What is a CRM and How Can It Improve My School’s Enrollment Marketing?

Learn why every school or district needs a CRM platform and how it can improve your enrollment marketing.

One of the most challenging aspects of K-12 school enrollment marketing is monitoring where every prospective family is in the recruitment cycle. Using a good school CRM platform allows you to personally nurture every contact — from interested to engaged to, ultimately, enrolled.

The best CRM software for schools can significantly improve the operations of your enrollment efforts and provide a more effective student recruitment process.

Below, you’ll learn why your school should implement a CRM system.

What is a School CRM Platform?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software gives you a holistic look at all your prospective customers or contacts. Think about it like a spreadsheet on steroids.

A school CRM allows you to capture your families’ contact information and then group them into buckets, track interactions, and segment these parents and guardians for automated interactions.

Using Your CRM System to Segment Contacts

Nobody likes mail that is impersonally addressed, such as “dear occupant” or “to whom it may concern.” Similarly, when you are attempting to recruit families to your school, they want to feel like you are treating them as an individual.

A school CRM platform lets you personalize interactions. 

For example, say you have a great arts program and an award-winning STEM program. By tagging each prospective parent or guardian by their interest (STEM vs. art), you can customize follow-up emails with relevant information.

School CRM Reporting and Analytics

CRM platforms can track and manage enrollment data in one easy-to-access place with simple reports.

Being able to provide a snapshot to the leadership of the school of the number of families in the inquiry stage, nurturing stage, or who have signed up for a school tour is priceless. This also gives you the ability to track how effective each tactic is.

Many schools struggle with rich data analysis when it comes to enrollment. A school CRM platform like SchoolMint Connect simplifies this task immensely.

A CRM Platform Can Be a Single Repository for Data

One of the hardest parts of enrollment management is in identifying prospective families. Knowing and identifying who is interested in your school is the costliest and most time-consuming part of a good enrollment system.

Having a single spot for all your prospective families’ contact information to reside is a huge boon. No longer are you having to juggle multiple Google Sheets and worry if somebody is changing all the information by accident.

Good data is the key to a strong enrollment system!

The Best CRM Software for Schools Automates Your Enrollment Activities

A good student enrollment program requires a lot of labor-intensive follow-up and personalized interactions. Here is where a school CRM can significantly improve your activities and save you a ton of time:

1. Imagine you have a “request more information” form on your website, and a parent or guardian fills this form out. This represents the moment they go from prospective to engaged.
2. With a school CRM, you can integrate this website form into your system. When a parent or guardian puts their contact information into the form, that information automatically creates a new record, tags them as a prospective family, and automatically sends them an email with a link or pre-created email that gives relevant information about your school.
3. Next, you can set up a rule that allows you to send more emails over a designated time period. That prospective parent or guardian gets more information, gets asked to register for a school tour, or whatever else you set — all automatically.

This takes a little bit of work on the front end, but once it’s set up, you save time by automating repetitive tasks.

Ready to learn more? Get in touch to see what SchoolMint Connect can do for you!