As Barron said, corralling all the material required for an application is hard for the IHE and the student. Staff at Fielding Graduate University saw a big drop in phone calls and e-mails from students attempting to verify receipt of their application, transcripts, and letters of recommendation after implementing WebAdvisor from Datatel.
Applicants can access the service over the internet, which links directly with campus databases, to get up-to-the-minute information on their materials. The financial aid office also uses the system.
6. Post Frequently Asked Questions Online.
Students call about more than just their application. To help address other admissions and enrollment related questions, Hudacheck says staff at the University of Minnesota built an online, interactive FAQ page using software from RightNow Technologies. When students visit the website they see a variety of previously asked questions they can explore. If they still choose to submit a question, the system will search existing answers for possible matches and present them.
"We've found that upwards of 80 percent of people don't finish their question because they find the answer they need through those matches," Hudacheck says. When a new question is submitted, administrators can track it internally, see which staff member received it, and see when a response was sent. The question is automatically escalated to a supervisor if it isn't answered in one business day. Hudacheck explains it took about three months to determine which questions and answers to include and to standardize the text.
7. Track Your Web Traffic.
Institutions are trying to find ways to deal with "stealth applicants," those students whose first contact seems to be their application. Admissions staff at Binghamton University, State University of New York, added Google Analytics to their website as a way to see where these "mystery" applicants are located so they could target marketing efforts appropriately. "This tool offers us a way to be stealthy in reverse," explains Cheryl Fabrizi, director of enrollment management marketing.
If staff members attend a college fair, Fabrizi can check website traffic the next day to see whether there was an increase in traffic from the geographical area of the fair. She can also see what pages were visited and how long readers spent on a page. They recently saw an increase in traffic from New Jersey and were able to plan a recruitment trip in response. "We can more effectively deploy resources," she says.
8. Use CRM to Manage Your Prospect Pool.
Constituent relationship management technology can be used to track an applicant through the process and tailor communications. "We're using Intelliworks Orion for total management of our funnel," says Jeffrey Handler, assistant vice president for enrollment management at Empire State College, State University of New York. The software helps staff determine where a prospect came from by allowing them to see how a visitor navigated to the college's website. It also helps move applications through the admissions process by allowing staff to alter e-mail communication based on the applicant's status. Besides tracking the effectiveness of an e-mail by showing who opened it and what links were accessed, Handler can find out how many people signed up for and then attended open houses and other events. But he says his favorite part is the variety of real-time reports he can generate on a moment's notice. "We don't shudder when the president walks in and wants a report."
'We anticipate our workload in the fall will be eliminated.' -Lee Harrell, Ohio Wesleyan University
Administrators at the University of Michigan are using CRM from RightNow Technologies to a similar end. "We just e-mailed 130,000 rising [high school] seniors and it took about 10 minutes," says Sally Lindsley, senior associate director of undergraduate admissions. The goal was to let students know the written response questions for their application were available online and to remind them to get letters of recommendation. "Before, we would send an e-mail and we didn't know if it was effective," she explains. Now they know e-mails sent from Tuesday through Thursday between 2 and 3 in the afternoon are most likely to be read. The system is also used to customize communications based on a student's interest and status. Lindsley says that in addition to saving time, the department has saved money on printing and postage by switching to e-mails.
