A lot of Colleges, Universities and Schools are still using outdated ways of acquiring and tracking data about potential students and their journey through the education system. If your marketing data looks like a lot of big lists within Excel, then you are falling behind.
The big issue with data is it has an expiry date, students may feel that English Lit is absolutely the course for them one day, and decide on something totally different the next. To keep up with this, schools need a two-way adaptable system that allows you to create a profile for every lead, which can change as they do, all the way to the point of alumni.
With CRM, students have access to a “User Portal” as soon as they register their interest in a course, meaning they can manage and update their information on an application that can be stored on their profile. This means if a few years down the line, that student may be eligible for a work placement, and you can see they are a great candidate due to their location and previous qualifications, without digging through endless sheets of data.
It’s the ability to make data work harder that makes CRM such a benefit to the education sector, sometimes you need such a specific list of people and Excel lists can go out of date as soon as they are made. One list may contain a list of students interested in going into further study, and another list showing who have got the correct grades, checking one list against another wastes time and is inefficient, CRM makes this task quick and easy so communications can be as targeted as possible.
If you would like to know more about the benefits of CRM, we are running a free webcast on how it all works on the 28th April, you can sign up here
