CRMs for online schools grew even more popular with the pandemic of 2020. COVID pushed many educational establishments to the cyber stratosphere, making offline education impossible for hundreds of millions of kids on the planet for months.
Similarly, there has been a huge demand for LMS software and VLE systems, as both the Learning Management System and Virtual Learning Environment have attracted masses of new users during the pandemic.
Educational institutions world over went through crises and had to adapt to new ways of handling their daily routine, registering kids to classes, checking homework, distributing materials, material explanations, taking exams.
Online relationship management is a whole new world for many principals, teachers, parents, and students, of course. Luckily, the industry has quickly picked up the challenge and enhanced its products to cater to the growing demand.
Let’s see what the industry offers in terms of CRM software for educational organizations, E-learning systems, Virtual classroom software. How they differ and what purposes these tools are best for.
Such an introductory section will be a solid foundation before we deep dive into the intricacies of how CRM for e-learning can be used to grow student lists, enhance results, and plan curriculum.
Online Teaching Software Overview
There are a few subcategories of technological solutions available for educational professionals. They include platforms that allow them to create, sell, conduct online courses; tools for teaching online classes in video mode, student relationship management software, CRMs for education consultants among others.
Let’s review some of the key solutions for virtual educational organizations:
LMS Software: For Corporate Segment, Academic Use And ELearning Companies
LMS systems are designed as a framework for providing an online learning experience.
Key Features of LMS include:
- Video conferencing
- Learner portal
- Synchronous / Asynchronous learning
- Blended learning
- Gamification
- Course authoring
- SCROM compliance
- Ecommerce features with payment option
Best LMS software solutions:
- Schoology Leaning
- Blackboard LMS
- Arlo
- Brightspace
- Pluralsight
- Moodle
- Cornerstone LMS
- Teachable
- Thinkific
- Lessonly
Training Software & Course Authoring Systems
For custom course development and conducting automated educational activities online.
Key Features of training software include:
- Built-in LMS
- Built-in Course authoring
- Certification management
- Mobile learning
- Simulation
- Learner portal
- Synchronous learning
- Asynchronous learning
- Blended learning
- Ecommerce
Best Training software tools:
- Moodle
- Google classroom
- iHASCO
- TalentLMS
- Edmodo
- WizIQ
- On-Demand Training
- Learning Stone
Learning Experience Platforms [LEP] Software
These platforms help aggregate training courses by a diverse range of suppliers into one common resource so that users can choose their course curriculum from a wide variety of assortment.
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Key Features Learning Experience Platform Systems include:
- Microlearning
- 3rd party course library
- Social learning
- Content sharing
- Course authoring
- Employee portal
- Self-service content curation
- Multi-user collaboration
- Recommendations
- Reporting and analytics
Top Learning Experience Platforms:
- Talent LMS
- SkillSoft
- DeveLoop
- Quizlet
- Digital Coaching Club
- Classtime
- THRIVE
- Next Thought
- HowNow
Summing up the overview of online education software solutions, it’s worth noting, that tools available far exceed tools enumerated here and there are multiple systems in other categories available, like virtual classroom software, Student Information systems, and so on.
Nonetheless, the systems listed here are mostly designed to deliver the educational content to the students in an orderly manner via digital means. The big part of a successful online educational business though is marketing. You may have created the best online courses ever and chosen a user-friendly tool to deliver them via, but getting students to notice it and attend it is a whole new mission.
This is when CRM for online education fits the bill best, as they offer an arsenal to acquire, retain clients, and nurture the relationship with them. Let’s see some practical ways of usage of CRM for education in an online environment here.
Online Education CRM: Best Practices
Top Features Of CRM For Educational Institutions Online:
- Student & Teacher Management Module
- Task Management
- Deal Management
- Pipeline Management
- Email marketing
- Social Platforms integration
- Calendar & planning module
- Profile enrichment feature
Nimble CRM is a universal Customer Relationship Management system, that caters to over 140 thousand professional world over, helping them manage businesses in a wide range of industries, inclusive educational institutions.
We help our users save on average 90 minutes per day, as the system helps organize, plan the day, and increase time management efficiency.
Let’s use Nimble CRM features to illustrate how a system like this can help optimize business processes in the domain of online education.
Online Learning CRM for Student Management
The student management module is a core and vital feature in a Customer Relationship Management tool. A database of your students is the starting point for any activity: if you want to know how many of them have enrolled in a specific course, which ones can get together for a meet up in a certain location, who needs to be sent a Birthday card to nurture those relationships on a more personal level.
A contact management feature is as elaborate in Nimble CRM for online learning, as it is user friendly. At a glance, Nimblers get access to dozens of data points on their contacts, inclusive location, gender, title, professional role, working place, contacts, social media profiles, and more.
The best thing is – you can always create a custom tag or segment, so that you can filter and sort the mass of students into the groups for mass actions: to send an email or reminder, for example. So you can attach a course name, or payment method to their profiles, for example.
Goes without saying, as an online education entrepreneur, you will have other contacts to store and manage, like those of your teachers, vendors, partners, colleagues. To quickly find those categories, just add a specific title tag to the contact profile, so you can perform mass actions and quickly look up the needed person when needed: ‘Teacher’, ‘Online education conference 2020’, ‘Marketing’, ‘LMS professionals’.
Email Marketing For Student Acquisition & Retention
Email marketing is still one of the most efficient channels when it comes to ROI. Email marketing tools can get quite expensive, specifically when you get plenty of contacts on your database. Nimble has a fixed price per user: $25 monthly payment if billed by the month and just $19 per month if billed annually. However large your database is.
Mass emailing is easy, just pick the demographic parameter to filter from your database or choose a custom tag for selection.
Moreover, you can also see the open rate in your Nimble email feature, so that you know if you are being paid attention to or you need to follow up with a call.
Profile Enrichment: Know Your Student
Your sales department will LOVE Nimble Prospector. This browser extension cuts so much manual input, as you can add contacts to your database from anywhere on the internet: from email, social media, internet page, 3rd party apps.
You always get quick access to your students’ social media activity too – that helps to know them better when upselling some courses or checking on their progress.
Stay Social, Stay Relevant
Social media insights provide access to all the databases of your teacher, partners, vendors, students. So you can use social media for professional purposes yet not get distracted by all the entertaining video content. Like, comment share from your CRM during your working day with a clean consciousness.
Plan Your Day Like You Have Thousands Of Students And You Will
A well-oiled time management routine is the foundation of a successful career in any segment, specifically in the LMS and online training realm, where distractions and volume of incoming information can get too much.
Calendar with all the tasks is part of your dashboard so that you start your day with a clear step-by-step process in mind.
The feature allows users to send invites, schedule meetings – individually and to a group of select contacts alike. It is integrated with all major calendar solutions (like Google Calendar, Outlook, etc.), so you can work across familiar interfaces as well.
Encourage Reviews & Social Media Presence For Organic Growth
Online educational businesses can take a lot of marketing budgets to promote. Use your satisfied students to provide positive reviews on Google Business manager and similar platforms.
Such a simple step can be programmed, so that every student who gets a certificate of completion receives an email with a link to your Google business manager profile review page, growing your SEO rankings with each positive comment about your courses.
Analyze To Grow You LMS Business
BigData is capable of providing answers to most of the blurred questions. Even if your database is not that big and you are only developing your online training business or promoting your online school, the reporting feature can provide valuable insights.
You can track your teacher’s performance with visual graphs, monitor the number of students per season, per campaign per specific course, etc.
Nimble: CRM for online education that helps grow your business
There are so many software systems for online teaching to serve every need of those helping humanity grow wiser quicker.
CRM for online schools and courses is a valuable tool in this arsenal, that helps to promote your business and nurture those relationships with your students for higher retention and word of mouth power.
Nimble CRM helps hundreds of thousands of professionals run their business like a clock for enhanced efficiency, optimizing pretty much every process along the way. This is why we have 1500+ positive reviews in Capterra and have been at the top of their top 20 best CRM list for years.
G2Crowd announced Nimble as the best CRM industry leader for small business teams.
If you are looking for more reasons to try Nimble to optimize your online school routine, check out these:
- It’s user friendly with plenty of webinars to show around on our YouTube channel.
- It can be integrated with any tools you use via Zapier or API in no time.
- Nimble Prospector extension is an absolute favorite of sales and marketing pros.
- Nimble offers 2 weeks free of charge with just an email, no credit card required.
Let’s get this student relationship management tool working to grow your online school in no time! Try Nimble CRM today free for 2 weeks with just a credit card.