Student CRM to exhibit at The Annual HE and FE Marketing Conference 2015

Data Harvesting is pleased to announce we'll exhibiting at at The Annual HE and FE Marketing Conference 2015. Just look out for our lime green stand brimming with pick and mix sweets.

The conference is taking place on Wednesday 29th April at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster from 8.45am - 4.30pm.

Our team will be showing delegates how to maximise marketing to prospective students through the use of an efficient CRM using our homegrown solution, Student CRM.

Student CRM is developed in Poole, Dorset (UK) specifically for the HE industry to enhance marketing communications and consequently increase your student conversion rate and recruit more students.

With a jam-packed agenda, the day looks set to be a great success for student recruitment teams. We look forward to meeting you there!

Register for your place with Inside Government here.

Student CRM exhibits at UCISA Edinburgh

We're pleased to announce that Data Harvesting will be exhibiting Student CRM at the premier IT event for UK universities and colleges, UCISA15 at the EICC in Edinburgh.

From 18th March until 20th March 2015, delegates will be able to learn more about student recruitment, enhancing student numbers, increasing conversion rates and improving the student journey to encourage students to enrol. Just head for the lime green stand, number 85.

Confirmed speakers include the following industry leaders:

We look forward to seeing everyone there, especially our clients and friends.

Recruit university students via mobile

Student CRM is leading the way with mobile marketing to students.

With the increasing use of Smartphones among young people, recruitment teams are utilising this popular channel of communication to market their university.

The majority of students have their mobiles on them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and read SMS messages within 5 seconds of receiving them.

The average person checks their phone 150 times a day and has their phone within arm's reach for 14 hours per day.

Many universities are benefiting from our integration with mobile to invite students to open days, remind attendees, give directions, wish them happy birthday and generally market to students via mobile.

A simple series of automated workflows and touchpoints can be setup in advance to trigger mobile communications behind the scenes to students to keep your university their number one choice.

Sending SMS messages has increased open day attendees, improved engagement and increased conversion rates for many of our university clients.

Love is in the air

Love really is in the air with our Student CRM users.

We're so confident in our Customer Support that we display a live Love-o-meter on our website which pulls in our live customer satisfaction rating (the good, the bad and the ugly) as well as any comments they'd wish to make. Resulting in Student CRM being the UK's most loved student recruitment solution.

Our Love-o-meter rating currently stands proud at 98%, which is above the industry standard for software. That's thanks to our dedicated army of student recruitment specialists who are ready to fix issues, receive feature requests and help with setup and implementation right here in our Head Quarters in Poole, Dorset.

Here's some recent comments (and even declarations of love) we've received from our users:

The 5 Cs to recruiting more students

With student recruitment, there are 5 Cs to recruiting your students and creating a relationship with each one. Each of our 21 apps have been carefully considered to give recruitment teams the very best tools to increase student engagement.

CONNECT

In order to market your university with prospective students you'll first need to connect with them and build a relationship, whether that's through online enquiries or through meeting them and taking their details at an event.

Our Enquiries app is excellent at managing students' initial questions about studying with you. One of our users responded to over 8,000 enquiries with this app.

CREATE

Ensure your marketing campaigns and recruitment activities positively represent your university and stay on brand. It helps to reinforce your brand by keeping material consistent with your brand guidelines, including your online forms.

With Student CRM you can create transactional communications and marketing materials to communicate with prospective students. We've also got a useful grab tool to segment groups of students and market to them by a specific criteria.

COMMUNICATE

Using a central Student CRM means all your recruitment activities are streamlined which improves your internal communications and helps to build an online relationship with your students - and visible to all departments to form a powerful strategy.

CONVERT

Research has shown that personalised communications are far more effective and engaging, Student CRM allows you to merge various details, including first name, into your marketing materials.

COMPARE

Review and analyse the progress of your recruitment activities by comparing the engagement rates of each. Which open days had most bookings? Which recruitment event collected most student data? Which forms captured most students? How many interactions it took before the student enrolled etc. This can be analysed with our purpose-built Enterprise Reporting app.

5 reasons to buy the best of British software

The best of British software is right here on your doorstep. There are many positives to buying from UK-based software developers / providers, here's just a few of our best bits:

 

 

1. Industry experts

We're experts in the UK HE industry. We've got the UK's leading student recruitment experts working to enhance the way in which you recruit your students. No one understands the UK higher education structure better than our team.

2. Master of one

Student CRM is a dedicated CRM to recruit students, so that's all we focus on. We don't strive to be a multi-purpose platform and spread ourselves thinly. Our passion lies within student recruitment and that's what we do best.

3. We live here

Our Customer Support team is also in the UK. So if you want to contact them just pick up the phone, log a support ticket, send an email or even arrange a face to face meeting. There's no need to worry about language barriers or timezones as we're here 9 til 5.30pm, just like you.

4. We own it

We've got our own Developers who work side by side with the Customer Support team to ensure the very best user experience. We built it from the ground up and know it inside out. All from our HQ in sunny Poole, Dorset.

5. Face to face

Everyone knows that it's far easier to learn new software face to face, rather than via Skype or simply supplied with a manual. Either we'll come and visit your university to provide top class training on how to use Student CRM, or you're very welcome to come down to the South Coast, meet the team, learn the system and explore the area.

When we all live in the UK it's much easier logistically!

Student CRM comes to the UCAS Annual Admissions Conference 2015 in Wales

We're pleased to announce that the UK's most loved student recruitment solution will exhibit at the UCAS Annual Admissions Conference in Newport for the third year running from 30th March to 1st April 2015.

We'll be showcasing our hugely popular Student CRM complete with our 21 cutting edge apps - come and find the team, you can't miss us, we're the limest stand there! We can help you increase your number of applications, improve engagement with both international and domestic students, recruit more prospects at recruitment events, organise your open days, manage your enquiries and everything else pre-enrolment.

Rumour has it we're giving away sweets, pens, mugs and more this year... 

Here's some snaps from last year. Come and visit us on our lime green stand, you can't miss us!

And as our friends from Wales would say - Edrych ymlaen at eich gweld yno (we look forward to seeing you there!)

Applications bounce back to near record levels

According to an article by the BBC, university applications are on the increase with record levels expected for this Thursday's deadline, demonstrating the keen demand for higher education.

In 2012, after the controversial introduction of increased tuition fees which tripled to £9,000, the number of applications plummeted. This year, the higher education industry seems to be recovering well with a record number of students enrolling into courses last Autumn (over half a million), showing that students are recognising the value in having a degree, despite the higher tuition fees.

Universities are having to work harder to recruit students.

With the increase in the number of students enquiring about university places, many universities are benefitting from an advanced Student CRM system in order to market, engage and recruit these students.

Recruit more students at open days

Open days and events are your most powerful marketing activity. They enable prospective students and their parents the opportunity to see your university in action, speak to current students, investigate course options and check out the local area.

Student CRM gives recruitment and marketing teams the tools to capture more student data at events, manage online bookings, make group bookings and communicate more effectively with students pre and post open days to increase your online bookings and attendance rates.

Our 4 dedicated event apps will ensure your open days and recruitment activities give you the best ROI.

DH Mobile

Capture student data offline on iPads at recruitment events worldwide. Once you connect to the internet, the data will sync into Student CRM with your other records ready to be followed up. It also allows you to customise your fields and forms.

Check out the app.

Applicant open days

Invite your applicants to their own tailor-made open day. Send personalised emails to applicants for their specific course, allow them to register online and communicate with them using branded automated emails and texts leading up to the day to increase attendance figures.

Check out the app.

Pre-applicant open days

Manage a full season of pre-applicant open days by inviting students to book online and create a personalised programme of their day to include tours, talks and registration. The app ensures you have a great attendance rate with post follow up workflows and touchpoints for both attendees and non-attendees.

Check out the app.

Event Manager

Use Event Manager for online bookings of campus tours for parents, students, schools and colleges so they can get a feel for your university with easy online booking with automated communications and booking forms for individual or group bookings.

Check out the app.

Welcome each student personally by scanning their barcode to avoid bottlenecks and queues so you can easily monitor which students attended and which students to send follow up communications to once information has been synced back into Student CRM.

Proactive CRM solution for Oxford Brookes

The team at Data Harvesting has worked closely alongside the project team at one of the UK's leading modern universities, Oxford Brookes, to implement and deliver a new Student CRM to manage prospective students right up to enrolment.

Our experienced developers understand the importance of tailoring a CRM system to meet the needs of each establishment. Although we've built the core Student CRM structure, much of the functionality can be tailored and configured to suit the way in which your departments work.

[quote] Data Harvesting are a breath of fresh air to work with, they understand our sector are keen to offer proactive solutions to meet our ever changing needs through a CRM solution that will transform the way we do business." [/quote] Richard Craven, Business Partnership Manager at Oxford Brookes University

Users are encouraged to join the online community and submit feature requests to shape the future of Student CRM.  We are in an industry which is constantly changing with new technologies, new demands from internal stakeholders and new legislation from the government, which is why Student CRM offers a flexible solution to ensure your student recruitment is sustainable in the future.

The availability of the support team has been invaluable to the project's success.  The team is available during your working hours to help with technical questions after implementation. Our Love-o-meter gives us a 98% live customer satisfaction rating, which is 12% above the industry standard for software. The comments from our customers speak for themselves.

In-house CRM systems vs Student CRM

Many universities use homegrown, in-house CRM systems built by their IT departments. In the short term it seems like a great idea but quickly becomes difficult to sustain and recruit students over the longer term.

While building something in-house may seem like a good idea in terms of customisation, budget and utilising the resources in other departments, in the long run it'll set you back from the competition who have chosen to buy in a professional CRM to improve their student recruitment results, leveraging the vast experience and capabilities of a dedicated educational CRM provider.

In our experience of listening to universities, in-house systems can be clunky, take a long time to develop from the ground up, quickly become out of date and can be difficult to use. Student CRM on the other hand, not only easily integrates with many other internal systems but is also robust as it's undergone rigorous security testing to ensure your student data is safe.

Our sound advice is to leave it to the experts (us). Here's why:

If you'd like more information or even a free demo of our system just click here.

Our 2014 Christmas Opening Hours

Our VIP telephone and email support for Student CRM users will be available during the following hours, all other calls and emails will be monitored.

• Monday 22nd December 2014 - 9.00 to 5.30pm
• Tuesday 23rd December 2014 - 9.00 to 5.30pm
• Wednesday 24th December 2014 - We'll mostly be eating mince pies, but please call us up until 12:30pm for any urgent support matters.
• Thursday 25th December 2014 - Friday 2nd January 2015 - Closed
• Normal Monday to Friday support will resume on Monday 5th January 2015 at 9am.

Users can always access the Student CRM Help Centre 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

(If you'd like a demo of Student CRM for your university in 2015, please use the demo page and we'll get back to you with available dates.) 

The CRM platform itself and all of your student-facing forms will continue to be available 24 hours a day throughout Christmas 2014 and New Year for users and their students.

Season's Greetings to you all, and a Happy New Year!

Record number of student enrolments in 2014

There have been a record number of students placed at UK universities and colleges during 2014 according to an article published by UCAS.

UCAS states that more than 512,000 students secured places in UK universities and colleges, with record numbers from both UK and international students - totally nearly 17,000 more students than 2013.

With this in mind, it's no wonder so many universities are investing in a dedicated and robust CRM system to manage and nurture students through the enrolment and recruitment process.

The Chief Executive for UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, states that many universities have had to work harder to recruit students in recent years due to the rise in tuition fees.

A centralised system, such as Student CRM, will enable a university to:

• Communicate more effectively with prospective students pre-enrolment
• Engage and nurture relationships
• Market your university, courses, campus and accommodation
• Manage open day bookings and enquiries more efficiently
• Analyse recruitment and marketing activities
• Recruit more students

Universities are now in direct competition with one another to win prospective students. With so many potential students to fill places it's important to ensure your recruitment teams maximise communications and marketing activities to manage these students to your full potential.

Click on the button below to see what our clients have to say about the UK's most loved student recruitment solution.

Front-line CRM support for Coventry University

At Data Harvesting we pride ourselves on the level of support we provide to our clients which is measured in real-time on our love-o-meter. We ensure that our users not only own the very best student recruitment CRM, but they also have the very best student recruitment experts at Data Harvesting on hand to answer queries, set up touchpoints, establish workflows and monitor open day bookings. All they need to do is submit a support request, send in an email or pick up the phone to speak to a member of the team.

Joe Etchells, Senior Communications Officer, Coventry University comments;

"We consistently receive excellent front-line support from the Student CRM customer services team. They always reply promptly and put forward practical solutions to help us get the most out of the system."

All users of Student CRM have access to the following support services:

• VIP support with expertise from the Customer Service Team
• Face-to-face and remote training
• The Help Centre which is full of useful resources, articles and a community for student recruiters
• A series of Black Belt emails to help recruitment teams get the best results from Student CRM
• The opportunity to submit feature requests to shape the future of Student CRM

In the past five years, Coventry University has jumped an incredible 49 places in The Guardian University Guide and now sit at number 27 - their highest position to date and has been rated the Number 1 Modern University in the UK.

Coventry University has the highest student satisfaction rating

Our client Coventry University has the highest student satisfaction rating with 88.4% according to the National Student Survey 2014.

The university offers a top quality student experience and has been stated as one of the best places for students to study for a degree in the UK.

In recent years they’ve continued to climb the Sunday Times University League Table and in 2014 have climbed from position 45 in 2013 to position 42. In the past four years, Coventry University has jumped an incredible 40 places, outperforming many other universities.

Their recruitment, marketing and international teams use Student CRM to ensure students are engaged from day one. Student satisfaction is hugely important when students are considering spending 3 important years of their life studying in the city.

Check out our 21 apps aimed at building a relationship with students before they enrol.

Student CRM success for UCL Institute of Education

Good working relationships aid the successful implementation of a project. Just over 12 months ago UCL Institute of Education (IOE) formed a relationship with Data Harvesting to implement a new Student CRM for their student recruitment teams. Unlike other CRMs, Student CRM isn’t an ‘out of the box – one size fits all’ solution. It’s very much configured to meet the requirements of the establishment. There is effort and commitment from both sides, as demonstrated by the teams at Data Harvesting and IOE. When a university buys Student CRM, it’s not simply buying the product. They are buying into a wealth of experience, project management skills, training and customer support that goes towards making it the UK’s most loved student recruitment solution.

Holly Cartlidge, Marketing Manager at IOE commented:

"Data Harvesting have been great to work with ever since we scoped out our requirements in summer 2013. I have been particularly impressed by their willingness to develop the system for our specific needs, and all of the team there are a pleasure to work with."

Users receive face to face training, Help Centre access, email marketing tips to enhance student recruitment and access to the Customer Support team for day to day technical support. The good channels of communication between Data Harvesting and IOE certainly contributed to the successful installation of Student CRM.

After delivering the successful project, Holly went on to describe the benefits of using Student CRM:

"We are now using Student CRM to manage contacts from external events, prospectus requests, open day bookings and enquiries, and can communicate much more effectively with our prospective students, which all helps us deliver impactful student recruitment marketing."

DH Mobile enhances international student recruitment at City University London

International Officers at City University London use iPads running DH Mobile to collect student data at overseas recruitment events.

Martin Maule, Senior International Officer at City University London, recently attended student recruitment events across Europe and further afield. Martin has collected the details of almost 1,000 students from Poland, Germany, Italy, Turkey and USA since September 2014.

Martin and his team were able to choose the forms depending on which country they were recruiting in and start collecting student details offline. Once connected to the internet back in the hotel, the team simply synchronised the data to import the new student details directly into Student CRM. Automated email communications could be sent before they've got back to the UK to promote studying at City University London.

Martin highly recommends the app;

"The DH Mobile app has really helped improve the information we obtain from our overseas recruitment activities. The form is very easy to complete for our enquirers and it is very easy to setup the event pages. If you are looking for a way to gather good data more effectively then this is a good option."

Mobile Event Capture allows City University London's international recruitment teams to collect data quickly and effortlessly using iPads and start engaging with the students instantly using pre-defined workflows. Forms can be tailored for different events, branded with City University London's logo and whichever fields required for the data they need to capture.

See how DH Mobile can enhance your university's domestic and international student recruitment.

Top 5 tips for choosing a University CRM partner

With so many potential CRM partners in the HE industry, it's vital to choose the right one to meet your university's student recruitment needs. Every company is different, so it's important to have a flexible solution, with a dedicated team behind it. Here's our top 5 tips to help you select the perfect CRM partner for your university.

1. Talk to the experts

Make sure your chosen CRM partner is reputable and an industry expert. It is important to make sure they fully understand the student recruitment process and how to engage your prospective students.

Do your research and go with who you are most comfortable working with, after all, it's a long term commitment which will require a great working relationship. You want your CRM project to be a success to support your marketing and recruitment teams for many years to come. A good partnership should feel like having an extra team of CRM specialists when you need them.

2. Check their track record

Find out who their customers are and ask them what they think of the service. Read some of their case studies to see what's been done by the CRM partner before. Ask existing clients for testimonials and how they found the working relationship.

Here at Data Harvesting, we are proud to be working with some of the UK's leading universities, some of which have been kind enough to leave these comments. Data Harvesting has a proven track record in helping Universities to achieve their student recruitment goals by increasing open day bookings; improving open day registration conversions; increasing applications; and enrolment conversion rates.

3. Review the service levels

The level of service you receive is very important to the smooth day to day support for your team. Find out how much training (if any) you'll get from your CRM partner. What support channels are available and at what time of the day? Can you just pick up the phone and ask a quick question?

Make sure it is clear if the implementation and set up is part of the package, otherwise you could find that your team is configuring your CRM. Implementation of your Student CRM will be managed to completion by a dedicated project manager.

With Data Harvesting you will receive face to face training, including a delicious lunch on the south coast if you come down to visit us. The Customer Support team are in the office working the same working hours as you do. Right here, in the UK. Find out how satisfied Student CRM customers are with the service.

4. Get a CRM partner for life

What happens after implementation and training? How much are you expected to do by yourself? What do you do if you encounter a problem? Is the long term support there for you?

Our Customer Support team is on hand when you need them. Data Harvesting customers are given a VIP Support phone number and email address giving them direct access to the Customer Support team. They're also sent regular emails to help them engage with their students to increase their conversion rate along with access to our Help Centre and the ability to submit support tickets.

5. Ask about their future plans

It's always good to know what your CRM partner plans for the future and what those plans entail. The continuing development of a CRM is essential to keep up with changes in student behaviour, the needs of student recruitment officers as well as advances in technology.

Here at Data Harvesting, we listen to our customer's needs and encourage them to submit feature requests to enhance Student CRM. And because it's our very own product, we can build new features using our team of skilled developers. Student CRM has been built based on student recruitment team requirements, making it a highly customised solution for Higher Education.

Book a free demo of Student CRM's 21 apps and one of our team will come up and visit your university to show you how it could enhance your team's student recruitment.

Increase student satisfaction with Student CRM

Student CRM has proven to increase student satisfaction over the years by helping universities to build a relationship from initial engagement with each student.

By cleverly capturing data and regularly sending personalised marketing communications to students, recruitment activities can all be managed and analysed within one central Student CRM.

Student satisfaction is a hugely important factor in The Guardian University League Table, The Sunday Times League Table and the National Student Survey - which provides a widely used benchmark. Many universities with high student satisfaction rates (above 85%) naturally rise up the league tables after implementing Data Harvesting's Student CRM.

With rising tuition fees and increasing student places to fill in the competitive HE marketplace, universities need to ensure their marketing hits the spot with each potential student. By making it more coordinated and streamlining administration, recruitment teams are making the process far more productive by being more helpful and fully engaging the student throughout.

Speed is a factor - so offering information promptly after a student has made a request enhances their perception of your university, long before they've enrolled. Student CRM allows teams to automate some of the key processes by creating timely touchpoints along the student recruitment process, based on the way you already work.

Visit our 21 specialist apps to find out how Student CRM captures student data, allowing you to market to them afterwards.

Love is in the air with Student CRM users

Our live Love-o-meter shows that our users have given us a customer satisfaction rating of 98% (score taken today at 11.30am on Friday 7th November 2014) which is 12% above the industry average for software.

It's updated in real-time, with active comments and praise from our users. Recently we've responded to 683 requests for support, such as 'how do I set up a new touchpoint', or 'where can I change the date for my open day' and even 'can I change my course codes without breaking everything'.

We pride ourselves on speed and efficiency. Our Customer Support Team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.* You can call and speak to them direct, send the team a VIP email or submit a ticket from directly within Student CRM. And they'll get back to you with an answer. Promise.

While many of the answers can be found in our intuitive VIP Help Centre, a lot of questions are bespoke to each institution and require a more indepth answer to discuss users' needs. We're more than happy to offer a solution, talk or walk through how to set something up or even build new features if it proves to be a nationwide student recruitment solution.

It's all part of the service from Data Harvesting.

*not quite, but almost.