Importance of 360° Communication for Admissions

With Meritto’ Unified Communication Suite, you can communicate effectively across multiple channels to ensure personalized engagement with your students from enquiry to enrolment.

When we talk about education, it's about helping students or prospects to make career decision.

When we talk about career career decisions, the first thing that comes into our mind is counselling. So when we say counselling, it means providing the right set of information at the right time to the right channel. When we say providing the information then we need to ensure that we have the right channels with us. When we talk about channels we have emails. We send emails to the students telling them the USP about the program and what are the placements, et cetera.

Then we have the SMS. When we talk about SMS, sending SMS regarding the prospect, the information, the brochure, the opening up of application form, the process, et cetera, then we have WhatsApp business API. When we talk about WhatsApp we know, the open rate of WhatsApp is more than 98%. So it's important to send information on WhatsApp.

Next comes Niaa which is an AI Chatbot. There should be a tool on the website that should help students to provide the right set of information at the right time. The students don't have to take the hustle or the pain going through their web pages and scrolling through the content. Rather they can come on the website, ask their questions and they get their resolution in real time.

Next important thing is a call. When we talk about calls, it's the first impact that any institute makes. So rather than making a pitch which is like a credit card call I am calling from XYZ University and you have inquired. It should be more personalised like hi, I'm calling from XYZ University. I can see that yesterday evening you inquired through Facebook and you have shown your interest in this particular course. And also I can see that in 12th you have scored this. So imagine the second call. In the second call the student feels connected to the counsellor or the caller. They can feel that this particular caller or counsellor is going to help them out in their career.

Next is social media. When we talk about social media it's important to have remarketing or retargeting. When we talk about retargeting it's important. If I have a prospect, if they are going on social media I can throw them the information related to the inquiry.

So these are the channels that any institute should use. So when you talk about channels, it's important that all these channels should be available on the fingertips. When I say fingertips, it's important that whether I am accessing the system through desktop or through mobile app, I can send any information at any channel on a click of a button.

Thus it's important to have the mobile app as well in order to ensure that we are using every channel and sending information in an omnichannel way. So the 360 degree approach is required in lead nurturing. So when we say lead nurturing, if you use an omni channel approach, the student is going to absorb the information at various channels and eventually it will help in more conversion as well as the decision time will decrease eventually.