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:

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!

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. 

The 1st iOS app of its kind - DH Mobile

We are proud to announce the launch of our native iOS app DH Mobile, which allows universities and colleges to collect student data on an iPad at recruitment events anywhere in the world.

It's the 1st app of its kind for student recruitment and is available to download from the App Store.

What does it do?

The app allows recruitment teams to collect student data offline at events across the world. Simply set up your recruitment stand and ask prospective students to tap in their details which will be stored on the iPad. Once you connect to the internet this data will be synced into Student CRM with your other records.

We've built it from the ground up right here in Dorset and have some nifty features such as the capability to set up multiple forms for various events, branded with your logo and designs, with specified fields and the ability to go back into each submission and make a private note against each person. These private notes will be seen by your recruitment team back at base so they can start making offers and marketing to those students you've selected.

It's our most popular app amongst our clients by far.

Click here to request your DH Mobile demo.

Here's what some of our users have to say:

"It's a very helpful and easy to use tool for capturing student data at events, and I was very impressed with the excellent post event follow up functions."

"The app was an easy way to collect student details and a great way to keep in touch with students in a timely manner. The data was organised just the way I wanted it for my records and it saved me a lot of time."

"I love the mobile event capture app!  It is simple, clean and easy to use."

"I was impressed with the ease with which I could use the Mobile Event Capture app. It was very client friendly, easy to customize and accessible"

"The Data Harvesting Team was very helpful and even delivered instant changes when I suddenly decided that I needed more data. Thanks a lot for the very positive cooperation!"

Recruit more students with Student CRM

Each of our 21 apps has been specifically designed to help recruitment teams fully engage with all students using a variety of recruitment activities.

A combination of targeted marketing to your prospective students and automated logging of each interaction within a central CRM enhances a student's likeliness to choose you.

Recruitment teams can capture, engage with and recruit students as well as manage, market and analyse data within Student CRM by choosing any combination of our apps to tailor Student CRM to suit each university's specific needs.

The Student CRM Student Database app forms the centre of all recruitment activity. Each student's interaction with a university or college is recorded in here. It forms a complete history of two-way communications with all students.

The next ring contains apps which run through the majority of our other apps so your recruitment team can personalise, segment and target students with automated communications sent by various touchpoints.

The next ring out displays the apps which help you to build a stronger relationship with your prospective students via Enquiries, Applicant Open Days, Prospectus Requests, Surveys amongst others. These help you to engage and get to know the students.

The outer ring shows that the combined activities and apps will help you to capture, recruit, market manage, engage, communicate and analyse your student recruitment activity.

If you'd like more information on how Student CRM can enhance your student recruitment just click here. 

Store one million students here

Users of Student CRM can now benefit from an All You Can Eat (AYCE) data plan.

With the UK's most-loved Student recruitment solution, we can make up our own rules, so we've decided to increase our data storage allowances - so our clients can store an unlimited amount of data in our cloud including student records, enquiries, templates, application-related files, document library links and everything else within Student CRM.

Nil, nada, zero, zilch, you will be charged nothing. Instead you will have unlimited space in the cloud to do what you do best; capturing student data and marketing to your students without the worry of storage limits.

This increase in data storage also comes with several other updates and enhancements within Student CRM to make it EVEN better for recruitment teams. (If you are a Student CRM user, you don't need to do anything to get this increase, it will be applied automatically.) Just a little extra love from Data Harvesting.

Imperial College London ranked joint second university in the world

Congratulations to our client Imperial College London who have ranked joint second in the QS ranking of world universities alongside the University of Cambridge scoring 99.4%.

The rankings consist of the top 200 universities in the world, ranked by higher education data specialists QS.

The top 5 QS ranking of world universities

1st = Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) 2nd = University of Cambridge 2nd = Imperial College London 4th = Harvard University (USA) 5th = Oxford University 5th = University College London

At Data Harvesting, we think it's fantastic news to see four British universities entering the top 5. Congratulations to you all!

IOE shortlisted for 'University of the Year' award

Our client the Institute of Education (IOE) has been shortlisted for the prestigious University of the Year Award 2014 with Times Higher Education.

This afternoon the IOE marketing team contacted our Customer Support asking for the new award logo accreditation to appear in each email template broadcast within Student CRM so all prospective students are fully aware of their latest achievement.

Of course our Customer Support team took on the challenge and turned the request around in less than 1 working day.

Chris Husbands, Director of the IOE commented:

[quote] This achievement follows our other recent successes, such as the number one position for education in the QS World University rankings and our 'Outstanding' OFSTED ratings for teacher training provision. Our entry focused on the Institute's exceptional research-led teaching, leading-edge research and global leadership role shaping lives worldwide. It is unusual for a specialist institution to be shortlisted for the 'University of the Year' award and this is a tribute to the outstanding creativity and dedication of IOE staff, students and alumni.[/quote]

Other universities nominated for the University of the Year award include:

• Birkbeck, University of London
• Edge Hill University
• University of Glasgow
• Harper Adams University
• Swansea University

The winners will be announced at the THE awards on 27th November.

Build stronger relationships with students

Recruitment teams can build stronger relationships with students by taking a multi-channel approach and communicating through a range of different media.

Research shows that by segmenting and targeting prospective students via personalised communications within Student CRM through a cross-section of different marketing materials, students will benefit from a stronger relationship with your university and be more likely to choose to study with you.

With the highly competitive sector of higher education, universities really need to stand out from their competitors from initial enquiry through to enrolment to ensure they're a top choice for students, utilising every channel possible to keep students engaged.

Cleverly combining digital marketing and direct mail over a staggered period of time leading up to the decision-making process is more likely to engage students with your university. A multi-channel marketing approach can include sending communications such as postcards, letters, emails and text messages to reinforce your university's brand and key messages.

Student CRM can automatically send personalised marketing materials to students via touchpointsincluding managing postal labels, distribution and mailing houses, to online email campaigns and text message communications.