take control of your recruitment efforts by adding powerful tools to your website
TRANSCRIPT
Take control of your recruitment efforts by adding powerful tools to your website
Marc-Olivier Ouellet, coordinatorNAGAP April 2015
admission.umontreal.ca
How many of you:– Feel confident that your recruitment efforts are worth it?– Can measure in numbers the effectiveness of your
recruitment efforts?– Have a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) in
place?
Questions
admission.umontreal.ca
Learn how to use tools for your website that will help you get information about your visitors and interact with themCreate a strategy that builds upon these new tools to accompany your prospective students in their decision-making processesEvaluate your recruitment efforts without the use of expensive and proprietary CRM and better target your actions
Learning Objectives
Université de Montréal at a Glance
UdeM’s campus, comprising some 40 buildings, is clustered around the majestic Art Deco tower of Roger-Gaudry Hall at the heart of beautiful city of Montréal
admission.umontreal.ca
+66 000 students in 16 faculties and affiliated schools
Université de Montréal at a Glance
admission.umontreal.ca
2 650 professors-researchers465 research units$526M in research revenue
Université de Montréal at a Glance
250 undergraduate programs (74%)350 graduate programs (26%)17 000 graduate students7 870 international students from 120 countries
admission.umontreal.ca
Office of Admission and Recruitment– Recruitment of undergraduate and graduate students– Centralized admission for undergraduate programs– Decentralized admission for graduate programs– Separate from the Office of the Registrar– Separate from the Office of communication– 50 employees : 35 for admission / 15 for recruitment– We do not have a CRM– We have Oracle/PeopleSoft Campus Solution
Internal Organization
admission.umontreal.ca
We live in a ever-changing changing world technologically and socially: – The Web is the # 1 source of information – Social networks more and more popular– Mobility-friendly sites are becoming a must-have– Web technologies have improved (HTML5/CSS3)– Consumer habits in terms of information have evolved
Learn about students’ habits on the Web– Nielsen Norman Group publication is a great start :
“College Students on the Web”, 2nd Edition
Understanding the Global Context
Understanding the Internal Context
Before• Salons• Student fairs• Distribution of brochures• Print documents• Tours in colleges• Face-to-face contact• Travels in targeted markets• Radio / newspapers ads• Mass marketing
Target• Websites• SEO• Conversations on Facebook• YouTube videos• Webinars• Personalized e-docs• Targeted newsletters• Remarketing• Content marketing
To adapt to this new reality and remain competitive, we had to review our methods and define a strategy
Defining a strategy
Transforming our activities
Traditional recruitment Inbound recruitment
Field activities
Travelon the road
Web et new
media
Promotion and ads
Wrriting content/
multimedia
Promotion and ads
Analysis
Guidance, follow-up
Field activities
New media
Web
From traditional marketing to inbound marketing
Adopting the inbound marketing model
Source: hubspot
Adaptation of Mattan Griffel “Lean marketing Marketing”
About “Growth Hacking”
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
REFERRAL
Source: Growth Hacking, http://slideshare.net/mattangriffel/growth-hacking
The lean marketing framework
ACQUISITIONSEO SEM SN PR Email Blogs Contests
ACQUISITION = getting prospective students to come to your website
The lean marketing framework
ACTIVATION = getting prospective students to sign up for anything that could lead to a repeat visit
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
The lean marketing framework
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
RETENTION = getting prospective students to become active
The lean marketing framework
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
REFERRAL
REVENUE = getting prospective students to apply to your university
The lean marketing framework
ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
REFERRAL
REFERRAL = getting active users to refer others
Growth Hacking: measure conversions at each step
Acquisition Activation Retention0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
X% Y%
Assessing our Recruitment Funnel
Public
• I discover UdeM (notoriety)
Suspect
• I am interested in programs at UdeM
Prospect
• I interact with UdeM
Candida
te
• I apply for admission at UdeM(and possibly at other universities too)
Admitted
• I’m admitted at the UdeM (and possibly at other universities too)
Enrolled
• I enroll at UdeM
Google Analytics
???
ERP / Admission system
ERP / Admission system
ERP / Admission system
???
???
Add tools on our website to interact with prospectsIntegrate tools to collect data about our prospectsCreate communication plan to guide our prospectsDevelop metrics and dashboards to measure and follow our recruitment efforts
Our plan
Internally, we gathered an informal “Web team”– Web Coordinator, junior webmaster, content editor– Responsible to designing features, prototyping
wireframes, writing technical specifications, etc.– We do not own a CRM
Externally, we worked with Web firm :– Expertise in open-source Web programming
(PHP/MySQL and Typo3)– No expert in Higher-Ed– Focus on small incremental features
Our resources
admission.umontreal.ca
If you want to track your prospect, you will need them to register to your siteBefore to do so, think about the features that will want them to create an account on your site– To register to your events?– To access protected documents?– To submit an inquiry?– To generate personalized content?
Tracking prospects
admission.umontreal.ca
Our picks :– Submit an inquiry– Subscribe to our newsletters– Create an online personalized viewbook– Access to restricted online content– Register to (online and offline) events
Features reserved for our registered users
admission.umontreal.ca
At UdeM, we chose to limit social login to Facebook, LinkedIn and Google– Twitter does not share the user email address– Social login promises to reduce barriers to register– Permission-based access to rich user data• Email, Name, Gender, Language, Birthday, Profile image,
Location, Hometown, Age, Scholarity
Disadvantages:– Maintenance– Not so easy to implement
About “Social login”
admission.umontreal.ca
Preferred modes of connection
Highschool students
Collge students
Lycée students
UdeM applicants
Other university students
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Facebook Google LinkedIn Email
Social login promised higher conversion rate– Objective is to simplify the signup process– In our case, create an account with an email is fast too– According to “Blue Research”, 49% never use social login– Mains raisons for NOT using social login :
• Don’t trust company to use information appropriately (49%)• Don’t want company to post to my feed (33%)• Concerned company will spam me or my contacts (16%)
Need to further analyse this– Do A/B testing– Ask our students
Source: http://fr.slideshare.net/Janrain/2014-consumer-research-social-login-and-personalization
Food for thoughts
admission.umontreal.ca
Before 2013 :– All inquiries were filled online and sent directly by email– No history, no archive, no way to make any analysis
In 2013:– We created an inquiry form that contained the same
fields as our profile page and stored every inquiry in our new database
– We asked for permissions to communicate with students
Inquiry form
admission.umontreal.ca
Highlights:– Over 28 000 inquires were sent in 2014 only– We got a better understanding of the type of subjects
asked throughout the year– We were able to be more proactive and listen to our
studentsThis fall 2014:– Encourage student to login with their account before
submitting their inquiry (about 15% do)– We integrated our inquiry form with our Frequently Asked
Questions to reduce number of repetitive questions asked
Inquiry form
Highlights:– The ability to push answers automatically based on the
level of study and topic showed great results– In January 2015 only, we were able to reduce by 20%
the amount of inquiries received compared to January 2014• 4194 questions received compared to 4994
– According to Google Analytics, we have +8% visits on our inquiry form
Inquiry form
admission.umontreal.ca
Making use of this data
Contact database
Inquiry form Register form Analysis
Newsletters
admission.umontreal.ca
We developed a batch routine that extracts every day the data that we collect in a simple cumulative CSV file (Excel)With Excel, we can do many things!– Do analysis– Filter– Hide columns– Etc!
Extracting this data
Communication Plan
Public
• I discover UdeM (notoriety)
Suspect
• I am interested in programs at UdeM
Prospect
• I interact with UdeM
Candida
te
• I apply for admission at UdeM(and possibly at other universities too)
Admitted
• I’m admitted at the UdeM (and possibly at other universities too)
Enrolled
• I enroll at UdeM
What messages do you need to communication
at each step of the funnel?
What is your target audience?
What are your call-to-actions?
We use “CakeMail” to communicate with our prospective students– Web-based mass mailing communication system– Similar to MailChimp– Can send email campaign easily– Can personalized emails with any data (like firstname)• Hi [firstname],
– Can add conditional logic inside templates• [IF LEVEL EQ “UNDERGRAD”] …
– Can import any Excel file with data
Communication with prospective students
admission.umontreal.ca
We produce annually our Guide d’admission : – Hybrid between University catalogue and a
Viewbook– It contains descriptions of all undergraduate
programs offered at UdeM, including :• Admission Requirements• Program Structure (courses)• Career Prospective• And more…
Admission Guide
admission.umontreal.ca
Before 2014:– Print publication of 350 pages, printed in 29 000 copies– Distributed to students and high school counsellors
throughout the province of Québec– Time consuming and costly to produce
This fall:– Limited print version for high school counsellors only– Online personalized online version for students
Admission Guide
Allow 20 programs by guideNo limit on the number of guidesMandatory and optional documentsDescription of all courses inside the programs selectedContent based on type of students (foreign vs local student), cycle (undergrads or grads), etc.Allow to name the guide, delete, modifyAllow to order a print copy
Options for students
To encourage students to create a guide, we launcheda contestSimple rules:1. Create an account2. Create a guide3. Submit an application
Get a chance to be reimburse your application fees
Contest « Collect your possibilities »
Use prospect’s email address as unique key– Otherwise, use firstname, lastname and birthday
Perform “search and map” function in Excel
How to map your prospect data with your ERP
Excel magic!
Website Database
PeoplesoftReports
admission.umontreal.ca
Feature Cost (in US$)Registration / LoginPersonalized Viewbook
30 000$
Inquiry form with integrated FAQ 4 000$Extraction data to Excel fil 1 000$Design 5 000$TOTAL 40 000$
Development Costs
In 8 months, over 16 500 individuals created an account
Explorer Accounts
High school student3%
College student22%
Lycée student9%
UdeM Student14%
UdeM Applicant23%
Student en-rolled in an-other uni-
versity18%
Other11%
Explorers Locations
Canada50%
France21%
Algeria4%
Morocco3%
Haiti2%
Senegal2%
Cameroon2%
Tunisia1%
Autre15%
Over 110 countriesrepresented
Level of study
1er cycle (Bac-calauréat, Majeure, Mineure, Certificat,
etc.)74%
2e cycle (Maîtrise/Master,
DESS, etc)20%
3e cycle (Doctorat)5%
Stages postdoctoraux1%
Winter 2015 Analysis
Suspects
• Website visitors: 435 671
Prospects
• 4 021 explorers
Applicants
• 8 837 applicants
Admitted
• 6 185 admitted
Enrolled
• 2 782 enrolled
Period: September 1st 2014 and December 1st 2014 – All level of study
2% submitted an application
11% submitted an application
5xProspective students that had an Explorer Account of 5 times more likely to submit an application
0.9% created an account
Fall 2015 Analysis
Suspects
• Website visitors: 570 377
Prospects
• 6 560 explorers
Applicants
• 27 365 applicants
Admitted
• TBD
Enrolled
• TBD
Period: December 1st 2014 and March 1st 2015 – All level of study
4,38% submitted an application
37% submitted an application
8xProspective students that had an Explorer Account of 8 times more likely to submit an application
1,2% created an account
4 100+ personalized guides were generated44% of students that created an online viewbook submitted an application for Winter or Fall 2015– Compared to 30% who did not
Personalized Viewbooks
Growth Hacking Model
Acquisition Activation Retention0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
435671
4021 442.31
570377
6560 2427.2
Winter 2015 Fall 2015
37%1%
admission.umontreal.ca
Imagine new features that will convince students to create an account at an early stage– Improve conversion rate from visitors to explorers– Landing pages– Redesign our login/sign-up page– Allow visitors to register to our events– Propose member-only fun quizzes
Ideas for future developments
admission.umontreal.ca
Improve our analysis– Linked our application data with our explorers data
daily through a batch job to simplify our analysisSynchronise our mailing lists with our explorers data– Change from “CakeMail” to “Mailchimp”– Automate communication based on set of criteria, like
field of interest, stage in the funnel, birthday, etc
Ideas for future developments
admission.umontreal.ca
Any question?Slides are avaiable on Slideshare– slideshare.net/marcolivier_ca
Contact me :– Marc-Olivier Ouellet– [email protected]– @marcolivier_ca– www.linkedin.com/in/mouellet
Discussions