From Student Admissions to Student Success: Top 5 use cases to engage and convert with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
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As universities embrace newer ways to reach and engage with prospective students, marketing automation has emerged as an essential tool to engage with students at the channels of their choice. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a powerful platform that can help universities automate their marketing campaigns and communications, providing a seamless, personalized experience for their target audiences.
At Aethereus, we have created EduAssist Student journey accelerator to help universities accelerate their Marketing cloud journey with pre-built use cases. Some of these use cases are highlighted in the below section.
Top Salesforce Marketing Use Cases for Universities
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1. Student Recruitment – Outreach & Nurturing
Salesforce Marketing Cloud enables universities to create personalized campaigns that target specific audiences and guide them through the enrollment process. The platform’s marketing automation tools can be used to capture leads and engage prospects through personalized email campaigns, social media ads and other channels.
A leading US based university increased application rates by 24% with student recruitment campaigns. By tracking the behavior and preferences of prospective students, segmenting them based on their interests, the university was able to attract more students to apply for their courses.
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2. Events Promotion
Universities can promote their events such as open houses, webinars and information sessions – at scale, by creating targeted campaigns that are designed to attract specific types of students. For example, a university can create a campaign that targets high school seniors who are interested in STEM subjects or a particular program.
The platform’s event management features can be used to create and manage event registration, send event reminders and follow-ups, and even capture feedback from attendees. This can help universities drive event attendance by 26% and increase engagement at their events and gain valuable insights to improve their future campaigns.
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3. Student Well Being
Higher-ed firms can also leverage Salesforce to send personalized communications to students based on their interests, behavior and preferences. By using the platform’s automation tools, universities can create targeted campaigns that deliver relevant content and resources to students.
For example, a university sent students personalized messages to promote mental health resources such as counselling services, stress management techniques and mindfulness programs. These communications were triggered by specific student behaviors and help reduce student dropouts by 16%.
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4. Student Progression
With timely nudges and notifications, universities can encourage students to complete their courses, turn-in assignments on time, track their performance versus peers. This ultimately helps universities improve learning outcomes and improve student progression goals.
A leading university used Marketing Cloud to send students timely reminders on their incomplete e-learning course, notify them of their exam schedule and share grade details, all personalized to the student and course being taken. This helped significantly improve learning outcomes and improve progression by 31%.
What is Eduassist?
Eduassist is an Appexchange Student Lifecycle Management (SLM) solution for higher-ed institutions, that enables end-to-end digitisation of student journeys.
Built on Salesforce’s EDA data model and with inputs from higher-ed practitioners, the solution contains pre-built screens, automations, KPIs and best practices aligned with prospect-to-alumni lifecycle.
Key modules include student recruitment and admissions, student experience & success, university operations and alumni management, which can be enabled as per university needs.
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5. Alumni Engagement
Salesforce Marketing Cloud can also help universities engage with their alumni, building lifelong relationships with them. With the platform’s automation tools, universities can create targeted campaigns that keep alumni informed about the latest developments at the university, provide opportunities for involvement and giving, and recognize alumni achievements.
By using Marketing Cloud, universities can segment their alumni based on their graduation year, program, or geographic location and send them personalized communications, such as newsletters, event invitations, and fundraising appeals. This can help universities build a strong alumni network, which can benefit the university’s reputation and fundraising efforts.
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Conclusion
While Salesforce has a powerful marketing platform that can help universities reach and engage their target audiences, a pre-built toolkit of KPIs, templates and best practices connected with core Education cloud data model can provide client with a head start in their Marketing journeys. Working with an experienced partner who understands the key touchpoints student journeys and education cloud data model can help universities forge ahead confident with their digital campaigns.
Aethereus has designed EduAssist appexchange solution leveraging it’s deep understanding of education domain to complement Salesforce marketing platform, by embedding KPIs like application rates, enrolment, student well-being and alumni outreach as part of pre-built campaign journeys. Leading Education firms have reported tangible outcomes like reduced dropout ratio or better alumni connect using EduAssist.
If you want to learn, how EduAssist for Marketing Cloud can help your university, please reach out to us here!
