Take control of your recruitment efforts by adding powerful tools to your website

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


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

About UdeM

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


+66 000 students in 16 faculties and affiliated schools



2 650 professors-researchers465 research units$526M in research revenue


250 undergraduate programs (74%)350 graduate programs (26%)17 000 graduate students7 870 international students from 120 countries


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

Creating a strategy


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

Before“Let’s go find prospective students”

Now“Let’s prospective students find us”

Paradigm shift

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


ACTIVATION = getting prospective students to sign up for anything that could lead to a repeat visit

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION


ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION

RETENTION = getting prospective students to become active


ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION

REVENUE

REFERRAL

REVENUE = getting prospective students to apply to your university


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



???

???

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

Our (on-going) journey


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


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

Creating a Registration system: login / connect


How “Social login” works

Social Login Trends


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”


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


Inquiry form


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


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

Examples of our 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


Making use of this data

Contact database

Inquiry form Register form Analysis

Newsletters


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

Examples of targeted newsletters

Reporting


Personalized viewbook


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 Guide 2014-2015


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 students to add programs to their guide

Creating the online version

Allow students to customize their guide

Creating the online version

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

Preview

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 »

Personalized guide on Instagram


Linking the data with your ERP

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

Return on our efforts4


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


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


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

Future plans5

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%


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


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


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

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mouellet

Take control of your recruitment efforts by adding powerful tools to your website

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