Choosing a Recruitment and Admissions Solution for Higher EducationEdtech buyer’s guide of must-haves and features to drive impact

Contents

SECTION 1 Questions to Ask Your Vendor ......................................5

SECTION 2 Features to Drive Impact ............................................10

SECTION 3

Why Salesforce ............................................................16

Introduction

Innovative admissions and enrollment leaders are quickly responding to the “New Normal” by pivoting to new recruiting and admissions tactics that emphasize student engagement and selecting technology that allows them to be more nimble with a digital-first approach. Schools simply can’t wait six to twelve months to adjust their admissions strategy. They need dynamic solutions and flexible platforms that allow them to innovate in order to attract and enroll students.

Most institutions can no longer fill their recruitment funnels by solely focusing on legacy tactics, such as relying on purchased lists and in-person events. In today’s competitive landscape, innovators are shifting their strategies to a digital-first approach that prioritizes speed and emphasizes creating engaging experiences for both known and unknown prospective students. Institutions are now less reliant on third-party prospect sources and must fill their own recruitment funnel with best-fit prospects that they have identified by themselves. Competition is increasing and schools need to build better relationships with these prospects as they nurture them throughout the enrollment funnel. This process begins by rethinking each stage of the funnel, and it starts at the top:

• “Where can we find more of the students who fit our profile?”

• “How can we differentiate ourselves so that prospective students feel a sense of connection, before they even self identify?”

• “How can we provide an engaging digital-first experience?”

• “What insights can we glean from these interactions to improve our strategies?”

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Questions to ask your vendorA list of common issues to look out for as you go through your evaluation, along with questions you can ask to uncover them.

Features to drive impact A list of features you should ask for in your conversations with vendors.

Why Salesforce? A glance at Salesforce for Recruitment & Admissions and our purpose-built product, Admissions Connect.

Innovators are also asking how they can boost their teams’ productivity and performance as well as how they can improve the applicant experience throughout the funnel. In addition, they are rethinking how they use data to inform their strategies at each step.

You and your team have likely grappled with these questions. Your school is unique and you need a solution that allows you to meet your challenges innovatively. Choosing a technology partner to help meet these challenges is a key part of the process.

There’s no shortage of admissions solutions on the market. But which option is right for you? Working with great institutions and analysts, we’ve put together this buyer’s guide. It consists of three sections:

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Questions to Ask Your Vendor

SECTION 1

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Acquisition, Personalized Engagement, and Actionable InsightsDoes the solution offer a next-generation admissions experience or does it just check the boxes?

Most vendors will say they offer an end-to-end solution. In reality, most are designed for one area of the process, and rely on workarounds to check the feature/function boxes.

Looking at our end-to-end admissions process, can you tell me how I would be able to use your technology at each stage of the funnel? How does the solution help us to automate engagement and use lists more intelligently?

I don’t want to be like everyone else; how can I use your technology to differentiate our school and programs? Can it help us understand which of our marketing tactics are working and where to focus our marketing and staff resources?

Does the solution offer next-generation marketing capabilities that expand our marketing sophistication? Can we engage with our prospects based on their actions and on their medium of choice?

• integrated multi-channel marketing

• dynamic content and real-time personalization

• interactive email

• social media recruiting

Marketing features to ask for:

• targeted ad creation and management

• advanced segmentation

• A/B testing

• integrated landing pages and forms

• marketing and predictive analytics

Questions to ask:

Does your solution have advanced integrated analytics and predictive capabilities? Will it help us pinpoint the right students based on our target profile? Will it suggest to our staff what action to take next?

How does your solution handle recruiter and territory management, lead scoring, forecasting, mobile access to prospect data and dashboards for recruiters?

Does your solution provide personalized support and engagement throughout the application process?

How does your solution help us with yield management and solve our summer melt challenges?

Does your solution offer new student onboarding capabilities to ensure a smooth transition for enrolled students?

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The Problem with Point SolutionsDon’t get boxed in

Point solutions are pieces of software that do one thing well, but aren’t flexible or able to connect to other systems. One of the biggest mistakes Admissions Directors make is choosing an app that fixes a current problem, but creates bigger ones down the road due to a lack of customizability and tendency to create data silos.

Does the solution allow my institution to innovate? Will I stand out from my peers or will I be following the crowd?

How easy is it to set up, customize, and manage applications for admission and inquiry forms?

How flexible and scalable is the solution? Can it support both undergraduate and graduate admissions in the same environment? If other areas within the institution adopt it, too, will it be easy to use this solution while maintaining separate processes?

Questions to ask:

How does the solution scale our team’s work? Does it come with workflows and approval flows that can easily be set up to match our unique admissions process?

Can this connect to systems that we’re using to manage other parts of the admissions process and later stages of the student lifecycle? For example, when this applicant becomes an enrolled student, how difficult will it be to transition their data?

What is the roadmap for making this part of a more holistic recruiting and admissions solution?

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Vendor Resources ConstraintsHow much time and attention can they really provide?

Most vendors like to give the impression of a large and high-availability staff, but whether they can deliver on that promise is a different story.

How innovative is your company? What does your roadmap look like for the next year? What kind of developer resources do you have dedicated to building those features?

Do you have a marketplace of “Apps” to extend and augment your solution?

What is the user experience? Can you show me the mobile experience for students and staff?

How large is your customer support staff and how many will be dedicated to our account? What level of support and ongoing familiarity will your team have with my account?

What free and paid training resources do you offer?

Questions to ask:

Lack of Ecosystem & CommunityNo vendor should be an island

While many vendors promise great in-house service, a broad ecosystem is key to your success. A healthy ecosystem includes implementation partners, independent software providers building complementary apps, and most importantly, a thriving customer community that gathers virtually and in person.

What is your customer community like? How many customers do you have in your online community forum? Do you hold local events and user groups?

Do you have partners who have implemented your solution for higher ed customers similar to us?

Who are some of the other vendors building apps that integrate with your solution? Have you worked with popular providers to build connectors, like Eventbrite, Google Analytics, and calendar integration with Outlook and Google?

How do you recruit your partners to ensure diversity of solutions in your ecosystem?

Questions to ask:

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Cookie Cutter Implementation MethodologyIs it one-size-fits-all or adaptable to your needs?

Formulaic and inflexible implementation plans can put your long-term success at risk.

Does your implementation include discovery sessions where you learn about our unique processes and challenges?

Can you show me your customer onboarding, implementation, and roll-out plans?

What different tiers of service can I choose from? How does case escalation work?

Can we see some implementation case studies that involve complex deployments, such as integration with other systems like an SIS or LMS?

Questions to ask:

Who will handle our implementation? Does it have to be you (the vendor), or can you recommend an implementation partner?

Which vital campus systems or departments do you coordinate with to ensure success as needs and requirements for the solution grow?

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Red Flag #6: Static Application PortalDoes it go beyond the application?

Application portals that are inflexible and don’t connect to other campus platforms create missed opportunities for engaging with and tracking applicants.

Is your applicant portal a social hub for applicants or is it just for filling out your application?

Does your applicant portal provide ongoing support for applicants such as a built-in, 24/7 chatbot or a self-serve knowledge base for frequently asked questions?

Can we customize the content and experience for applicants when they log in?

After prospects submit their application, how does your solution enable us to continue to keep them engaged across different marketing channels?

Questions to ask:

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Features to Drive Impact

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1-to-1 Digital MarketingYour students are sophisticated and require personalized engagement. Simple segmentation and email blasts won’t meet your challenges.

Shaped by ecommerce and their digital-first world, prospective students are accustomed to next-level marketing capabilities.

Does your marketing solution offer integrated, multi-channel communication across social media, digital advertising, email, print, SMS, push messaging, and landing pages?

Can your marketing tool utilize A/B testing and AI to deliver the right content, at the right time, and across the correct channel based on prospect and applicant engagement?

Is your marketing solution future proof? Does it provide an ecommerce-like experience?

Questions to ask:

Does your marketing solution offer advanced segmentation and personalization based on integrated data and external data sources?

Can your marketing tool notify or flag a recruiter to follow up with a prospect based on marketing engagement and CRM data?

Does your marketing solution offer an app marketplace to purchase add-on solutions?

Does your marketing tool offer a drag and drop interface to build a personalized student journey?

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FlexibilityYour programs are not static. Your solution shouldn’t be either.

Today’s students are more connected and moving faster than ever. As their expectations change, you must adapt quickly to meet them.

Does the solution provide an integrated, multi-channel approach for communicating with the student via their preferred modality, such as via email, social media, SMS, and print media?

Can a student interact with my team even when staff members aren’t available? Does the solution include chatbots or self-help knowledge articles via an online community? To what extent are chatbots actionable?

Can we create custom workflows and approval flows to automate manual processes?

Can we create validation rules to ensure data integrity?

Are data fields static or do they connect to other systems?For example, can I set up an automated sync between a field in the solution and our SIS?

Questions to ask:

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Advanced Analytics and Robust ReportingIs your data actionable and does it empower your recruiters? Does it drive marketing strategy?

You can no longer afford to wait days or weeks to get the answers you need. You and your team need accurate, real-time data to make decisions and communicate with prospective students.

Will this enable us to pull, combine, and analyze data from multiple platforms and data sources into one view?

Does the platform offer advanced analytics and capabilities that allow us to target best-fit students?

What are your predictive analytics capabilities? How does the solution help direct our resources to enroll our best class possible?

Will this solution provide insights on students across different phases of the recruitment funnel and student lifecycle?

Can this offer robust analytics to expand cross-departmental insights?

Questions to ask:

Will this inform me of which students are close to choosing my institution and suggest actions to take?

Will this enable me to capture and report on admitted students’ specific concerns?

Can I view advanced analytics on my mobile device?

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Trusted Support & CommunityAn engaged community means a track record of success.

You shouldn’t have to go it alone. Make sure your vendor has a vibrant, diverse community of institutions that you can turn to for best practices, as well as a trusted support team.

Do you have an active community of users online and offline?

What is the makeup of your higher education customer base?

Do you have 24/7 support and SLAs?

Questions to ask:

Questions to ask:

How regular are releases?

How are your releases scheduled and managed?

How do you ensure that these releases aren’t disruptive to our operations?

What kind of release notes and documentation do you provide to ensure that your customers fully understand what’s coming in your releases?

Constant InnovationOngoing improvements or disruptive upgrades?

Your program should never be interrupted due to a software update.

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Integration With Other Admissions SystemsOpenness is a good thing.

No matter how full-featured the application, it needs to be able to integrate with other systems. No one knows what’s coming in five years, but an open platform can help you future-proof your admissions office.

Does your solution play well with other systems? Which back-end systems and front-end apps can it integrate with?

Which integrations are most popular and/or actively maintained?

Can I speak with someone on your team that manages integration partnerships?

Is any part of your solution open-source? When it comes to your code base, are you committed to transparency?

Questions to ask:

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“Enhancing our current enrollment efforts in support of our academic mission requires the best technology. We’re excited to partner with Salesforce.org to build engagement opportunities for our future students and families which will more seamlessly support students from initial interest and enrollment to graduation.”

Mathew Cox, Senior Executive Director Of Enrollment Management University Of Colorado Colorado Springs

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Salesforce provides a complete solution for recruitment, admissions, enrollment, and marketing communications, helping you boost recruiter productivity and performance, streamline application management, and gain complete insight.

Salesforce for Recruitment & Admissions

SECTION 3

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Admissions ConnectDrive applicant engagement with personalized

Action Plans, Dynamic Checklists, and an Applicant

Experience Portal. Streamline the application

review process with a scrolling reader, document

management, and workflow automation.

Salesforce Products

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Marketing CloudMarketing automation and real-time

personalization, multi-channel communications,

dynamic email builder, calendar and campaign

management, landing pages and forms.

Salesforce Products

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Tableau, Tableau CRM, and DatoramaAdvanced real-time engagement analytics and predictive

capabilities across the admissions lifecycle.

Platform + AppExchangeWebsite integration, events management, payment

processing, document generation, and much more.

Experience CloudSocial applicant portal, toolkit for building an amazing online

applicant portal experience. Pictured with the Admissions Connect Chatbot which provides applicant support 24/7.

Salesforce Products

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1-to-1 Digital Marketing to Meet Prospects Where They AreNow you have the tools you need to engage prospects on the channels they love. Listen

to what prospects are saying on social media and discover who you’re competing with.

Build engagement journeys, including digital advertising, that guide applicants through the

process on modern channels like SMS and social.

Drive Applicant EngagementCreate a personalized and engaging applicant experience by providing your staff with

proactive and seamless tools to keep applicants on track.

World’s Most Innovative PlatformEducation Cloud is built on the Salesforce platform, so you get access to all of the latest

innovations like Einstein Artificial Intelligence.

Create a 360° Prospect ProfileAll of your prospective student and application data available in one place, anytime,

anywhere. No more moving data between multiple systems to get your job done.

Track Your KPIs in Real TimeMonitor how you’re doing against your goals and empower your recruiters to take action

in real time with AI. View a high-level dashboard showing your current admissions and

enrollment funnel to see if you’re on track compared to previous years.

Key Differentiators

Mobilize Your Recruiters Your recruiters can update a prospect’s file, communicate with financial aid, take application

information on-the-spot– all while they’re on the go.

Get a Platform, Not a Point Solution Why use different systems for recruitment, admissions, enrollment, and marketing

communications when you can just use one? Add new apps with just a few clicks, and

integrate faster with existing systems like your SIS and the Common App.

Ensure Success with Support & ResourcesFree training, expert implementation partners, and success plans with 24/7 support. We’ve

got everything you need to achieve your goals today and tomorrow.

Join Our Amazing Community The higher ed Salesforce community is more than a user community - it’s a family of

passionate trailblazers. Every day at events around the world and online, our community is

working together to help our institutions and students succeed.

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