CRM Recruit Customer Panel: High-Touch Communication Plans

CRM Recruit Customer Panel: High-Touch Communication Plans

Joanna Jasper, Chief Information Officer, Catawba College

Chad Austein, Executive Director – Enrollment Management Operations, Kean University

Judi Amsel, Senior Consultant, Ellucian

SESSION ID: 145379

© 2018 ELLUCIAN. SESSION ID: 145379

The views and opinions in this presentation

are those of the presenter and do not

necessarily reflect the position of Ellucian.

Disclaimer

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• Two very different institutions share how they are using Recruit to reach

and enroll prospective students

• Review challenges and opportunities in the transition from 3.x to 4.x

• Discuss the new Communications Plan feature introduced in 4.8 and the

API-based bulk email service options

• And what to do about “legacy” ExactTarget and when?

Know your options, and plan ahead

for successful communications strategy and execution!

Goals for this session

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Catawba College’s CRM Recruit Communications Journey

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1 Brief review of Catawba College’s profile and CRM Recruit overall journey

2 Tried and true communication strategies

3 Newest communication and outreach strategies

4 Challenges and opportunities in the 3.x to 4.x transition

5Challenges and opportunities in the transition to Communication Plans, an API-based

bulk email service, and the deprecation of “legacy” ExactTarget

Catawba College

Profile and CRM Recruit HistoryTo provide some context for the Catawba communications

strategy and perspective…


• Founded in 1851; located in Salisbury, NC

Small, private, co-ed, residential, mostly undergrad degrees

About 1000 traditional students; 300 adult/non-traditional students

Career preparation with a liberal-arts core

Personal, small classes, “everybody knows your name”

NCAA Division II

Many services to support student success

Catawba College Profile

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• Grow enrollment (double over next 10 years) and net tuition revenue

• Balanced operating budget (including depreciation) with no reliance on donor gifts

• Increase name and brand recognition

Nationally ranked for quality, value, outcomes, ROI…

… But little name/brand recognition outside NC

Catawba College Strategic Goals

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• Banner ERP College-wide: 6/2011

• CRM Recruit 3.x on prem: started implementation 7/2013; went live 6/2014;

• CRM Recruit 3.8 on prem to SaaS: 11/2015

• 3.9 SaaS to 4.5 SaaS: started migration 7/2016; went live 9/2016; Recruit PROD down for a full week; very intense project

• 4.6 SaaS: 4/2017

• 4.7 SaaS: 5/2017 adds Sparkpost as API-based bulk email service

• 4.8 SaaS: 7/2017 introduces Communication Plans which only work with API-based bulk email service

• 4.9 SaaS: 1/2018 adds SFMC as API-based bulk email service option (must choose one of the two options)

Catawba College CRM Recruit History

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Catawba’s

Communication Strategies


• Prospect/Inquiry: Soph, Jr, Sr, Intntl

• Applicant: Frosh/Transfer/Intntl, Funnel Stage

• Ad hoc blasts (e.g. particular major), Events, Additional Materials Needed, Parents

• Campaign Activities

ExactTarget bulk email

Direct mail if high predictive model score

Phone call if opted out of text

Campaigns

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• Using Mongoose platform for bulk texting

Data loaded from Recruit; counselors select students via database queries

• ExactTarget Email

1.8 million emails sent in last 12 months; great data on email effectiveness (delivered, read, clicked);

Use templates for branding, folders to organize all the emails; nice WYSIWYG editor

Most emails come from email address of Recruiter assigned to student

Good unsubscribe process, high delivery rate

Text and ExactTarget Bulk Email

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• Now accepting Common App

• Partnered with Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL)

Predictive model score; new financial aid matrix; RNL marketing campaign including RNL application

• Enrollment Growth Accountability Plan (EGAP) Initiatives

Recruiters outside Admissions and Athletics with recruiting goals: certain majors (theatre, music, nursing); special interests (marching band, e-sports); CRM Recruit Access and Comm Flows

• Mobile App: info, application, campus map and tour, push notifications once app started or beyond

• High School Counselor and birthday emails

• Test Optional for several years; now accepting unofficial test scores for Admissions decision on Test Required students

Catawba’s Newest Communication & Outreach Strategies

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Catawba’s

Transition from 3.x to 4.xSome of the challenges faced and how they were

resolved…


• Most campaign bulk emails come from the Recruiter assigned to the student (Person Owner field in 3.x; Opp Recruiter field in 4.x)

Ellucian advice: use workflows instead of campaigns

Catawba felt it would be difficult to reproduce campaign results via workflows (wfs wrong tool for the job) and Admissions staff would not be able to do it (i.e. Admissions staff build campaigns, IT CRM Admin builds workflows)

Catawba decided to continue to use campaigns Workflow to update Person Owner when associated Opportunity Recruiter field gets updated by Territory and Recruiter assignment process

Fairly simple solution; no regrets

The “campaigns don’t work against Opportunity entity”

Challenge and Solution

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• Campaign marketing lists look at funnel stage to decide whether you get, for example, the App Started comm flow or the Confirmed Student comm flow

• Not unusual for students to have submitted app (or beyond) and yet start/submit a new app online or at an imported app partner site (e.g. RNL, Common App); prospect/inquiry imports and dup merges can also create multiple opps for the same term (good dup checking rules and oppmatching config will minimize but not eliminate)

• If Confirmed Student, should get that comm flow only, not the App Started comm flow too (i.e. highest funnel stage for the term determines your CommFlow); else very confusing for the student

• Handled by primary recruitment path feature in 3.x; no primary opp feature in 4.x and it was clear Ellucian would not be creating one anytime soon

The “student has multiple Opp records for the same term”

Challenge

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• Recreated the concept of a primary recruitment path by setting primary opportunity (and primary application if student is an applicant) on each prospective student record

Primary Opp flag (y/n) on Opp

Multiple fields on Person, including pointer to Primary Opp and Primary App

Added flag on Academic Terms entity to indicate which terms are Current, Future, Historical

Triggered workflows to recalc Primary Opp whenever an opp is created or modified

Flag on Person record if workflows can’t figure it out and need someone to review and decide what’s primary

• Fairly complex solution; regret that Ellucian doesn’t provide this standard (like they did in 3.x)

The “student has multiple Opp records for the same term”

Solution at Catawba

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Communication Plans &

Bulk Email Service (API-based)


• Future of Campaigns; avail in 4.8; like Campaigns logically, but set up in a more visual way in a Visio-like plan editor

• Works on Person/Suspect/Opportunity/Event Participant/Organization; Member List instead of Marketing List

• Comm Plan made up of activities; each activity goes to a channel (letter/phone/appt/email/email service); start time on each activity

• Channel = Email Service to send bulk email; must use API email service Sparkpost (avail 4.7) or SFMC (avail 4.9)

• Branching and conditional logic on activities (e.g. send this email if acad program = Biology; send this email if acadprogram = Psychology)

• Run Ellucian workflow Evaluate Comm Plans hourly; Can add activities after the comm plan has been launched

Communication Plans

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• Inexpensive

• 150,000 emails/month

• ExactTarget = $8400

• Sparkpost = $588

• Email can come from Recruiter just like with ExactTarget (need to add field to User entity to store part of email address before @)

• Email can come from any email address even if not set up in Recruit or Sparkpost as user

• Decent tracking & reporting

Sparkpost Bulk Email Service: PROS

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• Each email is called a template; no ET-like templates for branding and consistency where you just add text

• No WYSIWYG editor, but can cut/paste from ET or another WYSIWYG HTML editor

• No folders for organizing your emails

• Doesn’t force/automate unsubscribe links, so more likely to get blacklisted

Sparkpost Bulk Email Service: CONS

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• Set up one account for your institution and link to your email domain (e.g. [email protected]); set up other users in this master account

• Set up your Sparkpost API in CRM Recruit: Settings => Settings Home => Email Service Configuration

• Set up your emails in Sparkpost (called templates); needs to be published to use with Recruit

• Recruit Communications => Email Service Templates => Retrieve Templates to bring new/modified emails into Recruit (since last retrieval); edit template to add personalization (data) mapping

• Emails recorded as Email Service Activity

Sparkpost Bulk Email Service: MECHANICS

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mailto:[email protected]


NOW

• Campaigns with legacy ET

• New comm flows being built in Comm Plans and Sparkpost

• Get experience troubleshooting comm plans and REALLY understand how they work

• Get pricing from Salesforce on extending ET past 6/30/18

• Get demo and pricing from Salesforce on API-based SFMC

• Can we keep using ET (with campaigns) and also start using SFMS API with comm plans? Answer: NO

JULY 1, 2018 AND BEYOND

• Campaigns with legacy ET

• Comm Plans with Sparkpost API (note: have to choose one or the other (SFMC); can’t use both)

OR

• Comm Plans only (no campaigns) with SFMC API

May need time to transition all campaigns to comm plans

If we can afford it, expect we’ll prefer feature-rich SFMC to basic Sparkpost

Can not run both legacy ET and SFMC API, so until we can go 100% comm plan, will need to run legacy ET and Sparkpost API

Catawba’s Plan

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• If needed, contract with Salesforce to keep “legacy” ExactTarget working

past 6/30/2018

• Get to Recruit 4.9 so you can use Communication Plans and either SFMC

or Sparkpost as your API-based bulk email service

• Evaluate SFMC vs. Sparkpost and decide which is right for your

institution

• There are many communication and outreach options

• Know your options and plan ahead for successful communications

strategy and execution!

Key Take-Aways

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And now, for a very different

perspective…Recruit communications management by Kean University


Kean University’s CRM Recruit Communications Journey

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1 Brief review of Kean’s profile and CRM Recruit overall journey

2 Lead by Example

3 Communications Best Practices

4 Results

5 Next Steps

Kean University’s

Profile and CRM Recruit HistoryTo provide some context for Kean’s communications strategy

and perspective…


• Founded in 1855; located in Union, NJ

3rd largest public institution in New Jersey

16,000 overall

3 NJ campuses

1 International Campus – Wenzhou, China

35 undergraduate majors, over 80 options for graduate study, including 4+ doctoral programs

Top 5 Most Diverse Schools in the US – Diversity, Inc. Magazine

NCAA Division III

Human Rights Institute, Holocaust Resource Center, 4 on-campus clinics, world-class facilities

Kean University Profile

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• Ellucian Colleague v5

• CRM Recruit 4.7 on prem,

launched Spring 2012

• Completed migration to 4x

January 2018

• Image Now/Perceptive

(Imaging Solution)

Kean’s CRM Recruit/ERP/Technological History

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• Regroup (texting solution)

• SlideRoom

• 3 CAS Applications

• Exact Target

Kean’s

Communication Strategies


• Heavy reliance on workflows

• 85 custom WF

• Upwards of 25 touchpoints

throughout the

communication cycle

• Diversify communication

points

Workflows

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•Administrative workflows

– Update fields

– Notify administrators

– Emails to campus constituents

•Prospect workflows

– Create account

– Application started/not

submitted

– Newsletters


•Pros

– Highly customizable within

related entities

– Timing

– Easy setup

– Accommodates multiple

processes/events

– Set it and forget it!

•Cons

– Unpredictable failures

– Trial and error during setup

– Maintenance requirements

Pros/Cons

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•Key to Success

– Create a working, living

document of all your workflows

and related communication

– Create a uniform naming

convention


Communications Plan

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•Application Submitted

•Supplemental reminders

•Supplemental receipts

•Application completion

•Acceptance notifications

•Withdrawal/deferrals

•Alternative majors

•Incomplete processing

•Deposit emails

•Yield emails

•Congratulatory emails

•Acceptance phone calls

Application Workflows/Communications

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• ExactTarget

Ad hoc emails, most lists uploaded instead of pushed from Recruit

Email marketing team designs templates, writes copies

EM operations runs lists

Name buys, events, application completion, yield, testing, orientation, registration, financial aid, student success and retention, student accounts

Text and ExactTarget Bulk Email

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144,419

1,088,372

2,796,829

5,218,003

6,539,995

1,850,905

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

7,000,000

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Annual Exact Target Sends

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018


Exact Target Templates

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• Utilize Common Application

• Partnered with Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL)

• College Board

• NRCCUA

• Collegefish.org

• Mymajors.com

• Hobson’s/Naviance

• High School Counselor emails

Kean’s Communication Initiatives

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Kean’s

Transition from 3.x to 4.xSome of the challenges faced and how they were

resolved…


• Utilized Scanner

• DO NOT RELY ON THE SCANNER

• Trial and error in the test environment

• Check, double check, triple check in production environment

• Review error logs and process logs

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Setup

Questions and Discussion


Thank you.We want to hear from you.

SESSION ID: 145379

Joanna Jasper, [email protected]

Chad Austein, [email protected]

Judi Amsel, [email protected]

CRM Recruit Customer Panel: High-Touch Communication Plans

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