Explore Our Newsletter Archive: A Wealth of Knowledge Awaits
Welcome to our Student CRM Newsletter Archive, your go-to resource for insights, tips, and stories that have shaped our journey and can inspire yours. You can subscribe here. Rather than just a collection of past issues, think of this archive as a curated selection of knowledge, designed to inform, entertain, and spark curiosity. Take a look through:
> 5 ways to increase form completion
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon provides insightful strategies to enhance the engagement and completion rates of student enquiry and booking forms.
Recognising the common challenge of high form views but low completion rates, Dom suggests five practical tips: introducing the form with a brief overview to inform students of the form's purpose and what they gain in return, utilising friendly and explanatory validation messages for required information, involving colleagues in the form completion process to identify areas for improvement, clearly stating what students can expect after submitting the form, and encouraging experimentation with form design and adjustments to find the most effective layout.
These recommendations aim to make forms more user-friendly and reassuring for students, ultimately increasing submission rates.
> Make 5 tiny touchpoint changes to increase student engagement
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon shares five simple yet effective strategies to boost student engagement through email touchpoints.
Touchpoints, defined as automated messages sent at strategic moments in a student's journey from enquiry to enrolment, can significantly benefit from personalisation and strategic timing.
Recommendations include personalising email subject lines with the student's name, using engaging and relevant opening lines, explaining the timing and purpose of the message to ensure relevance, leveraging common concerns to build community, and adopting a more human, informal tone in communications.
These strategies aim to create a more personalised and engaging experience for students, potentially leading to higher open rates and engagement, as evidenced by one university's 60.69% open rate achievement.
> Great student journeys are non-stop, relay races
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon shares valuable insights on optimising student recruitment through strategic use of stages in the journey from enquiry to enrolment, aiming to enhance recruitment performance and increase prospect enrolment rates.
The approach delineates the student recruitment journey into distinct stages, each representing a phase in the prospective student's path, from initial enquiry to final enrolment.
This segmentation allows for personalised communications tailored to each student's current stage, significantly improving engagement and interest in the university.
Dom emphasises the importance of assigning team responsibilities for each stage within Student CRM, likening the recruitment process to a non-stop relay race involving the Marketing, Recruitment, and Admissions Teams.
Each team plays a crucial role in nurturing prospects through the journey, with Marketing generating leads, Recruitment engaging and encouraging applications, and Admissions facilitating the final steps to enrolment.
> Video: the 7 most effective student recruitment emails that universities should be sending out
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon highlights the seven most effective types of student recruitment emails that universities should be sending, including offer-holder conversion emails, newsletters, webinar invites, audition announcements, UCAS deadline reminders, open evening invites, and enquiry follow-ups.
He challenges readers to assess the effectiveness of their current recruitment emails, based on insights gained from observing millions of emails sent by UK universities.
Dom also introduces a video showcasing how universities are leveraging targeted, impactful recruitment campaigns to significantly enhance their recruitment performance.
This newsletter is particularly aimed at universities seeking to improve their recruitment results, streamline their recruitment processes, adopt best practices from the outset, and utilise the latest, most innovative recruitment tools.
> Why last year’s courses will sink your next year’s student recruitment
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon addresses the pressing challenge universities face with constant course updates and the necessity for a unified source of truth to ensure marketing campaigns are always aligned with the latest course offerings.
The dynamic nature of course portfolios—where courses are frequently added, amalgamated, or withdrawn—demands a robust solution to maintain accuracy across all platforms.
The Courses and Subjects app from Student CRM offers a comprehensive solution by providing a centralised platform for managing courses by subject, level of study, faculty, and school for all entry years. This app ensures immediate updates across the system, enhancing efficiency and ensuring accuracy in course information disseminated through marketing and recruitment efforts.
Dom elaborates on the benefits of using Student CRM for student recruitment, highlighting the time and cost savings achieved through streamlined course management. The system allows for instant updating of courses, tagging for granular targeting, and seamless integration with online event bookings and application forms, ensuring prospective students always receive the correct course information.
Further, the app supports efficient course management, including bulk changes via Excel and easy duplication for future academic years, significantly reducing administrative burden. Dom underscores the value of Student CRM in facilitating best practices in student recruitment and employing cutting-edge tools for continuous improvement.
> The next 3-minutes of student enquiry insights could fix your enquiries problems forever
SUMMARY: in this issue, Dom Yeadon introduces a 3-minute video that promises to revolutionise how universities manage student enquiries.
Highlighting common issues universities face with enquiry management, the video and subsequent personal consultation offer solutions for streamlining and enhancing the enquiry handling process.
Top universities succeed by consolidating enquiries from diverse sources—web forms, emails, events, third-party tools, postal communications, telephone calls, and walk-ins—into a single, manageable system.
The Enquiries app by Student CRM provides a central platform equipped with powerful tools to boost officer productivity, improve student satisfaction, and ultimately, increase application rates.
Dom outlines best practices for managing enquiries, including building ongoing conversations to meet student needs efficiently, reassigning enquiries to relevant departments, employing automated triaging for emails, ensuring quick responses, using saved replies for common questions, adding private notes for internal discussion, consulting experts for specialised advice, and systematically closing enquiries with reasons to measure performance.
Additionally, he stresses the importance of identifying trends over the years through ready-to-run reports, offering strategic insights into enquiry volume changes.
Dom Yeadon, as the Founder and Managing Director of Student CRM, emphasises that adopting these practices, facilitated by the Enquiries app, can solve enquiry management challenges permanently. This newsletter targets universities aiming to improve recruitment outcomes, embrace easier and more effective technologies, follow best practices from the outset, and utilise the latest recruitment tools.