Working in silos is a common challenge for those in school advancement, admissions and marketing, where schools have different independent teams working towards similar goals, which can create a gap in internal communication and cause teams to miss out on each other’s expertise.
Aligned marketing and admissions teams result in improved communication and collaboration, getting everyone on the same page. And once everyone’s working towards the same goal and aware of what each other’s doing, everything is simpler and more efficient.
We sat down with King’s Schools to learn more about how Digistorm Funnel helped them to align their teams so they could better hit their growth goals.
About King’s Schools
King’s Schools exists to deliver an exceptional Christian education instructed by called, caring individuals that believe and have professed their personal faith in Jesus Christ.
Founded in 1950, King’s Schools is an independent, interdenominational Christian school for students from preschool to grade 12. Located in Shoreline on the beautiful 55-acre CRISTA Ministries campus, King’s Schools is known for its academic excellence, Christian commitment, a strong, caring community, and a rich heritage of alumni.
The King’s educational experience distinguishes the Bible as the supreme authority in life and equips our students to be leaders able to live out their faith as a practical demonstration of God’s love.
The challenge
Before adopting Funnel, King’s School was struggling with a complicated and inefficient admissions process. Like many schools, they relied on spreadsheets, which became overwhelming to manage.
The King’s Schools team recognised that they needed to change up the way they did things, and took proactive steps towards establishing a more efficient process. For such a large school, consolidating all of the admissions information simply became unmanageable. They needed a better way to undertake their marketing efforts, gather data, and help their marketing and admissions teams do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
As an admissions or marketing pro, your day can become quite challenging, having to be responsible for a plethora of families all with their own sets of data that need to be organised. That’s why the King’s team valued Funnel’s ability to organise their day and make it easier for them to manage all of their family data, which can be notoriously detailed and complex, and which needs to be stored securely and accessed easily.
Funnel allows the team to break down leads and families into different lists and filters, making it simple to keep track of everything in one place and filter information by date, location, name, and more.
How the admissions and marketing team was supported
As marketing receives more and more leads, it can become difficult to sort through them and judge them as potential new enrolments. That’s where lead scoring comes in. Lead scoring allows you to judge the potential of leads to determine which are the best fit for your school and which will be the most responsive to your unique selling points.
Your school probably has a picture of its perfect applicant, and lead scoring allows you to prioritise leads that match that ideal. Potential attributes to look for include:
A student’s proximity to campus
If their parent is an alumnus
If their sibling/s attend the school
If they’re a good fit for your programs
The King's team valued Funnel’s lead conversion feature, which helps determine where specific leads are coming from, whether it be through digital channels, drive-by signage, or from the school website. The feature also tells the team how many leads are coming in and what the actual conversion rate is.
How the King’s team was supported
The King’s team had a few must-haves in mind when searching for a digital solution to plug the gaps in their admissions process, including ongoing support, quick response times, and the capacity for problem-solving.
A school’s admissions process never sleeps, and because the technology the King’s team would end up adopting would serve as the cornerstone of their admissions process, their priorities were well-judged.
The King’s team knew that they needed to be able to operate the software themselves, but that they should also have access to ongoing support if any unexpected issues should occur. Funnel’s onboarding process begins with dedicated training to help schools get up to speed with the software and learn the ins and outs. The school team is assigned their own Onboarding Specialist, who can offer on-campus or virtual support, and whose mission is to make the school team members as comfortable and confident as possible with Funnel.
Wrapping up
By using Funnel to align their marketing and admissions teams, who already had similar goals, King’s School was able to improve the overall efficiency of their advancement strategy, and save their team members time and effort, which they could better spend making connections with families. With Funnel, the King’s team were also better able to lead score, which helped with their overall organisation and day-to-day effectiveness.
