3 Simple Changes You Need to Make to Your Student Registration Form Now

Your student registration form is an often overlooked but critical tool that you can use to improve your school’s recruitment efforts.

Although the primary goal of the new student information form is primarily administrative, with just a few tweaks and additional questions, it becomes a very powerful source of information for your future enrollment marketing efforts.

By adding three simple questions to your new student registration, you will begin to gather data that will benefit your school in multiple ways.

Form Change #1: “Do you have any other children?”

...And if so, what are their names, and what school/preschool do they currently attend?

Gathering this information allows you to identify the name and age of all the siblings who will become your targets for recruitment in subsequent years.

I know the inclination and default is that these kids will naturally come to your school, but do not take any child’s enrollment for granted!

Once you have these names entered into your prospect database or school CRM (like SchoolMint Connect), you can better forecast sibling attendance and create personalized outreach to these siblings.

• Learn more: How a School CRM Can Improve Your Enrollment Marketing

Additionally, if you are seeing patterns of certain ages of siblings not enrolling, it gives you some insight into a trend you should investigate.

For the students who are too young to attend your school, there are lots of little things you can do to actively nurture relationships and ensure that they will enroll in your school:

• Have your kindergarten teacher(s) send the younger child a Christmas or birthday card.
• Send a personal invitation to upcoming open houses or kindergarten-readiness days.
• Invest in t-shirts that will fit a smaller child, and provide that as a gift with “Future Student of X School” on them. You would be shocked at how much good will a free t-shirt can buy you.
• If you are a parochial school, consider a congratulations card for Baptisms.

Knowing how many of your students’ siblings attend a specific preschool also gives you a very strong talking point when you are attempting to solidify feeder school relationships.

Many preschools are challenging to partner with, and it becomes very powerful when you can tell the preschool director that 10 of her students have siblings that attend your school. That helps her to understand the benefits of partnering.

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Form Change #2: “How did you hear about our school?”

Asking this is critical! Knowing which tactic was successful in bringing them to your school allows you to understand what programs are working and what is not.

Some schools who take a more sophisticated approach will do a new parent survey, where they ask all the different channels that a parent interacted with on their journey to enroll.

You don’t need to be that precise if you are just starting out. Just get the main source.

Now, many parents will answer “word of mouth” when you ask this question. When you get this answer, always include this follow-up question: “Whom should we thank for referring you to our school?”

If you see certain family names consistently mentioned, consider tapping those families for a parent ambassador program. This also gives you the opportunity to publicly recognize these families as being critical in helping your school’s enrollment.

Form Change #3: “Where do you work, and what do you do?”

Identifying professions and the companies of your parent base has tons of benefits.

Imagine planning your next big event, and you are actively looking for sponsors. Being able to quickly scan your school CRM database of parents and their companies allows you to make targeted requests for support.

When you are trying to find volunteers, having this information is incredibly helpful. For example:

• Who owns a bakery that can offer cupcakes for graduation?
• Who works at a digital marketing company and could help update your website?
• Who works as a senior executive that might be able to donate money toward your next fundraiser?

With information like that noted in your school’s K-12 CRM, now you know.

There are certain activities where you just need a warm body — setting up chairs, manning a food booth, etc. — but as you look to improve more strategic functions, it is a huge benefit if you know which families you can tap for (ideally) free support.

Or perhaps your school needs to secure a catering company for an upcoming event. Wouldn’t it be great to use one of your parent’s restaurants?

By the way, if you need some assistance with social media, we have free resources in SchoolMint Enrollment Academy that can help you out — like training videos that can teach you to use AI to create 20 social media posts in five minutes or the below social media calendar.

Easily modify, delete, and create new enrollment forms with SchoolMint Enroll.

It’s hard to ask parents to complete this information when they are already enrolled, but you can always edit student registration forms when parents are registering for the next school year.

However, edit the forms now so that you can start capturing this critical data for the families who will transfer to your school(s) mid-year.

Fortunately, an enrollment management platform like SchoolMint Enroll makes it easy for you to make those changes as well as create unlimited new forms!

Visit our website to learn more about SchoolMint Enroll.