Streamlining Admissions and Enrollment with Salesforce Customization

Spring Intake season can be as daunting as it can be exciting. The challenges of managing admissions and enrollments can be enough to dampen the enthusiasm of even the most efficient Admissions Teams.

But the good news is that you can simplify these processes and provide a seamless experience to applicants with the help of Salesforce and its highly customizable features. Let's look at how we can do that.

Understanding the Challenges:

Before we explore the solutions, let's look at some of the hurdles that educational institutions face during admissions and enrollment.

Data Management: Traditional admission processes often involve excessive paperwork. This method consumes time and is prone to errors when the volume of applications is in the hundreds or even in the thousands.

Handling Incomplete Data: Many applicants might submit forms with missing information or documents. Tracking these missing elements and following up to get the information can be tedious without the right system in place.

Application Management: Often, applications have to be routed from one department to another for various evaluations, such as academic qualifications, financial aid, or housing. Ensuring these applications move seamlessly without losing any information or documents can be a logistical challenge.

Applicant Nurturing: In a world where attention economy is precious, universities must create several touchpoints with engaging and meaningful content to applicants to maintain interest levels.

Maintaining Applicant History: Maintaining a comprehensive history of an applicant is crucial. However, storing all their previous applications, communications, and relevant notes in an easily accessible place can be challenging with a traditional process due to data volumes and complexities.

Salesforce: Go beyond solutions to create measurable impact

Salesforce, with its powerful capabilities, offers a comprehensive solution to these challenges. Moreover, Salesforce Consultants can set up customized solutions for your institution and unique requirements.

Data Management: Salesforce Partners can create Customized Salesforce Forms that allow applicants to submit their information online. This not only reduces paperwork but also ensures data accuracy. Educational institutions can efficiently manage and store applicant data by digitizing the admission process.

Handling Incomplete Data: Salesforce customization offers automated workflows that can be configured to send reminders and alerts to applicants with missing information. This feature saves time and ensures that all applicants submit complete forms. Additionally, it enables your admissions team to quickly identify which data is missing from each application and follow up accordingly.

Application Management: With Salesforce's automation capabilities, applications can be seamlessly routed from one department to another. Salesforce partners can customize workflows to ensure zero loss of information or documents during this process. Salesforce can also be customized to set different criteria for application evaluation and evaluate the applicants for an overall score. 

Salesforce consultants can also build knowledge portals or self-service portals that allow students to access FAQs, stay updated on the latest news from the institution, and raise tickets if they need further assistance from the Admissions Team.

Applicant Nurturing: Salesforce really shines in this area! Salesforce's Marketing Cloud can automate replies, enable reminders, and enable notifications. And with their deep understanding of business processes, expert Salesforce Consultants can set up 360-degree views of each applicant to create WOW moments for applicants.

For KEOUGH and Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, we started by creating applicant journeys on their Marketing Cloud. We then mapped these journeys to applicants so they would receive automated and personalized communications depending on where they were on the journey.

Maintaining Applicant History: Salesforce offers a centralized repository for storing comprehensive applicant histories. Every interaction, previous application, communication, and relevant notes can be easily accessible in one place. 

But Salesforce is more powerful than that! You can create trackers to map applicant journeys to identify at which stage the drop-off rate is the highest. With this information, institutions can now make data-driven decisions to tighten their lead funnel.

Conclusion: 

Incorporating Salesforce customization addresses several challenges faced by Admission Teams in universities. But Salesforce is much more than a platform that merely addresses challenges. It can provide in-depth visibility into your processes and transform how you interact with applicants and students. You just need to pick the right Salesforce partner.