Every interaction you have with families adds up while they’re weighing their options for schools. But does it ever seem like you’re understaffed and under-resourced, and it’s hurting your ability to get in more face time with families?

Fortunately, there is an easier way to manage all your responsibilities that frees up your schedule, too.

Leveraging Community Relationship Management (CRM) software for schools can help you effectively manage every connection you’re building with current and prospective families without the stress of tracking data, analytics, and communications, so you can spend more time building meaningful connections.

What is a CRM for Schools?

A CRM platform is typically known as a “customer” or "client" relationship management platform, but at Finalsite, we prioritize building stronger school communities. Our Community Relationship Management platform is the first of its kind, full suite for schools, offering an all-in-one solution that includes websites, communications, mobile apps, enrollment management, and marketing services. 

It helps schools manage their relationships with students, families, and staff, giving schools a clearer view of all the interactions between your team and your community. This powerful platform can provide:

• Personalized communication to cater to each family’s needs and enhance their experience with your school's marketing campaigns and communications.
   
• Streamlined information sharing to ensure families have access to relevant stories and details, helping them see themselves as part of your school’s long-term story.
   
• Automated reminders and updates to keep everyone on track, from application deadlines to event invitations.

A CRM platform offers numerous benefits that extend beyond communications, though. Improving the enrollment process, fostering community engagement, and optimizing administrative processes is just the beginning. 

Centralized Data Management

By gathering all your communication and data into one platform, a CRM ensures that school admins have access to the same accurate and up-to-date contact information so your office can benefit from better decision-making and more efficient workflows. 

An all-in-one-platform for schools gives both high-level and granular views into your processes and track communications with each individual. This way, you can quickly pinpoint and resolve obstacles to break the bottlenecks in your operations.

Enhanced Community Engagement

A CRM allows you to engage with your community through multiple channels, including your school website, mobile apps, and mass notifications. Instead of sending generalized emails that often fail to engage students and families, this multi-channel approach helps maintain a strong connection with families, keeping them informed and involved in school activities with personalized communication tools that allow you to tailor messages directly to them. 

You can also support your efforts with custom workflows to ensure that contacts receive exactly the right message at the right time. Once you’ve gathered and compiled data within your CRM, you can use that information to create highly personalized messages and continue to optimize your communications around contacts’ behaviors and engagement.

Keep the Process Moving with Marketing Automation

School professionals know how challenging it can be to keep communications on track. By scheduling automatic touchpoints and reminders, you can prevent stalls and identify whether students or parents have questions or concerns you need to address. 

From open houses to parent-teacher conferences, automated invitations, reminders, and follow-ups ensure no detail is overlooked and that events run smoothly.

Improved Staff Collaboration

With all communication and data in one place, your staff can collaborate more effectively, too. The right CRM can help you save time and eliminate time-consuming headaches by automating many tedious processes. 

Plus, it provides greater visibility into your efforts and keeps data centralized so everyone can stay on the same page. Whether it’s coordinating an event or following up on a parent inquiry, a CRM makes it easy for staff to stay informed and work together seamlessly.

Eliminate Messy Data with Data-Driven Insights

Gone are the days of file cabinets, sorting through paper forms, and manually trying to keep everything in order. A CRM will help you clean and access records for cleaner data, valuable analytics, and reporting tools that help you understand the effectiveness of your communications and engagement strategies. Keep refining your approach, so you can meet the needs of your school community better with each communication.

Pinpoint Enrollment Obstacles

Get both a high-level and a more specific view of roadblocks within the enrollment stages so you can hone your school’s messaging, drive enrollment, and support retention in a way that directly reflects your family's needs and concerns. 

Within the enrollment management system, admins can add and view notes related to specific prospects, whether it’s from a formal campus visit or even a phone conversation. Based on these notes, you can provide more specific communication and:

• Reallocate your outreach efforts based on the most successful strategies.
• Eliminate channels that aren’t serving your school’s growth.
• Keep new families engaged and excited to complete the admission process.
• Create a high-yield communication plan.
• Boost your school’s yield and help build a stronger campus.
• Meet your enrollment goals.

Schedule Touchpoints

Set up touchpoints around incomplete student applications to address their concerns and guide them to completion. You can send online application deadline reminders, application status updates, and even financial aid information if they’ve shown interest. 

For events, you can send invite emails faster to a larger group and even schedule reminder emails if they haven’t yet RSVP’d. Post-event, you can efficiently send personalized thank-you emails and follow-up communications, optimizing your event management.

Reach New Audiences

With all the smart tools in place, your school is ready to reach, engage, and convert new families and audiences. Digital advertising, strategic marketing, and the latest strategies are all led by school marketing professionals ready to help your school thrive.

Key Takeaway

A Community Relationship Management platform is about more than just managing admissions, marketing, and communications. It’s about creating a cohesive, connected community where every interaction is meaningful and contributes to the overall success of your school.