Over the last 9 months, we processed close to ₹900 crore worth of fees for our partner institutions, including Token Fees. This represents a significant milestone in our journey towards digitizing admissions and fee collection. We were thrilled to witness the remarkable scale of digital transactions and the rapid adoption by both institutions and students.

However, amidst this success, we couldn’t ignore a distressing trend. Approximately ₹200 crores worth of transactions were left incomplete, resulting in a large number of deserving students relinquishing their offer letters. Upon closer investigation, we discovered that the main reason behind this was the difficulty students and parents faced in managing the required funds within the given timeframe, typically ranging from 1 to 5 days. This challenge has become increasingly daunting for parents in India, especially considering the rising cost of education.

At Meritto (formerly NoPaperForms), we believe that every deserving student should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams without financial constraints. In this blog, we will delve deeper into the issue and discuss potential solutions to address the timely payment of fees. Our goal is to empower institutions and families alike, ensuring that no student misses out on the opportunity of a lifetime due to financial limitations. Let’s explore how we can overcome this challenge together and create a more inclusive and accessible education system.

Why Education Remains Out of Bounds for a Large Population of Students

While parents would go to great lengths to finance their child’s education – from mortgaging their house, pawning jewellery, and selling assets to borrowing from informal money lenders at high interest rates, there are still many students who have to completely give up on their dreams of higher education.

Today, out of an estimated $110 billion education market, education financing covers <5 %; it is majorly offline-heavy, driven through banks, and very rigid. While banks have offered education loans traditionally, since 2018, they’ve steadily cut down on education lending, due to rising defaults, as per Reserve Bank of India.

The problem is inadequate financing, at the right time to the right aspirant.

Due to the increasing cost of education and limited or no access to formal loans, higher education remains out of bounds for a large section of the Indian population. If you are applying to a Tier-2 category institute with no collaterals and low or no credit score, you can be assured that you have to leave your offer.

As a net result, on one side the Institution loses out on qualified, meritorious students and on the other, the students lose out on good opportunities.

How Collexo will Revolutionize Education Financing in India

With our deep understanding gained by working with close to ~600 Higher Education Institutions and 400 Schools, we are delighted to announce the launch of Collexo – an integrated payment and financing platform for the education sector. Through Collexo, we will be empowering our Partner Institutions to get their “Full Fees, Upfront” while parents will be able to pay the fees in easy 8 to 12-month Installments with no interest or extra charges and collateral-free access to loans. As of now, we are selectively opening this for 10 partners but we will ramp it up soon and open it up for all our existing partners.

Here are some key highlights on how Collexo will benefit institutions, parents, and students

•  100% upfront cash liquidity for institutions while parents pay monthly with no interest or extra charges. This will empower institutions to accelerate their growth roadmap and unburden the parents and students of paying a lump sum amount at once.

•  Hassle-free fee collection for institutions and seamless, flexible payment options for parents. The institutions will be able to track all their payments and the parents will earn handsome cashback and rewards.

• Increased quality admissions and reduced dropouts as we make education affordable for all

• Opportunity to launch premium courses as parents will be able to afford to pay more monthly

Through Collexo, we will make education affordable for all!

Education remains the sure shot way to empowerment for millions. We will give our all to ensure that every student gets a fair shot at attaining it.

Collexo will universalize easy payment to make education affordable and thus, opportunities accessible.

Why Do Institutes Need Marketing Anyway?

Evolutionary Journey towards a Revolutionary Practice

Beginning with Traditional Marketing

1. Features on magazines/newspapers
2. Billboards and posters
3. Broadcasting on television/radio
4. Telemarketing via calls/text messages

Loopholes Discovered:

1. The practice unfolded itself as a ‘spray and pray’ approach – it was quite unfocused, reducing the chance to reach the target audience
2. The spendings involved were quite high with no promise of return
3. There was no way to track if the message is received by the intended audience

Digital Marketing Takes Control

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Search Engine Marketing
3. Social Media Marketing
4. Content Marketing
5. Email Marketing
6. Pay-per-Click Advertising

Loopholes Discovered:

1. While attracting leads was possible, nurturing them in the real time became a task
2. An expected conversion still remained a question, as an effective tracking on a real-time basis posed a problem
3. Institutes were switching to and relying upon outsourced marketing services. The outsourced agencies worked as per their convenience and/or limited knowledge
4. Relying upon publishing agencies became difficult owing to high chances of data leakage
The email marketing practices increased the outreach but were not personalized and hence didn’t fetch the effective results

Rise of CRMs in Education Industry

1. Helping the organization get the real-time knowledge of its marketing campaigns’ success and learn where it needs to improve
2. Assisting in Campaign Management by providing users with a good understanding of leads and traffic where they’re coming from

A Comprehensive Solution for Education Marketing Strategy

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, widespread lockdowns prompted a significant shift towards digital channels for various purposes, including entertainment, information, and education. As admission teams adapted to remote work and faced new challenges, institutions recognized the need to develop effective communication strategies to engage and nurture prospective students, ultimately leading to conversions.

However, admission marketing teams found themselves grappling with an important question: What approaches are truly effective in this unique world order? How can they leverage their existing tools to maximize their impact? This is where an integrated communication strategy, such as a CSO (Communication Strategy for Admissions), becomes crucial.

In this blog post, we will explore the foundations of an integrated communication strategy and how it can empower educational institutions to communicate effectively for their admissions in the ever-evolving landscape of 2020 and beyond. We will discuss the key components and benefits of a CSO, providing insights and actionable tips for optimizing your communication efforts. Join us as we uncover the power of an integrated approach and discover how Meritto (formerly NoPaperForms) can support your institution in implementing a successful CSO to enhance admissions communication and drive results. Get ready to revolutionize your admissions strategy and connect with prospective students like never before.

The Conspicuous impact on the ground

An average 40-45 % of the Admission Process is based on direct face-to-face engagements with the student but given the current scenario, this has become nearly impossible. You might be thinking about making your admissions more accessible to your prospective students–right from inquiry until enrolment but where do you begin? The questions that follow are illuminating, it’s something that when answered can do more by building resilience.

So, what would your answer be to these questions?

• What’s the impact that communication and its content can probably have on your prospective students?
• How do you ramp up Digital Engagements and how do you know if there’s a need to do so?
• How do you then plan an effective Integrated Communication Approach for your Admissions?

Evaluating your Institute’s Communication Preparedness

The Coronavirus pandemic is occurring just when a large chunk of the students across the country complete one part of their education and brace themselves for the graduate and post-graduate college admissions. While it has begun to add up to the quest of these students to find and attend your institution, it has also brought in a change with how students are pursuing their higher education interests. 

A significant amount of life and living has gone mobile. While there was a time where it seemed impossible, the pandemic has had people being remote and mobile with systems remarkably enabled to do it. This has also brought to light the problems with the traditional student engagement strategies that can no more be overlooked: The redundant pitching and data overlapping.  Trends suggest that your prospects no longer revert or react to communications they know that are sent in bulk. Instead, they are cautious as ever about what they consume and choose for their education.

So, how do you, as an Institution, ensure personalization of communication and other services to realize your conversion or enrolment goals?  The next section might have the answer you’re looking for.

Strategizing your Admission’s Marketing?

Even as you might have parked customized templates for your counselors to immediately engage your leads, or must have ramped up weekly communication about your institution while working towards triggering communications based on student behavior, it is important to approach change with an effective action plan.

While one step is to define your goals so you could prioritize your actions, the next is to chalk out an integrated communication strategy for you to profitably scale your efforts. An approach as CSO, that is a guiding light to all your actions, that can nudge you in the desired direction and something that can tell you when you have gone off-track with your efforts.

C, Comprehensiveness

It’s important to make sure that you have a 360-degree campaign in place, that your institution is accessible on all different properties and mediums that your prospective students could turn to. Email, SMS is where it begins. Do you run remarketing activities on Google and Facebook? Do you have a solution to engage your students whenever and wherever they are? Whether it’s a landing page, website, widget, or WhatsApp? Do you have a Education chatbot, if it checks all the criteria? However, if you do, how do you further assess to check if it’s the right one?

Answering these questions can set you on the path to choosing the right comprehensive mediums and channels for your Admission’s Marketing. It can ensure that your communications are received, remembered, and are acted upon. 

S, Specificity

It is further important to have communications that concisely state or bring the intended impact of your marketing or outreach efforts. You’re working day in and day out to reach and engage your prospective students but what’s all of it for, if it can’t drive the action that helps you achieve your end goal?

Does Brand engagement stand first on your priority or is it user acquisition? Does your communication bring forth the essence of what you intend to achieve? Do you know when to modulate your communication depending on whether it’s transactional or promotional?

Specificity and Uniformity with communications across channels can do more good than you could have ever thought while ensuring that your efforts don’t go in vain.

O, Optimization

There’s nothing that fits all. Your Admission Marketing challenges might be unique and it’s quite possible that once you kickstart a campaign, a little or more optimization might be needed but why exactly?

The answer is simple: So you could identify avenues and mediums that aren’t fruitful or double down on those that are bringing you promising numbers and results. A one-view dashboard on your screen that has all the key metrics of your communication performance, whether it’s the delivery, click and open rates or the real-time effectiveness of your campaigns across channels and their ROI can help you better optimize and make informed decisions. 

So that is the most effective approach to a concerted execution plan.

The CSO approach can help you ask the right questions or answer a few for your Admission’s Marketing. It can help you prioritize your efforts and give you a quick framework to implement your Communication plans for Admissions 2020. If you’re stuck or caught between multiple solutions that instead of enabling you are holding you back from realizing your goals, consider reaching out to our success wizards here, who love to take up challenges.

In today’s competitive landscape, Higher-ed Marketers face numerous challenges and distractions that demand their attention. Successfully driving Admissions Marketing to boost the bottom line requires careful strategizing, which can sometimes feel like a complex task. However, the key to a transformative marketing strategy lies in asking the right questions. If you’re seeking to differentiate your marketing strategy from simply being effective to becoming profitable, we have the answer that will empower you to reimagine your institution’s marketing for the better.

A competitive transformation begins with asking just the right questions. So, if you’re thinking about what distinguishes a marketing strategy from being simply effective to also being profitable, we have the answer that could further empower you to reimagine your institution’s marketing for the better. It’s a unique approach to the unique challenges that Admission Marketers face. 

Here’s everything about it.

The Evolution of Admission Marketing

Everything we almost know has had a humble beginning, so was the marketing at educational institutions. Print, OOH, Offline Events, Consultants became the most preferred medium initially.

However, it wasn’t long before the higher-ed market realised the problems that came with it—- It was cluttered, there was an inability to measure effectiveness because of the Spray-and-Pray Approach and there was high-spillage even as it was cost heavy.

With the Digital Boom, things seemed promising. It brought with it 4 promises for Admission Marketing Teams which are as follows:

1. The ability to measure, to put numbers to the effectiveness
   
2. The potential to have highly focused targeting based on Geographies, Course Intent among others
   
3. The opportunity to fine-tune and optimize on a run-time basis
   
4. The feasibility of being cost-efficient

But again, the fad became the next traditional because of the challenges that it brought with it. Admission Marketing teams now have a higher dependency on Marketing Agencies and Publishers, the ability to measure, scale and personalize is under-utilized, there are a lot of junk leads resulting in inflated costs and whatnot.

This is what sets the premise of realizing the need, the importance of the CLICK approach but before we get there, it’s even more important to seek and understand the question below.

What is it that a marketer wants?

Marketing an institution is a lot different from the usual and what makes it different is what your end goal is. So, what actually is it? Our experience with hundreds of Institutions and their Marketing Teams helps summarise four-common goals into questions so you could pick or relate to one or more among them as you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to each. 

1. Is it scaling volumes while making it more important than the number of Applications and Quality of Enrolments?
2. Do you want to achieve Lower Cost Per Lead and further, Lower Cost per Enrolment?
3. Or, do you want to build your brand equity to retain or increase the organic pull?
4. Do you want to decrease dependency on your Paid campaigns, Consultants, or Agents?

Once you know what’s that one or all objectives to achieve, could you better plan, execute, or optimize ways to find success with it. Here’s where it’s important to find the right approach to begin. 

Here’s where you CLICK!

Leaving all rocket science and pretentious strategies behind, here we are with a simple, quick, and effective approach to realizing your goals. So, what CLICK all about?

Let’s get started.

C, Centralize your data across marketing campaigns.
It’s basic, yet very important for your Admission’s Marketing.

L, Lead Quality Intake.
It’s important for you to capture it the right way, also while you define a metric to measure quality from Day 1.

I, Inventory Tracking.
Do you track which inventory is doing better than the others? And. How do you track the consumption of emails, SMSes?

C, Conversion Attribution.
Rightly attributing a source to a lead, can do more to your marketing spends and how you rationalize your spends. One way to check if you’re doing this is to ask can you identify multiple instances of a lead? How would you find the key reason to attribute to one or over the others? It’s important to begin thinking and managing this aspect of your Admission’s Marketing.

K, Kaizen.
Lastly, it comes down to managing a data-driven progressive campaign. The more you keep tracking real-time, the more you could optimize real-time.

CLICK is an approach, a framework that can equip you to execute and spearhead an ROI driven marketing in all. This approach could help you discover opportunities with your existing systems or could probably help you identify vulnerabilities that have been for long: and that’s totally okay to know them now because it’s better late than never.

Things could really be complex indeed but it all only boils down to never losing focus on what’s important to you, and more importantly, what’s not. So, are you curious about finding more?