azorus blog

a blog on CRM for higher education

Practical Tips on Going Green in Higher Ed

Today’s “going green” phe­nom­e­non is sweep­ing the nation and cost­ing us a pretty penny while doing so; hybrid cars, wind energy, organic prod­ucts, the list goes on. In the con­text of Higher Education, col­lege and uni­ver­sity recruit­ing offices can also “Go Green” and save money doing so.

Mercyhurst College reduced View Book print­ing by 50%. 

How?

Mercyhurst College strate­gized when send­ing view books to prospec­tive stu­dents and rather than send­ing a view book to every prospect, they only sent view books to stu­dents who demon­strated an inter­est in Mercyhurst. Their selec­tiv­ity paid off! Not only did they reduce print­ing and postage by 50%, they also expe­ri­enced a 7% increase in fresh­man enroll­ment. By lever­ag­ing their CRM plat­form capa­bil­i­ties, Mercyhurst was able to bet­ter iden­tify key prospects. Instead of wast­ing time and money try­ing to reach out to every­one with print based mate­ri­als, they intel­li­gently focused their recruit­ment efforts on the prospects most likely to enroll.

How did they know which prospects were more likely to enroll? Well, it was all about build­ing rela­tion­ships with their prospects where they live – online, and con­stantly mon­i­tor­ing the ana­lyt­ics. While we can’t give away all their secrets, we can share with you that Mercyhurst’s strat­egy included print, emails, a per­son­al­ized por­tal, a Facebook appli­ca­tion and con­sis­tently mea­sur­ing the results of every call to action. Mercyhurst’s CRM plat­form played an inte­gral role in enabling the exe­cu­tion of their inno­v­a­tive recruit­ment strategy.

The moral of the Mercyhurst story is focus more of your recruit­ment efforts with online tac­tics. Leverage a CRM plat­form to help you “Go Green” sav­ing you time and money. By doing so, you’ll impress your prospects and your boss and not to men­tion you’ll do your part to help save the environment.

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If CRM is the solution… what’s the problem?

As I said in my last Blog, the notion of decid­ing what CRM is or what CRM can do… is not easy espe­cially in the con­text of higher edu­ca­tion. Consider that when you Google “What is CRM?” about 21,000,000 results are returned. Yes CRM has been around for years in the com­mer­cial sec­tor and has been crit­i­cized for over promis­ing and under deliv­er­ing… and for being over hyped and over priced. And no doubt much of that crit­i­cism is jus­ti­fied. And for higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions… this is actu­ally very good news indeed. Because HEI’s have gen­er­ally been fol­low­ers on ini­tia­tives like CRM, the mis­takes of the past in the com­mer­cial mar­ket can be avoided (hope­fully). A fun­da­men­tal start­ing point then is defin­ing what you want CRM to accom­plish… both now and in the future. And it’s crit­i­cal to rec­og­nize that CRM is a jour­ney and not a des­ti­na­tion. Consider a Harvard Business Review arti­cle; CRM Done Right. “A wide range of com­pa­nies are suc­cess­fully tak­ing a prag­matic, dis­ci­plined approach to CRM. Rather than use it to trans­form entire busi­nesses, they’ve directed their invest­ments toward solv­ing clearly defined prob­lems within their cus­tomer rela­tion­ship cycle.” Read More »

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WYNIWYG CRM in HE… an idea whose time has come?

Yes… alpha­bet soup for sure so let’s clar­ify. WHAT YOU NEED IS WHAT YOU GET CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT for HIGHER EDUCATION. So what does this mean? Let’s start with what’s hap­pen­ing in higher edu­ca­tion… at least from a very high level perspective.

Today’s Higher Education lead­ers are fac­ing dizzy­ing change in the demo­graph­ics they serve and the envi­ron­ment in which they deliver. They must pro­vide higher lev­els of ser­vice demanded by an increas­ingly sophis­ti­cated, dis­cern­ing, and tech savvy stu­dents. They face intense com­pe­ti­tion in a glob­ally flat mar­ket. They must man­age inter­nal stake­hold­ers, who are reluc­tant to embrace change. They must sat­isfy exter­nal stake­hold­ers, who have increas­ingly aggres­sive expec­ta­tions for insti­tu­tional account­abil­ity. And they must do all of this with dimin­ish­ing direct fund­ing, while cut­ting expenses and tight­en­ing bud­gets. It’s a tall order! So… for today’s higher edu­ca­tion lead­ers, oper­at­ing in this envi­ron­ment on a “busi­ness as usual” approach will ensure one thing… insti­tu­tional extinc­tion. Read More »

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