Innovating with the Great 58 at Engage @ Wake Tech

Innovate with the Great 58 — that was the theme of our very first Engage @ event, held at the RTP Wake Tech campus on Tuesday, March 14.

We had such an enriching time with partner schools and others from all over the NCCCS as we explored innovative ways to recruit and engage North Carolina community college students.

Staff from various departments at Element451 delivered presentations on relevant topics such as innovation, integrations to do more with less, how to streamline the full student lifecycle for maximum student success, and using data and insights to make the best decisions possible to reach your goals.

Presentation Recaps + Session Slides

Below are the slides for every presentation from Engage @ Wake Tech.

Take a look, explore, and connect with us to learn more about how Element451 can help you innovate to reach today's students.

10 Types of Innovation

This interactive session surveyed the 10 Types of Innovation and gave attendees a proven framework that can be implemented within teams or institution-wide to speed up the innovation process, yield stronger results, and create better value for our audiences.

Why do some great innovative ideas fail while others exceed all expectations? Three reasons:

1. Innovation rarely fails due to a lack of great ideas. It is almost always because of a lack of discipline and process.
2. Innovations that stick and are hard to replicate and go well beyond just the product.
3. Innovation can only be successful and sustained if it creates value for your target audience and achieves adoption.

View the Presentation →

Emerging Technology & Element451

Our product roadmap presentation got attendees up to speed on exciting new releases and features inside the Element451 CRM.

We covered previous updates and releases such as:

• The addition of custom organizations, labels, and relationships
• People profiles redesign and customizable profile templates
• Enhanced insights with all new visualizations and segmentation
• Repeatable and action based journeys
• Updated Tasks with custom statuses, priorities, and types

We also looked ahead to new, upcoming releases such as:

• Integrated appointment scheduling
• WhatsApp connection into Conversations unified inbox
• In-App calling from People Profiles or Conversations
• Website banners and popups

And last but not least, our two latest AI-powered innovations, Bolt Copilot and BoltBot!

Powered by Open AI, the same tech behind Chat GPT, Copilot helps you streamline your content generation and copywriting tasks, while BoltBot is your newest team member — a conversational chatbot that can answer questions 24/7.

View the Presentation →

End Those Spreadsheets Forever

This presentation explored using your CRM to create a holistic student experience by:

1. Streamlining events by moving from third-party forms and apps with no way to segment your audiences, track or follow up, and streamline your communication.
2. Consolidating supplemental applications + app reviews so you can deliver an engaging experience, integrate into your SIS in no time, allocate resources to other important avenues, and avoid paper applications.

The results?

• You can offer more timely and relevant content to your students.
• Modern tools help your school keep pace with a digitally savvy generation of learners.
• A single CRM tool can eliminate cumbersome apps and programs in your tech stack.
• Your team can remarket more effectively to students who have abandoned the admissions process but may still be interested in attending.

View the Presentation →

Gaining Insight(s): Taking Action with Dashboards

Our insights presentation recapped recent updates to our enhanced Insights dashboards including:

• Expanded access
• All new visualizations
• Individual dashboards and modules
• Comparison to other NC schools
• Reporting beyond admissions funnel
• Daily data refreshing
• Unlimited filtering

Think of Insights as a cool cousin to your NCCCS Dashboard family. NCCS Dashboards provide great visualizations and a space to compare to other NCCS schools, view your historical trends, and track data outside of admissions and enrollment numbers beyond the initial admission acceptance.

Insights is going to get into the nitty gritty of admissions activities with students and staff members. And you don’t have to leave your Element instance to view it, and the data gets refreshed daily.

View the Presentation →

Student Success, Not Early Alerts

Element451 CEO and founder, Ardis Kadiu, tackled how schools can positively impact student success in all areas including outcomes, engagement, retention, and graduation through the Power of Early Alerts — Identifying what are the circumstances, events, behaviors (or lack thereof) that can provide an early indicator of need, of difficulty, of risk - and the necessity for intervention and engagement by the institution.

With smaller budgets and decreased departments, it's time we shift our dependancy on human interactions for early alerts.

If we shift our approach to be digital-first students can talk to a chat bot, who can change their personality and can be a counselor, friend, or a coach they can get answers and guidance towards their issues and they are more likely to reach out. We can then combine that with other signals that don't require human intervention such as:

• class grades
• courses they have completed
• logins to systems
• a survey
• personal check-in from the bot

View the Presentation →

U-N-I-T-Why You Need a Plan to Integrate Your CRM + Website

Website CRM integration is when your website sends or receives information from your CRM.

Why is it necessary to integrate your CRM + website?

• Your website is the powerhouse of your school’s student recruitment efforts. It’s where prospects go to find information about your school and it’s where you gather their contact information in return. 
• Just as the importance of a school’s website can’t be understated, so is the need to make sure that these leads are properly organized, categorized, and guided further down the funnel.
• By integrating your school’s website with a customer relations management (CRM) system, you can optimize these lead conversion activities – to the benefit of both your prospects and your staff. 

From efficiency to effectiveness to enhanced communication, there are plenty of ways that this process can improve recruitment.

View the Presentation →

Partner Panel: Getting the Most out of Element451

We had the chance to hear from four incredible Element451 partner institutions in the NCCCS, including:

• Abe Dones, Vice President, Chief Student Services Office, Durham Technical Community College
• Brittany Meinsen, Admissions Counselor, College of the Albemarle
• Elvin James, Director of Career and College Promise, Wake Technical Community College
• Devin Purgason, Executive Director of Marketing and Student Care, Forsyth Tech Community College

View Clip from Presentation →

Element451 and CFNC + Ethos Integration

Integrations are critical. Our goal is to allow you to integrate with systems that you need.

For some schools, that’s the Common App. For public colleges in North Carolina, this generally means Colleague and CFNC. The great thing is that by using Ethos, it provide a lot of flexibility for clients as it’s used by both Colleague and Banner. 

In this presentation, we provided a step-by-step guide to both integrating with CFNC and Ethos for maximum streamlining. We also show you ways to create connections with your tools thorugh a variety of methods like:

• Flat File
• API
• or third party tools like Zapier

Because we've built a lot of these integrations with NCCC schools in mind, you can see how our experience with large and small institutions has helped us create a system that is easily scalable and is beneficial to our partners.

View the Presentation →

The Right Partner for the Great 58

We know most schools don't have the right tools to do efficient marketing and recruiting. At Element451, we help schools with software that keeps students engaged and enrolled.

We'd love to partner alongside you to increase your staff's efficiency while reaching today's students in the ways they expect.

Let's connect to brainstorm how best to impact North Carolina community college students.