The Importance of Personalisation for Higher Education Student Recruiting
In a competitive higher education landscape, personalisation has become crucial in attracting, engaging, and retaining prospective students.
The Personalisation Capabilities of Azorus CRM for Higher Education
Azorus CRM empowers institutions to deliver personalised engagement at scale, tailoring communications and interactions to meet the specific needs and preferences of prospective students and applicants. The platform allows universities to create unique experiences across multiple touchpoints, enhancing the recruitment process and fostering stronger student relationships.
Key Personalisation Features:
Targeted Communications
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Segmented campaigns: create highly targeted email campaigns by filtering contacts based on factors like program interest, country, or year of entry.
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Dynamic content insertion: use placeholders to insert personal details (e.g., student name or program choice) into emails, ensuring communications feel relevant and personal.
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Custom communication journeys: build personalised email sequences based on student behavior, such as follow-up emails triggered by opened messages or other tracked activities.
Self-service Student Portals
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Customised portal views: deliver a personalised portal experience, showing relevant information, content, and tasks based on the student’s interests or application stage.
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Adaptive forms: forms adjust dynamically to display different questions or options based on a student’s prior responses, streamlining data collection.
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Progress tracking and reminders: students receive customised reminders to complete tasks, such as submitting documents or registering for events.
Event Personalisation
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Event invitations: send personalised event invitations based on geographic location, academic interests, or stage in the recruitment process.
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Attendance tracking and follow-up: monitor event participation and automatically follow up with personalised content or next steps.
Behavior-Driven Personalisation
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Triggered actions: set up triggers that respond to student activities, such as sending a thank-you email after an enquiry or recommending specific programs after a portal visit.
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Preferred channel engagement: identify which communication channels each student engages with the most and prioritise outreach accordingly.
Profile-Based Insights
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Comprehensive student profiles: build rich profiles by accumulating data from interactions, enquiries, form submissions, and event attendance.
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Tailored recommendations: use profile data to suggest programs, events, or actions specific to each student’s academic goals and interests.
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Language and Regional Personalisation
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Localised communication: personalise communications by region, ensuring emails and messages align with cultural norms and are delivered in the student’s preferred language.
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Geo-targeted campaigns: adjust messaging and offers based on the student’s geographic location to ensure relevance.
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Impact of Personalisation on Student Recruitment
The personalised experience provided by Azorus CRM enhances student engagement by ensuring every communication and interaction feels relevant and meaningful. By leveraging dynamic data and behavior-based triggers, institutions can:
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Increase conversion rates by delivering the right message at the right time.
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Build deeper relationships through individualised communications.
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Improve efficiency by automating personalised workflows.
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Drive retention by keeping prospective students engaged throughout the recruitment funnel. ​​​
Azorus CRM transforms the student journey into a personalised experience, helping institutions stand out in a competitive higher education landscape while fostering long-term connections with prospective students.
Filter Engine & Target Groups
Effective communication stems from intelligent segmentation. Within the Azorus platform is a powerful central segmentation engine that powers the personalised content that triggers emails, SMS, Call campaigns, and even the very content users see in their emails and portal pages.
The matching process of the data takes place in the background, automatically compiling and segmenting data in real-time without the need for manual input – once a filter has been made, it will constantly search for new users who match its criteria. This helps to lessen redundant effort, increase productivity and pull together the information you require quickly and easily.
You can:
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Create simple rules, e.g. Year of Entry = 2025;
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Create complex rules, i.e. Year of Entry = 2025 AND Subject of Interest = (Biology OR Chemistry) AND Level of Study = Undergraduate AND Country of Birth = India;
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Set matching criteria based on triggered events and date ranges, i.e. signed up for a Virtual Open Day; or three days after registration;
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Save all filters for future use;
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Quickly and easily update several filters by updating just a single rule (every filter that uses that rule will then get updated);
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Organise your filters and records easily using folders with drag and drop functionality;
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Invert your filter criteria with one click of a button, i.e. show all prospective students with a GPA of 3.2 inverted to GPA not above 3.2;
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Assign filters to specific emails and web portal content to ensure prospective students are receiving information they have indicated is of interest to them;
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View a list on-screen of prospective students who match your filters, export the information to an Excel spreadsheet or graph information from any fields contained within the report.
Personalised Booking Timetable
Our event management capabilities allow you to create any number of different types of events that can include personalised timetables.
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campus tours
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student interviews
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general open days
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applicant open days
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offer holder open days
Provide your students with the ability to create their personal timetable and booking confirmation with a QR code for attendance tracking.
“We have successfully run our large and complex Undergraduate Open Days, 40+ versions of Offer Holder Open Days, all our Campus Tours and other on and off-campus recruitment events using the Azorus Events module for the last several years.
The system is extremely robust and handles a huge volume of bookings with no issues and the functionality allows us to handle a vast array of variations of sessions, locations, timings, booking methods etc. We have been working together with Azorus for 12 years and there’s a reason for this. The relationship that has been developed over the years is unlike any I’ve experienced with any supplier before… and this frank, honest and good-humoured approach makes them a joy to work with.”
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~ Richard Harrison - CRM Manager
“We really like the fact that Azorus exclusively works in the field of higher education. All their clients are universities in North America, the United Kingdom and the EU. We learn from all these clients; we learn from each other. We feel that as clients we truly have an influence on the further development of the CRM product. Azorus is a living system. It starts with a standard package, but from then on it is constantly being developed further in cooperation with the clients. That is all part of the agreement once you become a client of Azorus.”
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~ Dominic Kok - CRM Manager
“Azorus offers a highly customizable CRM which empowers HEI’s. From creating tailored online web portals, multiple offline recruitment forms, and highly targeted e-mail campaigns; we have the tools and access to manage all features, which greatly enables us to act fast, decisively and independently. When questions are raised or support needed, I can rely on Azorus to respond quickly and provide assistance, ensuring that we are able to deliver projects on time.”
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~ Andy Ball - CRM Manager