#5 Reasons Why Online Admission Platforms are Key to An Education Institute's Digital Strategy Online admission platforms simplify the selection process and make the communication process proactive and transparent

Having worked on digital marketing campaigns for the education sector for over five years, it's exciting to witness the digital convergence taking place in the field nowadays! With an increasing number of education marketers finding success with digital, the time when education marketing is largely digital isn't far away. But with an online and on-the-go audience, is marketing really where the buck must stop when it comes to digital adoption? Most certainly not!

Using a medium like the digital to establish connect with an entirely digital audience is a great strategy, but it can't succeed if you switch back to archaic ways at the business end.

In an independent research we carried out, over 70% of Indian higher education institutes have a completely non-digital admission procedure, which is quite startling for an industry that's so eager to invest in marketing on digital.

This brings me to the importance of online admission platforms and their role as somewhat of a glue that binds the entire digital strategy together. Besides, with the evolution in the capabilities of online admission platforms, it's impossible to overlook having one! But nonetheless, here are five key reasons why online admission platforms are a key component of an educational institute's digital strategy:

#1 They Simplify the Entire Process – Well isn't the purpose of life to make life easier! And online admission platforms do exactly that. Giving you the ability to define every step in the application & admission process, and going even beyond to integrate with your CRM systems to manage students throughout and beyond their association with you, end to end online admission platforms truly simplify the entire enrolment process. Besides, tracking every prospect through every stage of the funnel ensures you don't miss out on any important activity.

Online admission platforms also simplify the selection process by automating shortlisting to a large extent and make the communication process proactive and transparent by enabling automated communications and alerts possible at every stage of the funnel.

#2 They Reduce Overall Digital Costs– Unless you're living in the early 2000's, setting up an end-to-end online admission system is extremely easy and it doesn't require a lot of infrastructural investment on your behalf. Most of these platforms nowadays are cloud based and require minimum infrastructure to host them on your domains, making them highly cost-effective. Besides, integrated capabilities mean you reduce your overall investment in digital while you maximize returns from digital.

#3They Provide the Right Information at the Righttime – No or incorrect information at any stage of the application or admission process, is one of the biggest reasons why many students drop off from an education institute's funnel each year. On online application platforms it is easy to configure and provide information to students depending on where they are in the application funnel. This helps answer relevant queries and increase enrolments.

#4 They Provide Marketing Capabilities –Since online admission platforms aggregate a lot of data on prospective students, targeting and driving focused marketing campaigns through these platforms is a capability that can prove to be a huger differentiator for your business.

#5 They Provide Relevant Insights– The cornerstone of the success of digital is its ability to define what's working and what's not. The utility is the same in the case of online admission platforms as well. Modern online admission platforms can analyze student data as well as performance from marketing campaigns executed on the platform. These insights can help tailor campaigns to target those demographics that are more likely to convert, thereby maximizing the performance of information and campaigns, as well as increasing enrolments.

The adoption of digital in the education sector has largely been driven by successful examples of forward thinking education marketers, but if this adoption needs to be sustained, it is imperative that digital strategies succeed holistically, which is only possible with integrated and more comprehensive capabilities such as those provided by end to end online admission platforms.