Simply put, your institution’s customer relationship management system is the critical first step in ensuring success for your recruitment team. Without a powerful management framework, your college or university can look or appear disorganized and ultimately fall behind in attracting the right-fit students.
Fortunately, implementing Salesforce Recruitment & Admissions solutions can help your college or university get ahead of the curve. I spent five years as a college admissions recruiter myself before joining the Salesforce consulting team at Coastal Cloud, with hundreds of hours on the road recruiting, a variety of conversations with students over the years, and hundreds of attended events. I am excited to share three key lessons I learned throughout my professional journey in higher education. More importantly, I want to share how Salesforce can help ensure success for YOUR team in these key areas.
1. Organization is Key
Many college recruitment representatives will likely be on the road for weeks at a time. A typical day on the road can see representatives visiting at least four to five high schools during the day and even an additional college fair or prospective student meet and greet in the evening. College representatives need access to key data about prospects, high schools, other colleges, and events to have frequent success. Therefore, your representatives need mobile-friendly solutions, beyond just maintaining the organization of visit schedules and prospect data.
How a Salesforce Recruitment & Admissions Solution can help:
- Salesforce Education Data Architecture puts prospect information within easy reach for your representatives
- Salesforce Mobile functionality allows your representatives to easily access and input prospects and other information from a mobile device
Coastal Cloud Client Success Story:
“The Recruiting and Admissions Team at Bluefield University needed a standard way to track the entire lifecycle of a recruited student all the way through to the admissions process. Now, Salesforce has completely reinvented the way our teams work, we now have one system for all student communication and tracking. We can track a single student with which we engaged via any source, all the way through to graduation. The portals that the students can use promote self service, which has ultimately minimized the tasks our teams need to perform.”
– Education Consultant at Bluefield University
2. Data is Your Best Friend
There are only so many hours in a day and only so many days within each college recruitment cycle. Every single minute is valuable. Regardless of your recruitment team size, no one can visit every school in the country and provide direct outreach to every prospective student. Your recruitment team needs access to detailed, clear, and organized data to prioritize decisions. Salesforce can save your college or university a tremendous amount of time and money by providing insight into the most impactful student outreach at the right time.
How a Salesforce Recruitment & Admissions Solution can help:
- Standard reports within Salesforce Education Data Architecture allow your team to keep your enrollment funnel well organized and clear
- Tableau allows for even more personalization of the data you need – years of education/attendance at a college or university, programs, majors, geography, and in other areas
- Salesforce Einstein can provide even more insight in helping prioritize strategic recruitment decisions
Coastal Cloud Client Success Story:
“Our organization needed a way to step up our Marketing game. We were able to post to social media, make calls and schedule emails, but we had no way to track any of it. We had reached a level of maturity where we needed to see the results of our outputs. Tracking our marketing efforts now gives us insights into what works and what doesn’t! Now, our employees are equipped to make the best decisions for our organizations based on accurate data.”
– Experience Coordinator at The Wellington School
3. Your Prospective Students Are Eager to Communicate
Whether a student is a prospect of your institution or already enrolled, they must be at the center of all you do. Prospective students expect clear messaging from your recruitment team. They also expect personalized communication on how your institution will be the right fit for them, as well as expedited answers to their questions. Not only should your prospective students be at the center of your team’s focus, but Salesforce’s Recruitment and Admissions solutions help your team place personalized and efficient communication at the center of everything.
How a Salesforce Recruitment & Admissions Solution can help:
- Admissions Connect allows for easy application review, allowing your team to provide immediate feedback for applicants
- Chatbot integration allows students to get immediate answers to their questions while allowing your team to keep a record of student communication
- Other products such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can help provide personalized and targeted marketing unique to your institution’s recruitment marketing needs
Coastal Cloud Client Success Story:
“Florida Atlantic University receives thousands of messages regarding admission and recruiting. Before Coastal Cloud, we had no way to track and delegate these messages to the right teams. We can now use Salesforce and Pardot to track calls, manage campus visits, organize & track messages, and utilize reporting capabilities. We were able to integrate the solution with our existing student information database, making for a seamless 360 degree view of our campus. Since the solution, we have been able to manage more than 3 million messages and many new prospects and students.”
– Director of Project Management & Quality Assurance at Florida Atlantic University
About the Author
Shaun Bummer
Consultant
Shaun is a 8x Salesforce Certified Consultant at Coastal Cloud. He is a proud graduate of the University of Montana, where he served both as a Student Ambassador Coordinator and Admissions Counselor. He also worked on the recruiting and admissions team at the Oregon Institute of Technology
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