A vital component of private school marketing is customer relationship management (CRM). CRM is a must for schools and other types of businesses to thrive. The good thing is there are available tools to help businesses out with their CRM. 

If you start using CRM software, not only it will help you with customer relationship management. It can also help you manage your prospects, turn your inbound marketing into a lead-generating machine, and promote customer satisfaction by streamlining the admission process. 

Why education CRM is vital for your lead-generation success  

CRM helps the education sector track, store, and manage their leads in one single platform. As a result, the software can help you speed up admissions, boost enrollment, and reduce long-term marketing costs.

In particular, CRM education software can: 

• Help in scheduling emails to prospective students – You will not need to send emails manually at the appointed time. 
• Set up a drip campaign with an automated software solution – Use automated emails to encourage parent and student communication. 
• Improve response time with an education CRM solution – Your school needs a system to respond quickly to customer queries and keep transactions going. 
• Auto-qualify prospects based on their behavior – Good school marketers will research prospects based on behavior and needs. 
• Track with zero leakage – CRM for education tracks and stores student information without compromising data security. 

Remember that you need a solution tailored for your school or your business. Look for the best CRM software that allows you to customize features so that it perfectly suits and matches your needs. 

The best service can also help you out with other marketing strategies for lead generation, such as: 

• Website design
• SEO
• Local SEO
• Inbound marketing
• Social media marketing 
• Google Ad management
• Facebook Advertising

We have only touched on the part about lead generation up to this point. However, for your school’s operation, CRM software gives many more benefits. In other words, you can use CRM in education for many more purposes from end to end. 

Among the areas to benefit from CRM include: 

• Student admission process
• Student and faculty attendance
• Faculty management
• Course management
• Publishing student performance and results
• Examination and performance evaluation systems
• Office administration
• Payroll management
• Managing scholarships
• Student fees

You can integrate school CRM software with an advanced third-party integration service. It will allow you to easily handle marketing tasks, making it easy for you to focus on other tasks that also need your attention.  

Independent School Marketing – Why a CRM is effective for lead generation

When using CRM software, you also would like to use it in a manner that you will achieve the desired results. You will do best if you go around the internet reading reviews and marketing tips that show how you can maximize the use of such tools. 

For lead generation and management, tools like HubSpot CRM and others can help with the following marketing tactics: 

Marketing automation

When you automate your marketing tasks, the first thing you can do is collect information on a central database. After that, it makes data analysis very easy. 

Another benefit of this is it enables you to remove repetitive jobs. With your team free from repetitive tasks, they can focus on building strategies and driving leads. 

Automating your campaign also makes it easy to assess your marketing strategies. You can check the results and conversions to compare outcomes vs. costs. Then you can analyze which techniques work the best, so in your future campaigns, you can use fewer resources for a more focused school marketing strategy. 

Social media integration

Social media is an oasis of prospects you can convert into leads. Thus, your chosen software should be able to help you mine prospects from this platform. 

There are many ways to use such a tool for social media. With it, you can optimize customer relationships. What are your target market’s concerns? How do they respond to your messages? Which school services do they need? These and more are areas where a CRM can help you. 

Also, with a CRM that allows social media optimization, you can build customer profiles and learn about their behavior. If you know their inclinations and the people they follow, you will know what to talk about when interacting. 

More strategies you can use CRM for social media: 

• Tailor your social content
• Enrich customer support
• Develop social advertising
• Suggest related purchases

Invest in the right tools because the right tools will enable you to see an overview of your customer interactions via phone, chat, email, and social interactions. 

Also, make your website an effective tool for gathering leads from social media platforms. We recommend optimizing your website to help get more leads from social media platforms. 

E-commerce integration

E-commerce integration is another strategy you must use. Your CRM software should allow you to do this, and it is easy to generate leads this way. In addition, the process allows for connecting your website to the software. 

When installed, the new system will lead students and parents to your website, where they can register and provide personal information. Ensure that you do not collect too much information from them, as new visitors are wary of providing more information than necessary. Always keep in mind to put yourself in the shoes of another person. 

Assuming that they are in the research stage of the buying cycle, allow visitors to browse your pages upon registration. This strategy provides you the browsing details of your visitors, helping you create a browsing history database.

With actionable insights the system provides, it will be easy to convert new leads into enrollees. In addition, with the new ideas you have, you can identify the preferences and needs of your target audience. Then you can make necessary changes in your e-commerce marketing.

Lead data cleansing

Dirty data in your database will lead to futile marketing campaigns, but with a CRM tool, you can now check and purge your database of useless entries. 

All marketing database have their share of dirty data. At least 30% of every database consists of useless entries. These entries are either incomplete, wrongly formatted, inaccurate, or outdated. 

Remember that school marketing campaigns are data-driven, and cleaning your database with the right CRM tool can help your team engage only with the right audience. 

Why a CRM is effective for lead management

Lead management gives the ability to look at potential clients and manage them to increase conversion. It is the process of pursuing leads until they complete a purchase. 

In the process of lead management, CRM software brings in the leads for your team. Your team then qualifies the leads and nurtures the ones that passed the criteria. The software then transfers prospects off to the sales representatives, whose task is to convert them into paying customers. 

Steps in CRM lead management for schools include: 

Capturing

The first step is to draw leads to your school. Strategies to use in this step include: 

• Publishing blog posts
• Creating videos
• Providing free materials that leads can download
• Creating digital ads
• Email marketing
• Sponsoring academic contests

Now that you have drawn attention to your school, it is time to categorize leads. You will also create appropriate content for these people, so they will not lose interest in you.

Categorizing

Once you already have the names and other information about your leads, it is time to separate groups. Group them according to buyer stage and demographics. Again, your CRM software will provide you with more information coming from various sources. 

Sources it will obtain data from include email lists, customer databases, and social media platforms. The subsequent steps will be: 

• Information analysis
• Customer segmenting
• Lead qualification for a more targeted approach

Now, you have a list of students to target. 

Scoring

The next step is to identify the leads that match your blueprint of an ideal customer. Of course, your ideal customer will depend on your brand’s narrative. 

Lead scoring is ranking the sales readiness of your leads. You will assign a value for each criterion to come up with a final score for each prospect. 

Lead scoring does not only benefit the marketing teams. After identifying the leads with the highest scores, other departments in your school now have a list on which they can focus their resources. 

The management sets the budget commensurate to marketing needs, and the marketing team plans and chooses appropriate strategies. 

On top of that, the admissions team gets ready to implement easy-to-follow application and enrolment procedures customized according to identified customer needs. 

Nurturing

Lead nurturing is one of the many capabilities of CRM software. It can nurture leads using automated message sending triggered by customer behavior or predetermined scheduling.

Some tactics you can use include: 

• Targeted content – Tailor valuable content to the audience segment with high intent to engage. Keep your content relevant and informative. Remember to include your visitors’ and leads’ comments and questions to help you create targeted content.
• Multiple channels – Some businesses only focus on email marketing. It is one of the most effective ways to nurture leads. However, there are other channels, too. Nurture your market wherever you can find them using a multi-channel approach.
• CRM software comes with multi-channel approaches that capture an audience whether they are browsing the internet for products or doing activities in their social media accounts.
• Multiple touches – Another technique for nurturing is increasing interactions with your target audience. Send personalized emails, and create fresh website content for new information or procedures. Also, engage with your audience on social media.
• Timely follow-ups – The purpose here is to keep your brand/school on top of your audience’s mind and build trust. Arrange for a thank you note or a welcome email that you will send within 24 hours after a lead has signed up. 
• Personal emails – Personalized products and communication are vital to your school. You want parents and students to know that you are familiar with them and their preferences. Marketing is not only about capturing and making business. It is foremost about creating relationships. 

Choosing a CRM for your private school

One thing that you need to know is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for CRM users. You will have to analyze your needs, get the perfect solution. 

Here is what you should consider before you choose CRM software or service. Most of these systems do not understand how a school operates. Most CRM systems can only provide data and give reports – delegating leads, rating leads, and tracking conversations. 

But you are a school, so you have specific and unique needs. Ask questions, such as: 

• Can the software help with tracking the steps for students to complete enrolment? What about providing all the paperwork? 
• Does the software have the capacity to track financing and payments? 
• How about enrolment caps based on the number of classrooms and class size?
• Can it track student academic programs and measure student performance? 
• Can it even help you manage an open house? 
• How about online applications. 

So you see, there are many aspects to consider for comparison between brands. Different brands have different focuses. What you want is a tool that helps you manage things from the first inquiry to student orientation and beyond. 

Customization is the key to getting the right system to put in place. However, you want a customized solution that will be more expensive.

CRM software for enrolment and admissions processes

CRM software for education allows users to streamline their admissions and enrolment processes. These tools create an integrated enrolment, student admissions, and tuition payment system to assist K-12 independent and private schools. From inquiry to the orientation of new applicants, the software can help your team work faster and smarter. 

When choosing such software, check out for additional features because some of these tools offer more features that may be valuable in your school operations. 

It is good to know at what tier or level each has. This way, you can determine what features will be helpful in your school’s operations. Also, do not hesitate to ask for a free demo. 

On enrolment and admissions, you would also like to know the advantages of acquiring student information concerning those areas and why your school needs to store such information. There are many benefits that CRM student information system can bring: 

Trouble-free enrolment processes

The system guides students throughout the recruitment process. Some services provide maps so prospective students can geo-locate classrooms, buildings, and other points of interest using their devices. 

Others offer service desk features that can help parents with their queries. For example, they can ask questions and receive prompt service related to financial aid, registration process, subject coverage, and more.

Student information management 

Students provide heaps of data that can be overwhelming for the school staff to handle. This challenge presents itself from enrolment through the years of a student’s attendance in your school. 

With CRM software, you can have a single dashboard that stores student information that you can access anytime, anywhere. 

Bolster cross-department communication

Some of the hurdles private school staff encounter during enrolment are related to communication. For example, someone needs to know enrolment data. Another one would like to know if security measures are in place. One student may have a query, but the answer to his question can only be provided by the clinic, or the library, or the school’s guidance counselor. 

All of these need immediate attention. With CRM software that connects all departments in one place, it is easy to attend to each concern as they pop up. 

Conclusion

Adopting a CRM solution is one of the best ways to improve processes in your school. However, when choosing a platform, you must prioritize the ability to provide high-quality customer support. Good customer service makes a world of difference for all types of business, and in your case, the goal to attract more students and retain your current roster. 

Make sure to talk with the provider to know the fullest extent that you can use such software. You want to make an apple-to-apple comparison on the features that matter most to you.