10 Performance and Impact Features webinar - 31 March 2022

10 Performance & Impact Features

Do you have a remit of:

• Recruitment

• Marketing

• Outreach

• Events or anything else closely linked to these?

Do you have a colleague who doesn't currently use the CRM that does work in these areas?

If the answer to any of these were yes, maybe, sort of or anything else other than "no", then this Webinar is for all of you! Download the slides here http://dhdocs.com/D1RI

Transcript:

Andy Speed: Yeah. So often everyone, um, suffering, we're going to be talking through 10 performance and impact features within student CRM within the system, uh, areas that either aren't being utilized by all or many, um, and things that just will help us understand the system and use things in a different way. Let's say hopefully, um, what I would say is that for the majority of the people on this call, the majority of things we're going to talk about already included in the packages.

That you have some of the features maybe in apps that you don't have. Um, but you can obviously pick and choose which ones you're going to, to utilize, move forwards. And we can talk about those afterwards with those that wish.

We're in the session, the four sort of main steps of the, uh, the session agenda for today. One define what we mean by sort of performance, impact and dates hooks. The second part is looking at the 10 features, hopefully deal that deal with that in 10 ish minutes, hopefully to allow plenty of time for questions and discussion at the end.

I'm very aware. I don't necessarily like to follow my timings very well, so it may be slightly more than 10 minutes. Um, and then at the end quick discussion and questions and next steps from there, sorry, performance impacts and data folks. First of all, to address data hooks, data hooks is an official term that's out there.

I don't necessarily mean it in the official term of data hooks. I'm referencing. The idea of, um, a nice bit of imagery, let's say where we're identifying. Items of information, data, knowledge, et cetera, that we might want to keep poking out a little bit, that we can utilize further down the line for other purposes, to identify or to analyze or judge or, or however you want to terminate it.

Terminology sort of use for that. That's basically why I'm determining bikes or data hooks. All of the features that I'm going to talk through are all ways of creating those books, creating these points of additional data and implement. So within that, essentially, to understand what high-performance or higher levels of impacts are, we need to understand what we're trying to achieve, uh, from, from what, from our activities and our things that we're doing.

The same can be said from this webinar. So to utilize the tools and the tips on talking about, you're going to need to know what you're trying to achieve as a result of that, and that hopefully we make more sense as we've moved around. The survivorship bias plays a part in this, for those that don't know what that is, and don't recognize the image of the plane that's on there.

There was a study that was undertaken during world war two. Um, basically BOMA planes that were returning, um, from there, from their runs and they misunderstood, um, that the, that the weaknesses in the planes that were returning were where the bullet holes were, where the red dots were. And in fact, actually the problem was I didn't recognize that the planes that weren't returning were probably showing areas of, uh, of weakness in the air is different to this one.

And they had assumed that because they survived, that they could understand where the findings were for. Where does that play in terms of this and what I'm talking about? Uh, essentially, what are we measuring? Why aren't we measuring it? What aren't we using, et cetera. And what don't we know, um, uh, my, I guess, point with this and the things that we're going to talk about is.

Why wouldn't you want to do some of the things I'm talking about as we move, move throughout the, the features in a little while, um, in order to have a better, deeper understanding of, of all of our activities and the successes and those types of things. Um, and ultimately if you don't understand where you're going and what you're trying to get to, um, and you don't really know what solutions you don't know what the primary scope of the, of the role is or what you're trying to achieve.

My bigger question. Why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you create these various data hooks that I'm talking about with you, um, for use in the future when, when you have weather out or when you decide you want this, actually you could start building a sort of base of information and knowledge to be used in the future.

Hopefully that will make sense. And hopefully that wasn't too much of a, of a gardener thrown in my own presentation. So onto now, our 10 in 10. Now the first one of these, uh, is probably, uh, it's a little bit of a cheat. And then the first five all relate to this one particular, uh, aspect. But each of them I believe are worth sort of talking about an individual basis.

So I'm going to, if an activity reports in, I would say when I've looked across the. Most providers aren't using this and, or aren't using it consistently, um, for their own success. This for me is the, the sort of the gold element of, of sort of building these data hooks. You're applying multiple. Tags to your data that you create, um, through each of these five things that are on screen there, between the teens, your users, your activities, and your organizations you're involved yourself with and the outcomes, um, to understand basically the value that's coming from these.

And it's as simple as when you clone an event from one of the event apps, because it's available in event matters. Michael have been capture prep can open days, applicant open days, and it's even available when you do a data upload into one of those, those occurrences as well. Um, that you're creating these, these sort of data points.

So when we're talking about understanding sort of group value. So again, when we talk through the, the activity types and using teams, that will make more sense, but it could be around on Samuel sort of staff and team effectiveness. And it could also be around understanding sort of your return on investment from, from the types of activities that you're undertaking.

So activity types is the second feature that we're talking about, that links back to the event activity report. Ultimately, this is a way of comprehensively sort of identifying any activity that leads to students, joining your, your providers, be it recruitment bit, nurturing, bit conversion, whatever types of terminology you want to apply to that.

Um, it's a way of recognizing that your outreach accidents, uh, your international teams work, whatever it is, there's a way of capturing it within. It's as simple as a, as a free text, you create a line, you give it a number and you give it an activity name. You create a bit of a description to provide some sort of continuity and transparency across your teams, across your departments across time so that everyone knows what it was being recorded against that activity at that period of time.

Um, and you can go on infinitum and create these down as many times as you like. What is it? It's essentially, it's just a way of identifying these activities that you're doing. It's found within the student database, um, settings cold. Um, and why. For me, it's all about that continuity element. It's about, uh, providing the opportunity to collect information against these, for example, in this one here.

[00:07:07] So you'd know how many webinars, what success level look like from that webinars, how many leads we were capturing from those webinars? Um, it's, it's a way of having a deeper understanding of what it is that we're doing and judging some value off the back of that and providing that sort of continuity and consistency as well.

On top of that number three, our users and teams. So it's the second part of the event activity reports in. Again, continuity is a big part of this. For me, it comes down to, uh, understanding which people belong to, which teams that link to which activities. And we start to build a bigger, deeper picture within the CRM, uh, as to what's contributing to our success, it could be looking at performance management or monitoring.

Teams groups or teams, groups of people. However you want to sort of utilize those, understanding the sort of the group value again. So again, if you have a team that specifically international or outreach focused, or our schools and colleges and partners or whatever else you want to break those down to, it's a way of judging success, performance impact against those.

But you have to be able to create these first and again, most people. Using this function very often at all. Um, again, it's creating sort of large levels of data against these these groups. Um, and you can also partner it with an automation. Should you wish to, to be able to automatically, um, allocate teams, user sorry, or teams, uh, against.

People which we can, which you can see within the student record as well. And so that's, that's another function and that again, available, um, within, uh, the shin database, sorry, under users. Sorry. Um, and then the assessments there set the users up within there. So they're using the teams come from there.

Just a little aside here, before we move forward, I'm gonna reference this a bit. So I just wanted to introduce this here. In our it's actually quite useful. I would say most people aren't using these in, in any real, uh, real sort of passion let's say. Um, but they're available in most apps, right? Varying degrees of, of usability or, or sort of value.

And a lot of them link back to things that are coming up within these 10 that we're going to be talking about. And as you can see that as there's a handful on there. So between users assigned teams assigned personas and stages, all of those are things that we're going to talk about in the next sort of six or so features.

Speaking of associations, probably my favorite one in our, in our list of, uh, of 10 for today. Um, the ability to understand and link people, organizations, and events together. In such a simple and slick way from the, from that event activity reporting point, um, linking student database thinking, contact manager and all of your event apps in one fell swoop, just the ability to be able to record.

Beyond just what the event is. So an example of what that would look like on this example here, we've got our, our student, our example, student Johnny Cash, um, within the student record card yourself, uh, that you'll see this yourself and tab eight along the bottom is associations. I would say most, most people don't have.

Any, anything in these, when you look at your student records, um, and they would, they will appear in here automatically when you create the, the association with the event that you create, and then, then import those students for whatever reason. And the example that we've got here, our pink column was actually manually entered, um, which is done from within the student record card itself from within the student.

And, and that association is given the blue one was automatically allocated when they send it a specific. Here's what it looks like in the logs as well. So we can see exactly where they came from. Again, the blue, you can see that happened from, uh, from taking part in an event, uh, and the pink one was added by a specific, uh, organized, uh, specific person, myself, uh, who added this to this, this organization.

So we could see what I looked like. From within contact manager itself, uh, it starts to look like this. So again, when we looking in concept manager and we look under our organizations, they have the same tab of association. And within that, we'll show you the full list of the students that are associated with that organization.

Now for big organizations, something like a, you cath, where you could have thousands of students associated. Top, press that tab. If you've got a lot of time to wait, sometimes it can be a wall to put a lives through an easier way of saying how many students are associates with that is to help her over the little green, um, Person icon in the top right-hand corner and it will show you how many students are associated with that organization.

And again, this one here, so fake kg, consultancy others for notices you Casper. I'm not going to call it that on a demo at so Fe kg consultants. Both of those organizations, vacate G consultancy and fake academy both exist in different occurrences. So fake academy in this example existed in our schools and colleges, and then our fate kg consultancy existed in our business contacts.

So we're able to separate the two different types of organizations. Two different associations within those. Um, and still at the same time within the student themselves, see it in one place. We can see the different ways that they're interacting with the different parts of our organization, our partners, et cetera, and understanding that full value.

On the back of that. Another one of our in-app reports, which is really, really useful to know, and to see, and to understand is this one here, which is the in-app report for associations by organizations, where you can view and see a simple count based on the timeframe that you associated the top. So that ones for all time within this test, Set up the, I had to see which organizations we have in there and how many associations they've got.

So where they're coming from in reality, what this means to you in real life is that those associations will be coming when a lead is generated from that organization. So when I'm at a school and they fill out my MEC form and that, that, that name comes and hits. Uh, hits the student database and it comes in on the same cable automatically, or the end of the event, that association is created as a, as a result of that.

And that goes on their record. Then that student, we meet them again, uh, a UCAS event. Then we meet them at an open day. Again, all of those things can start to build up within there. So it's given us a real, real idea of where that partnership. The next one from that is, uh, is around event outcomes. So this is the last part of, uh, the event activity reporting.

And it's the area we come back to post event. It's our understanding of how successful that event was. And basically trying to put some level of tangibility, uh, against that. Now you could use the simple. Attrition of how many leads did we capture? How many people did we find? Which of course you'll get from, from your data important.

You'll understand it from that perspective, but are there other things that are valuable to us as an organization beyond just how many leads did we capture? Is it about how many people we actually going front? Or if it's outreach, how many students did we see while we're there? Is it about how many parents we saw or is it about how many perspectives as we gave out?

Whatever those other sort of intangible elements normally would have. Can we record it here in some capacity. So you would set it up again, based on each occurrence of, uh, of each of your event apps, you would have the option to create a different set of outcomes available to you. And again, you just build these out as many as you like, as long as you've got some logic to it that makes sense to you and you use the description to help other people understand that.

For example, this one that I've got in front of us here, where I've selected five, very good. That's on the basis that actually there was more than 200 people at that event. And I've said that that was really good. That was, that was a very good event from this capacity. So it's just as long as you understand how that works for you for that occurrence for that app, et cetera.

That's where that, that value really comes into. So that's the event outcomes. Um, In terms of outside of, uh, event activity reports in, so the last, the second half of this basically are all outside of that. So you're responsible for is a really interesting one, um, in my opinion. So, uh, it's the little tab just below Jimmy nails.

Nine, that is a little down, and it's basically the chance to allocate a user from the system, a member of your staff, to be responsible for an individual. And there could be many reasons why you might want to do this. It could be that that individual falls within a specific outreach category or. Uh, there's a specific recruitment target and that student for whatever reason meets within that, because they, uh, they're part of a key focus for you in terms of courses or they're an alumni or whatever it is.

There could be a reason to specifically identify them and essentially account manage. Account management them through sort of the recruitment process. This could be a way of, of sort of allocating that and then measuring what that does. Um, you could allocate them based on postcode or allocate them based on region or whatever it is that you want.

There's ways of, of identifying this. Um, and ultimately it's something that you can do if you wanted to. That have too, but it's, it's a function that's I would say is currently not utilized as much. Um, and the big part for me with this one comes down to sort of performance management and sort of monitoring.

So if there are multiple people doing the same function, Is there a distinct difference in the success rate from individuals within the same team. And is there learnings to come from individuals that are ultimately doing the same function as someone every year massively outperforming in terms of enrolling more students at the end of the process?

And if so, what are they doing? Are they doing anything different? Is it purely luck? What is that? And without having this attributed, you don't have the ability to really do that beyond that, unless you're obviously saving this information somewhere else separately. Um, the other key parts of this is the ability to partner with an automation again.

So the ability to automatically allocate individuals to be responsible for someone, if they meet certain criteria. Okay. So for that, I keep referencing automation. So those that don't know what what's motions are. It's a separate app, uh, that allows for, um, basically. Non linear integrations between applications.

So functionality that ultimately is within a specific application. It allows it to interact with another application in another way that it wouldn't do without the automations app. If anyone wants to understand more about that, can we can talk about it often. Number seven is personas. Uh, probably one of the features that you use the most, but the most differently across the system.

And the most probably inconsistently, um, I saw this on LinkedIn. Couldn't help myself, but bring it into this session. The phones aren't about demographics. And I think that a lot of the time is because they, everyone has something shared, actually a persona is about more the differences, less so than the shed.

So in this case, all of the shared actions are the shared sort of demographic elements to this. So in prince Charles and OZO, Could paint them as the same individual. If we took the picture away and just had the description by our ultimately the same person, it'd be hard to argue that they weren't, if you didn't know who they were, um, on the right-hand side, you can see the difference in the way that the system can look at this and the way that you could use personas.

So we can see prince Charles is a money bail in orange, and also he was born is black and he's a balmy back. And essentially it's a way of, um, allocating. The attributions to individuals based on either how they self-define or based on the actions that you see them do or perform, um, either through one of your, sort of your web forms or rapid survey, something like that, um, or, or partner with an automation.

So when they do something specific that you allocate them to a certain persona, And it's about the ability in the future to be able to personalize content to them. The other thing which is probably the most seen with personal persona, sorry, is the fact that personas are time limited. So a student can move between personas throughout their journey with us.

It isn't fixed in time. So you will see students changing episodes as they move through the process. Depending on how many opportunities you give them. So I, so identify as a persona that will happen at the screenshot. And you can see that is essentially it's a, it's a short one. It looks like a salad within student database.

Again, under the settings called new, create them by creating the name, allocate color code. Actually create some kind of a ballot to explain what they are and what it's doing. And that falls within that. The other, the other aspect I'd say within this as well, is that if you aren't going to use this and wanting to track personas over time, it's always good to partner it with an automation, to be able to potentially tag the student with the persona that they have at that time, so that if they change the cider in the future, and you wanted to understand previous personas, you could, you could understand that through an automated.

Hopefully that that makes sense. We can talk about them more in questions that are offending or might come up. Uh, this is the, my second favorite one in the list this afternoon. So around stages, uh, again, one that's, uh, inconsistently used and I'll show you on the next grade, the next couple of screens, couple of different ways that this is, this is being done.

Essentially it's about defining and identifying what your funnel. Um, I would say most people in the system are focusing purely on understanding the stages or the state. Uh, of applications, but not necessarily understanding the stages or the positions students sat pre-application. So that whole big sort of chunk between lead gen and an application, this is potentially a way of doing that.

It creates a real high level of flexibility as well, because you have complete control over what these look like. Um, and you can, you can determine what these stages. Look like and work. And so it fits your system that you want it to not necessarily, not necessarily just as the standard sort of UCAS idea, it could be leading up to the Yukon one and then mimic the UCAS one answer was, or however you want it to basically, as you can see on screen here, this is another really nice feature of the in-app reports.

Is that it shows us our stages really nicely. So if you want it to understand how many students were relevant of how they applied, whether it a direct African a post-grads, if it was an undergrad, if it was in central student, whatever else, um, obviously all of their status is, uh, application stage. I'll one thing.

But when the, in the, in the buildups that, what does our pipeline look like? Where are people sitting? How long are they sitting there for? What does that, what does that whole thing look like before they apply? Ultimately the time where there's the highest level of attrition normally is that you're losing people between lead gen and application.

So what's going on in that period of time. And, and what can we do to basically stop that or to limit that or to, to reduce that. And this is a nice way of doing that. And again, that flexibility of doing it, however you want to work really well. And again, you can partner it with an automation to automatically move or, or to recognize when students are at specific stages, depending on, on how you build things out.

This is an example of, of a couple of different ways that this is, uh, this is potentially being used in the system. So these are two different test environments we've got. Um, and I thought let's just show both versions of these. Um, so we've got, uh, on the, on the left-hand side, you've got a real, uh, Follow the less structured let's save them the one on the right.

And that's more of a gut feeling on the left. So are they just calling on us? Are they, are they, are they hot? Are they, are they really interacted with us? And then have they applied or enrollment? It's a really basic one on the right. We're talking about a far more sort of micromanaged processor that the sort of understanding of it, but you can see how potentially the two different processes work.

On nine is our engagement scoring. So engagement scoring again, south lynching database out in the. The Coke within that. It's essentially a way of, um, recognizing interactions that you're having with your, with your leads or with your applicants and allowing the engagement score, which you can see a quick snapshot of in the top, right.

And corner where that sits in the student record card. To understand how engaged those students are with you and with your processes. Now we know that there are a couple of, uh, complications as a result of, uh, essentially bots inside email, um, providers, a couple of specific email providers, and that can skew a couple of the scoring functions related to sort of email opens.

It's an ongoing thing that we're working, but they, they, they develop issues, uh, for us as we fight the fires, uh, we are working on this. But the point that I sort of refer to on this, uh, it always comes back down to what I think I mentioned at the start around focusing on outcomes, if we're focused on our outcomes and the actions that we want, our, our students, our leads, our applicants to be doing, as opposed to necessarily what they've read it.

So the actions that we get into attend something, book onto something, speak to someone, for example, those things aren't skewed by email stats. Those things are all fixed in stone, late they happen. Um, and there's a way of recognizing that. So you could minimize the implications of the emails. But just not monitoring email, email opens, for example, and that can come up within this.

The good thing about email, so it will be guidance store and sorry is they could be pre-planned so you can program this whole sort of page of grids and give their scores and all these things to it, or it can be ad hoc. And I say that on the basis, they could be partnered with an automation. Um, and you could allocate some level of, uh, of engagement score based on that, which I'll show you on the next slide.

And it's about being outcome focused success. So if we focus on the outcomes and the things that we want our students to be doing, you're more likely to sort of see value in this section itself. This is an example of what an automation looks like. That involves engagement score. I've broken this down.

It's normally a one straight string by brokenness. It's easy to view. Um, so in this example, we're looking for a student that inquires with us. They come in by our, the inquiry. Um, and we're looking within the message content within the message content. We're looking for the value Easter egg, 2022, and as a result of their comment, including Easter of 2022, we're going to give them an engagement score of a hundred.

Now that's a stupid example. Um, however, it has its value when we put it in the context. If I'm giving a presentation, a large store fair or something like that, or an assembly or wherever it is, or on a piece of marketing material and a bit like a voucher Dakota, March madness, 20, 22 or whatever it is for one of our shops that we have.

And the rules, if they quote that back to us, does that mean they're more highly engaged than someone that doesn't quote that back to. Maybe, maybe not. Um, there's a lot of different ways of, uh, of tweaking or recognizing that engagement score change. And that's an example of one of those times that I quite like.

Speaking of automations, we're going into our 10th one now. So 10 hair, there's two examples on the screen. Essentially automations are used to increase team capacity. If you're looking to automate things and to take away some of the manual processes to use some of the functionality that I was talking about before or, or whatever else, the automation is a really neat and nice way of doing that.

Um, it allows, uh, Applications to interacting non-ordinary ways, as I mentioned before. So as we can see in this example, we, the first one we're looking at inquiry. So we're looking at when a web phone creates inquiry. Someone creates an inquiry with us, um, and the message content includes. And you can't say that.

For example complaint, terrible Paul rubbish. So if it includes any of those, we're going to adjust our engagement score and we're going to reduce it by 99. We're going to say that if they've, if they've taken their time to contact us and use any of those words, it's likely that that's negative and therefore we're going to reduce their engagement score.

And what we're going to do then is we're going to replace their priority, fill with the little staff due to the inquiries. And we're going to turn that into a yes. So it's going to say. And then what we've got on the right here is a secondary automation from that. And that's, if an inquiry form has a priority of yes, that is going to trigger an automated notifications, a specific member of staff to go and deal with that.

So in this instance, if that gets tagged, sorry, if that gets prioritized. An email is going to be sent to team leader, uni.com. And that member of staff is going to have a direct email land in their inbox to say, this student has been made a priority, go and have a look at them, go and find out what's going on with them.

Same can be said. For example, if someone's using the data compliance one, for example, it could be. There's all sorts of different ways. It could be around status changes. It could be around, um, withdrawal rules or whatever else is ways of, of using this to your, your sort of benefit. So, yeah, automation is a great way of increasing capacity and again, it's a, it's a function.

And a feature that I would say is, is vastly under utilized. And then I know us at 10 in 10, and I've gone over my 10 minutes and now I'm going to go over my 10. And I'm going to throw in one more, which states tax, which ultimately, uh, on the, on the screen here on the right, we've got, uh, This is just an example on the power BI I have on the system from an American university, the types of things that you can build out with your, with your.

That information from the data packs, uh, it could be through Tableau or another, another platform, whatever your institution is using. And it's a way of really deep diving into that data. I've mentioned in our reports. They are specifically very lightweight. They're not designed to be, uh, to be able to deep dive into things.

The system isn't designed to be. Allow that to look across those apps, uh, within the system, uh, taking it out into device, back to looking at it on a proper business analyst sort of platform is the best way of doing that. Looking at how your success works in the future, looking at where your trends analysis comes from.

Again, the data is a great way of taking that out on that that covers all that. The sort of the data we've spoken about today as well. Uh, understanding specifically the, the sort of the value and the impact of your maybe your outreach activity or international activity, schools, colleges, partnerships, et cetera.

That's where it comes from. Understanding your selling investment all from this. And the real key to this one, the reason why the data packs and the BI platforms are more useful and better than having it just as in the system, you have the ability to bring in other data from external, you can bring in stuff from, uh, from your student record system and look at the, the journey that they take from inquiry through to, uh, I don't know, to graduation or beyond sort of graduate destinations, those sorts of things.

So it's not just the recruitment process. You can look at the, sort of the whole life journey. Okay. That's my 10 in 10, just a quick recap of the sections that we've covered across there for you on screen. And I'll ask if people can start to get their questions together. I'm going to take a moment to just not speak for a second.

I'm going to open up the chat window so I can see what's there. And step, fuck asking you to come back on for me and let me know if there's any ones that you specifically think I should be speaking. Oh, I'm here. Um, no, we haven't had any questions yet, but let's see if anybody has got anything that they'd like to ask about.

Yeah. If anyone has questions, feel free to turn your Mike Mike and-or camera on. We're not recording cameras, so you're not going to be on screen. Um, one of the questions I've got actually is, um, Throughout the system. Lot of what you're talking about here is, is actually across apps. So, so is that one of the primary benefits really are things like, for instance, um, the event activity reporting panel is that you can categorize things across the different apps.

Yeah, I think so. So it's the, I guess. The benefit of having it across apps is that you have that it's not just happening in isolation. So it's not just recording what you're doing in mobile event capture and only mobile event capture allows for that comparison across similar apps. So everything that relates to activity your, are you there that for your events that you're doing, it will record that against those, but you also have the ability.

Within this stuff is, but you can change for example, your outcomes. If you want to have different outcomes for different occurrences, you can have that difference at the same time as being similar. Um, as long as your activity list is comprehensive, you don't necessarily need to use all of those activities in all of the apps within all of the occurrences.

As long as the activity list itself is comprehensive and it provides that sort of single point of, uh, of reference then, then yeah, it works great. Yeah. So an example might be for instance, um, like, uh, you might be running a specific kind of, um, event with a particular channel, like an online event, um, using a particular, um, third party for instance, but you might have a big event like in PhD, in pre applicant, open days, and then a much smaller targeted event at, um, various, uh, a very specific student demographic.

But using event manager, but if you had the same, um, activity type across the two apps and you record that accurately, then you'll be able to see how that particular channel is performing for you both in the bigger open day, online, open day, and about specific student event. It's the sort of thing where my head immediately with the situation you just presented that stuff, but actually your activity type might well.

For example, a presentation and, and your recording. Cause they're all presentations in different capacities. And then actually your, the association is where the success part comes from there because actually you could record, uh, you could set up your platform, you could set up, I don't know. My webinar or go to me or whatever it is as your business contacts and then associated from there.

So you can actually record your activity type and your, your platforms, a separate thing. You can obviously do that within the location part as well above which comes into that as well, because all of that context is usable in line with this when it comes out in the data packs. Um, it's just a question for me.

It just. It gives options. And that flexibility, that ability to, to get a bit creative with how you want to record something or how you'd want to, to, to understand things at a deeper level comes from doing that. And the nice thing is the clone ability. So once you clone it and a lot of that hard coding part bottom just needs tweaking.

You just need to adjust who the association is, go and see, but actually the person that's doing the event or the team that's doing the event is already there. So you don't even necessarily need to rebuild it every time you just need to tweak it. You. Yeah. Okay. That makes more sense. So does anybody have any questions then?

Always happy. That's not a problem. What I would say is, um, next steps from this, in that case, um, there's, there's two things that you can do or three things you can do. One is you can say that was, that was lovely. But it's not for me or it's not going to work or whatever else, and that's absolutely fine.

Or go and have a little play with that yourselves and just, just do what you want to do. The second option is that you have a chat with staff or a team about how you might use some of these functions and features, or the third option is, is to book, to have a meet with me and have a chat about things, uh, as your account manager.

And especially if there's a function there, if you're looking at automation, for example, um, or if you don't have access to contact manager or whatever, As, as a possibility of sort of taking that element and seeing how that works. So if there's no other questions, I'll ask you to wrap the, uh, wrap the recording upstairs.

Yeah. Cool. Okay. Yep. That seems to be it. So I'll just stop the recording now.

Zuko Forms Webinar 9 Feb 2022

Can you get your Form Completion Rate (FCR) beyond 50%?

Learn about form analytics with Zuko using real Student CRM examples.

Find out how Zuko can pinpoint the friction points in your Student CRM Web Forms and show you where your prospects bale out. 

Using Zuko you can make simple changes to increase your form completion rate and improve your recruitment.

Transcript:

Lene Raastad: Now it's definitely recording. I got the notification.

Dom: Thanks. Okay. Good morning everybody. This is a webinar. For one of ethics and we are partnering with Zuko, Zuko analytics. We've known for a great many years and they've got some really cool stats around web form analytics. So they do something way cooler than Google analytics can do way cooler than we can do.

So let her know this morning, I'll go into a co-host and talk you through a little project we've been running in the background. So the little project we're running in the background is in fact that. So Lana and Allen from Zuko and myself, we say Andy, but I think half of CS is here as well. So what we're going to do is I'll do a very quick.

And I'm going to hand over to Zuko and Lenne. And I am going to actually go through the project that we ran together then into Q and A, and then at the end, we've got next steps. So this will be a 30 minute webinar as usual. Um, however, if it wants to run over or we finish early, that's cool as well. And then we'll share the video with everybody.

So the background to this is that. Um, Ryan Taylor from city, university of London, very kindly agreed to participating in this as the, or it has a kind of a Guinea pig web form. So on the, um, The city website is this page. Okay. And embedded on this page is a link to a web form. So this is all about short courses.

Uh, and Ron and I had a look in the back and we agreed that one of these forms is mysteriously underperforming, and we don't know what it is. So why don't we check it out? So what we've done is we've found the form and we found the link. Okay. The link is here, curiously. We've also, uh, Found another link down here, which is an interesting finding we'll talk about later.

And this is inside, uh, runs form, which again, I've got permission to share with you. This is the form itself. Okay. And this is the location that's stored at, which has abated or showed you the most important thing and bewildering for anybody who wants high response rates is this, this is not cool. 1.9% completion indicates there is an issue.

And from our stats, you can see it's getting loads of views and you got the weekend troughs and the week peaks as well. So there's something going on here. Thanks to, uh, Zuko and learner. We have been able to dig a lot deeper into this. So, um, I'm going to ask Lana now to give a quick description of her Allan and Zuko and the part they've played, firstly, in setting.

Zuko tracking.

Lene: Sure. Okay, cool. So what I will do then is I will share my screen so that you can see everything as well. Um, okay. So if I click continue, now, I believe I will kick you out to screen sharing. Are you okay with me doing that? Please? Go ahead. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Continue. And then I need to choose the correct one, which I think if there's one.

Cool. Cool. Can you see my screen? Okay. Yeah, we can. Perfect. So in, if we first talk about kind of how Sukkot works and how the setup was done. So basically the purpose of Zuko is to help you identify basically where and why people are dropping out of your form. And then once you've identified where and why that then gives you the opportunity to go and change.

And then increase your conversion rates on your forms. Right? So with the set up, it's pretty simple. So how it works, let me just move these faces out of the way so I can see here. So the setup is super simple. So how it works with Zuko for the setup is you have two different tags. So you basically just copy and paste these tags into your form system.

And we did this together, didn't we? Dom. And how long did it take you think? Was it five.

Dom: Uh, probably less than that. Yeah. It's well established. There's also help center articles in the help center if you want to set it up, but it's straightforward if you got stuck, um, chat with Steph and her team as well.

Thanks Lene.

Lene: Okay. So once you've set everything up, that's when you start getting the data through, right? So that's what I'll show you now. So incident go, you'll have these different databases. So, what we've got here is the form data. And this one gives you the kinds of top level data of your starters and completions and views to the forum.

Then I'll take you into the other reports later on that goes a little bit deeper into each individual field. Um, but first, if we look at the city form here, you can see the people that viewed the form, uh, removed the best. So based on the people that viewed the form, as you can see, it's a similar kind of peaks and troughs.

So we're looking at before. Then you can see the people actually started the form. And this is one of the things we noticed when we were looking at this data is that there's quite a big gap here between the people that view this form and the people that start this form. So this kind of goes back to what we were looking at before, when you looked at where on the page.

So, let me get my tub here

Dom: and the difference lender between your blue line and the red line is in line with the 1.9% completion rate that we're getting inside. Um, cities, web form itself, we run the stats and we're, we stop at 1.9%, but you can go much deeper so you can see the problem that we can see the differences.

You can go right into it and figure out what's going on.

Lene: Yeah, that's completely true. So basically, just to, just to show you this again, so basis where the form actually was. So what we noticed was that basically anybody that goes on this page, regardless of which form they're actually going on to, or if they go onto form at all, gets counted as a view on this form, which then of course contributes quite a lot to a very, very.

Uh, view to stops, right? And then again, of U2 to completion, right? So on average, based on our benchmarking stats that we have from the education sector, we're looking at around a benchmark and conversion rates of around 70% doesn't overall. Um, and then for applications is around six to two points. Um, and for inquiries around 77%, which is quite different to the kind of stats we're seeing here.

But yeah. So let me jump back to the farm itself. And then of course we have the completions and also the abandons here. So completion is of course, somebody that successfully completes the form and then abandoned is somebody that starts the form, but then leaves at some point. And these are the people you want to identity.

Why they abandoned. Right. But as part of the kind of overall data, we also have these things here, which is basically a conversion rates. So like we spoke about before kind of your view, proportionately who views the form starts to form. And of course also who've used the form, ends up completing the form as well.

And it's also quite interesting to look at the difference between the complete and abandoned sessions. So in this form here, you can see. Um, these are the average complete sessions to patients, and these are the average abandoned session durations. So of course, normally you might have a little bit, um, more data in here.

So we normally recommend having at least around a thousand sessions before you started. Proper conclusions, because of course you need, you need that number two, to make sure that you have statistical relevant evidence here. So what I'll do is I'll take you through the kind of data we gathered here. And then I'll also show you an example from another form that has a lot more data in it, so they could see how you can draw conclusions from this data.

Dom: Would you mind scrolling up just for a second? There was. So on the right-hand side at the bottom, you've got to start to do completion rate 3.75%. Now that may appear to other universities there's quite a healthy, uh, completion rate. However, in your experience, it's not as high as the average numbers you're getting from education for, uh, clients that use

Lene: That's true. So, uh, the average was around a 62% for application form. From starts to completion. Right? Interesting

Dom: inquiry forms.

Lene: Yes. An inquiry forms are even higher. There's 77% on average.

Dom: Okay. So that's something for all of our users to aim for. Um, and it's worth bearing in mind that if we don't. Web forms.

Uh, they are the lifeblood of feeding into students' CRM with your web forms. You don't have enough of them if they're not behaving properly, if they're not distributed in the right places, uh, your students are suffering from, you know, a starvation of fuel here. So what lenders from can do is to take the forms you've got and just increase the response rate, massively.

Everything else flows through the front of much better when you've got a lot more coming in. Okay, Linda. Thank you,

Lene: definitely. Okay, cool. So, uh, continue on. So here you have basically the difference then between the abandoned and completed completed session. So the session duration here, you can see that in this form so far, the average completed session duration is around six minutes.

Whilst the average abandoned session duration is around one minute. And when you see that kind of difference, then you can. Already kind of assume that the people that are leaving are leaving quite early on in the journey compared to the six minutes, it takes to complete the form, for example. Um, and here we have a field return.

So what we mean by field return is basically if somebody interacts with the field, um, then they move on and then they have to return back to that field. Maybe they had an error message or maybe they had to go back and change. Um, so, so normally it's quite good to, to compare the difference here. So if an abundance sessions are on average, returning a lot more, that can indicators of friction.

If they're returning a lot less back in indicate leaving early on in the journey, and then you have this one here, which basically shows you the failed submissions over time. So these are the people that make it all the way to the end of your form. And they try to submit, but they fail to do it probably because they had an RMS.

That meant that they hadn't filled in the phone properly. Cool. And then the next one we'll we'll dig into them is the field data. So after you've kind of looked at all the overall, uh, data, I forgot to mention actually you can, of course add any filters you want here as well. If you want to filter by a specific date range, and then out of the box, we do also have other filters to look at here.

So you can, um, look at different browser families, new versus returning user, for example, and device types are all there for you to kind of filter from. Cool. And then the next one we then have is the field data, which then shows you each individual field, uh, in your form. So how Sukkot works is it pulls these in, based on, um, HTML, uh, name or ID.

So I'll quickly show you also, cause this is. Um, you can customize this within Zuko so you can call it something else. If you don't want to call it what it comes in as, so where you see, there we go. So if we go here to the label fields, you can see that in this form have already labeled these fields. Out of the box.

These came in based on their, um, HTML names and IDs here, which is basically a student undisclosed first name you can see here, and it's, it's just been renamed to first name just to make it easier. Um, and that means you can also actually order all these fields in order how they appear in your form, uh, by simply dragging and dropping to customize the order of your fields here.

So let me go back to the data. And then what you see here is basically a graphical overview of where there might be some friction in your form. So what they show us too, it shows you the proportion of abundance. So which fields had the highest proportion of abundance. It shows you which fields have the most proportion of field time.

So that means how much time they're actually spending in the field. Normally, of course, that is text fields that spending more time in, rather than buttons, for example, Uh, and then also start to see which fields proportionately people are returning to the most. So you can isolate out and look at what you want to do.

And the rule of thumb here is basically the longer the bar is. The more likely there is to be some sort of friction with them.

Dom: Could we infer Lana from that extremely long bar on inquiry message at the bottom. Can we infer that clients are sufficiently invested at that point? They're not in, they're not abandoning from that field typing along message and they're submitting and they're going back a little bit, the yellow bar at the end.

They're going back. Certainly not as much as they are in other fields.

Lene: Yeah. The field time. Of course, the majority of field time is spent in that field, which does make sense from the nature of the field, because it's probably a field with a type in maybe even a sentence. Right. So,

Dom: so that's really interesting to see that when they're down to their, they're investing their time in the form and then abandoning that or after if you show abandoned.

Lene: You have a couple of abandons on the submit button and then a couple of abandons here, but in this form with the amount of data that's here at the moment, the majority of people are abandoning either before hitting and hitting this part of the. We're a little bit off, but yeah. So if you want to look at the actual abandon counts, you do that further down spend, you can see the total abandoned count on each field, what proportion that place of abundance, and also be abandoned rate within the field.

So the abandon rate within the field is basically out of everybody that interacted with the field. What percentage of people then ended up abandoning? So as you can see here, the numbers are still quite low. So that's why I'll use another example for a little bit later on just to show how you can draw better conclusions from it.

But if you just look at this, uh, as it is now a course ID is at the moment, the biggest contributor to abandoned.

Dom: And to clarify, the reason that we have low data in the city form, uh, is because on S you will show him one of the learnings at the end of this. Usually there's a lot more data flows in far more quickly, and that's something that a lender is going to show you again, another account that's running this, isn't a city account.

You're about to say, but it's got so much data. It gives you a much better indication of what your forms will actually be collect.

Lene: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, is it easier if I now show that example straight away? So we can, we can look at, look at the same reports from both, or should I do it towards.

Dom: That's up to you.

Lene: I think maybe it might be easier to just show it now. So if we, so now that we're already looking at this report to say as an example, let's look at this one here. Yes. So if we look at this example here, you see, we have a lot more data. So you end up then getting, um, some buttons or. Spending out a lot more in terms of abandoned.

So this is an example from a different industry as well, but it's quite a tight example to look at. So if you see similarly to what we just looked at, you can see the biggest contributor to abandons in this example, form is the step one submit button here. And you can see that that's around half of all abundance, but you can also see that you have some other contributors to abundance.

If you look at abandoned. Right? So for example, This is a multi-step form. So if you look at the step three submitted person here, which is much lower, actual, total abandoned count, but the abandoned rate is still around half of the people that interact here they leave, which means there's also some friction with some fields in, in step three.

So just, just to kind of show how it looks like when you have more data. So let me toggle back to where I was. Um, then the next one here, we have field abundance over time. So this one is normally used. If you make a change to a field and you want to see if that change had an impact on the field directly.

So a changed a field might be that, say that you have identified. Let's see, we identify that the course ID is the biggest contributor to abandon. And you want to change maybe the description of the field, or maybe you want to change the error message that comes within the field. And then you choose that field and you look here.

So at the moment, because there's not much data that looks like this, but if I talk back again to where I was, um, when you have more data, you can kind of see how this moves over time. Then you can see if you've changed, how the impact, uh, in the abandoned, in that specific. So

Dom: then, uh, your, your sulfur Zuko identifies protect potential.

Well, first of all, it's identifies whether the numbers are too high, you need them lower. Like the abandoned rates are too high. Let's bring them down. Or the completion rate is too high. Let's bring it up. So as a result of all of this, you've just said that over time you could, for example, recommend to city, they do three things with their web form.

And if they did all of that, this. Then when you run the stats, you should be able to see the low numbers getting higher and the high numbers getting lower over time. So you can see the difference it's made.

Lene: Um, brilliant. And then another thing you want to, to focus on because, um, quite often, if a field has friction, that means they have to go back to the field and change it. If everything is straightforward with the field or use it probably will not have to return to it. That's why this field returns overview is quite important to look at as well.

So here you can see. Proportionately which feels have, uh, the most amount of returns to it. You can also focus on only abandoned sessions if you want to, or you can, you can do a mix. So you can see here, this is a little bit of a mix between, uh, returns across abandoned and completed sessions, but you can actually see at the moment, the only people that have returned the submit button eventually completed.

So that's a good thing. And then if you want to dig a little bit deeper and to feel returns, that's when you get this graph here. So basically this shows you kind of three different things here. So you have the number of sessions that interacted with each field. So you have here, uh, the total number of sessions that's interacted with the first name field.

So you can see here 37 people interacted with the first name field out of these people. 16 of them ultimately abandoned at some point later in the journey and 21 of these people ultimately. And then you can look at the percentage of sessions that returned to this field. So you can see that 25% of these abundance sessions had the return to the first name field whilst only 4%, almost 5% actually of these completed sessions, 21 sessions they had.

So that's why soup is kind of trying to help you to identify where there might be friction by highlighting this. So where there is a statistical relevant difference between returns of abandoned and completed sessions, it gets highlighted. So the red means that it's abandoned sessions that returns more.

And if it's highlighted in blue over here, then if the completed sessions that gets returned. And then basically here, you just have the average number of returns to the fields out. So the people that return to field on average, how many times do they have to return to the field? So that's also something that's really nice to look at if there is a field that they have to return to a lot of times.

So I'll toggle back to my other example here again, just to show some way where they have a little bit more data to look at. So, if you look at here, for example, let's see average returns to fails. So you can see, for example, let me see if there's one with a low. So if you look at this animal birthday tier, for example, you can see that this one is highlighted in blue, actually, um, compared to the other ones.

So here complete the sessions are proportion of returning more and you can see that completed sessions are returning almost two times loss dependent sessions. Run one and a half times on average. So that's something to look at as well as specific, especially, um, it's good to highlight if abandoned sessions that returning a lot.

So sometimes you might see, uh, if you have a phone number field or something like that, where the use of comped, um, cons get the formatting, right then quite often, abandoned sessions might have. On average for field returns, for example. And then that could cause so much friction at the end of abandoning.

So that's something we would see from experience. Let me.

Dom: So the, uh, the, the stats that you're showing, um, again, you're familiar with your platform. And I imagine the rest of us who are marketers and are thinking, this is a great load of stats, firstly, to get guidance, to work through your platform and to understand where to find the issues and the friction points.

Um, how would a user do that? So two-part question. Firstly, how would you use a, learn your software so now know where to jump, to, to get the beds. And then once you've identified that it is the first name and the date of birth that you've got a suspicion, there's an issue with, how can you help them decide actually how to affect it because we're measuring it, but we then want to improve it.

So one how to use the software B what to do with your recommendation.

Lene: Sure. Okay. So how do you use the software? When we onboard a new user, we have, uh, an in-depth training session together first, where we teach them kind of what to look out for and how to interpret the data. Uh, we also offer monthly bimonthly or quarterly check-ins with you as well to kind of help them look at the data together if they have any problems.

Um, and then kind of when it comes to how to action today. Uh, we're also able to, to help with base and experience kind of what could be causing it. So specifically if we're using an example, like phone number that I used before, uh, quite often it has to do with, with formatting, um, or the error message or the description around it.

Uh, quite often, if it has to do with any kind of personal data, like you're asking for, say an email address and a phone phone number again, maybe the user doesn't really realize why you need it. So it might be that we recommend you to, to explain why this information is needed, for example, and

Dom: the recommendations that you had come up with these, uh, um, actions that I'll use as can immediate.

Uh, undertake themselves by just creating a new version of the web form, create all of that. And then at a certain time, you'll say, okay, version two. Now it goes live. And Zuko immediately starts to see the impact of those changes. So all of your recommendations are actionable inside web form builder by users themselves.

Lene: Yeah. Sometimes the recommendation might also be even just to, to change up the order of the questions a little bit. So there's one, I haven't had time to, to show you guys yet, but if we look at the field fly, for example, so what this can kind of show you. So say if you, for example, have identified that there's an issue with.

The submit button that a lot of people are leaving there. You can look at where they go onto next. So you can look at, okay, they're clicking the submit button. Then they have to return back to say subject of interest ID. Right. And that then kind of indicates that, okay, so they had an error message with this field, uh, what's wrong with this field?

How can we make them not jump this field, but you can also use this to kind of see how people flow through your form. So say you have your first field to get form here. You see, okay. The majority of people are moving on to the last name, which makes sense. Okay. Let's look at last name. Okay. The majority I'm moving on to student email makes sense.

But then at some point, if you find that kind of the path people are taking is spreading a bit, might indicate a little bit of confusion, and then maybe this could also just be, be helped by larger things. Cool. And does that, does that kind of answer the question or did I go a little bit rogue there? I tend to

all of a sudden, okay, cool. So this there's a couple of things I ever post. I haven't shown yet. I realize that we've kind of run over already, but if you have time to stick around while I share the rest, that would be awesome. Cause the rest we have to show now is kind of the. Digging a little bit deeper reports.

So we do also have, um, this report called session Explorer. So say you have identified which fields are causing issues. You've looked at the flow, how people are flowing through your forum. And again, identified how, which fields people are returned active, for example, off the submit. So the people that are making it to the end, and then you might want to go to this one called session Explorer here, which basically then shows you individual users.

That are matching your criteria. So I have already filtered this, um, by sessions that interacted with the submit button. So they made it all the way to the end of this form. And I filtered by abandoned session as well. So then it goes, this, there's not a lot of data here. Now. It only returned, um, to uses that that matches this criteria.

But when you have more data, you'll get more users to look at. So, what this allows you to see is actual real users on how they flow through your form. So here you can see this user here, you got all the metadata on the top. They have around eight field returns, which means there was definitely some friction.

And that's probably the reason why they didn't manage to complete this form. They spent almost 10 minutes to try and complete it as well. And then you can kind of work your way down and see how they move. So you can see this user here moved fine from first name, last name to email. No problem. Uh, residents ID.

You can see them moving through no issues. So if there is a field return, that's highlighted in red. So if they have to return back to field and edit the data that's red and the field we are looking for will be highlighted in yellow. So you can move through here. You can see, and then not having any problems until they get to these fields here.

Now they have to return back to the year of entry and also the subject of interest ID that you have here. And then they continue down the field. They have to return again to. To these fields, uh, continuing, moving down, they tried to submit it. Doesn't work again, have to return back to a subject of interest ID course ID substitute interest ID.

Again, they returned it five times actually before eventually leaving the form. So this, this is really good kind of piece of data to look at if you want to. An actual example, to match your hypothesis and match the kind of overall data that you've seen. So this is really nice to get that super in depth, uh, individual, uh, look,

Dom: that's really great because, um, obviously all Google is going to get you and all our stats is going to get you is the, uh, loading of the form and the completion of the form.

So the session that breaks it down as every single step is, is excellent. I love the granularity of that.

Lene: Brilliant. Um, and then of course, we also do have, um, the segment comparison that I haven't shown yet. So what this does, it allows you to compare. If you have several different forms, you can compare them against each other, or you can also compare the same form with, um, with different filters.

So you can see here, I have already added a comparison. I, you can add in more, if you want somebody to just fail, to take. To see the difference in this particular form from desktop versus mobile users. So you can see that these stats here, this basically been Ciro status from the mobile device. So oldest starts you've had in this form have come from the desk.

Um, but it might be that you can do, for example, novice returning users here, you can compare different kinds of forms to each other. So this is super flexible for you to build any comparison you want to build based on the forms you have in the system. And then of course, you can look at these five a time as well as if you're looking at views.

Of course, now you will have oldest artists from, from one pass. If I look at start to completion right here is of course only going to be one within the staff in it. Um, But, yeah. So this gives you the flexibility to kind of, kind of look at the data and do what you want with it. And this is also exported as a PDF.

So super nice and easy. If you just want to send around a report to the business, for example, um, I did forget to mention that most of the reports are exported as a PDF and some are also exportable as a CSV as well. Um, for, for that.

Dom: Well, thank you ever so much later. I mean, I'm, I'm completely impressed with the package now that we've used it before with you.

Uh, I think it gives our use as, uh, an insight into, uh, forms that was just not possible any other way. I think interpreting the data is best done with you alongside, um, journeying through the software and then understanding it. And then when it comes to actual. Actioning the recommendations again, uh, you can work with any users can work with our team or just directly.

And so I've worked for a minute. I love

Lene: brilliant. Brilliant. I was just going to say, so what we do find is uses normally get very comfortable with, with analyzing the data after. Say say a couple of months of working together or maybe even one session together. It completely depends on, uh, on, on the users.

That's a big mix, but yeah, we're always happy to have regular catch-ups and look through the data together. I think it's, uh, it's really fun to, to identify pain points for users. And definitely when you see conversion rates massively improving.

Dom: Fantastic. Thank you ever so much. So I'm going to pretend to, uh, the deck we've got here and it did run a slightly longer than they thought, but really worthwhile.

I'm really pleased you went through and showed us all of those, um, examples. Now what's interesting about, uh, what we saw with, uh, Citi is there are some takeaways there. Firstly, the formats. Okay. At 40 I'd know, middle forties percent completion rate is not bad. And most people would agree. That's not bad at all, but it's below where it could be.

But the second thing of course, which is a learning that I found out is that the, uh, the form itself linked to from the page, um, actually in city's case, Uh, a link that was used to embed that form actually had a locked version. So if you open up the web form, it opens up version 11. And at the moment we've version of the web form that is current is version 16.

So we'll be following up with Reese and Ryan to just make that tiny little change on their website. And also we'll look at ways of tightening it down. So you don't get so many formulators to begin with and the stats aren't so polluted as for the form performances. Totally with a Lennar, which is just brilliant.

So we've looked at cities form. We've looked at, uh, other forms. We looked at how the system is set up and worked. So this is the point staff where everyone can come off mute and foreign any questions, or if any of these questions is very similar to the one you want, please say,

Lene: Yeah. So Gareth had a question about student CRM. Um, he asked and I think this is, might be quite relevant for something that we're doing at the moment. He asked where the multistep forms are possible in web form builder.

Dom: Okay. Uh, they are in the, I've seen. But it's not released yet in web form builder.

Now, as Zuko does support multi-step forms, the implementation of the code might be a little bit different. Um, but it does that. So you'll be able to see through Lennar's system that it stopped at stage three, you stopped at stage four and the granular inside that, but yes, multi-stage, or multipage forms are on their way.

And if anybody wants a private viewing of that, Uh, please do get in touch with staff and we can show you something that no one else can look at yet.

Cool. Okay. So, um, how much does it cost? It's a good question. So obviously when you've bought students around, you have as many web forms as you like built in our built-in sort of very blunt tracking, uh, to get Zuko on the case. How does it work? How does somebody engage you? And what's the cost over a month or quarter or a year?

Lene: Sure. Um, so if you want to use your go, we do of course have a 1000 free trial for, for new users to test first. Then if the user is super happy with the data that comes through, which most people are, hopefully then they can sign up for either a rolling monthly contract. Or we also have yearly contracts.

If somebody wants to just do the super flexible monthly contract, it basically is no minimum time. You can, you can join and, um, Uh, cancel and rejoined whenever you want. Um, that is basically based on the total number of sessions you attract. So the number of views you have on your form, so the kind of lower level you have up to 10,000 views.

And this, you can, you can use to go on as many forms as you want. So it's not. Um, account per form. You can add as many forms as you want. So it's only limited by the number of views on your forms. So the lowest tier we have, it's up to 10,000 views. That's a hundred pounds per month. Then we have 25,000 views, which is 250 pounds per month.

And up to 50,000 views, which is 500 pounds a month. And then if you want to, to get the one year contract, it's a 20% discount on, on that.

Dom: Thank you. So if any students from a university is thinking about this, um, the question of return on investment, the number of students that come out the bottom of an optimized form, that's been through the Zuko process compared to them, the students that don't, if you don't engage Sukkot and don't spend the money on the stats for 3, 4, 5 months, you need enough time in there.

Uh, I think it's, uh, a very affordable solution for getting it into. Um, so I personally think it's a, uh, it's a no brainer for me and at those prices, I also think it's a no brainer. And with lender support at the side, where then a might want to, um, help you with private consultancy as well at the back, I think it's absolutely critical for cities form.

We will have woken it up and made a big change to it as a result of what Leonard discussed. As well, so yeah, that sets up, um, how much it cost on a yearly contract. Another question there, question two is who sets up the tracking? So a university has logged on spoken to you and they have those Zucca accounts.

How do they set up with tracking?

Lene: Well, they will do it themselves, or, I mean, we can also help. So quite often what I do, if anybody has any issues with getting the tracking set up. So remember how I showed earlier on in the webinar, how you get these, when you create a form, you get these two tracking codes. Um, you basically. Copy them and paste them into your system, uh, what we can do and what we sometimes do.

If anybody has any problems, really to do a screen-share schedule them, say a half an hour meeting, and then that in less than five minutes, it should be done in that meeting if anybody has any problems.

Dom: Okay. Thank you very much. And again, the point of tracking any web form. Yes, you can. You can have multiple web forms inside Zuko and add down metrics inside web form builder inside students.

Sarah. Thank you. Okay. We'll wrap this up in a second. And the next steps is anybody interested in taking their forms to the next level and basically increasing performance, uh, links here that will be shared. This deck will be shared in a touchpoint that goes out after this webinar. So firstly, we've got the website.

Um, over at Zuko, then you've got lenders email to go through and our spine or any questions. And again, we'll also support any questions that come through our customer support at the same time. So yeah. Point three, analyze your forms, increase your conversion rates. I think it's an excellent tool to have,

and thank you very much. And for Allen as well for, uh, partnering with us on. Uh, and for enabling city to run these tests. So really great. Thank you guys. That's been so good. So stuff over to you for a final wrap up.

Lene: That was really useful. Um, Ryan did have to leave earlier, but he's going to watch the rest of the. So that's, that'd be fine. Um, if it's anything that needs to be followed up support wise, then that can come through us. That's no problem at all. Um, when we finish this, the recording will be available and so will the deck, and that'll be sent to people who were here and people who didn't come as well.

Thank you very much.

Dom: Thanks very much everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye. Bye bye now. Bye bye.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Student CRM and Uni Compare Integration

Have you ever had great leads generated from an external website, but been confounded by how to use those leads in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from that site, for organising on your PC, then uploading them into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.

With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as Uni Compare, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.

About: Uni Compare's cross-platform service helps 500k students a month with their university application. Student can search for a course and calculate their Tariff Points in seconds. Their consumer-first mobile approach has enabled the service to reach 250,000 app downloads and over 150,000 registered users. That's why they have been voted 5/5 on Trustpilot.

Benefit: Uni Compare's site and app service empowers students to understand their future university choices. Students can search, create enquiries, prospectus orders and open day bookings. Your university can connect with prospective students as they begin their university search.

Service: This integration allows you to sync the Uni Compare dashboard to Student CRM. This creates a seamless experience for the university for the handling student enquiries and prospectus requests using 'Data Connections' in Student CRM. All you need to do is contact your Uni Compare Account Manager. Integration cost = free.

Student CRM and The Access Platform Integration

Have you ever had a great lead-generating FAQ and enquiry system on your website, but been confounded by how to use those leads in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from a dozen dashboards and into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.

With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as The Access Platform, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.

About: The Access Platform was built to empower – empower prospective students to make the right choice for their future, and universities to work with student ambassadors to create authentic content. TAP was made to help universities build awareness, confidence, and a sense of belonging with prospects anywhere in the world. The platform allows prospects to have direct conversations with their peers and makes it easy for universities to curate User Generated Content and student-authored FAQs.

Benefit: The Access Platform (TAP) helps universities attract, engage with, and convert prospective students worldwide, using peer recruitment. Universities increase lead generation, conversion to applicant and enrolment, and gain valuable insights and data about these students.

Service: Our free integration with Student CRM enables automatic transfer of prospect data, collected through the platform, to Student CRM. We can also synchronise conversation transcripts with CRM, and note whether certain elements have been flagged for safeguarding reasons. Request an API key from your Customer Success Manager to get started. Integration cost = free.

Coming up: World Access to Higher Education Day - 26th November 2019

What is World Access to Higher Education Day?

Last year, over 40 events in 15 different countries took part in the first World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED). These events, attracting 380 delegates, attempted to find local and global solutions to the problem of unequal access to higher education (HE).

This year, the focus is on encouraging governments, universities and others to make meaningful commitments to provide disadvantaged students with fairer access to HE.

So what’s going on?

There are nine events (so far) in the UK alone, happening all around the country, and covering a variety of topics regarding access to HE.

Another key facet of helping disadvantaged students is to find out what challenges they face. This research had been highlighted in the Student Voices project, with compelling stories from all around the globe.

How can you get involved?

If you’re interested in getting involved, or running your own event, take a look at the website for advice and ideas.

Student CRM and UniBuddy Integration

Have you ever had a great lead-generating chat system on your website, but been confounded by how to use them in a meaningful way? Perhaps the slog of exporting them from a widget and into a email marketing platform stopped you from getting the most value from them.

With Student CRM you can integrate a wide variety of lead-generating platforms, such as the Unibuddy Chat widget, and bring them straight into your CRM. From there you can easily turn leads into prospects with Student CRM’s inbuilt marketing tools.

About: Unibuddy was founded by a couple of students who needed help with choosing their own university. The challenge for them was getting trustworthy, authentic information about the courses and life at their short-listed universities. They wanted to speak to students who had first-hand experience of the institution and couldn't find that opportunity online. This led to them launching Unibuddy and embedding it where all students visit - on each university's own website.

Benefit: Through Unibuddy prospective students can easily message current student ambassadors through the university's own website. Your university gets new enquiry contacts, improved applicant conversion and unique data insights to understand your students better.

Service: This integration sends Unibuddy students into Student CRM. You can schedule and automatically transfer new contact records with an indication of how engaged they are into your Student CRM using 'Data Connections' in Student CRM. All you need to do is request your university’s unique API key from your Unibuddy Success Manager. Integration cost = free.

World Access to Higher Education Day - 26th November 2019

An interactive map showing countries who have higher education equity policies

What is World Access to Higher Education Day?

Last year, over 40 events in 15 different countries took part in the first World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED). These events, attracting 380 delegates, attempted to find local and global  solutions to the problem of unequal access to higher education. From these varied events emerged a crucial research paper, “All around the world – Higher education equity policies across the globe”, the largest global survey looking at policy commitments to equitable access to HE. 

From this research and the outcomes of many events from WAHED 2018, NEON and other organisers have collated some central ideas that disadvantaged students face. Armed with these, they’ve been able to provide governments and HE establishments with a better understanding of the challenges faced by students struggling to get into, and remain in, higher education.

So what’s happening this year?

On 26th November the second WAHED will take place at universities and establishments around the world. Their focus this year is on encouraging governments, universities and others to make meaningful commitments on providing disadvantaged students with fairer access to higher education. There are already many events planned in the UK, Australia and Brazil, among others, and a myriad of ways you can get stuck in.

Will you be an advocate for disadvantaged students?

Student CRM at CRM Network HE Conference

The CRM Network HE is an information-sharing network for people within the Higher Education section working specifically with CRM technologies. We’re delighted to announce that Dom will be speaking at the second CRM Network HE Conference on 12th July.

In his session, “How to 10x your student enquiry satisfaction rate with Student CRM”, Dom will share practical tips on how to boost your enquiry satisfaction rate by ten times, while at the same time delighting your Enquiries Officers. Every attendee will walk away with Dom’s “7 University Rules for Enquiry Management Mastery” tip sheet.

Dom looks forward to seeing you there.

Agent Portal - Now in any colour (including black!)

Henry Ford was once quoted as saying, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black."

Unlike Mr Ford, we let you pick your own colours and upload your own design to match your university’s branding - in Agent Portal from Student CRM.

When your overseas agents log in, they see every application they have submitted and can submit new applications in seconds. Your colours continue inside the portal too.

Maximise the impact of your university’s branding in Agent Portal from Student CRM.

Interested what a dedicated UK HEI agent management solution could do for your international recruitment numbers?

Congratulations to 2019 graduates at Leeds College of Music!

We’re pleased to be sponsoring the Leeds College of Music Graduation Event this year at the First Direct Arena Leeds on 24 July 2019.

Book tickets here: https://www.lcm.ac.uk/whats-on/graduation/

At a time when hundreds of graduans prepare to graduate in front of proud parents, peers and conservatoire staff, we’re thrilled to be helping make that day a little more magical.

Leeds College of Music put on one of the most creative graduation events around, featuring on-stage, live performances from the very best final year students, in what will be another stunning occasion.

Dom Yeadon, Student CRM founder and Managing Director will be attending the luncheon and the afternoon event, and presenting two special academic prizes.

Help! How do I know if I am buying the right student recruitment solution?

This article was written by our CRM guru Ben. It's long-form and old school, but all the better for it: it captures the essence of why Student CRM appeals today.

If you are looking to replace your current student recruitment and marketing solution, you will be aware it can be a little daunting and challenging.

You will be nervous about making a mistake and buying the wrong system, be concerned about the amount of time and resource it takes to implement and be thinking "what if it all goes wrong?".

Well, guess what? You are not alone.

We have this conversation on a weekly basis. You want to minimise risk, maximise your ROI and ensure you don't have an awkward conversation with the purse holder as to why you are now stuck in a long contract with a system that doesn't help you attract, engage and recruit students.

Below are a couple of the conversation topics we discuss with Universities in the early stages who are looking to procure a new solution and how we think Student CRM helps.

Hopefully, it will address some of the concerns you have, answer some of your questions, and help remove that fear of buying the wrong solution. We'd love to chat with you over a coffee about Student CRM. After all, we (and the many Universities who are using it right now) think it's pretty darn good.

However, if you just want a chat about the CRM world, what we think is happening in student recruitment and what the future looks like, get in touch. We'll provide the knowledge, you provide the coffee (and biscuits).

1 - Platform or Solution? 

Student CRM is a solution: built, tested and already being used by dozens of UK universities right now. This means it's ready to go.

The other option is a platform which will usually require you to "build" onto it and tailor it to your needs.

Our customers have chosen to go down the Solution route as they don't want ongoing costs, the resource drain needed to support a large platform system and the man-hours needed to tailor it to their requirements. They just want something that works, does the job they need it to do and they know they have a system that is built for the exact job they need.

2 - Fit for purpose?

Let's be honest, recruiting students is pretty up there when it comes to important things for a University to get right.

We have seen this is an increasingly competitive sector with its own unique challenges, so why would you risk getting a system that wasn't built for the job?

Student CRM is built specifically for the UK HE sector. We are based here in the UK (in sometimes sunny Dorset). Our Customer Support and Technical Support team are based here, in the same office (believe it or not, our technical support team aren't even in the basement underneath the office with no natural light, they are on the same floor as us!).

We have worked in this sector for over a decade and we think we have a pretty good understanding of what our clients want. We only work with UK Universities and other UK based HEIs.

Why don't we work with Universities in America for example?

Well, how can we say we are experts in our field, or understand what our customers want, or be proud of the service levels we give our customers when we are thousands of miles away in a different country? How can we give the very best service and technical support if our staff don't even work the same hours as our customers? We can't! So we have ensured that we become experts in the UK HE sector and provide our customers with a solution that has been built with them in mind.

3 - Enterprise-wide or recruitment specific?

Sometimes we speak to customers who aren't yet sure what they're looking for. Would a single system that covers all possible areas of the student journey from recruitment through to accommodation and finance be better than one that focuses on the recruitment side and talks to other "in-life" systems?

We provide the latter here.

Student CRM concentrates on the first point of contact through to enrolment and then we pick up again at alumni. We integrate with other solutions such as your Student Records System to cover the entire student journey.

Why have we chosen this way? We know student recruitment like the back of our hand and want to provide a "best of breed" solution that talks to other "best of breed" solutions to provide the user and student with the best experience possible (that was a lot of "bests" in one sentence!). The thought of a customer putting all of their eggs in one basket and using (and funding) a system that was just "okay" in all areas didn't seem like a good outcome for our customers.

A simple way of putting this: in football, the striker doesn't take the goal kicks, doesn't take all the throw-ins, doesn't go in goal to save the penalties, doesn't manage the team from the sideline... they do what they do best, score goals. They work seamlessly with their teammates who have the perfect skills for other positions to help win the game but stick with what they are good at.

4 - What's the future look like?

This is coming up time and time again when we speak to customers who are looking to move away from their current system, often because it has become clunky, stale and hasn't changed with the times.

How do you know if the solution provider will keep enhancing the system and add new functionality that will help you?

Firstly, this shows the importance of knowing the sector and knowing your customers. We know the sector really well. But we aren't working at student recruitment fairs. We don't speak to international agents on a daily basis. We don't send out campaigns to students every week.

So how can we provide our users with a solution that not only meets their requirements but removes their pains both now and in the future? We speak to them (remember that old school thing called speaking to each other?)! Our customers have created a User Group who meet every other month to discuss best practice, share feedback and tell us what they want to see in the solution.

This means not only can we give our users a system that is fit for purpose, but we can also confidently say it meets our user's needs and removes their pains as they have told us what would help them do their job. These suggestions then get put into the Roadmap and our customers vote on what functionality or enhancements they want to happen first.

A simple activity that is so powerful. Why would you want a solution that firstly wasn't created for the sector you are working in, but secondly is guessing what functionality you want (probably from another country)?

Hopefully, you find the above helpful and it has been thought-provoking. What I lack in content writing, Student CRM more than makes up for in student recruitment and marketing!

We'd love to chat to you and discuss your pains with student recruitment. We can then show where we can help you meet your targets, and you can be the toast of your team for being the person who introduced them to Student CRM. Get in touch now on 01202 237406. What have you got to lose?

Tomorrow's open day is under control

Open days are hectic. So much planning, organising and arranging goes on months in advance that it's easy to lose track of something vital. With Student CRM you have the tools necessary to make sure nothing gets missed. So you can take it easy, knowing your Open Day is under control.

How do you recruit the girl with the red hair?

Everyone has their own needs and wants, and no two students will ever have exactly the same requirements.

With Student CRM you have the tools to converse with, and learn about your students. When you know what your students want, helping them and applying your expertise is easier.

Success is built-in for some students

Australia. United States. Zimbabwe.

Some students will go far. Others come from afar. World class students need world class institutions, and for the best education they’ll go where they need to.

With Student CRM you have the tools to reach out to these far-off students, pique their curiosity, and help them start their journey to further education.

(Just remember Time Zones exist…)

She knows where she is going

Focused. Driven.

Some students have questions about everything from university life, to their chosen course. This student knows exactly what to ask to get where she’s going.

Student CRM gives you the tools to answer quickly, efficiently, and as fully as she needs.

Anything is possible

Dancer? Astronomer? Dreamer.

For a student at the start of their journey, anything is possible. But they can’t go anywhere without the right information. Student CRM helps you deliver that knowledge so your students are on the right foot from the get-go.

One look and you know this graduate will shake things up

Everyone approaches things in their own style, but sometimes we can mistake that style for something else.

The student who seems too controversial may be the student who’s asking the hard questions. The student who’s ‘too brash’ is trying to get to the heart of the matter. The student who’s seen as unconventional is looking for new solutions to old problems.

These are tomorrow’s movers and shakers.

When you meet them, you’ll want to recruit them swiftly. With Student CRM you have the tools to do just that.

We help you recruit students who will change the world

From Open Day to Alumni, to the breakthrough in their chosen Industry, Student CRM helps you pave the way for world-changing students.

The tools in Student CRM are built around recruitment specialists - people like you. They’re designed specifically to streamline and maximise your working day. Automation shoulders the tedium of touchpoints, and each app draws the student through the recruitment process with ease, leaving you more time for other things.

Looking forward to her best open day ever

Automated welcome emails sent out? Check.

Student Ambassadors trained with the booking-in app? Check.

SMS primed in case of emergency? Check.

Looking forward to your best open day ever? Check!

There’s no denying that open days are hectic, but with Student CRM you have the tools to manage your event with confidence and ease.

(Sorry, we can’t help with the cat herding)

How small nudges tackle "Summer Melt"

“Summer Melt” may not be a new phenomenon, but it’s only relatively recently being tackled effectively by student recruitment officers. Wikipedia defines Summer Melt as,

“The phenomenon of prospective low-income or minority students' motivation to attend college "melting" away during the summer between the end of secondary school and beginning of Higher Education, ... [due to] lack of resources, support, guidance, and encouragement.”

This US study found that many of these students are either daunted by, or simply do not even know, what steps to take at what times to further their journey into Higher Education.

Fortunately this has a simple fix: the process of Nudging.

Nudges are simple touchpoints, typically via SMS, that gently remind the student of the next step they need to take as part of their application, or simply as reassurance that the next few weeks ahead hold no surprises.

Often students most susceptible to Summer Melt are those from low income or disadvantaged families, where they may be the first generation to go to university, or not have access to a computer to pick up emails. As such, they won’t have anyone to guide them through the application process, and they may miss a key step over the summer.

Using the automated touchpoint system in Student CRM, recruitment officers can send out these “nudges” to students who may become unwary victims of summer melt.

But use caution, as this can be a double-edged sword.

Too many “nudges”, and the important bits gets lost in the noise. Within Student CRM tyhe ‘Personas’ feature can help highlight who would most benefit from nudging touchpoints, while a range of tools within the system allows you to keep track of the student’s application at every stage.

The trick is to understand your Student CRM data, and draw up a thoughtful and balanced approach to nudging touchpoints, in a way that benefits the student.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Student CRM might be able to help you, please do get in touch.

Large photo by Loïc Fürhoff on Unsplash