Jill Dougherty Cleary is busy. As Director of Marketing and Recruitment for Graduate Arts and Sciences at Saint Joseph’s University, Jill is responsible for generating qualified inquiries and leads for over 40 graduate programs.

“In the course of a day, I may have radio and online campaigns going,” she says. “I may have a niche publication advertising one of our programs.” Add to that monitoring search engines and social media marketing and it would be easy for Jill to get overwhelmed in the noise.

Jill and her colleagues rely on a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to help them rise above the media din.

“What the CRM enables us to do is take a more global look at the results of our individual marketing and recruitment efforts. What vehicle is bringing in the most inquiries? What’s really pushing people?” she says.

CRM allows marketers like Jill to assess their recruitment efforts: to quantify, to organize and to prioritize. The deep analysis provided by a CRM promotes fiscal responsibility, helps eliminate redundancy and fosters strategic thinking.

But assessment is only the first step. The end goal of CRM is relationship-building. It’s designed to help recruiters translate all that data and analysis — email click-throughs, event registrations, phone lists, etc. — into actual touch-points with students.

And ultimately, for folks like Jill Cleary, to get those students to enroll.

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