Book more open day visitors with Student CRM event apps

Ensure more students complete your booking form journey with our new and improved forms.

They now look great on desktop computers and all smartphone devices, the buttons are more clickable, there is the ability to add customised text and a selection of different themes to choose from. 

Check out the three individual upgrades below:

Responsive booking forms in Applicant Open Days

They work on desktops and now tablets and smartphones too.

Text now appears 100% readable on a smartphone, displaying chunky buttons to go to the next page, and students enjoy a lovely, easy booking experience.

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Custom text in header and footer

Now you can add extra texts to your Event Manager booking form.

Help your users navigate through their booking journey with editable header and footer texts on each page of your EVM booking form.

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Responsive theme previewer for forms

Now you can safely preview different themes & headers on different devices (iPhone, smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops) without making changes to your live forms.

Forget seeing tiny booking form text on a smartphone and giant text on a laptop.

Preview 16 built-in free responsive themes, or Custom CSS your own. Preview your Applicant Open Day forms a bit like Litmus, but for your multi-part open day booking forms.

Could this be the start of something beautiful (looking)?

Measure the performance of your forms with GA

See your DH web forms in Google Analytics

Do you know if 20% or 80% of students complete your DH web forms? Use Google Analytics to track the drop-off rate for each form in your university's GA account.

Your GA code snippet can be added into your DH web forms for Applications, Enquiries, Event Manager, Pre Application Open Days, Prospectus Requests, Rapid Response.

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Goals & Funnels on DH forms in your Google Analytics

Analyse your Student CRM form performance in your university’s Google Analytics account. Your GA code snippet can be added into your DH web forms - Applications, Enquiries, Event Manager, Pre Application Open Days, Prospectus Requests, Rapid Response.

The multi-part booking forms like AOD, POD and EVM can all have goals and funnels. Which page do most students bale out during an open day booking?

Just check out your Google Analytics funnel to explore.

GDPR makes recruitment officers homesick for good old days

GDPR is a stinker.

Just ask any student recruitment director, manager or officer.

At one fell swoop GDPR throws out the marketers' rulebook. It’s not like the good old days. No more implied consent, send this email to every enquiry we have in our CRM, no more getting away with grey area marketing practices. Data Protection 2.0 has arrived.

Under GDPR it's a tougher regime. As I said, it's a stinker. But the good news is that we can help you figure this out from a practical, operational point of view. What changes you will need to make in your recruitment activities, your web forms that collect data, and how to do the right thing. 

Many UK universities have yet to bottom out the practical implications for their student recruitment activities and even more are still figuring out how to capture, store and manage student enquiry data in a compliant manner.

Consent will now have to be earned

Under GDPR, consent will now have to be earned. Students who do not see value in what you are offering will simply not give you consent to market to them in the future. And you will now give them new smart tools and make it crystal clear that they are now fully in charge of the relationship's dynamics. The boot will soon be on the other foot.

Getting it right is not necessarily going to be difficult or onerous, just different. For your recruitment officers there are new rules. A few changes to make.

A few new skills to learn

• Consent: All of your Student CRM web forms that collect data from students (enquirers, applicants, alumni, etc) will need to be updated to take account of the new consent obligations.

• Evidence: you will have to be able to quickly produce evidence of how each student gave you their consent.

• Marketing: you will have to create compliant email, SMS, post and tel campaigns.

• Rights: you will have to comply with subjects exercising their new rights.

• Policies: it now becomes vital that you have easy access to all of your own University's Data Protection various new policy, procedure and process documents.

You may already be well on the way to compliance by 25 May 2018. That may even seem a long way off today, but it isn't, especially when you consider that your student recruitment officers are already planning their activities for Sept 2018 entry.

Those Universities who help their recruitment teams to embrace the spirit of GDPR will be the winners.

Contact Data Harvesting to see how we can help you to help your recruitment teams to embrace the spirit of GDPR and feel back in control.

Make your University's open days sticky

'Sticky' open days are those that get booked up quickly online, are anticipated in advance, well-attended on the day and leave a positive engagement memory 'stuck' in your students' minds. Achieving share of mind is a key deliverable for today's recruitment-focussed UK universities.

So, what are the ingredients for success?

Dom Yeadon, Founder and Managing Director

"The logistics alone are mind-boggling"

“I have always thought that the logistics of running just one University open day alone are mind-boggling. When you know that this happens many times over each year, it becomes even more impressive” says Dom Yeadon, Data Harvesting's Founder and Managing Director. Dom and the team at Data Harvesting have supported hundreds of open days for some of the UK's top universities over many years. 

Success has but two ingredients: a motivated events team, and the right tools for the job.

Consider that, for one open day, the Events team in the University is responsible for ensuring that thousands of students register in advance, turn up on the day (often with friends and family) and have a life-changing experience as they discover how University life will open up new exciting opportunities in the workplace. Plus the Events team will cope with the unexpected on the day, and will do so with a smile on their faces.

This is the University’s chance to shine. This is also where the right solution makes the difference.

The Events team efficiently coordinates students, faculties, lecturers and student ambassadors so they are each in the right place at the right time. They arrange travel, parking, buses, taxis, coffee, food and guidance all day long. They ensure every visitor arriving on campus knows how to make the best of the few hours exploring what the future can hold.

People always find a solution, with or without a software solution like Student CRM, as these mini miracle workers always seem to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

"Not all open days are equal"

Data Harvesting’s approach is to provide these University teams with the right tools for the job, and free up some of that energy into innovating. Not all open days are equal, especially if they’re done right.

Using Student CRM an Events team can set up a whole season of days in advance, create automated emails and SMS to deal with the entire registration process.

They can fine-tune along the way if a venue reaches capacity, or a course changes. They can see progress and keep all stakeholders informed, all safe in the knowledge that each student can arrive on the day, having been kept informed by the system. That means no more manual acknowledgements, spreadsheets, cut and paste quick emails or wondering what will happen next.

A typical open day can generate around 50,000 automated processes running in the background in Student CRM, efficiently and accurately following workflows and touchpoints set up at the start of the season. Repetitive, complex tasks is what software is built to do, whereas people want new challenges and fresh opportunities to succeed.

Ben Reynolds, Business Development Manager

"Good software supports good people"

Ben Reynolds, Business Development Manager at Data Harvesting says:

“the extra time saved allows the Events team to make the little differences that their visitors appreciate. Real human moments, for example:

You turn up at an open day. Upon arrival you get a personal welcome from a Student Ambassador Gemma, who hands you your own personal programme (she explains “just in case your phone’s battery runs out and you can’t access it online later in the day”). Gemma knows your name, where you travelled from and that you need wheelchair access at 11:15 in the West Hall. Gemma hands you the campus WiFi code and then her mobile number in case you need more info.”

All this information in stored within Student CRM’s apps, and can be delivered where it is best used.

"Universities in the UK lead the world in embracing technology"

Opening the door to Data Harvesting’s R&D lab, Dom Yeadon reveals:

“To help International Offices recruit overseas students we are looking into a new Chat integration - great for Virtual Open days (VODs). This will allow the University’s Events team to manage and curate many VODs - chatting with students from all over the world, without leaving their desks. The magic is in automatically saving that individual’s personal extract from the bulk transcript to that student's record in Student CRM. No other CRM can do this straight out of the box. Our scientists are on it.

Potential integrations with Amazon's Alexa

We are looking into integrating with Amazon’s Alexa - the ground-breaking virtual personal assistant. I have an Echo Dot on my desk and use it daily to hear (her) speak to me. I want to talk to Student CRM via Alexa and get real answers back. Alexa should tell me how well the registrations are going for next Saturday’s open day. “Dom, you have two thousand and seventy-three registrations for your open day on Saturday, third of May. That is 95% of target, with sixteen days to go.”

Perhaps not for every Director of Recruitment, but then again I do like my gadgets.

I feel extremely fortunate to get regular support and input from our User Group, so any new developments meet the emerging needs of each University’s Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions teams. We all meet at each University in turn, discuss what is great and not so great and see how to improve the product and service.

Our online Product Roadmap is the first and only one in this sector, showing existing and prospective customers where we have been and where we are going. Transparency at all times.

Universities in the UK lead the world in embracing technology in innovative ways. They do so to deliver quality, consistency and bandwidth in a resource constrained climate. We enable Universities to use some of that freed-up energy for innovating to attract tomorrow’s students.”

Talk to our student recruitment expert Ben Reynolds about your upcoming open days and how to make them sticky.

Call Ben on 01202 237406 or leave your number below and we will call you.

Your number will not be shared with any third parties. 

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Data Harvesting provides Student Recruitment software Student CRM to UK universities.

Built in the UK specifically for the UK’s HE sector, this cloud-based software meets the unique challenges faced by UK Universities today as their marketing, recruitment and admissions teams process tens of thousands of new students wanting to go to University each year.

It starts with an online enquiry, a request for course information, many online interactions, phone calls, emails, visiting the University for open days or tours, and hopefully resulting in the University’s offer being accepted by the applicant.

Our Student Recruitment software helps many different departments to work together using automation to treat each student as an individual as they make their way from enquiry to enrolment. All done immediately, at scale and with no errors.

For more information contact Ben Reynolds, Business Development Manager at Data Harvesting on 01202 237406, 07391 184001 or ben.reynolds@dataharvesting.com

Share and archive your segments

Segments is a billion and one times more useful than (old) search for building lists. Even moreso now we have upgraded it.

Tidy users can now archive old test segments and results. Clever users can now even share their (genius, smart and elegant) segments with other users to leverage their hard work.

The interface for campaigns has undergone a major facelift and now allows users to schedule campaigns for the future in a simple 3 step process for email, SMS, letters, labels and downloads to make managing your data even more logical. 

Segment. Target. Communicate. 

Will your student recruitment SaaS handle GDPR in time?

Your University only has until 25 May 2018. That's when the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) becomes law here in the UK.

That's when your University's Data Protection Officer (DPO) becomes the accountable, principal point of contact for your enquirers, applicants and students who have been processed through your student recruitment software. 

View fullsize

Your DPO will need to be confident that your Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions teams have collected personal data correctly. They will need to know that you can prove that consent to process their data was obtained in accordance with this new strict framework, and that your subsequent recruitment activities respected the permissions given. 

They will need to understand the rights granted to individuals under the GDPR: erasure, portability, subject access and objection. They will need to be able to respond properly whenever a SAR comes in. They will need to be sure that collection, processing and accessing sensitive data like criminal convictions and disabilities (now called Special Categories) needs treating very carefully indeed. 

They will need to know that appropriate technical and organisational measures as well as effective policies and procedures are in place. That not only have you reduced the chances of a data breach from within your student recruitment software, but that in the case of one occurring on their watch, that it reaches the ICO within 72 hours. They will want to demonstrate to the ICO that they can and did respond to and contain any breach of security swiftly and effectively.

In other words, your Data Protection Officer is going to need to know they can rely on the team and technical expertise from your student recruitment software provider. 

In November 2016, many software providers are still trying to work out just how they will handle the new requirements, but will they be ready in time? Some will and some won't.

All providers should eventually be making technical changes to how data is structured, stored and accessed. They should eventually be training their own customer support, project management, account management and managed services teams to not only be trained to be GDPR compliant, but also and more importantly they should understand that they now share responsibility for your University's initial and continued GDPR compliance.

Here at Data Harvesting, home of Student CRM, we are well underway in our preparations for GDPR. Progress to date?

• With strong support at board level, we have recently met with and discussed GDPR compliance challenges with Microsoft's identity and security experts at Microsoft's head office in the UK.
• We have discussed GDPR challenges with InfoSec officers from several universities, engaged university cyber crime consultants and considered likely attack vectors for breaches.
• We are putting the finishing touches to our GDPR Partner Programme to be made available to our current UK University clients in Q4 2016.
• We have mapped out our technical requirements for database changes and data processing controls within our Student CRM product to meet GDPR.
• Our new Security Centre app (ships Q2 2017) contains new GDPR tools alongside our threat detection and user access lockdown to make your CISO's job easier.

If you work at a UK University and want to talk in confidence about your student recruitment software GDPR readiness, you can message me on LinkedIn. 

Dom Yeadon
Managing Director & Founder at Data Harvesting

CSV download 24x faster today

One customer asked if we could please speed up his data download. He had clicked and was waiting for a CSV file of all his Open Day bookings to download in his browser. It was taking ages.

Over lunch, one of our Devs took a look at the code that builds the data files. After speeding it up he sent it over to Customer Support for testing. It passed and was released. A whole bug fix lifecycle of just 4 hours.

The shorter bar is better (no waiting around) - this is 24x faster now

We reduced the delay from 16.02 seconds to a mere 664 milliseconds. So now there is no wait. It is virtually instant. And the change went live this afternoon.

Product Updates in June and July

We roll out incremental product updates without any disruption to services, see what we have released in June and July 2016.

• Calendar app - Our latest app launch. See all your Student CRM activity in Outlook or Google Cal. Read more.
• In-app notifications - Users now benefit from seeing what's new with in-app notifications which pop up when a new feature is released. Our Usergroup voted this as the most effective way to stay updated.
• Subjects and Courses app download - See which courses have been mapped to which subjects and download as a csv.
• Improved student searching - Across our three dedicated event apps.
• Enhanced segments and filters - Users can now create some hugely detailed segments in the student record card to target their students.
• New look Help Centre - It's much easier to search the 500+ articles or log a ticket in the super sleek resource. 
• Customise my Dashboard - Users can move their favourite apps to the top and arrange them in an order to suit.

- View our timeline for our complete list of recent releases -

- View our product roadmap to see what lies ahead -

It's all about building a system that our Users LOVE to use. 

Student CRM Calendar now in your Outlook and Google

Need to look ahead at any recruitment events taking bookings in Student CRM for next month? How many Open Days are you running next year? Now you can view everything from your Outlook or Google calendar (and click to manage each event in Student CRM from your calendar).

With our Calendar app you can view a day, week or month at a time to for all recruitment events across our five event apps - Applicant Open Days, Pre-Applicant Open Days, Event Manager, Mobile Event Capture and Contact Manager.

Features include:

• Roll your own colour-coded calendar
• Show and hide various views
• Jump directly from the Calendar to each listed event
• See live and draft events
• See past and future activities
• Display as Day, Week or Month
• Easy to add by URL in your Google Calendar
• Easy to add URL as an Internet calendar in Outlook

Would you like a demo of our new Calendar app? Simply click the button below.

Six of the best

With so many CRM providers available, why do our clients choose Student CRM year after year?

As well as improving conversion rates, enhancing marketing communications and increasing student recruitment figures, Student CRM is also popular among universities for the following reasons:

1. Made in the UK

Student CRM was built right here on the South Coast in Poole, Dorset by our team of talented Developers. Our great location not only makes face to face meetings and training convenient, but it means our Customer Support team is available during your working hours, in your timezone. 

2. Built specifically for HE

Our platform was built specifically for the higher education sector. Each app was built with universities and student recruitment in mind and that's the way it's going to stay. Forever.

3. Created by us

Unlike other providers and resellers, Student CRM is ours. We own it. We built it from scratch and are developing the code on a daily basis to make it an even better CRM for our users.

4. It's a modular system

We currently have 25 apps, each one to target a specific area of recruitment, including managing enquiries, applications, open days, surveys, data capture and more. Pick and mix to choose the apps most relevant to suit your university's recruitment plan.  

5. Roadmap for the future

We listen to our users' needs and have a feature idea forum in our Help Centre where users submit ideas.

A lot of what we've launched in the past started out as a feature idea from a user which was then brainstormed in-house, and created by our team. Some of our CRM users have even formed a usergroup where they regularly meet up to discuss Student CRM and recruitment in general.

6. Ongoing customer support

We've got a team of student recruitment experts in-house to help set up your open days and respond to your technical queries as well as an online Help Centre full of 500+ articles.

Our users rate the service received and leave comments in our live customer satisfaction rating page, called the DH Love-o-meter. 

City University London climbs 19 places in the Guardian University Guide 2017

Congratulations to our client, City University London who have jumped 19 places up the Guardian University Guide 2017 League Tables to 18th position.

They've climbed into the UK top 20 universities for the first time and are ranked 4th university in London. 

The fantastic increase through the rankings from 37th to 18th is partially due to the rise in City's student satisfaction ratings that helped to drive their improvement. 

Congratulations to all at City University London.

Segments & Filters in Student Record Card

On Tuesday 31 May 2016 we released Segments & Filters in Student Database.

You can now filter on all fields on the student’s Record Card and create some truly detailed segments, like this one:

Find me all prospective domestic UG students who:

• were previously interested in Law AND
• recently switched to being interested in Engineering AND
• want to start in 2017 AND
• are currently 21 years old AND
• currently live in the United Kingdom AND
• have a valid mobile number AND
• were last contacted over 30 days ago.

That is mighty powerful, and takes your targeted marketing communications to a whole new level now.

Data Harvesting Universities user meetup grows out of a City University London idea

In April 2016 Student CRM users from UK Universities, already in touch online via the Student CRM Community Portal, arranged to all meet up in person at City University London. Ryan Taylor, Head of Digital at City, was interested to find out how other Universities were getting the most value from this UK based SaaS solution from Data Harvesting.

The gathering of like-minded student recruitment professionals has evolved into the ‘Data Harvesting Universities User Group’. This April meeting was to become the inaugural forum for this user group, now open to all Student CRM users in other Universities who wish to participate.

The Data Harvesting Universities User Group holds a bi-monthly meetup and participating Universities volunteer to host the User Group Forum on their campus. The group meets to share CRM best practice, and work collaboratively with Data Harvesting to develop the product and service.

This initiative is supported by Data Harvesting who attended the May 2016 meeting to present the Product Roadmap. This Roadmap, published for the first time in May 2016, is freely available for anyone, not just Data Harvesting’s customers, and is now updated monthly at http://www.student-crm.co.uk/roadmap

If you are using Student CRM and would like to be involved in the group and attend the next meet up, please contact Ricky Pitcher, CRM Executive at City University London on Ricky.Pitcher@city.ac.uk or 020 7040 4241. While City is helping to coordinate the group at this early stage, they’re keen to point out all Universities have equal standing.

#dhusersmeetup

500+ articles in new Help Centre

This new look to our Student CRM Help Centre is super clean.

It’s so easy to search the 500+ articles, videos, checklists, and ideas available. There’s also a new dedicated forum for those users who are interested in the Student CRM User Group.

Lots of goodies to help you become a CRM black belt. The Student CRM Help Centre is available 24:7:365 so you can get help during the hours that suit you.

Import 10,000 student records in just a couple of minutes

Data Manager APP launched

Our latest app, Data Manager, contains a collection of tools that allow users to manage their student data in Student CRM. The first tool is Data Importer and allows users to import their own CSV data files directly into Student CRM.

By matching the columns in your CSV files to the fields in Student CRM you can quickly import thousands of new students into your Student Database in just a few clicks. 

So, after a day of collecting prospective students' details, or even using UCAS Media's scanning service, users can upload any CSV file ready to start communicating with those students.

Select a workflow during import and ensure the perfect personalised emails/texts get sent out afterwards. There is nothing this easy to use available anywhere else.

Data Harvesting publishes Product Roadmap

Seems obvious now we've gone public, but entering into an open dialogue with users (and the world) really does build a better product.

We believe our Product Roadmap and Product Timeline should be freely available for all to see. So here it is! Visit the page and click to view our future plans for functionality, apps. integrations and support.

BI brings your data to life

Transform recruitment data into rich visuals

Student CRM transforms real-time recruitment statistics into rich charts, graphs and visuals by integrating with Microsoft's Power BI to show all your recruitment activities pinned on one dashboard.

Identify recruitment trends, analyse which activities are giving you the best return on investment and plan for the year ahead.

Admissions might ask "How many conditional offers did we make this week for each faculty?" whereas Marcomms might ask "How many students open and click our transactional emails?" which is all easy to see on your own customisable Power BI dashboards. 

Ask us today about how your Business Analysts can start creating your own meaningful visuals from your Student CRM data.

Her question "my dog?", your answer "yes" 🐶

In this screenshot, the student got an answer to her question immediately. She just typed in her question and got an instant answer from the Data Harvesting Q&A web form on your university web site.  

Searching through thousands of articles in your own knowledge base within Q&A returns results that help your students along their recruitment journey. Even when your officers are busy or your offices are closed, this self-service online tool keeps working.

Such anonymous student interactions are somewhat inevitable in the early stages of recruitment, but these light touches soon blossom into data capture and a personalised journey to application for many students.

Q&A is just one of a number of ready-to-go recruitment solutions within Student CRM that improve the way you recruit students online.

Student CRM was built in the UK specifically to meet the unique challenges faced by UK Universities. It runs in the cloud and is used by many of the UK's leading Universities in preference to their old systems.

As at 16:58 today, our customer satisfaction rating see our love-o-meter stands at an industry leading 98.4%.