Using CRM Technology in Student Acquisition

Transcript

Michael Bird

Hi! My name is Mike Bird. I’m the CEO here at Social Garden. Today I’m here with Andrew Shea, the CEO at BAA, Builders Academy Australia. And we’re talking about digital marketing, and digital disruption within the education sector. So Andrew, do you want to start by telling us a bit about yourself?

Andrew Shea

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me here today. I’m the CEO of Builders Academy Australia, which we spoke about, around three thousand students up the Eastern seaboard of Australia, specialising in building and construction training. Myself? Fifteen years in the industry, really passionate about making difference to the students’ lives. And thanks for a fantastic team that we have at Builders Academy, we do a great job in doing that.

Michael

Totally. We love working with you guys. So first of all, what kind of changes have you seen within the education sector because of the digital disruption and the changes to that?

Andrew

I think something is our business has matured into its sales and marketing processes. We’ve become very good at knowing who our customers are. I think that’s the key.

And I think as part of that for our marketing and our sales, we need to know which persona we’re speaking to at the time. So it’s something we’ve done a lot of training on internally. And through the actual pipeline system we have in place and being able to train our staff, we are really focusing on who our customers are, how are we going to speak to them, so knowing that it’s a fit for purpose in the conversation, and that we’re speaking the same language.

And also where do we find them. In the current age – digital – is where we find our customers. Everyone has phone in their hand at all times, especially the tradies on the roof, they get down for two minutes, they check their Facebook, they check their Instagram, they check their Snapchat. So for us to be able to connect and engage with our customers, we have to go digital.

Michael

So I know you guys are doing some pretty cutting edge stuff when it come to the acquisition, but do you also see the application of CRM technology and automation in retention piece as well?

Andrew

I think so, certainly. I think it’s about maintaining that engagement. So our whole business model is really focused on launching the students towards a better career, toward a better life for themselves and their families in a lot of cases. The more we can keep that conversation open through any automation processes, any communication, the better we are actually meeting our customer’s needs.

So the way that we use, from the CRM of Salesforce through to Marketo, from a marketing automation perspective, we want to make sure that no matter where the students are in the life cycle, we can reach out to them. We can make sure we can flag if they’re not going along their journey at the pace they should.

And we can interject and say, “Hey, we’re here for the long run.We’re here to get you to where you want to go and launch you towards a better future. You’re going off the rails a little bit, how can we help?” That’s the key, how can we help?