In 2020, Birmingham City University (BCU) began setting out the business case for a new constituent relationship management system. It had relied on multiple systems and legacy software to communicate with different audiences. “We realised that user expectations had evolved,” said Nicola Vaughan-Bell, assistant director of brand and creative marketing at BCU. “People expect bespoke content that’s tailored to them. The customer journey has also evolved and they want to talk to us about multiple things across multiple devices.”
The new system needed to align with BCU’s wider business strategy of growing its student numbers and increasing conversion from application to enrolment. The university was managing multiple user journeys with limited personalisation and sought to tailor its communications to key priority groups. “From a technology perspective, we wanted to look at how we could join up disparate systems and understand the whole student journey from the first point of action to becoming part of the alumni community,” said Vaughan-Bell.
“We’re competing with all brands because young people are bombarded with emails,” she said. Furthermore, the university’s marketing team was spending valuable time analysing data rather than creating compelling content, so it needed a system capable of generating actionable data insights. This would also enable the team to reuse materials tailored for different audiences and reduce the number of duplicate emails.
BCU implemented Anthology Reach in stages, starting with prospective students, followed by current students and eventually, alumni. One of the benefits the platform offers is the ability to categorise different leads as cold, warm and hot so that communications can be tailored appropriately. It also provides a holistic view of the user journey, such as whether someone is an offer holder or has booked an open day. “Before, we’d have to piece lots of things together to see this,” said Vaughan-Bell.
Daniel Falls, director of consulting and implementation services at Anthology, said BCU’s success with Anthology Reach has expanded to other areas such as business-to-business communications. “This creates additional data on the types of students they’re recruiting and what issues they might face in the future,” he said. Since Anthology Reach is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, it can easily be integrated into existing systems, and support teams may already be familiar with its architecture. “We can help create success plans and connect students to advisors. There is also strong survey capability within the platform, so we can get feedback into the system,” he added.
BCU has benefited from the ability to send highly relevant and well-timed emails to the right people, including targeted subject-level communications. Anthology Reach has helped the university to enhance its communication and enrolment strategies across 14 prospective student audiences covering departments, study level and year of entry. “Now we can see people all the way through the funnel, see what drives them to the next step and track their engagement,” Vaughan-Bell concluded.
Find out more about Anthology Reach.
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