Hear from Rosemary Kelly, associate vice president for student services, as she describes how Fayetteville Tech faced several challenges with recruitment and engagement, exacerbated by the unprecedented impact of the pandemic. See how their decision to implement Element451 revolutionized their approach, resulting in a steady 3-5% increase in enrollment numbers and a more cohesive student experience.

Fayetteville Technical Community College's Most Loved Features

• Unlimited two-way texting
• Conversations module
• Event management + scheduling
• Marketing automation

What challenges were you hoping to solve when you implemented Element451?

After the pandemic, we realized that we needed to reach students in a different way than we ever had before. It's been a challenge because everything went from being at home and everything having to be remote to now trying to entice students to come back to the college environment, whether it be seated or even online. So we needed to do something other than just using the same old traditional methods of robocalls and emails that we know the students don't read. And so we needed to look for something that was more engaging and a little bit more in tune with the times.

We searched quite a bit for something that would fit what we were looking for. And there were huge companies out there, and some of them were not even truly engaged with the student experience. There are a lot of CRMs out there that are all about sales and marketing, but they're not engaged completely with what's going on at a college. And Element451 had all those "elements."

But what we liked also is the fact that they were local and so the fact that the headquarters was in Raleigh really enticed us. And the fact that they were so student-centered, that's what really made it. That's what sealed the deal for us.

What are your most loved Element451 features?

We love the texting feature. Love it because we know, like I said, students don't read emails. And so we love the texting aspect. We also love that we can create an Event so that, for instance when we're having orientations, when we're having open houses.

It used to be you would just have to guess at how many people were going to show up. And so now it can be more personalized. They can actually sign into the event, they can RSVP, they know what they're expecting from us, and then we know what we're expecting because they're going to hopefully show up because they've RSVP'd. And so we like that aspect of it also. It's pretty reliable. That's helped us tremendously with the planning aspect.

How have you seen Element451 boost your effectiveness in your day-to-day work?

We've definitely seen an improvement with using the Element451. We really like it that now we can track the enrollment. So our enrollment has grown probably between 3 and 5% steadily and we're way ahead of where we were during the peak of the pandemic. And we want to say it's pretty much inclusively to the fact that we're using Element451 now and the fact that admissions has grown because we have new ways of reaching out to the student.

What would you tell a colleague about Element451?

I would tell a colleague to definitely go with Element specifically because you're coming up with new things all of the time, and we love that aspect. We love that it's easy to use, not only from our perspective in setting it up on the backside of it but also the fact that it's easy for the student to use. So you get a double whammy with the fact that it's so inclusive with the student as well as the end user.

To see how Element451 can help increase your enrollment, book a demo today.