In the past, applying to six or seven colleges might have been enough.
But now, each student applies roughly to 15 or more institutions. The colleges or universities have also found ways to market themselves to applicants, via social media and other channels. The result is an incredibly larger pool of students for institutions to choose from and with the increase in the number of colleges providing a variety of courses, a plethora of choices for the students as well.
As the student application volume rises, admissions teams across institutions are trying to cope up with this challenge. The selection of students from a large chunk of applicants has itself become a tedious process. In order to avoid this never-ending process of application juggling, multiple educational institutes are transitioning to an online admission process.
So, what is holding you back?
1. I am comfortable with excel sheets
Excel is just like that old blanket of yours, which in the beginning gave you all the warmth and comfort that you needed. But, it’s old, weary and ratty now, and it’s time to let it go. Like all things comfortable, but past their time, it won’t be able to keep you warm for long.
In the initial years of any business, excel is the usual choice, to manage everything from day-to-day activities to leads. And, why not? It’s simple to set up, easy to use and comes free of cost. Excel might work wonders for you until your business starts taking off and multiple people start managing a decent amount of data. Your e-mail list gets longer, and it gets harder each day to track the leads in your enrollment funnel using just excel. That’s when you know that excel is not enough!
2. I don’t want to send robotic content
Imagine a situation wherein you have organized an admission drive and now you want to reach out to all your potential candidates. You know it’s practically impossible to draft each email individually. Instead, you can transition to an automated e-mail tool, which won’t just cut down your workload but also save you time.
You are right if you think that the content might be monotonous and robotic. But, that’s a problem with an average tool that doesn’t give you enough customization options. With the right tool, you’ll get tons of options for easy personalization – with beautiful, customizable templates and content personalization for every applicant, your students would never know that the message is automated and not crafted solely for them. Plus, with such communication automation, you can send the emails instantly, making sure that the conversation immediately picks off right from where you left it.
3. I don’t want to knock on IT doors every second day
Wouldn’t it be great, if you could build your own workflows? The student enrollment journey might seem complicated involving multi-step application forms and dashboards, but with a student automation platform, the entire process becomes incredibly simplified and you can start designing your own workflows.
You don’t have to ask your IT team for reports anymore, and eventually the dependency drops to the point of non-existent. I understand that rolling out a new technology for your entire team might sound like a massive deal, but once adopted the benefits are long term. Plus, with a tool that’s easy to use across hierarchies and skillsets, the adoption time might be reduced by a huge margin.
4. I have tried automation before, no ROI
It happens often that you try a new tool and don’t find the best results instantly. Well, in most cases, the success of a tool depends on its organization-wide adoption. So, to give any new technology a real shot, find out how easy it is to deploy across teams and hierarchies. Any change is generally faced with resistance initially, but if you can demonstrate to your teams the benefits they receive (getting more work done in less time), the resistance is sure to drop. It’s okay to give the tools up that increase your team’s workload, instead of helping them optimize their time. However, a tool with a small learning curve and fast deployment would eventually break through the resistance. After all, everyone wants to meet their targets faster, and have more time for themselves.
Before deploying any system, you must identify if the system can be set up easily, solve all your pain points and is used to its full potential. Considering all these basics can drastically minimize your chances of failure. Here is a detailed guide to buying an education CRM, which will help you choose the right platform for your institution.
A dynamic platform will not only help your institution in driving better results, predict future outcomes, but also engage your students with automated marketing campaigns. You can also try LeadSquared and automate your student engagement with a better higher education enrollment management system.
