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Recruit & Retain INDIANA UNIVERSITY-PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS Recruitment and Beyond CRM for lifetime engagement. BY CHRIS FOLEY B Y NOW, MOST COLLEGES AND universities in the U.S. are familiar with Constituent Relationship Manage- ment or CRM as a type of software used in re- cruiting and admissions offi ces to send out mass mailings or email blasts. What is less known, however, is that CRM is becoming an integral part of a new strategy at several universities for engaging students throughout their lives — what we at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and within the Indiana University system refer to as lifetime engagement. As director of undergraduate admissions at IUPUI, I fi rst looked at CRM the way most of my colleagues did — as a way to have a complete record of communications with students, consolidate dispa- rate databases, and push out proactive communication campaigns. Prior to implementing a CRM, admissions staff had to check with three or more different systems to understand our interactions with a student. Mass emails were sent out using mail-merge in MS Offi ce and accurate records of who had received each communication were almost impossible to maintain. Above all, a prospective student was a stranger to us multiple times because we couldn't share our informa- tion across multiple databases, if it was stored at all. IUPUI works with a wide variety of students — ranging from traditional freshmen to external transfers, IU-system transfers, visiting students, adult learners — over four different entry terms. Our students often have complicated lives and respond to different methods of communications. They vary widely in age, socioeconom- ic status, geographic origin, parental education, and ethnicity. They all expect us to communicate with them via their own preferred medium . . . and they expect us to know, and act upon, our previous communications with them. CRM allows you to capture that infor- mation and create more personalized, proactive communications. Originally, I saw CRM as a means to simplify this and better meet these expectations. A robust CRM technology would compile everything into a single database and on a single record, providing a 360-degree view of our relationship with each student — from front desk and campus visits to direct mail. With one click, a recruiter would then be able to pull up practically every interaction we had with a student. CRM would allow us to plan, build, and execute marketing campaigns with greater ease and precision. And it did all those things. You can use CRM to provide information to current and pro- spective students about their interests and awareness of various student groups, such as affi nity groups for Latino and Hispanic 10 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / NOVEMBER 2012 students, LGBT, music on campus, theater, or intramural activi- ties. Their responses can be recorded in the CRM, which will generate communications based on their associations and prefer- ences. You can then more seamlessly connect them with these opportunities and currently enrolled students who have similar interests, helping them build their social network. Ultimately, our team is focused on using CRM to learn more about prospective students and applicants: who they are, what they want, and what they need to know. But we know it can do more. As we implemented the technology, we learned that we needed an organizational philosophy and culture around it. In other words, we wanted to recreate our mindset around building relationships with constituents as they evolved from applicant to student to alumni and donor — one that became interactive, more personalized, and collaborative not just with the student, but also with other University offi ces. Moreover, we wanted to use these relationships we'd cultivated with students as the foundation for their other relationships they would foster at the University. Once we started thinking about this approach, we discovered that the next step lies in the area of retention. As a large campus with many contact points with enrolled students, we have both the blessing and challenge of having many voices in helping support our students. CRM will help us not only know what each of these voices is saying to students, but to take proactive action to help students based on these voices. And now that we are connecting across both the prospective student and enrolled student stages of the student lifecycle, we can begin this engagement and retention strategy earlier in the process. We have the ability to look at their communication behavior before they enroll in class, which opens up many more possibilities for encouraging retention. Today, the defi nition of CRM at IUPUI is not limited to a system, application, or even a project. CRM is about really know- ing the individual story of each student. It's about having greater visibility and coordination across departments and schools. Our hope is that this more strategic approach for building and managing relationships across the institution will go a long way toward helping students achieve their academic and professional goals, and deepen their commitment to our institution long after they graduate. CPM Chris J. Foley is the director of Undergraduate Admissions at IUPUI, Indiana's urban research and third largest university campus, and has 15 years of working in admissions, recruitment, and enrollment management. WWW.PLANNING4EDUCATION.COM