Case Study: TargetX and Plymouth State University
Plymouth State University multiplies the number of deposited freshman without adding a single operations staff member through the adoption of the TargetX Recruitment Suite
Challenges: Plymouth State’s data was spread across multiple systems, making targeted and automated communications impossible
In 2013, Palmetto College at the University of South Carolina was using a third-party vendor to manage recruitment, foster leads, and convert prospects into enrolled students. USC Palmetto College“The board of the University System of New Hampshire (USNH) identified a gap for the entire USNH system, including Plymouth State, in the area of CRM,” says Jeremy Heidenreich, Director of Enrollment Operations.
He continues, “I’m glad they did because the adoption of the TargetX Recruitment Suite has proved to be not only the enabler but also the initiator, for us to make essential changes in our Admissions office.”
The Plymouth State admissions’ team was stuck in a manual mindset. The office had no centralized data system or automation technology to handle the multiple and ongoing conversations with prospective students. Staff was wasting valuable time, paper, and sanity individually handling prospect nurturing, financial aid reminders, event invitations, and follow-ups.
“It was an especially cumbersome process to get data about the behaviors of student prospects and where they were in the application process,” says Heidenreich. “Data was housed in disparate legacy systems, SIS, Access databases, Excel lists, and paper reports. It was incredibly time-consuming.”
Solutions: TargetX Recruitment Suite streamlines and automates prospect management for maximum efficiency and effectiveness
The TargetX Recruitment Suite is comprised of three key pieces — the Recruitment CRM, mobile-first Online Application and a paperless Application Review tool — that are all integrated into one powerful suite for recruiting and nurturing the right students.
The CRM is customized for each institution and has automation capabilities to trigger campaigns, events, tasks, and other recruitment activities to improve the efficiency of the admissions staff.
Plymouth State’s adoption of the TargetX Recruitment Suite allows student data to be fed into one central system. Data is instantaneously at the fingertips of Plymouth State’s Admissions staff, all in one place, instead of manually searching through disparate data sets across multiple sources. Centralization makes workflow management and targeted prospect nurturing an easy, and impactful, process.
Results: Decreased processing time, increased number of deposited freshman
Plymouth State has significantly increased the number of deposited freshman without adding a single operations staff member through the adoption of the TargetX Recruitment Suite.
“The number of deposited freshman to our program went from 840 to 1512 students,” says Heidenreich. “We knew that if we could get five more students to apply through the adoption of the Recruitment Suite, it would pay for itself. We blew that out of the water. In fact, Plymouth State is in the process of building a new residence hall to accommodate all of its housing needs.”
The staff’s ability to drastically cut down on processing time has also resulted in an enhanced customer service experience. Plymouth State’s ability to turn around decisions for applicants went from six weeks to less than a week!
Heidenreich says, “We were able to take admissions recruiting and processing and automate it almost completely. For example, we can now instantaneously see which students have what GPA and are eligible for a particular scholarship. All of that was manual before. The CRM allows us to eliminate all of the non-value added work, so our staff members can focus on what is really important: the students.”
Plymouth State University at a Glance
- A member of the University System of New Hampshire
- Founded in 1871
- 52 undergraduate majors and 60+ undergraduate minors
- 6,235 graduate and undergraduate students
- Home of the Panthers
TargetX Solutions
Goals
Plymouth State University needed a CRM solution integrated with Salesforce that would:
- manage prospective students and their data, in one system, throughout the entire recruitment funnel;
- automate and personalize correspondence between the Admissions office and prospective students;
- cut down on staff time spent on non-value added activities; and
- increase the number of students committed to Plymouth State