5 Reasons to choose an Education CRM over Spreadsheets

Are you one of those educational institutions that still prefers to use Google or Excel Sheets to conduct their admission and marketing activities? 

Maybe yes, considering the free cost and ease of use. However, in the long run, you will end up compromising on your counselor’s efficiency and overall conversion rates. Although Excel is a great tool for data management, it falls short in core areas such as education marketing.

Excel sheets have many shortcomings, such as uneven lead integration that leads to lead leakage, zero automation, with time consumption working pace. 

Your institution needs a more efficient admission automation tool that can manage data efficiently and help you prioritize it on various parameters. To get the utmost clarity, just go through these 5 insightful reasons why you should choose an education CRM over spreadsheets. 

To Improve Efficiency via an all-in-one Education CRM Software

An education CRM software may seem exorbitant to you initially, but it is a great long-term investment for institutes of all sizes. In an educational institute, the counselor needs to communicate with a large number of prospects. If they rely on traditional methods such as spreadsheets, then it will definitely decrease their efficiency and will consume more time.

Here, CRM can be a boon as it is one tool vs. multiple applications. It helps you to manage all your leads by integrating different lead sources, nurture your leads and increase the number of productive calls by communicating with all your prospects on time. Prompt communication through various options for communication such as Bulk SMS, Emails, Whatsapp, Calling, Chatbot and Video calls have been provided within the CRM. No third-party application needs to be maintained for the same. 

For a Tailormade & Customised Solution

Excel sheets are great, but they have a one-size-fits-all approach. To tackle this, many industries have come up with their own custom solutions specially designed for their work. After all, the need for tools changes with the business model.

Accountants have Tally & Quickbooks, medical doctors have Practo, the wellness industry has Zenoti, and the retail industry has Capillary. So why should the education marketing industry be left behind? Why not a focused and tailor-made CRM software for the education industry?

Spreadsheets have limitations beyond which you can’t customize the tool according to your business model. But you can do that with dedicated education CRM software! You can have a customized platform according to your institute’s needs. Filtering out features that you don’t need helps to cut down your operation and marketing costs, which could be utilized elsewhere. 

For a Single Source of Lead Repository Across All Marketing Channels

One of the biggest challenges of using a spreadsheet for your admissions process is that you have to manually add all your leads from the different lead sources and channels. However, with education CRM software, you can easily integrate your multiple lead channels into the system through APIs that store all your leads.

For example, if a visitor responds to your Facebook ads, email ad campaign, or on your institute’s website, the API integration makes sure that the leads get directly stored in the CRM. An education CRM helps you manage your marketing and sales campaigns from one centralized system.

The education CRM channels all the scattered data and arranges it. Lead integration eliminates the chances of coming across duplicate leads. Additionally, it ensures 0% lead leakage with 100% faster responses. 

To Set Admission Marketing On Autopilot

Spreadsheets are futile when it comes to automating tasks. An education CRM is miles ahead. When using a spreadsheet, you have to go through the arduous task of manually updating the sheet whenever there is a change in the admission status. But with education CRM software, you can automate these tasks and simplify your work.

In the education industry, most of the leads come from the institute’s website or 3rd party vendors. When any lead fills out the form, you get a notification with all the details. Later, you fill this data into spreadsheets manually. What a cumbersome process!

Here, education CRM software will definitely help you as the details of the leads automatically get added into the system as soon as the prospects click on the submit button. There is no need to fill in the data manually. All the data directly gets filled in from your website or publishers to the education CRM.

To Make Data-Driven Decisions

Every successful education institute needs to analyze its admissions and marketing ROI. With tools like the Pivot table, bar graphs, pie charts, etc., spreadsheets still have a place in prediction and data analytics. But Excel has its limitations.

A spreadsheet can’t help you analyze huge amounts of data very accurately. Moreover, using tools like predictive modelling, big data analysis, and channel optimization is a specialized activity. For a complex report like this, you will need to juggle too many spreadsheets in one go. Whereas, education CRM software lets you create a variety of reports on demand. 

An education CRM has customised reports for the analysed data provided within the CRM. No fancy, complex, number sheets for you, just an understandable table or graph will do. The reports can be customised as per your organisation’s requirements and individual comprehension. You can easily track the performance of lead generation sources, counselor performance, call-to-conversion ratio, etc. 

Conclusion

Spreadsheets, hands down, are a great tool for data work, especially if you are an educational institute working on simple, small amounts of data. But it doesn’t hold a candle to education CRM software.

If you are looking for a solution that helps you simplify your work exponentially, reduce the time spent on every task, increase your efficiency and reach your admission goals faster, you need to think and work beyond an Excel spreadsheet.

You need a single platform that will help you make your work less complicated by performing complex tasks for you. With an education CRM taking over all your manual and difficult tasks, you and your team can focus more on more important and productive tasks like student nurturing and increasing your conversion ratio. 

By the way, if you are looking for an all-in-one marketing automation solution for your institution which is completely dedicated to the education industry, then ExtraaEdge is the thing for you. 

Book a 30-minute DEMO and kickstart your journey to a hassle-free admission process with ExtraaEdge.