bigger, deeper picture within the CRM, uh, as to what's contributing to our success, it could be looking at performance management or monitoring.

Teams groups or teams, groups of people. However you want to sort of utilize those, understanding the sort of the group value again. So again, if you have a team that specifically international or outreach focused, or our schools and colleges and partners or whatever else you want to break those down to, it's a way of judging success, performance impact against those.

But you have to be able to create these first and again, most people. Using this function very often at all. Um, again, it's creating sort of large levels of data against these these groups. Um, and you can also partner it with an automation. Should you wish to, to be able to automatically, um, allocate teams, user sorry, or teams, uh, against.

People which we can, which you can see within the student record as well. And so that's, that's another function and that again, available, um, within, uh, the shin database, sorry, under users. Sorry. Um, and then the assessments there set the users up within there. So they're using the teams come from there.

Just a little aside here, before we move forward, I'm gonna reference this a bit. So I just wanted to introduce this here. In our it's actually quite useful. I would say most people aren't using these in, in any real, uh, real sort of passion let's say. Um, but they're available in most apps, right? Varying degrees of, of usability or, or sort of value.

And a lot of them link back to things that are coming up within these 10 that we're going to be talking about. And as you can see that as there's a handful on there. So between users assigned teams assigned personas and stages, all of those are things that we're going to talk about in the next sort of six or so features.

Speaking of associations, probably my favorite one in our, in our list of, uh, of 10 for today. Um, the ability to understand and link people, organizations, and events together. In such a simple and slick way from the, from that event activity reporting point, um, linking student database thinking, contact manager and all of your event apps in one fell swoop, just the ability to be able to record.

Beyond just what the event is. So an example of what that would look like on this example here, we've got our, our student, our example, student Johnny Cash, um, within the student record card yourself, uh, that you'll see this yourself and tab eight along the bottom is associations. I would say most, most people don't have.

Any, anything in these, when you look at your student records, um, and they would, they will appear in here automatically when you create the, the association with the event that you create, and then, then import those students for whatever reason. And the example that we've got here, our pink column was actually manually entered, um, which is done from within the student record card itself from within the student.

And, and that association is given the blue one was automatically allocated when they send it a specific. Here's what it looks like in the logs as well. So we can see exactly where they came from. Again, the blue, you can see that happened from, uh, from taking part in an event, uh, and the pink one was added by a specific, uh, organized, uh, specific person, myself, uh, who added this to this, this organization.

So we could see what I looked like. From within contact manager itself, uh, it starts to look like this. So again, when we looking in concept manager and we look under our organizations, they have the same tab of association. And within that, we'll show you the full list of the students that are associated with that organization.

Now for big organizations, something like a, you cath, where you could have thousands of students associated. Top, press that tab. If you've got a lot of time to wait, sometimes it can be a wall to put a lives through an easier way of saying how many students are associates with that is to help her over the little green, um, Person icon in the top right-hand corner and it will show you how many students are associated with that organization.

And again, this one here, so fake kg, consultancy others for notices you Casper. I'm not going to call it that on a demo at so Fe kg consultants. Both of those organizations, vacate G consultancy and fake academy both exist in different occurrences. So fake academy in this example existed in our schools and colleges, and then our fate kg consultancy existed in our business contacts.

So we're able to separate the two different types of organizations. Two different associations within those. Um, and still at the same time within the student themselves, see it in one place. We can see the different ways that they're interacting with the different parts of our organization, our partners, et cetera, and understanding that full value.

On the back of that. Another one of our in-app reports, which is really, really useful to know, and to see, and to understand is this one here, which is the in-app report for associations by organizations, where you can view and see a simple count based on the timeframe that you associated the top. So that ones for all time within this test, Set up the, I had to see which organizations we have in there and how many associations they've got.

So where they're coming from in reality, what this means to you in real life is that those associations will be coming when a lead is generated from that organization. So when I'm at a school and they fill out my MEC form and that, that, that name comes and hits. Uh, hits the student database and it comes in on the same cable automatically, or the end of the event, that association is created as a, as a result of that.

And that goes on their record. Then that student, we meet them again, uh, a UCAS event. Then we meet them at an open day. Again, all of those things can start to build up within there. So it's given us a real, real idea of where that partnership. The next one from that is, uh, is around event outcomes. So this is the last part of, uh, the event activity reporting.

And it's the area we come back to post event. It's our understanding of how successful that event was. And basically trying to put some level of tangibility, uh, against that. Now you could use the simple. Attrition of how many leads did we capture? How many people did we find? Which of course you'll get from, from your data important.

You'll understand it from that perspective, but are there other things that are valuable to us as an organization beyond just how many leads did we capture? Is it about how many people we actually going front? Or if it's outreach, how many students did we see while we're there? Is it about how many parents we saw or is it about how many perspectives as we gave out?

Whatever those other sort of intangible elements normally would have. Can we record it here in some capacity. So you would set it up again, based on each occurrence of, uh, of each of your event apps, you would have the option to create a different set of outcomes available to you. And again, you just build these out as many as you like, as long as you've got some logic to it that makes sense to you and you use the description to help other people understand that.

For example, this one that I've got in front of us here, where I've selected five, very good. That's on the basis that actually there was more than 200 people at that event. And I've said that that was really good. That was, that was a very good event from this capacity. So it's just as long as you understand how that works for you for that occurrence for that app, et cetera.

That's where that, that value really comes into. So that's the event outcomes. Um, In terms of outside of, uh, event activity reports in, so the last, the second half of this basically are all outside of that. So you're responsible for is a really interesting one, um, in my opinion. So, uh, it's the little tab just below Jimmy nails.

Nine, that is a little down, and it's basically the chance to allocate a user from the system, a member of your staff, to be responsible for an individual. And there could be many reasons why you might want to do this. It could be that that individual falls within a specific outreach category or. Uh, there's a specific recruitment target and that student for whatever reason meets within that, because they, uh, they're part of a key focus for you in terms of courses or they're an alumni or whatever it is.

There could be a reason to specifically identify them and essentially account manage. Account management them through sort of the recruitment process. This could be a way of, of sort of allocating that and then measuring what that does. Um, you could allocate them based on postcode or allocate them based on region or whatever it is that you want.

There's ways of, of identifying this. Um, and ultimately it's something that you can do if you wanted to. That have too, but it's, it's a function that's I would say is currently not utilized as much. Um, and the big part for me with this one comes down to sort of performance management and sort of monitoring.

So if there are multiple people doing the same function, Is there a distinct difference in the success rate from individuals within the same team. And is there learnings to come from individuals that are ultimately doing the same function as someone every year massively outperforming in terms of enrolling more students at the end of the process?

And if so, what are they doing? Are they doing anything different? Is it purely luck? What is that? And without having this attributed, you don't have the ability to really do that beyond that, unless you're obviously saving this information somewhere else separately. Um, the other key parts of this is the ability to partner with an automation again.

So the ability to automatically allocate individuals to be responsible for someone, if they meet certain criteria. Okay. So for that, I keep referencing automation. So those that don't know what what's motions are. It's a separate app, uh, that allows for, um, basically. Non linear integrations between applications.

So functionality that ultimately is within a specific application. It allows it to interact with another application in another way that it wouldn't do without the automations app. If anyone wants to understand more about that, can we can talk about it often. Number seven is personas. Uh, probably one of the features that you use the most, but the most differently across the system.

And the most probably inconsistently, um, I saw this on LinkedIn. Couldn't help myself, but bring it into this session. The phones aren't about demographics. And I think that a lot of the time is because they, everyone has something shared, actually a persona is about more the differences, less so than the shed.

So in this case, all of the shared actions are the shared sort of demographic elements to this. So in prince Charles and OZO, Could paint them as the same individual. If we took the picture away and just had the description by our ultimately the same person, it'd be hard to argue that they weren't, if you didn't know who they were, um, on the right-hand side, you can see the difference in the way that the system can look at this and the way that you could use personas.

So we can see prince Charles is a money bail in orange, and also he was born is black and he's a balmy back. And essentially it's a way of, um, allocating. The attributions to individuals based on either how they self-define or based on the actions that you see them do or perform, um, either through one of your, sort of your web forms or rapid survey, something like that, um, or, or partner with an automation.

So when they do something specific that you allocate them to a certain persona, And it's about the ability in the future to be able to personalize content to them. The other thing which is probably the most seen with personal persona, sorry, is the fact that personas are time limited. So a student can move between personas throughout their journey with us.

It isn't fixed in time. So you will see students changing episodes as they move through the process. Depending on how many opportunities you give them. So I, so identify as a persona that will happen at the screenshot. And you can see that is essentially it's a, it's a short one. It looks like a salad within student database.

Again, under the settings called new, create them by creating the name, allocate color code. Actually create some kind of a ballot to explain what they are and what it's doing. And that falls within that. The other, the other aspect I'd say within this as well, is that if you aren't going to use this and wanting to track personas over time, it's always good to partner it with an automation, to be able to potentially tag the student with the persona that they have at that time, so that if they change the cider in the future, and you wanted to understand previous personas, you could, you could understand that through an automated.

Hopefully that that makes sense. We can talk about them more in questions that are offending or might come up. Uh, this is the, my second favorite one in the list this afternoon. So around stages, uh, again, one that's, uh, inconsistently used and I'll show you on the next grade, the next couple of screens, couple of different ways that this is, this is being done.

Essentially it's about defining and identifying what your funnel. Um, I would say most people in the system are focusing purely on understanding the stages or the state. Uh, of applications, but not necessarily understanding the stages or the positions students sat pre-application. So that whole big sort of chunk between lead gen and an application, this is potentially a way of doing that.

It creates a real high level of flexibility as well, because you have complete control over what these look like. Um, and you can, you can determine what these stages. Look like and work. And so it fits your system that you want it to not necessarily, not necessarily just as the standard sort of UCAS idea, it could be leading up to the Yukon one and then mimic the UCAS one answer was, or however you want it to basically, as you can see on screen here, this is another really nice feature of the in-app reports.

Is that it shows us our stages really nicely. So if you want it to understand how many students were relevant of how they applied, whether it a direct African a post-grads, if it was an undergrad, if it was in central student, whatever else, um, obviously all of their status is, uh, application stage. I'll one thing.

But when the, in the, in the buildups that, what does our pipeline look like? Where are people sitting? How long are they sitting there for? What does that, what does that whole thing look like before they apply? Ultimately the time where there's the highest level of attrition normally is that you're losing people between lead gen and application.

So what's going on in that period of time. And, and what can we do to basically stop that or to limit that or to, to reduce that. And this is a nice way of doing that. And again, that flexibility of doing it, however you want to work really well. And again, you can partner it with an automation to automatically move or, or to recognize when students are at specific stages, depending on, on how you build things out.

This is an example of, of a couple of different ways that this is, uh, this is potentially being used in the system. So these are two different test environments we've got. Um, and I thought let's just show both versions of these. Um, so we've got, uh, on the, on the left-hand side, you've got a real, uh, Follow the less structured let's save them the one on the right.

And that's more of a gut feeling on the left. So are they just calling on us? Are they, are they, are they hot? Are they, are they really interacted with us? And then have they applied or enrollment? It's a really basic one on the right. We're talking about a far more sort of micromanaged processor that the sort of understanding of it, but you can see how potentially the two different processes work.

On nine is our engagement scoring. So engagement scoring again, south lynching database out in the. The Coke within that. It's essentially a way of, um, recognizing interactions that you're having with your, with your leads or with your applicants and allowing the engagement score, which you can see a quick snapshot of in the top, right.

And corner where that sits in the student record card. To understand how engaged those students are with you and with your processes. Now we know that there are a couple of, uh, complications as a result of, uh, essentially bots inside email, um, providers, a couple of specific email providers, and that can skew a couple of the scoring functions related to sort of email opens.

It's an ongoing thing that we're working, but they, they, they develop issues, uh, for us as we fight the fires, uh, we are working on this. But the point that I sort of refer to on this, uh, it always comes back down to what I think I mentioned at the start around focusing on outcomes, if we're focused on our outcomes and the actions that we want, our, our students, our leads, our applicants to be doing, as opposed to necessarily what they've read it.

So the actions that we get into attend something, book onto something, speak to someone, for example, those things aren't skewed by email stats. Those things are all fixed in stone, late they happen. Um, and there's a way of recognizing that. So you could minimize the implications of the emails. But just not monitoring email, email opens, for example, and that can come up within this.

The good thing about email, so it will be guidance store and sorry is they could be pre-planned so you can program this whole sort of page of grids and give their scores and all these things to it, or it can be ad hoc. And I say that on the basis, they could be partnered with an automation. Um, and you could allocate some level of, uh, of engagement score based on that, which I'll show you on the next slide.

And it's about being outcome focused success. So if we focus on the outcomes and the things that we want our students to be doing, you're more likely to sort of see value in this section itself. This is an example of what an automation looks like. That involves engagement score. I've broken this down.

It's normally a one straight string by brokenness. It's easy to view. Um, so in this example, we're looking for a student that inquires with us. They come in by our, the inquiry. Um, and we're looking within the message content within the message content. We're looking for the value Easter egg, 2022, and as a result of their comment, including Easter of 2022, we're going to give them an engagement score of a hundred.

Now that's a stupid example. Um, however, it has its value when we put it in the context. If I'm giving a presentation, a large store fair or something like that, or an assembly or wherever it is, or on a piece of marketing material and a bit like a voucher Dakota, March madness, 20, 22 or whatever it is for one of our shops that we have.

And the rules, if they quote that back to us, does that mean they're more highly engaged than someone that doesn't quote that back to. Maybe, maybe not. Um, there's a lot of different ways of, uh, of tweaking or recognizing that engagement score change. And that's an example of one of those times that I quite like.

Speaking of automations, we're going into our 10th one now. So 10 hair, there's two examples on the screen. Essentially automations are used to increase team capacity. If you're looking to automate things and to take away some of the manual processes to use some of the functionality that I was talking about before or, or whatever else, the automation is a really neat and nice way of doing that.

Um, it allows, uh, Applications to interacting non-ordinary ways, as I mentioned before. So as we can see in this example, we, the first one we're looking at inquiry. So we're looking at when a web phone creates inquiry. Someone creates an inquiry with us, um, and the message content includes. And you can't say that.

For example complaint, terrible Paul rubbish. So if it includes any of those, we're going to adjust our engagement score and we're going to reduce it by 99. We're going to say that if they've, if they've taken their time to contact us and use any of those words, it's likely that that's negative and therefore we're going to reduce their engagement score.

And what we're going to do then is we're going to replace their priority, fill with the little staff due to the inquiries. And we're going to turn that into a yes. So it's going to say. And then what we've got on the right here is a secondary automation from that. And that's, if an inquiry form has a priority of yes, that is going to trigger an automated notifications, a specific member of staff to go and deal with that.

So in this instance, if that gets tagged, sorry, if that gets prioritized. An email is going to be sent to team leader, uni.com. And that member of staff is going to have a direct email land in their inbox to say, this student has been made a priority, go and have a look at them, go and find out what's going on with them.

Same can be said. For example, if someone's using the data compliance one, for example, it could be. There's all sorts of different ways. It could be around status changes. It could be around, um, withdrawal rules or whatever else is ways of, of using this to your, your sort of benefit. So, yeah, automation is a great way of increasing capacity and again, it's a, it's a function.

And a feature that I would say is, is vastly under utilized. And then I know us at 10 in 10, and I've gone over my 10 minutes and now I'm going to go over my 10. And I'm going to throw in one more, which states tax, which ultimately, uh, on the, on the screen here on the right, we've got, uh, This is just an example on the power BI I have on the system from an American university, the types of things that you can build out with your, with your.

That information from the data packs, uh, it could be through Tableau or another, another platform, whatever your institution is using. And it's a way of really deep diving into that data. I've mentioned in our reports. They are specifically very lightweight. They're not designed to be, uh, to be able to deep dive into things.

The system isn't designed to be. Allow that to look across those apps, uh, within the system, uh, taking it out into device, back to looking at it on a proper business analyst sort of platform is the best way of doing that. Looking at how your success works in the future, looking at where your trends analysis comes from.

Again, the data is a great way of taking that out on that that covers all that. The sort of the data we've spoken about today as well. Uh, understanding specifically the, the sort of the value and the impact of your maybe your outreach activity or international activity, schools, colleges, partnerships, et cetera.

That's where it comes from. Understanding your selling investment all from this. And the real key to this one, the reason why the data packs and the BI platforms are more useful and better than having it just as in the system, you have the ability to bring in other data from external, you can bring in stuff from, uh, from your student record system and look at the, the journey that they take from inquiry through to, uh, I don't know, to graduation or beyond sort of graduate destinations, those sorts of things.

So it's not just the recruitment process. You can look at the, sort of the whole life journey. Okay. That's my 10 in 10, just a quick recap of the sections that we've covered across there for you on screen. And I'll ask if people can start to get their questions together. I'm going to take a moment to just not speak for a second.

I'm going to open up the chat window so I can see what's there. And step, fuck asking you to come back on for me and let me know if there's any ones that you specifically think I should be speaking. Oh, I'm here. Um, no, we haven't had any questions yet, but let's see if anybody has got anything that they'd like to ask about.

Yeah. If anyone has questions, feel free to turn your Mike Mike and-or camera on. We're not recording cameras, so you're not going to be on screen. Um, one of the questions I've got actually is, um, Throughout the system. Lot of what you're talking about here is, is actually across apps. So, so is that one of the primary benefits really are things like, for instance, um, the event activity reporting panel is that you can categorize things across the different apps.

Yeah, I think so. So it's the, I guess. The benefit of having it across apps is that you have that it's not just happening in isolation. So it's not just recording what you're doing in mobile event capture and only mobile event capture allows for that comparison across similar apps. So everything that relates to activity your, are you there that for your events that you're doing, it will record that against those, but you also have the ability.

Within this stuff is, but you can change for example, your outcomes. If you want to have different outcomes for different occurrences, you can have that difference at the same time as being similar. Um, as long as your activity list is comprehensive, you don't necessarily need to use all of those activities in all of the apps within all of the occurrences.

As long as the activity list itself is comprehensive and it provides that sort of single point of, uh, of reference then, then yeah, it works great. Yeah. So an example might be for instance, um, like, uh, you might be running a specific kind of, um, event with a particular channel, like an online event, um, using a particular, um, third party for instance, but you might have a big event like in PhD, in pre applicant, open days, and then a much smaller targeted event at, um, various, uh, a very specific student demographic.

But using event manager, but if you had the same, um, activity type across the two apps and you record that accurately, then you'll be able to see how that particular channel is performing for you both in the bigger open day, online, open day, and about specific student event. It's the sort of thing where my head immediately with the situation you just presented that stuff, but actually your activity type might well.

For example, a presentation and, and your recording. Cause they're all presentations in different capacities. And then actually your, the association is where the success part comes from there because actually you could record, uh, you could set up your platform, you could set up, I don't know. My webinar or go to me or whatever it is as your business contacts and then associated from there.

So you can actually record your activity type and your, your platforms, a separate thing. You can obviously do that within the location part as well above which comes into that as well, because all of that context is usable in line with this when it comes out in the data packs. Um, it's just a question for me.

It just. It gives options. And that flexibility, that ability to, to get a bit creative with how you want to record something or how you'd want to, to, to understand things at a deeper level comes from doing that. And the nice thing is the clone ability. So once you clone it and a lot of that hard coding part bottom just needs tweaking.

You just need to adjust who the association is, go and see, but actually the person that's doing the event or the team that's doing the event is already there. So you don't even necessarily need to rebuild it every time you just need to tweak it. You. Yeah. Okay. That makes more sense. So does anybody have any questions then?

Always happy. That's not a problem. What I would say is, um, next steps from this, in that case, um, there's, there's two things that you can do or three things you can do. One is you can say that was, that was lovely. But it's not for me or it's not going to work or whatever else, and that's absolutely fine.

Or go and have a little play with that yourselves and just, just do what you want to do. The second option is that you have a chat with staff or a team about how you might use some of these functions and features, or the third option is, is to book, to have a meet with me and have a chat about things, uh, as your account manager.

And especially if there's a function there, if you're looking at automation, for example, um, or if you don't have access to contact manager or whatever, As, as a possibility of sort of taking that element and seeing how that works. So if there's no other questions, I'll ask you to wrap the, uh, wrap the recording upstairs.

Yeah. Cool. Okay. Yep. That seems to be it. So I'll just stop the recording now.

Zuko Forms Webinar 9 Feb 2022

Can you get your Form Completion Rate (FCR) beyond 50%?

Learn about form analytics with Zuko using real Student CRM examples.

Find out how Zuko can pinpoint the friction points in your Student CRM Web Forms and show you where your prospects bale out. 

Using Zuko you can make simple changes to increase your form completion rate and improve your recruitment.

Transcript:

Lene Raastad: Now it's definitely recording. I got the notification.

Dom: Thanks. Okay. Good morning everybody. This is a webinar. For one of ethics and we are partnering with Zuko, Zuko analytics. We've known for a great many years and they've got some really cool stats around web form analytics. So they do something way cooler than Google analytics can do way cooler than we can do.

So let her know this morning, I'll go into a co-host and talk you through a little project we've been running in the background. So the little project we're running in the background is in fact that. So Lana and Allen from Zuko and myself, we say Andy, but I think half of CS is here as well. So what we're going to do is I'll do a very quick.

And I'm going to hand over to Zuko and Lenne. And I am going to actually go through the project that we ran together then into Q and A, and then at the end, we've got next steps. So this will be a 30 minute webinar as usual. Um, however, if it wants to run over or we finish early, that's cool as well. And then we'll share the video with everybody.

So the background to this is that. Um, Ryan Taylor from city, university of London, very kindly agreed to participating in this as the, or it has a kind of a Guinea pig web form. So on the, um, The city website is this page. Okay. And embedded on this page is a link to a web form. So this is all about short courses.

Uh, and Ron and I had a look in the back and we agreed that one of these forms is mysteriously underperforming, and we don't know what it is. So why don't we check it out? So what we've done is we've found the form and we found the link. Okay. The link is here, curiously. We've also, uh, Found another link down here, which is an interesting finding we'll talk about later.

And this is inside, uh, runs form, which again, I've got permission to share with you. This is the form itself. Okay. And this is the location that's stored at, which has abated or showed you the most important thing and bewildering for anybody who wants high response rates is this, this is not cool. 1.9% completion indicates there is an issue.

And from our stats, you can see it's getting loads of views and you got the weekend troughs and the week peaks as well. So there's something going on here. Thanks to, uh, Zuko and learner. We have been able to dig a lot deeper into this. So, um, I'm going to ask Lana now to give a quick description of her Allan and Zuko and the part they've played, firstly, in setting.

Zuko tracking.

Lene: Sure. Okay, cool. So what I will do then is I will share my screen so that you can see everything as well. Um, okay. So if I click continue, now, I believe I will kick you out to screen sharing. Are you okay with me doing that? Please? Go ahead. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Continue. And then I need to choose the correct one, which I think if there's one.

Cool. Cool. Can you see my screen? Okay. Yeah, we can. Perfect. So in, if we first talk about kind of how Sukkot works and how the setup was done. So basically the purpose of Zuko is to help you identify basically where and why people are dropping out of your form. And then once you've identified where and why that then gives you the opportunity to go and change.

And then increase your conversion rates on your forms. Right? So with the set up, it's pretty simple. So how it works, let me just move these faces out of the way so I can see here. So the setup is super simple. So how it works with Zuko for the setup is you have two different tags. So you basically just copy and paste these tags into your form system.

And we did this together, didn't we? Dom. And how long did it take you think? Was it five.

Dom: Uh, probably less than that. Yeah. It's well established. There's also help center articles in the help center if you want to set it up, but it's straightforward if you got stuck, um, chat with Steph and her team as well.

Thanks Lene.

Lene: Okay. So once you've set everything up, that's when you start getting the data through, right? So that's what I'll show you now. So incident go, you'll have these different databases. So, what we've got here is the form data. And this one gives you the kinds of top level data of your starters and completions and views to the forum.

Then I'll take you into the other reports later on that goes a little bit deeper into each individual field. Um, but first, if we look at the city form here, you can see the people that viewed the form, uh, removed the best. So based on the people that viewed the form, as you can see, it's a similar kind of peaks and troughs.

So we're looking at before. Then you can see the people actually started the form. And this is one of the things we noticed when we were looking at this data is that there's quite a big gap here between the people that view this form and the people that start this form. So this kind of goes back to what we were looking at before, when you looked at where on the page.

So, let me get my tub here

Dom: and the difference lender between your blue line and the red line is in line with the 1.9% completion rate that we're getting inside. Um, cities, web form itself, we run the stats and we're, we stop at 1.9%, but you can go much deeper so you can see the problem that we can see the differences.

You can go right into it and figure out what's going on.

Lene: Yeah, that's completely true. So basically, just to, just to show you this again, so basis where the form actually was. So what we noticed was that basically anybody that goes on this page, regardless of which form they're actually going on to, or if they go onto form at all, gets counted as a view on this form, which then of course contributes quite a lot to a very, very.

Uh, view to stops, right? And then again, of U2 to completion, right? So on average, based on our benchmarking stats that we have from the education sector, we're looking at around a benchmark and conversion rates of around 70% doesn't overall. Um, and then for applications is around six to two points. Um, and for inquiries around 77%, which is quite different to the kind of stats we're seeing here.

But yeah. So let me jump back to the farm itself. And then of course we have the completions and also the abandons here. So completion is of course, somebody that successfully completes the form and then abandoned is somebody that starts the form, but then leaves at some point. And these are the people you want to identity.

Why they abandoned. Right. But as part of the kind of overall data, we also have these things here, which is basically a conversion rates. So like we spoke about before kind of your view, proportionately who views the form starts to form. And of course also who've used the form, ends up completing the form as well.

And it's also quite interesting to look at the difference between the complete and abandoned sessions. So in this form here, you can see. Um, these are the average complete sessions to patients, and these are the average abandoned session durations. So of course, normally you might have a little bit, um, more data in here.

So we normally recommend having at least around a thousand sessions before you started. Proper conclusions, because of course you need, you need that number two, to make sure that you have statistical relevant evidence here. So what I'll do is I'll take you through the kind of data we gathered here. And then I'll also show you an example from another form that has a lot more data in it, so they could see how you can draw conclusions from this data.

Dom: Would you mind scrolling up just for a second? There was. So on the right-hand side at the bottom, you've got to start to do completion rate 3.75%. Now that may appear to other universities there's quite a healthy, uh, completion rate. However, in your experience, it's not as high as the average numbers you're getting from education for, uh, clients that use

Lene: That's true. So, uh, the average was around a 62% for application form. From starts to completion. Right? Interesting

Dom: inquiry forms.

Lene: Yes. An inquiry forms are even higher. There's 77% on average.

Dom: Okay. So that's something for all of our users to aim for. Um, and it's worth bearing in mind that if we don't. Web forms.

Uh, they are the lifeblood of feeding into students' CRM with your web forms. You don't have enough of them if they're not behaving properly, if they're not distributed in the right places, uh, your students are suffering from, you know, a starvation of fuel here. So what lenders from can do is to take the forms you've got and just increase the response rate, massively.

Everything else flows through the front of much better when you've got a lot more coming in. Okay, Linda. Thank you,

Lene: definitely. Okay, cool. So, uh, continue on. So here you have basically the difference then between the abandoned and completed completed session. So the session duration here, you can see that in this form so far, the average completed session duration is around six minutes.

Whilst the average abandoned session duration is around one minute. And when you see that kind of difference, then you can. Already kind of assume that the people that are leaving are leaving quite early on in the journey compared to the six minutes, it takes to complete the form, for example. Um, and here we have a field return.

So what we mean by field return is basically if somebody interacts with the field, um, then they move on and then they have to return back to that field. Maybe they had an error message or maybe they had to go back and change. Um, so, so normally it's quite good to, to compare the difference here. So if an abundance sessions are on average, returning a lot more, that can indicators of friction.

If they're returning a lot less back in indicate leaving early on in the journey, and then you have this one here, which basically shows you the failed submissions over time. So these are the people that make it all the way to the end of your form. And they try to submit, but they fail to do it probably because they had an RMS.

That meant that they hadn't filled in the phone properly. Cool. And then the next one we'll we'll dig into them is the field data. So after you've kind of looked at all the overall, uh, data, I forgot to mention actually you can, of course add any filters you want here as well. If you want to filter by a specific date range, and then out of the box, we do also have other filters to look at here.

So you can, um, look at different browser families, new versus returning user, for example, and device types are all there for you to kind of filter from. Cool. And then the next one we then have is the field data, which then shows you each individual field, uh, in your form. So how Sukkot works is it pulls these in, based on, um, HTML, uh, name or ID.

So I'll quickly show you also, cause this is. Um, you can customize this within Zuko so you can call it something else. If you don't want to call it what it comes in as, so where you see, there we go. So if we go here to the label fields, you can see that in this form have already labeled these fields. Out of the box.

These came in based on their, um, HTML names and IDs here, which is basically a student undisclosed first name you can see here, and it's, it's just been renamed to first name just to make it easier. Um, and that means you can also actually order all these fields in order how they appear in your form, uh, by simply dragging and dropping to customize the order of your fields here.

So let me go back to the data. And then what you see here is basically a graphical overview of where there might be some friction in your form. So what they show us too, it shows you the proportion of abundance. So which fields had the highest proportion of abundance. It shows you which fields have the most proportion of field time.

So that means how much time they're actually spending in the field. Normally, of course, that is text fields that spending more time in, rather than buttons, for example, Uh, and then also start to see which fields proportionately people are returning to the most. So you can isolate out and look at what you want to do.

And the rule of thumb here is basically the longer the bar is. The more likely there is to be some sort of friction with them.

Dom: Could we infer Lana from that extremely long bar on inquiry message at the bottom. Can we infer that clients are sufficiently invested at that point? They're not in, they're not abandoning from that field typing along message and they're submitting and they're going back a little bit, the yellow bar at the end.

They're going back. Certainly not as much as they are in other fields.

Lene: Yeah. The field time. Of course, the majority of field time is spent in that field, which does make sense from the nature of the field, because it's probably a field with a type in maybe even a sentence. Right. So,

Dom: so that's really interesting to see that when they're down to their, they're investing their time in the form and then abandoning that or after if you show abandoned.

Lene: You have a couple of abandons on the submit button and then a couple of abandons here, but in this form with the amount of data that's here at the moment, the majority of people are abandoning either before hitting and hitting this part of the. We're a little bit off, but yeah. So if you want to look at the actual abandon counts, you do that further down spend, you can see the total abandoned count on each field, what proportion that place of abundance, and also be abandoned rate within the field.

So the abandon rate within the field is basically out of everybody that interacted with the field. What percentage of people then ended up abandoning? So as you can see here, the numbers are still quite low. So that's why I'll use another example for a little bit later on just to show how you can draw better conclusions from it.

But if you just look at this, uh, as it is now a course ID is at the moment, the biggest contributor to abandoned.

Dom: And to clarify, the reason that we have low data in the city form, uh, is because on S you will show him one of the learnings at the end of this. Usually there's a lot more data flows in far more quickly, and that's something that a lender is going to show you again, another account that's running this, isn't a city account.

You're about to say, but it's got so much data. It gives you a much better indication of what your forms will actually be collect.

Lene: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, is it easier if I now show that example straight away? So we can, we can look at, look at the same reports from both, or should I do it towards.

Dom: That's up to you.

Lene: I think maybe it might be easier to just show it now. So if we, so now that we're already looking at this report to say as an example, let's look at this one here. Yes. So if we look at this example here, you see, we have a lot more data. So you end up then getting, um, some buttons or. Spending out a lot more in terms of abandoned.

So this is an example from a different industry as well, but it's quite a tight example to look at. So if you see similarly to what we just looked at, you can see the biggest contributor to abandons in this example, form is the step one submit button here. And you can see that that's around half of all abundance, but you can also see that you have some other contributors to abundance.

If you look at abandoned. Right? So for example, This is a multi-step form. So if you look at the step three submitted person here, which is much lower, actual, total abandoned count, but the abandoned rate is still around half of the people that interact here they leave, which means there's also some friction with some fields in, in step three.

So just, just to kind of show how it looks like when you have more data. So let me toggle back to where I was. Um, then the next one here, we have field abundance over time. So this one is normally used. If you make a change to a field and you want to see if that change had an impact on the field directly.

So a changed a field might be that, say that you have identified. Let's see, we identify that the course ID is the biggest contributor to abandon. And you want to change maybe the description of the field, or maybe you want to change the error message that comes within the field. And then you choose that field and you look here.

So at the moment, because there's not much data that looks like this, but if I talk back again to where I was, um, when you have more data, you can kind of see how this moves over time. Then you can see if you've changed, how the impact, uh, in the abandoned, in that specific. So

Dom: then, uh, your, your sulfur Zuko identifies protect potential.

Well, first of all, it's identifies whether the numbers are too high, you need them lower. Like the abandoned rates are too high. Let's bring them down. Or the completion rate is too high. Let's bring it up. So as a result of all of this, you've just said that over time you could, for example, recommend to city, they do three things with their web form.

And if they did all of that, this. Then when you run the stats, you should be able to see the low numbers getting higher and the high numbers getting lower over time. So you can see the difference it's made.

Lene: Um, brilliant. And then another thing you want to, to focus on because, um, quite often, if a field has friction, that means they have to go back to the field and change it. If everything is straightforward with the field or use it probably will not have to return to it. That's why this field returns overview is quite important to look at as well.

So here you can see. Proportionately which feels have, uh, the most amount of returns to it. You can also focus on only abandoned sessions if you want to, or you can, you can do a mix. So you can see here, this is a little bit of a mix between, uh, returns across abandoned and completed sessions, but you can actually see at the moment, the only people that have returned the submit button eventually completed.

So that's a good thing. And then if you want to dig a little bit deeper and to feel returns, that's when you get this graph here. So basically this shows you kind of three different things here. So you have the number of sessions that interacted with each field. So you have here, uh, the total number of sessions that's interacted with the first name field.

So you can see here 37 people interacted with the first name field out of these people. 16 of them ultimately abandoned at some point later in the journey and 21 of these people ultimately. And then you can look at the percentage of sessions that returned to this field. So you can see that 25% of these abundance sessions had the return to the first name field whilst only 4%, almost 5% actually of these completed sessions, 21 sessions they had.

So that's why soup is kind of trying to help you to identify where there might be friction by highlighting this. So where there is a statistical relevant difference between returns of abandoned and completed sessions, it gets highlighted. So the red means that it's abandoned sessions that returns more.

And if it's highlighted in blue over here, then if the completed sessions that gets returned. And then basically here, you just have the average number of returns to the fields out. So the people that return to field on average, how many times do they have to return to the field? So that's also something that's really nice to look at if there is a field that they have to return to a lot of times.

So I'll toggle back to my other example here again, just to show some way where they have a little bit more data to look at. So, if you look at here, for example, let's see average returns to fails. So you can see, for example, let me see if there's one with a low. So if you look at this animal birthday tier, for example, you can see that this one is highlighted in blue, actually, um, compared to the other ones.

So here complete the sessions are proportion of returning more and you can see that completed sessions are returning almost two times loss dependent sessions. Run one and a half times on average. So that's something to look at as well as specific, especially, um, it's good to highlight if abandoned sessions that returning a lot.

So sometimes you might see, uh, if you have a phone number field or something like that, where the use of comped, um, cons get the formatting, right then quite often, abandoned sessions might have. On average for field returns, for example. And then that could cause so much friction at the end of abandoning.

So that's something we would see from experience. Let me.

Dom: So the, uh, the, the stats that you're showing, um, again, you're familiar with your platform. And I imagine the rest of us who are marketers and are thinking, this is a great load of stats, firstly, to get guidance, to work through your platform and to understand where to find the issues and the friction points.

Um, how would a user do that? So two-part question. Firstly, how would you use a, learn your software so now know where to jump, to, to get the beds. And then once you've identified that it is the first name and the date of birth that you've got a suspicion, there's an issue with, how can you help them decide actually how to affect it because we're measuring it, but we then want to improve it.

So one how to use the software B what to do with your recommendation.

Lene: Sure. Okay. So how do you use the software? When we onboard a new user, we have, uh, an in-depth training session together first, where we teach them kind of what to look out for and how to interpret the data. Uh, we also offer monthly bimonthly or quarterly check-ins with you as well to kind of help them look at the data together if they have any problems.

Um, and then kind of when it comes to how to action today. Uh, we're also able to, to help with base and experience kind of what could be causing it. So specifically if we're using an example, like phone number that I used before, uh, quite often it has to do with, with formatting, um, or the error message or the description around it.

Uh, quite often, if it has to do with any kind of personal data, like you're asking for, say an email address and a phone phone number again, maybe the user doesn't really realize why you need it. So it might be that we recommend you to, to explain why this information is needed, for example, and

Dom: the recommendations that you had come up with these, uh, um, actions that I'll use as can immediate.

Uh, undertake themselves by just creating a new version of the web form, create all of that. And then at a certain time, you'll say, okay, version two. Now it goes live. And Zuko immediately starts to see the impact of those changes. So all of your recommendations are actionable inside web form builder by users themselves.

Lene: Yeah. Sometimes the recommendation might also be even just to, to change up the order of the questions a little bit. So there's one, I haven't had time to, to show you guys yet, but if we look at the field fly, for example, so what this can kind of show you. So say if you, for example, have identified that there's an issue with.

The submit button that a lot of people are leaving there. You can look at where they go onto next. So you can look at, okay, they're clicking the submit button. Then they have to return back to say subject of interest ID. Right. And that then kind of indicates that, okay, so they had an error message with this field, uh, what's wrong with this field?

How can we make them not jump this field, but you can also use this to kind of see how people flow through your form. So say you have your first field to get form here. You see, okay. The majority of people are moving on to the last name, which makes sense. Okay. Let's look at last name. Okay. The majority I'm moving on to student email makes sense.

But then at some point, if you find that kind of the path people are taking is spreading a bit, might indicate a little bit of confusion, and then maybe this could also just be, be helped by larger things. Cool. And does that, does that kind of answer the question or did I go a little bit rogue there? I tend to

all of a sudden, okay, cool. So this there's a couple of things I ever post. I haven't shown yet. I realize that we've kind of run over already, but if you have time to stick around while I share the rest, that would be awesome. Cause the rest we have to show now is kind of the. Digging a little bit deeper reports.

So we do also have, um, this report called session Explorer. So say you have identified which fields are causing issues. You've looked at the flow, how people are flowing through your forum. And again, identified how, which fields people are returned active, for example, off the submit. So the people that are making it to the end, and then you might want to go to this one called session Explorer here, which basically then shows you individual users.

That are matching your criteria. So I have already filtered this, um, by sessions that interacted with the submit button. So they made it all the way to the end of this form. And I filtered by abandoned session as well. So then it goes, this, there's not a lot of data here. Now. It only returned, um, to uses that that matches this criteria.

But when you have more data, you'll get more users to look at. So, what this allows you to see is actual real users on how they flow through your form. So here you can see this user here, you got all the metadata on the top. They have around eight field returns, which means there was definitely some friction.

And that's probably the reason why they didn't manage to complete this form. They spent almost 10 minutes to try and complete it as well. And then you can kind of work your way down and see how they move. So you can see this user here moved fine from first name, last name to email. No problem. Uh, residents ID.

You can see them moving through no issues. So if there is a field return, that's highlighted in red. So if they have to return back to field and edit the data that's red and the field we are looking for will be highlighted in yellow. So you can move through here. You can see, and then not having any problems until they get to these fields here.

Now they have to return back to the year of entry and also the subject of interest ID that you have here. And then they continue down the field. They have to return again to. To these fields, uh, continuing, moving down, they tried to submit it. Doesn't work again, have to return back to a subject of interest ID course ID substitute interest ID.

Again, they returned it five times actually before eventually leaving the form. So this, this is really good kind of piece of data to look at if you want to. An actual example, to match your hypothesis and match the kind of overall data that you've seen. So this is really nice to get that super in depth, uh, individual, uh, look,

Dom: that's really great because, um, obviously all Google is going to get you and all our stats is going to get you is the, uh, loading of the form and the completion of the form.

So the session that breaks it down as every single step is, is excellent. I love the granularity of that.

Lene: Brilliant. Um, and then of course, we also do have, um, the segment comparison that I haven't shown yet. So what this does, it allows you to compare. If you have several different forms, you can compare them against each other, or you can also compare the same form with, um, with different filters.

So you can see here, I have already added a comparison. I, you can add in more, if you want somebody to just fail, to take. To see the difference in this particular form from desktop versus mobile users. So you can see that these stats here, this basically been Ciro status from the mobile device. So oldest starts you've had in this form have come from the desk.

Um, but it might be that you can do, for example, novice returning users here, you can compare different kinds of forms to each other. So this is super flexible for you to build any comparison you want to build based on the forms you have in the system. And then of course, you can look at these five a time as well as if you're looking at views.

Of course, now you will have oldest artists from, from one pass. If I look at start to completion right here is of course only going to be one within the staff in it. Um, But, yeah. So this gives you the flexibility to kind of, kind of look at the data and do what you want with it. And this is also exported as a PDF.

So super nice and easy. If you just want to send around a report to the business, for example, um, I did forget to mention that most of the reports are exported as a PDF and some are also exportable as a CSV as well. Um, for, for that.

Dom: Well, thank you ever so much later. I mean, I'm, I'm completely impressed with the package now that we've used it before with you.

Uh, I think it gives our use as, uh, an insight into, uh, forms that was just not possible any other way. I think interpreting the data is best done with you alongside, um, journeying through the software and then understanding it. And then when it comes to actual. Actioning the recommendations again, uh, you can work with any users can work with our team or just directly.

And so I've worked for a minute. I love

Lene: brilliant. Brilliant. I was just going to say, so what we do find is uses normally get very comfortable with, with analyzing the data after. Say say a couple of months of working together or maybe even one session together. It completely depends on, uh, on, on the users.

That's a big mix, but yeah, we're always happy to have regular catch-ups and look through the data together. I think it's, uh, it's really fun to, to identify pain points for users. And definitely when you see conversion rates massively improving.

Dom: Fantastic. Thank you ever so much. So I'm going to pretend to, uh, the deck we've got here and it did run a slightly longer than they thought, but really worthwhile.

I'm really pleased you went through and showed us all of those, um, examples. Now what's interesting about, uh, what we saw with, uh, Citi is there are some takeaways there. Firstly, the formats. Okay. At 40 I'd know, middle forties percent completion rate is not bad. And most people would agree. That's not bad at all, but it's below where it could be.

But the second thing of course, which is a learning that I found out is that the, uh, the form itself linked to from the page, um, actually in city's case, Uh, a link that was used to embed that form actually had a locked version. So if you open up the web form, it opens up version 11. And at the moment we've version of the web form that is current is version 16.

So we'll be following up with Reese and Ryan to just make that tiny little change on their website. And also we'll look at ways of tightening it down. So you don't get so many formulators to begin with and the stats aren't so polluted as for the form performances. Totally with a Lennar, which is just brilliant.

So we've looked at cities form. We've looked at, uh, other forms. We looked at how the system is set up and worked. So this is the point staff where everyone can come off mute and foreign any questions, or if any of these questions is very similar to the one you want, please say,

Lene: Yeah. So Gareth had a question about student CRM. Um, he asked and I think this is, might be quite relevant for something that we're doing at the moment. He asked where the multistep forms are possible in web form builder.

Dom: Okay. Uh, they are in the, I've seen. But it's not released yet in web form builder.

Now, as Zuko does support multi-step forms, the implementation of the code might be a little bit different. Um, but it does that. So you'll be able to see through Lennar's system that it stopped at stage three, you stopped at stage four and the granular inside that, but yes, multi-stage, or multipage forms are on their way.

And if anybody wants a private viewing of that, Uh, please do get in touch with staff and we can show you something that no one else can look at yet.

Cool. Okay. So, um, how much does it cost? It's a good question. So obviously when you've bought students around, you have as many web forms as you like built in our built-in sort of very blunt tracking, uh, to get Zuko on the case. How does it work? How does somebody engage you? And what's the cost over a month or quarter or a year?

Lene: Sure. Um, so if you want to use your go, we do of course have a 1000 free trial for, for new users to test first. Then if the user is super happy with the data that comes through, which most people are, hopefully then they can sign up for either a rolling monthly contract. Or we also have yearly contracts.

If somebody wants to just do the super flexible monthly contract, it basically is no minimum time. You can, you can join and, um, Uh, cancel and rejoined whenever you want. Um, that is basically based on the total number of sessions you attract. So the number of views you have on your form, so the kind of lower level you have up to 10,000 views.

And this, you can, you can use to go on as many forms as you want. So it's not. Um, account per form. You can add as many forms as you want. So it's only limited by the number of views on your forms. So the lowest tier we have, it's up to 10,000 views. That's a hundred pounds per month. Then we have 25,000 views, which is 250 pounds per month.

And up to 50,000 views, which is 500 pounds a month. And then if you want to, to get the one year contract, it's a 20% discount on, on that.

Dom: Thank you. So if any students from a university is thinking about this, um, the question of return on investment, the number of students that come out the bottom of an optimized form, that's been through the Zuko process compared to them, the students that don't, if you don't engage Sukkot and don't spend the money on the stats for 3, 4, 5 months, you need enough time in there.

Uh, I think it's, uh, a very affordable solution for getting it into. Um, so I personally think it's a, uh, it's a no brainer for me and at those prices, I also think it's a no brainer. And with lender support at the side, where then a might want to, um, help you with private consultancy as well at the back, I think it's absolutely critical for cities form.

We will have woken it up and made a big change to it as a result of what Leonard discussed. As well, so yeah, that sets up, um, how much it cost on a yearly contract. Another question there, question two is who sets up the tracking? So a university has logged on spoken to you and they have those Zucca accounts.

How do they set up with tracking?

Lene: Well, they will do it themselves, or, I mean, we can also help. So quite often what I do, if anybody has any issues with getting the tracking set up. So remember how I showed earlier on in the webinar, how you get these, when you create a form, you get these two tracking codes. Um, you basically. Copy them and paste them into your system, uh, what we can do and what we sometimes do.

If anybody has any problems, really to do a screen-share schedule them, say a half an hour meeting, and then that in less than five minutes, it should be done in that meeting if anybody has any problems.

Dom: Okay. Thank you very much. And again, the point of tracking any web form. Yes, you can. You can have multiple web forms inside Zuko and add down metrics inside web form builder inside students.

Sarah. Thank you. Okay. We'll wrap this up in a second. And the next steps is anybody interested in taking their forms to the next level and basically increasing performance, uh, links here that will be shared. This deck will be shared in a touchpoint that goes out after this webinar. So firstly, we've got the website.

Um, over at Zuko, then you've got lenders email to go through and our spine or any questions. And again, we'll also support any questions that come through our customer support at the same time. So yeah. Point three, analyze your forms, increase your conversion rates. I think it's an excellent tool to have,

and thank you very much. And for Allen as well for, uh, partnering with us on. Uh, and for enabling city to run these tests. So really great. Thank you guys. That's been so good. So stuff over to you for a final wrap up.

Lene: That was really useful. Um, Ryan did have to leave earlier, but he's going to watch the rest of the. So that's, that'd be fine. Um, if it's anything that needs to be followed up support wise, then that can come through us. That's no problem at all. Um, when we finish this, the recording will be available and so will the deck, and that'll be sent to people who were here and people who didn't come as well.

Thank you very much.

Dom: Thanks very much everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye. Bye bye now. Bye bye.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

A new CRM in lockdown? by Student CRM

Skip to 18m 30s to see the Q&A with Dom Yeadon.

Implementing a new CRM can appear to be a daunting experience, especially when teams are working remotely. This video shows how implementing Student CRM remotely works, and how it is easy and painless it actually is. Skip to 18m 30s to see the Q&A with Dom Yeadon. Why not get in contact with us to see Student CRM for yourself?

Transcript:

Martha: How well does remote working fit in with a CRM implementation project? (for both the supplier and the University)

Dom: It suits it rather well actually. From a practical point of view, remote working removes the logistical variables of traditional on-campus face-to-face meetings, such as:

• travel delays

• issuing parking permits

• registering arrival at reception

• being picked up by the host and walking back to the meeting room

• time spent 'plugging in' laptops to non-existent ports on 'the new system in this meeting room',

• WiFi access and IT creating a new access code

• room availability, late attendees, early leavers, etc.

Time spent on logistics can consume up to 25% of the allowed time on a bad day!

Martha: Do you think remote working will continue for these types of projects?

Dom: I do hope so. From a supplier's perspective, reducing travel times and logistical challenges is a big win, because that saves time and costs throughout the project. The biggest benefits when implementing Student CRM remotely far outweigh the minimal non-verval communications visible in a face-to-face meeting. I like the fact that:

• We can pull in our in-house experts in real-time, mid-session, in seconds.

• Arrivals and departures are non-invasive.

• Resources can be shared with links in chats, questions logged for follow-up at the end of each session, or in email.

• Collaborative document updates save so much time during the sessions.

• Breaking out into follow-up sessions with certain stakeholders in a 'run-on' session can alleviate the need for formal 'fix a date, etc' clarifications on another day

(my tip would be: aim to finish each 30-minute session at 25 minutes leaving a 5-minute buffer at the end, and aim to finish 10 minutes early on a full 60-minute session. Go over 60 minutes at your peril!)

Martha: How well does it work solving problems remotely – getting people explaining issues or talking through solutions?

Dom: At first glance, it might appear to be a challenge where face-to-face would be the natural first choice. 

Not so. 

In order to address this need to communicate more effectively, we find that greater care is taken to explain in clearer language, diagrams, and real-life examples than may not otherwise be the case with face-to-face. 

This focus on clarity has delivered faster, agreed outcomes with instant shared collaborative notes and changes in real-time. 

One dynamic observed in previous face-to-face meetings is the 'nod of approval' from some stakeholders in attendance that is actually masking uncertainty over speaking up and saying 'no, I just don't get it, make it clearer please'. Whilst this can happen we see that individuals remotely joining tend to feel more comfortable raising their hand. I will often check that we all understand with one of my famous 'silly questions' that makes it acceptable to not know everything about a new CRM :)

Martha: How do you run your customer engagement meetings during lockdown? Will this change after lockdown?

Dom: Our next User Group Meetup is in 3 weeks’ time It will be meetup #23, with the last 2 being held via Zoom.

One week in advance, we deliver cookies to every participant's home so they can nibble during the meetup.

I do think users will want to go back to hosting at each member university as a face-to-face group as before because the 'downtime' between sessions is where some great new friendships are formed whilst we all buzz around the buffet lunch.

I will follow the User Group members' lead on this.

Martha: What is the ONE takeaway every university should get from this session?

Dom: Remember that practically every challenge we will face together during a CRM implementation is likely to have already been faced and solved before by our team.

Delays, last-minute changes, overriding priorities, key university resources being diverted to deal with emerging university issues/emergencies, and so on. 

We have many years of experience and solutions that we can call upon at a moment's notice.

There really is very little new under the sun, it just sometimes gets communicated to us in new and exciting ways! We do have the answers and you do get the outcome you seek. Delivering the apparently complex within a solid framework works very well.

END

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Managing Course Changes in Student CRM

Your courses regularly get added, amalgamated, and even withdrawn, and sometimes totally reorganised when new faculties/schools are merged or created. The challenge is in ensuring your courses are the same across all platforms. This short video will show you how the Course & Subjects app can help you. Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Your courses regularly get added, amalgamated, and even withdrawn, and sometimes totally reorganised when new faculties/schools are merged or created. The challenge is in ensuring your courses are the same across all platforms. This short video will show you how the Course & Subjects app can help you. Take a closer look at Courses.

Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Dom Yeadon, founder of Student CRM, and we're going to look at the best way to manage course changes using Student CRM. 

Courses change all the time. They get added, amalgamated and sometimes even withdrawn due to lack of interest, and of course, the inevitable internal reorganisation when new faculties and schools are merged or created. The challenge is in ensuring your courses are the same across all platforms. This short video will show you how the Courses and Subjects app can help you. 

So the unseen knock-on effects of a simple course change can often surface well after the change occurred, and this leads to checking and double checking all the time and then unpicking the problems detected afterwards; when, and if, they are spotted at all.

And the solution, of course, is to have one single source of truth. One master list of courses connected to everything. And the Courses and Subjects app does precisely that. Allowing you to manage courses by subject, level of study, faculty, school...for all past, present and future years of entry.  

Changes take effect immediately. So not only can you find all of your, for example, undergraduate courses for next year’s entry, but you can also edit each one and set it to published or draft to see it instantly appear across your system. You can add tags to courses to create even better granularity for students. 

So, for example, you may wish for a certain subset of courses to appear on a web form. By assigning a tag, a new virtual list is now available in that webform - one change instantly updates everything. For course enquiries, students can select a future year of entry and see the correct courses from that year. Officers can respond with correct course information, and you capture the prospective students’ course of interest for marketing.

For online event bookings, they can book onto the events for their chosen course, as your event forms are automatically updated with the latest course list. As are course groups in open days. And again, you capture the prospective students’ course of interest for marketing. 

Your online application forms update with correct course changes automatically, and course matching by code ensures that the new courses are immediately recognised in Student CRM as it can tell the difference between the same UCAS course code N103 for Business Management in year 2021, and the same course in year 2022.

So web forms get fresh drop-down menus. Students can select their course by selecting year of entry, level of study and so on. And because your webforms are all by the course list in Student CRM, all the changes take immediate effect without you needing to ever update a form. 

Email touchpoints. You can configure your email touchpoints to always merge in the correct course information code, UCAS number - even the URL that the student can click to see more course info on your own website. You can also add conditional content into your emails based on course tags for more granular and targeted messaging. And all email content stays evergreen. So you never have to revisit and update the email just because a course was added or altered. 

And you can download courses at any time. You may wish, for example, to make bulk changes all-in-one-go on your desktop, using Excel before uploading them back into Student CRM. And when you upload the courses, it recognises the existing courses and updates them accordingly. Maybe, for example, it might add some new tags that you added to some courses. And if it doesn't recognise the courses you've uploaded, it creates those courses as brand new. 

You can copy courses from this year to next. And this is one of the hardest tasks each year, but it's now one of the easiest, because you can easily duplicate a full year of courses then make small adjustments to save time.

On the Student CRM Roadmap, you can see the forthcoming upgrades, not only the Courses and Subjects app, but also all 26 apps. No other CRM does this because no other CRM is built according to the needs of its student recruitment users. Your enquiries officers will thank you for buying them the best university CRM you can get.

If you'd like to request a demo, please do get in touch. And if we can help you, we will.

Managing Student Enquiries by Student CRM

Student CRM’s Enquiries app delivers powerful tools to your university officers to help them increase productivity, drive up student satisfaction scores and ultimately contribute to higher application rates. Take a closer look at Enquiries.

Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dom Yeadon, Founder of Student CRM, and we are going to look at the best way to manage student enquiries using Student CRM.

Do you know here your enquiries come from? - Web forms, Emails, Collected at events, Third party tools, In the post, Inbound telephone calls and Walk-ins.

Bring all enquiries into one place - it is absolutely vital that you have one place to monitor and manage your enquiries from. The Enquiries app delivers powerful tools to your officers to help them expand their productivity, increase student satisfaction and contribute to higher application rates.

Build ongoing conversations - as each officer identifies the needs of the student and meets them quickly and efficiently, they demonstrate the typical level of care and quality that students can expect from your university.

Reassign enquiries - if, after reading the enquiry, an officer decides that this is one for your Admissions or Finance or Accommodation team, it can be reassigned in a click.

Automated triaging - this is particularly useful for categorising email enquiries based on the email they sent it to.

A quick response is appreciated - Don’t keep students waiting around for an answer. Every enquiry has a timer showing elapsed time to help your officers prioritise.

Saved replies - when a question looks familiar, bring in a saved reply to deliver detailed information, images and links quickly.

Private notes - Add private notes as you discuss within your team how best to handle an enquiry.

Referring to experts - need some quick input? Simply assign an enquiry to one of your experts to add in their advice.

Closing your open enquiries - selecting a reason each time an enquiry is closed, measures how well your officers are doing.

See trends across the years - are you processing more undergraduate enquiries this year compared with last year? Ready-to-run reports show you in a click.

The Student CRM Roadmap - this is where you can see the forthcoming upgrades to not only this Enquiries app but also all 26 apps. No other CRM does this, because no other CRM is built according to the needs of its student recruitment users.

Enquiries officers will thank you for buying them the best university CRM you can get.

Request a demo today - https://www.student-crm.co.uk/enquiries

+12% enrolment growth for Institute since using Student CRM

“The Institute for Optimum Nutrition went live with Student CRM in January 2019, and since then the number of people engaging with our organisation has increased by an encouraging margin. In the following two years, the subscriber database has increased by 40%, applications by 25% and new students by 12%. 

This CRM platform meets most of the non-course commercial activity, manages direct applications and admissions, and integrates with our student record system, so has had a positive impact on business and customer results.”

Gareth Pritchard - Business Manager

Student Recruitment Campaigns by Student CRM

Student Recruitment Campaigns by Student CRM

Only Student CRM delivers the richness of student data, combined with the best looking CRM you have ever used - to allow your recruitment officers to create unlimited, targeted, effective recruitment campaigns that increase your recruitment performance like never before. See what Campaign Manager can do for you.

Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Dom Yeadon, founder of Student CRM, and we're going to look at how easy it is to create your student recruitment campaigns from within Student CRM. 

So who is this for? It's for: 

• universities that want to improve their students' recruitment results,

• universities that want it to be easier and more effective to recruit students each year,

• universities you want to start off by following best practice from day one, and

• universities who want to use the best newest cutting edge recruitment tools year after year. 

So these are the most effective types of campaigns that our universities send out. They are:

• Offer-holder conversion emails

• Newsletters

• Webinar invites

• Audition announcements

• UCAS deadline reminders

• Open Evening invites

• Enquiry follow-ups

To create a list of students you wish to target, you simply add filters, drawing information from everything the students have made enquiries, bookings, applications, looking at certain levels of study faculties, UCAS course codes - the list is almost endless.

And you choose from personalized email and SMS broadcasting, or you can download CSV data or ready to print PDF letters and labels.

To use the built-in Template Builder, you simply select any of your branded email templates and send yourself previews so you can check that it looks great.

Broadcasting - once your student lists and your templates are both ready, you can broadcast immediately or schedule it for later. And for scheduled broadcasts, it double-checks your segment at the time of broadcast to make sure the list is as fresh as possible.

Instant reports show your opens and clicks, your top links, who did what and when, plus you can easily tag recipients for a follow-up campaign in a few clicks.

Students CRM’s Roadmap lists the forthcoming upgrades that give your recruitment campaigns even more power. Now, no other CRM does this because no other CRM is built to perfectly meet the needs of its student recruitment users. 

So thank you. If you use student CRM already, we thank you for helping us to make this the world's best university CRM. If you haven't tried it yet. Do get in touch for a demo. And if we can help you, we will.

Student Database - Tools & Tabs by Student CRM

Student Database - Tools & Tabs by Student CRM from Dom Yeadon on Vimeo.

The Student Database app (SDB) stores every student along with a record of everything they have ever done. 

This data is updated in real-time as the student opens emails, completes web forms, enquires, books onto events, applies, uploads documents, changes their mobile, and so on. Learn more about Student Database.

Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Dom Yeadon founder of Student CRM, and today we're going to look at the student record card - tools and tabs. 

This webinar is going to cover the student record card itself, new keyboard shortcuts, looking at applications, the likelihood ring, tools and tabs. And then, at the end, we're going to look at the future of Student Database (SDB) - where the product is going on the Roadmap. 

(DOM CLICKS THROUGH THE DECK)

The student record card is obviously where all the information generated in all of the other apps gets centralised into one location. The student record card typically consists of some engagement bar information at the top of the record - here we have the name, persona, stage etc, and then some more information underneath.  You'll see straight away that the information underneath is in tabs.

New keyboard shortcuts. As you know, I am a fan of using fingers rather than mice, if I can. So I've just highlighted the four new shortcuts. When you're in a student card, if you want to edit any of the tabs, you simply click “E” to edit. 

On the right-hand side, to jump to any of the tabs, you can use the numeric keys 0 to 9, and that will jump you to the relevant tab.  And down the bottom, the rolodex viewing - so when you are viewing a student or a number of students, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to tab left and right.  And finally, we've got the “plus button” to add. So the plus button will then add a note or a task or an association.  It is contextual so it will add an item depending on which tab you are in.

Let's look at the first thing in the top of the engagement card, which is applications.  In the engagement bar we have the student's ID and to the right of that, you'll see a number of ticks. Each tick is an application and the different colours represent different things. So if it is a grey color, then the application is from a previous year of entry. If it is a green application, then that student has enrolled.  And if it's a black or very dark grey tick, then that is for an application that is still waiting to close - so not yet enrolled in the current season. 

The likelihood ring is a ring that closes around the inside of your avatar. So Rob Andrew Sanderson has an avatar, a purple avatar because he has the persona of “wise owl”, so that's what colours it.  And around the inside of that ring, you can see his likelihood score at 30%. Because again, that's driven from the “stage 3 - Intends to apply”. We know this gives Rob a 30% likelihood of actually enrolling and that now creates a ring around the inside. As the likelihood creeps up, the rings go round and round until they close up with an enrollment.

In tools on the right-hand side, you've got the “more options button”. And in here we can send an email, we can send an SMS, we can add a note or a task. We can even add a course of interest. And again, as before we can send the privacy center login links, or we can reset a password.  We can also add a new student, merge this student or even delete this student.

Looking across the bottom, we first have the “Personal” tab.  Here we can see all the standard personal information.

The ”Courses” tab - here you can see the most recently interested course on the left and then all the history on the right-hand side.

In the “Apps” tab is all the information the student has given through the various apps that they have interacted with.

“Data” tab contains the codes, legacy codes, MIS codes, any data stuff in the left-hand panel. And then on the right we control the GDPR consents, channels and topics. 

Number five, “Tasks” - tasks is one tab totally related to tasks for this record only.  And you can see other officers' tasks in here, so you can see who else is working on tasks for this one student. 

“Notes” are searchable. Any notes you put in are displayed here.  On the right-hand side you'll see a plus icon to add a new note.  And again they're searchable.

“Docs” - this lists all the docs that the student or an officer has uploaded either in Enquiries or in Applications.  And you can see the source of those and jump through to look at the Application or the Enquiry.

“Associations” allows you to associate a student with another entity. So it can either be another student or an organisation in Contract Manager or an agency in Agent Manager or teachers or agents or different students.  There are lots of ways you can create an association. They all get listed here.

“Logs” - this is where everything is stored. So whatever is done to the student is stored here in different log types and the filters across the top allow you to search by logs and filter by log types and even the apps that they were generated in.

“Sensitive Data”, requires a permission in your user card to view this tab.  You can get permission very easily by asking your user admin, and anyone who lands on this page can click that link at the bottom and they can read how to request access to sensitive data. 

This is what's in the sensitive data at the moment.  It's just gender, ethnicity, disability code and death/fraud. 

And in order to get access to sensitive data, you need to check that this is checked in your platform access profile. If it isn't, then simply contact one of the user admins on the right-hand side. 

And of course the last tab is the All-in-one tab.  Everyone should be familiar with this.  It’s the classic All-in-one tab, that is still there for anyone who wishes to use the old layout. 

We'll follow up at the end with the Roadmap. So the Roadmap which you can access inside from your jump menu, I've simply filtered by Student Database to have a look at all of the items to do with Student Database that we are shipping.  

So some are at a hundred percent progress and some are still being shipped. That one at the bottom, of course, will move up to a hundred percent as it was shipped yesterday. 

Okay, thank you. I'm now going to go into the app itself and let's have a look. 

(DOM LOGS INTO STUDENT CRM TO DEMO)

We're starting on the homepage.  And of course, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at my student record called Sanderson.  So I'm going to shortcut F for “Find” and I'm going to find all the Sandersons. 

So again, what this does, you can see there we had some saved searches from the ones I've done before. And if I go into here, I obviously want to sort by score, find the most engaged, which is Rob Sanderson.  Fantastic. I am going to click into Rob and look at his record card live. 

On this record card, we've again, got the engagement bar at the top with each of those applications, which mouse over. And if I were to click those, I’d jumped to the actual application themselves. We've also got the rolodex. So you will remember that I found three Sandersons I can tab through and look at the other Sandersons.  We've got a Dominic Sanderson and a Jane Sanderson. And of course, I'm going to work in Rob Andrew Sanderson.  (The data that we're sharing with you, of course, is sample data from a sample university - it’s not client data.)

If we look at the likelihood ring here, we can see that it's up to 75% that's affected by the stage.  I think in the demo, it was showing at “4 - Applied”, which is at 50%.  “Intends to apply” is 30%. And then it goes up through the stages to the top. What we want to do is, we want to get this student up to enrolled and, of course, these can be automatically updated upon actions using Automations.  So I'm moving it manually just to show you that. Of course, this is driven by processes inside Student CRM.

Now we can do quite a few things in here. This is the more options. I'm going to quickly walk you through a couple.  So I can send an email. This is a one-to-one email. Okay. And this is, Hi, It’s Dom from NFU and I'm going to just start to type Hi, Rob. And then I don't really want to use an original response. So I'm going to get a saved response. This works exactly the same way as Enquiries. I know that number three is the one I want. So I just bring that saved response in and there it is.  Off we go; that is now sent and logged.  And we'll find that later when we look down the logs.

The next thing I'm going to do from here is I'm going to add a task. So let's add a task. And what I want to do is I want to add a task - I'm going to assign it to Laura. And I spoke with Rob and there's something we need to follow up on. So, after the weekend, which will be Monday, let's get it done by three o'clock in the afternoon.

I spoke with Rob about the status of his architectural technology application. This one up here, actually, and said we’d check and reply. Laura, could you please do that? So there I've just created a task for another user. 

And finally, I'm going to add a note to the student record. So let's add a note and this is going to be a telephone call because I spoke to Robert earlier.  And there's the information - he called us and wondered if we can get back to him with the information. Using the more options on the side, there's plenty of things you can now do all by staying on this card. 

Let's go to tab two. And I'm just going to remind you by typing “K” that in our shortcuts, we can jump across the tabs using the 0-9 student tabs.

So I will type number 2 and we jump across to Courses. 

In Courses, we've got a shortcut to add a course. And we can edit the courses.  On the right-hand side, all of the pre-existing history is listed, but in this tab, if you want to add a new course of interest, you can simply do so here by following exactly the same academic selectors.  I won't do this because I don't want to over-ride the latest one at the moment.  But you can add a new course in and that's really useful if you're on an enquiry and the enquiry comes in through IEM and there's no course in there. So you can add a course in that way.

Next we're going to look at number three, tab three is the Apps, and this is every app that Rob Sanderson has interacted with.  So he's made some bookings in Pre Applicant Open Day, and because he's our test student, he has a significant history in this particular tab. There's a lot of information there. 

Tab four (Data) is where we can edit the channels; as can the student in their data privacy center. Now, again, one of the shortcuts in here is the “E” for edit.  So wherever you see a pencil, you can either click on the pencil to edit the student, or you can type the shortcut “E”.  By typing the shortcut, E, it turns into this mode and I'm going to turn off “Phone” because Rob asked me too; on the phone, strangely enough!  Okay. 

Tab five is Tasks. Task is a listing. And here you can see the tasks that we put in today.  So you can search whoever created the task, who it was assigned to and the statuses of them. So you can now cancel a task as well. Statuses are quite useful. That's a new status - the cancelled one.  

Number six, the Notes tab.  Notes is where you can filter by any note. And again, the notes are by different types. So there's the note I've just put in just now (Rob called us).  And again, you can search in Notes for anything you like. 

Docs.  These are the applications. I can download these straight to my desk here, or I can jump over to the application or the inquiry that they were saved in. Obviously in Applications, these are documents that the student or the agent (if using international agent portal), or the officer themselves uploads against the application.

And these are often files that are sent in as attachments uploaded in the form, so during an inquiry form, these will appear here. There's no, “Plus” here - you cannot add a document here. They have to originate elsewhere. 

Tab 8 - Associations. Again, you can connect any student with any other entity in Associations.  And in this case, it says here the student was introduced by Bournemouth Collegiate College. Let's jump across to Bournemouth Collegiate College.  We leave the Student Database and go into Contact Manager. Here is the college and there is the relationship. So this organisation introduced the student.  And again, you can jump back.  So Associations allows you to add an association if you want, or to go and look at the other associations you've got. 

When I look at the Logs tab, then, again, filterable by the search bar at the top.  Out of 1,109 log events, I just want to find all the campaigns that this student has been involved in.  This student has been involved in 60 different campaigns. And there's the record of every single one. That's quite useful to see.

In the Sensitive tab, I have been granted permission by my user admin, so I can see these. I can even edit these if I want to. 

And then at the end we have the All-in-one tab and this tab contains everything stacked rather deeply and tabs at the bottom.  So for those who wish to remain using the All-in-one tab, please do.  

For the rest of us, I think these new tabs are fast and easy. If I want to edit this, I can edit just one particular field and save very quickly.  So it's much faster to edit specific pieces of information on the student record card now.

(DOM BROWSES TO THE PRODUCT ROADMAP)

Over to the Roadmap.  The Roadmap is where we publish where the product is going. So we can see here, I filtered by Student Database and these are the four things that have been shipped and there's more things coming up. As Student Database evolves, the Roadmap can be planned and seen here. 

Okay, we're going to go back now to the homepage and these are all the apps we're using.

And just one final slide.  This is about Student Database and it's one of the 26 apps inside Students CRM. And if you're seeing this for the first time, please do get in touch and you can request a demo. Thanks very much. Okay. This is Dom Yeadon founder of Student CRM signing off. Thanks very much.

(END)

Automations Manager by Student CRM

Automations Manager lets your university student recruitment officers build automations that routinely carry out complex actions.

• Saves you time: never carry out manual tasks again.

• Extends your powers: get inside your processes like never before.

• Optimises how you work: create rules that work for you.

• Easy to use: just set it and forget it.

Student CRM is the leading-edge CRM software for HE providers.

Find out more

Transcript:

Hi, it's Dom, the Founder of Student CRM, and we're going to look at Automations Manager. So, a quick webinar just to go through what this app does. In this minute webinar, which is going to run for 12 minutes, we're going to look at how Automations Manager works and how this makes your student recruitment life better.

(DOM CLICKS THROUGH THE DECK)

The apps you can automate in are Enquiries (ENQ), Mobile Event Capture (MEC), Prospectus Requests (PRQ) and Rapid Response (RAP) - there are slight differences between each of those. And we're then going to look at how you can monitor the performance of the automations you've set up. And then the practical part - we'll build three automations, and then we'll look at the future of Automations Manager as well.

So the first part, how does Automations Manager work? 

Well, the idea behind Automations Manager is that your recruitment teams use it to configure and then manage any automations. Those automations routinely carry out specified actions when certain processes run. 

(DOM EXPLAINS THE 3 BASIC STEPS ON SCREEN)

So on the right-hand side, we can see that every time a PROCESS occurs. And in this case, it's listening out for the process “If an inbound email (IEM) creates a record in your Enquiries app”. OK, Step 1, that's the process that it listens out for. 

The second Step is that it sees if the condition is met. So you could say that you only want certain IEMs to be run in this automation. So in this case, it's saying “if it's been forwarded from your Admissions team inbox (admissions@uni.ac.uk) into Enquiries, then it'll meet the CONDITION”. So if the conditions are met in this second step, then it will carry out the action.

And in this case the ACTION is that it's going to replace the existing content in the field ‘category’ with “admissions”. I'll explain later why that is a good thing to do for IEMs. 

(DOM EXPLAINS THE 4 BENEFITS)

So how does this make your life better? Well, firstly, it'll save you time, so you never have to carry out manual tasks again.

Secondly, it extends your powers. So it allows you to get inside your processes, like never before. I'll cover that a little bit later. 

Thirdly, it optimises how you work. So you can now create rules that work for you and do lots of the heavy lifting.

And fourth, it is just so easy to use, like a lot of processes inside Student CRM, you just set it and forget it.

(DOM GOES INTO DETAIL IN EACH APP)

So the apps that you can automate inside today are Enquiries (ENQ), Mobile Event Capture (MEC), Prospectus Requests (PRQ) and Rapid Response (RAP). In this list the greyed out apps are currently on our roadmap because we are also introducing Applications (APS/V), Student Database (SDB), and the three event apps, Event Manager (EVM), Pre-applicant Open Days (POD), and Applicant Open Days (AOD). So those are the apps you can automate in at the moment, and the other ones are coming soon. 

So if we look at automating in Enquiries (ENQ), we know that this gets triggered when an Enquiry comes in. So on the left-hand side, we look at the conditions. You can set a condition, ie: “if the category is XXX, if the channel is XXX, if the message contains XXX, etc”.

So those were your conditions. And on the other two-thirds of the screen, we look at the actions. So actions in Enquiries can update the ‘category’, the ‘owner’ and the ‘priority’ of that Enquiry. But more importantly, it can also update fields from the Student Database Record Card as well. So if an email enquiry contains XXX, (maybe it's got a particular phrase in it), then you can update the record card.

And of course the most useful one of those is down the bottom, right. Which is ‘adding a tag’. In Mobile Event Capture (MEC), you've got a few more fields to use when setting conditions because, unlike an enquiry, the Mobile Event Capture (MEC) web form is on your iPad. MEC is not in huge usage at the moment, because of COVID. Conditions in this app allow you to use any of the fields that the student has completed on their form, which tend to be a lot more fields than an Enquiry.

So we've got MEC - any of the mobile event capture fields down there, and then the Student Database fields that are entered on the screen. So you could set up a condition to look for, say, if they type the mobile number in X, then run an action. And the actions on the right hand side, are this time just updating fields on the Student Database Record Card.

It's much the same for Prospectus Requests (PRQ) and Rapid Response (RAP), so I won't go into too much detail on those two, but it's the same principle that applies. 

(DOM SHOWS THE PERFORMANCE CHART)

Once you've set up an automation, then it runs and it charts every single time the automation is successful. So it doesn't chart if it looks but does not get triggered to run because the conditions are not met. So in other words, it's running all the time.

If you get twenty enquiries in, and only three of them qualify to be run as an automation, you'd only see three on this chart. Where one of our Universities is currently running automations and they've got twelve separate automations running -  you can see they're getting quite a lot of value from the app itself each day.

(DOM LOGS INTO STUDENT CRM TO DEMO)

What we're going to do is to build three separate automations. Now I will go into our demo account ‘New Forest University’ and I will look at three example automations and we'll build them out together.

Okay. So here we are in Automations Manager being the primary app on my home page. When I click into this, I filter to find my 3 examples as I just want to see those  that I've prepared in advance - automations one, two, and three. (And of course I can also filter by the different processes that are available in different apps.)

(DOM BUILDS AUTOMATION NUMBER ONE)

I'm going to go into automation number one, and let's look at how we build it. So automation, number one. This automation assigns a team to a student record based upon the Postcode Area. Okay. So let's look at how we set up this process, then the conditions and the actions.

Let's expand this and take a look. So what I do is I choose the PROCESS I'm looking for in Step 1, and I'm looking for “when a web form creates a record”. I then look at a target app - this one is in Rapid Response (RAP). And then I pick one or more occurrences that it runs on because you can have one automation running simultaneously across many occurrences.

The second part is the CONDITIONS in Step 2. And you'll notice that if I run a second condition, then it can either match ‘any of the following conditions’ displaying the operator ‘OR’, or it can match ‘all of the following conditions’ with the operator ‘AND’. So we've said we want to assign teams based on a postcode, so that's quite simple.

We look at the condition: any postcode areas that are in the list ‘BH DT SP and PO’. So when a student types their full postcode in, the postcode area is automatically calculated. Then it'll find and qualify only those postcodes. 

And of course it will carry out the action - and the action is to replace the field content in the team, and this demo uni already has two teams, so we're going to choose ‘UK Recruitment’. So once that's done, we simply set it to active and that is now up and running. So in this one, we have added a team based on a postcode. 

(DOM BUILDS AUTOMATION NUMBER TWO)

Let's look at automation number two. Automation number two assigns an enquiry to a category if it comes in via IEM - in other words, there was no web form and it is an unstructured email about a student's application. So let's have a look at the Step 1 PROCESS settings for this one, ‘When a Web form creates a record in Domestic Enquiries, then the following conditions apply’.

So I'm going to add a CONDITION here and I'm going to say that if the forward came from your Admissions team inbox (admissions@uni.ac.uk) - in other words if you're forwarding emails sent into your Admissions team inbox into your Enquiries (ENQ), then I want to replace the category with ‘Admissions’. OK, so what I've done here in this one is I've said that if IEM creates a record in a certain occurrence, and it's been forwarded from a particular email it will assign the correct category. So you've got some useful fields in here, ie: - forwarded from a particular address at your university. Then of course it can replace the field content of the current category with ‘Admissions’.

So that's the second one done. 

(DOM BUILDS AUTOMATION NUMBER THREE)

The third one we'll look at is automation number three, which updates the student’s stage. So as we know, a stage on a student's record takes them from 1. Enquiry to 6. Enrollment, and we will look at how this one is built. Step 1 PROCESS is ‘if a web form creates a record in Rapid Response (RAP)’, and we're going to choose the occurrence ‘Domestic Enquiries’ to keep it separate from International Enquiries.

Now, we specifically want to target this automation on students who fill out our “if you intend to apply, please complete this” web form, regardless of what details they submit in the form. Step 2 CONDITION is all students who complete that form, so it's a catch-all condition.

If this form is completed, then the STEP 3 ACTION is going to replace the stage for all who intend to apply. So this allows you to collect an intent from a student, completing a form. One quick note, whenever you are using stages and you are automating stages, stages only ratchet up, so you don't downgrade a Stage 5 Applicant to a Stage 2 Enquirer. It will only ever go up and up and up. (It's just a quick side note.)

So those are the three automations we've looked at. Lets just finish off the webinar.

(DOM WRAPS UP)

So that's the future of Automations Manager. Automations Manager Is currently benefiting from quite a lot of investment from our team. So we know the power of this, just from the apps that are using automations already. We're also adding it into Student Database (SDB), and the three event apps, Event Manager (EVM), Pre-applicant Open Days (POD), and Applicant Open Days (AOD).

(DOM BROWSES TO THE PRODUCT ROADMAP)

When you look at our Roadmap, which you can get from your ‘Jump’ menu inside the login, then please have a look at the jobs that are ‘open’, you can then filter here and you can also look at the progress to shipping %. We have included the due date on the right hand side so you can see which month each new Roadmap item ships in.

So I will draw this to a close now and say that JJ is always happy to send you a quote, and to look at your needs in terms of an AMM automation. Thank you.

(END)

Get the 2021 University Guide to Best Practice in Student Recruitment

This 2021 Guide to Best Practice in University Student Recruitment contains the top 5 best practice recommendations you can action today.

This guide can help your university to consistently increase enquiry, engagement, application and conversion rates. So you can hit your numbers, and deliver on your strategic plan.

Super segments - fields to filter by

A super segment finds students who have taken part in many activities, such as 'made an enquiry', 'attended an open day', 'applied for 2020 entry', and then 'enrolled'.

Create your own super segment in seconds:

(Image above: this is what a super segment looks like; note that each filter is searching inside a different app.)

Creating a super segment is easier to do when you know which fields to use from each app. This article lists the apps you can filter by and the fields you can use in each app:

AOD - Applicant Open Days

 Bookable . . . . . . . . . . ie: "yes"
 Booked Open Day Date . . . . ie: "3 Jul 2019"
 Booked Open Day ID . . . . . ie: "2544"
 Booked Open Day Name . . . . ie: "New Forest Applicant Day"
 Booking Status . . . . . . . ie: "Attended"
 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Group Code  . . . . . ie: "ARCH-20"
 Course Name  . . . . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "UG web form(ID:7070.01"
 Interview  . . . . . . . . . ie: "yes"
 Level of Study . . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "Applicant Days 2020 (ID:4585)"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

APS - Applications

 Application Status . . . . . ie: "Declined"
 Course title . . . . . . . . ie: "Computer Sciencee"
 Date Created . . . . . . . . ie: "3 Jul 2019"
 Deferred . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Yes"
 Enrolled . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Yes"
 Entry Source . . . . . . . . ie: "UCAS"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "UG web form(ID:7070.01"
 Intake Month/Year  . . . . . ie: "September 2019"
 Level of Study . . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "Passive UG Applications (ID:4585)"
 Qty Enrolled   . . . . . . . ie: "1"
 Qty Submitted  . . . . . . . ie: "2"
 Residency Status . . . . . . ie: "Home"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

ENQ - Enquiries

 Category . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Admissions"
 Channel  . . . . . . . . . . ie: "IEM"
 Enquiry date . . . . . . . . ie: "Sat 03 Jan 2019"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "UG web form(ID:7070.01"
 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . ie: "good"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "Domestic Enquiries (ID:4586)"
 Open/Closed  . . . . . . . . ie: "Closed"
 Owner  . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Sally Smith"
 Priority . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Yes"
 Status . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "New"
 Updated date . . . . . . . . ie: "Thu 03 Jan 2019"

EVM - Event Manager

 Booked Event Date  . . . . . ie: "3 Jul 2019"
 Booked Event ID  . . . . . . ie: "12345"
 Booked Event Name. . . . . . ie: "New Forest Student Led Tour"
 Booking Status . . . . . . . ie: "Not Attended"
 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Name  . . . . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Custom field 1 . . . . . . . ie: "custom value 1"
 Custom field 2 . . . . . . . ie: "custom value 2"
 Custom field 3 . . . . . . . ie: "custom value 3"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "UG web form(ID:7070.01"
 Level of Study   . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "Student Tours (ID:4585)"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

MEC - Mobile Event Capture

 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Name  . . . . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Created date . . . . . . . . ie: "Sat 03 Jan 2019"
 Enquiry Source . . . . . . . ie: "Register your interest"
 Event Name . . . . . . . . . ie: "Student Fair"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "RAP - UK Enquiries (ID:6703.01)"
 Level of Study . . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Location . . . . . . . . . . ie: "O2 Arena London"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "International Events (ID:4586)"
 Subject Name . . . . . . . . ie: "Art and Design"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

POD - Pre-applicant Open Day

 Booked Open Day Date . . . . ie: "3 Jul 2019"
 Booked Open Day ID . . . . . ie: "12345"
 Booked Open Day Name . . . . ie: "New Forest Open Day"
 Booking Status . . . . . . . ie: "Attended"
 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Group Code  . . . . . ie: "ARCH-20"
 Course of Interest . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "UG web form(ID:7070.01"
 Level of Study   . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "PG Open Days (ID:4585)"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

PRQ - Prospectus Requests

 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Name  . . . . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Created date . . . . . . . . ie: "Thu 03 Jan 2019"
 Delivery Method  . . . . . . ie: "Post"
 Enquiry Source . . . . . . . ie: "Register your interest"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Rap - UK Enquiries (ID:6703.01)"
 Level of Study   . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "PG Open Days (ID:4585)"
 Subject Name . . . . . . . . ie: "Art and Design"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

RAP - Rapid Response

 Course Code  . . . . . . . . ie: "P0980980"
 Course Name  . . . . . . . . ie: "French History"
 Created date . . . . . . . . ie: "Thu 03 Jan 2019"
 Enquiry Source . . . . . . . ie: "Register your interest"
 Form . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "Rap - UK Enquiries (ID:6703.01)"
 Level of Study   . . . . . . ie: "Undergraduate"
 Occurrence . . . . . . . . . ie: "PG Open Days (ID:4585)"
 Subject Name . . . . . . . . ie: "Art and Design"
 UCAS Course Code . . . . . . ie: "C878"
 Year of Entry  . . . . . . . ie: "2020"

A super segment of course also includes these fields from the Student Record Card in Student Database:

SDB - Student Database

Address 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Address 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Consent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
County  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Course of interest - ever . . . . . . ie: "-"
Course of interest - most recent  . . ie: "-"
Course Tag - ever . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Course Tag - most recent  . . . . . . ie: "-"
CRM ID  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Date Created  . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Date Modified . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Date of Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Death/Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Disability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Email Address . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Engagement Score  . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
First Name  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Form  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Gender  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Last contacted  . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Last Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Level of Study  . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Likehood  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Marketing Unit  . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
MIS ID  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Mobile  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Nationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Note Content  . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Note Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Occupation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Opted in to Email . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Opted in to Phone . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Opted in to Postal  . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Opted in to SMS . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Persona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Postcode  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Prospect Status . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
PRV Account Created . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Region  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Responsible . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Source  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Source App  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Subject of interest - ever  . . . . . ie: "-"
Subject of interest - most recent . . ie: "-"
Team  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
ULN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
UTM Campaign  . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
UTM Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
UTM Medium  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
UTM Source  . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
UTM Term  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"
Year of Entry . . . . . . . . . . . . ie: "-"

Video: Responding to every student enquiry instantly

Responding instantly to students who contact your university is a top priority.

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.

Virtual Open Days with Student CRM

Universities are all moving online to host their open days.

Many of our universities use Event Manager (EVM) for their online events. This is how it works:

What’s the difference between on-campus and online (virtual) events?

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.

How to run this season’s events online

1. Create the booking form (in Student CRM)

1. Create an EVM event called ‘Virtual Open Day’, give it a date and start and end times when it will run.

2. Give it a location of ‘online’ and set the event live.

2. Prepare for the live event (in Unibuddy Live)

1. In Unibuddy, set up the event to run at the same date and times as in EVM.

2. Get your team and content ready.

3. Promote (in Student CRM and social media)

1. 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.

2. 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)

1. 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)

1. In Unibuddy, run the event.

2. See all the attendees arriving in Student CRM automatically.

6. Follow up (in Student CRM)

1. Find all the students who booked and attended and follow up.

2. Find all the students who booked and did not attend and follow up.

Unibuddy: 187 attended and went straight into Student CRM

Which question in your student enquiry form is DESTROYING your completion rate?

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

Solving today's biggest problem with today's form builders

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?

Slightly more difficult than nailing jelly to a tree

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.

Solving this problem

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. 

Try it for yourself

• 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.

IMPERIAL COLLEGE RANKED #3, #5 AND #7 BEST UNIVERSITY - SO WHICH CRM DO THEY USE?

“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.

Leicester scoops Student CRM Award at HELOA 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).

Using Google Meet

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.

18 most common university web forms

• 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:

Open Evenings form by City, University of London

Student CRM and Uni Compare Integration

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.