Growing and maintaining high enrollment in higher education involves more than just numbers. Enrollment drives innovation, shapes academic excellence, and ensures knowledge continuity. Yet, many universities fall into old habits, failing to adapt to changing times and student expectations. To remain relevant, they need to embrace change. This is where a purpose-built CRM for universities comes into play.
Let’s begin.
Understanding Enrollment Challenges in Higher Education
To sustain enrollment growth, universities must first understand the top factors impacting enrollment. These include external challenges like economic shifts, internal attributes like program offerings, and learner preferences such as personalized experiences. By recognizing these factors, universities can develop strategies that cater to enrollment trends and provide personalized support to students.
CRM in higher education helps address these challenges by centralizing data, streamlining processes, and enhancing student engagement. It becomes a crucial tool for enrollment teams to analyze, predict, and respond to changes quickly.
Leveraging CRM for Universities to Address Enrollment Barriers
The education landscape is fast-evolving. Colleges and universities need robust strategies to stay ahead. One key strategy is using a CRM for universities to streamline operations and boost engagement. Meritto’s CRM for higher education enables institutions to achieve this by offering advanced features designed to enhance the student experience.
Imagine a university facing declining enrollment due to a lack of engagement. Using Meritto’s CRM for universities, the admissions team can automate personalized communications to re-engage prospective students. This can include targeted emails, SMS, and WhatsApp messages based on student behavior and preferences. The CRM for universities helps maintain consistent follow-ups, ensuring no student falls through the cracks.
Key Features of Meritto’s CRM in Higher Education
Discover how Meritto’s comprehensive CRM empowers educational institutions to streamline operations, enhance student engagement, and drive enrollment growth. This section will delve into the essential features that make Meritto the leading choice for higher education institutions.
1. Lead Management and Centralization
Meritto’s CRM for universities centralizes leads from multiple sources—like websites, social media, and events—into a single platform. This ensures that all potential students are accounted for and followed up promptly.
How It Works in Real Life:
Imagine an admissions counselor at a large university who needs to manage leads from various channels, such as college fairs, website inquiries, social media campaigns, and email marketing efforts. Without a centralized system, it becomes a daunting task to track each lead’s status, leading to missed follow-ups and potential loss of students.
With Meritto’s CRM in higher education, all leads are automatically captured and stored in one unified dashboard. The system assigns a lead score based on engagement levels and interaction history. This allows the counselor to prioritize outreach efforts, focusing first on leads that show higher interest, thereby increasing the chances of conversion.
2. Automated Communication
Effective communication is key to improving student engagement and enrollment rates. Meritto’s CRM in higher education offers automated, multi-channel communication capabilities. With this feature, universities can send personalized messages via email, SMS, and WhatsApp.
How It Works in Real Life:
Consider a prospective student named Emily who has expressed interest in the Business Management program but hasn’t completed her application. Using Meritto’s CRM for universities, the admissions team can automate a personalized drip campaign. Emily receives a series of tailored emails highlighting the program’s unique aspects, testimonials from current students, and reminders about application deadlines.
Simultaneously, she receives SMS notifications and WhatsApp messages offering to connect her with a program advisor. This consistent, automated follow-up keeps Emily engaged, leading her to complete her application process without feeling overwhelmed by generic messages.
3. Data-Driven Insights
Meritto’s CRM for universities provides advanced reporting and analytics, helping institutions track engagement, lead sources, and counselor performance.
How It Works in Real Life:
The Director of Admissions at a university needs to assess which marketing channels are performing best and where to allocate future budgets. Using Meritto’s CRM in higher education, they can easily access detailed reports showing which campaigns bring in the most qualified leads, the conversion rates per channel, and the cost per enrollment.
For example, the data might reveal that social media ads targeting high school seniors have a 40% higher conversion rate compared to email campaigns. With this insight, the Director decides to allocate more budget toward social media, optimizing resources for better enrollment results.
4. Insights-Driven Nudges
Meritto’s CRM in higher education utilizes insights to provide actionable nudges. These smart suggestions help admission teams decide the next best action for each lead.
How It Works in Real Life:
Picture an admissions counselor, Alex, who manages hundreds of leads daily. He needs to know which students to contact first and how to approach them. Meritto’s CRM for universities analyzes each lead’s interaction history, engagement level, and current status. For a lead named Sarah who hasn’t opened recent emails, the CRM might suggest a different approach—such as a phone call or a personalized WhatsApp message.
These insights-driven nudges help Alex save time and increase his chances of successfully engaging leads. By making data-informed decisions, he can focus on high-priority tasks rather than guesswork, improving his productivity and outcomes.
5. Mobile CRM Access
Today’s enrollment teams need flexibility. Meritto’s mobile CRM for universities enables teams to manage leads and follow-ups on the go.
How It Works in Real Life:
An admissions team is attending a college fair, where they collect information from hundreds of prospective students. Using Meritto’s mobile CRM, team members can instantly input each student’s details, interests, and follow-up requirements directly into the system.
Right after the fair, the CRM automatically sends personalized emails to each student, thanking them for their interest and providing further information on the programs they inquired about. This immediate follow-up, made possible by the mobile CRM, enhances the student experience and increases the likelihood of conversions.
6. Advanced Counselor Management
Meritto’s CRM in higher education allows institutions to manage and evaluate counselor performance effectively. This feature includes advanced reporting on counselor activity, lead follow-ups, and conversion rates.
How It Works in Real Life:
A university’s admissions manager needs to assess the performance of her team of counselors. With Meritto’s CRM for universities, she can generate detailed reports on each counselor’s activity. She sees that Counselor John has a high number of initiated contacts but a low conversion rate. Meanwhile, Counselor Jane has fewer contacts but a much higher conversion rate.
The manager can then identify best practices from Jane’s approach and train John and other team members accordingly. This targeted coaching improves overall team performance, leading to more effective student engagement and higher enrollments.
7. Robust Student Journey Automation
Meritto’s CRM for universities provides automated workflows to guide students through their journey from inquiry to enrollment seamlessly.
How It Works in Real Life:
Imagine a student named Daniel who just submitted an inquiry form on the university’s website. Meritto’s CRM automatically adds him to a pre-defined workflow. Daniel first receives an email introducing him to the program he inquired about. Next, the CRM schedules a call for a counselor to provide more personalized information.
If Daniel completes an application, the CRM triggers the next steps, such as document submission reminders and interview scheduling. This seamless, automated student journey ensures that Daniel feels guided and supported throughout, reducing drop-offs and increasing the chances of enrollment.
Why Choose Meritto’s CRM in Higher Education?
Meritto is a global enrollment platform designed to equip universities for growth. With over 1 billion student engagements and 100 million inquiries processed annually, Meritto is trusted by over 1,000 educational organizations worldwide. The platform supports 5 million applications on average each year, making it an industry leader in CRM for universities.
Ready to Upscale Your Enrollment Strategy?
Transform your institution’s enrollment strategy with Meritto’s CRM for universities. Equip your team with the right tools to drive growth, enhance student engagement, and improve overall performance. Schedule a personalized demo today and see how Meritto can help your institution thrive in a competitive education landscape.
Don’t miss the chance to revolutionize your enrollment process. Schedule a call to get started!
