<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://dc.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=332593&amp;fmt=gif">
Skip to content

ESPM strengthens student and candidate experience with unified management platform

ESPM Fachada unidade São Paulo

Industry

Education

Challenge

ESPM's reliance on manual processes for student aplications created data silos and hindered effective communication. This resulted in inefficient workflows, difficulty accessing real-time information, and challenges measuring campaign success. To optimize admissions and improve communication, ESPM wanted to transition to a more integrated and automated solution.

Results

ESPM optimized their student journey and business pipeline with HubSpot, resulting in a 92% organic lead increase.Also they automated sales and service to ensure each contact received personalized communication via email, WhatsApp, calls, or chat, and solving over 60000 students tickets over 6 months.

+47%
Organic Lead Database
60k
Solved Tickets from students in 6 months
15k
Students fully answered by automations

We have a before and after with Hubspot, literally a turning point in the way strategic planning started to be built, because we started to have access to valuable data such as the control of sources of origin, conversion time and many others.

Fernando Cesário

CMO at ESPM

Our experience with HubSpot has been positive since the beginning of its implementation. I quickly noticed its ease of use and ability to adapt to our needs. We started with the Inbound Marketing module to structure lead acquisition. Later, we expanded its use. Adding the Services module brought significant improvements to our relationship with our students and alumni.

Jean Almeida

Corporate Systems Coordinator

Espm Interno

About ESPM

A recognized leader in Brazilian higher education for over seven decades, ESPM boasts a distinguished legacy in the fields of Communication, Marketing, Consumer Studies, Administration, Creative Economy, and Technology.  With a robust network of four campuses across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre, and four regional units in key metropolitan centers, ESPM serves a diverse community of 12,600 undergraduate and postgraduate students supported by over 1,100 faculty and staff members.

The Challenge

Prior to implementing a sophisticated CRM system ESPM encountered considerable challenges in effectively unifying the various departments responsible for student outreach and enrollment.  Locating specific data and pertinent information in a timely manner proved a significant obstacle.

Essentially every process depended upon spreadsheets and a disorganized collection of documents and all communication with prospective and current students was conducted by hand.  This naturally led to inconsistencies in information across departments and hampered any attempts at evaluating the efficacy of various initiatives.  Furthermore it slowed down the work of staff considerably and increased the likelihood of miscommunications with their contacts.

Finding the Ideal Automation Software

This scenario led the institution to seek a CRM solution. The challenge was to find robust marketing automation software to support the following initiatives:

  • Independent management across departments: Integration between Marketing, Relationship & Sales, and Student Experience teams.
  • Journey mapping: Gathering data from lead sources, enrolled students, and registered students.
  • Development of automation workflows for conversion and nurturing.
  • Aggregating insights measurement, channel-specific improvements, and optimizations.
  • Centralizing information.
  • Enhancing control and evaluation of sales consultants.
  • Maximizing team efficiency through process automation.
  • Optimizing conversion rates for websites and online channels.
  • Optimizing CPL and CPM.

Beyond simply requiring a CRM and marketing automation platform, ESPM also needed a partner who could efficiently deploy the solution and offer ongoing assistance with managing and maintaining the technology.

ESPM aimed for a personalized approach and the intelligence missing in their relationship-building process with their contact base.

The university found the ideal tool for this purpose in HubSpot and a valuable partner for implementation and operation in Mkt4edu.

The Implemented Solution

The implementation of HubSpot took place in two stages: the first focused on the Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, with a focus on acquiring new students, and the second stage focused on the relationship with the existing student base.

ESPM had an internal team and external specialists from Mkt4Edu / 4RevOps, a global partner company of the HubSpot ecosystem, with a dedicated professional for each Hub. The leaders of each department closely followed and monitored the progress of the projects.

In addition, the close involvement of ESPM's IT team made all the difference in the success of the project.

HubSpot Implementation and Key Projects

The first strategic move after adopting the CRM in 2019 was the optimization of the institution's buyer's journey and business pipeline. Check out the key deliverables from this phase of the implementation:

  • Sales automation: All contacts in the database were engaged through sales actions, whether via email marketing, WhatsApp, calls, or chat.
  • Custom dashboards: Created for tracking campaign performance.
  • Training: Empowered the team with knowledge and understanding of HubSpot.
  • Blog development: Built within HubSpot's Content Hub, along with content strategies to index new organic keywords.
  • Google Analytics: Configured and integrated with HubSpot.

The day-to-day operations of ESPM with the new tech stack were supported by Mkt4edu, which was responsible for mapping the lead journey until enrollment.

The dashboard created using strategic data from HubSpot was also a standout feature. It allowed a clear visualization of the lead journey stages, from generation to enrollment, over time.

This made it possible to identify key moments throughout the semester for lead generation, business development, and enrollment conversion, providing insights into the journey and enabling the design of student admission strategies, including:

  • List segmentation;
  • Contact database cleaning;
  • Creation and updates of properties;
  • Workflows and customized nurture sequences: Mapping and implementing the buyer's journey from lead generation to enrollment for each business unit;
  • Enrollment tracking: Lead nurturing with newsletters and career planning steps;
  • Flow health monitoring;
  • Task automations for the Relationship Center, with results measurement.

Results Achieved

After the first year with HubSpot and a well-defined strategy, ESPM’s results were impressive:

  • 48% of enrollments came from organic sources, representing a 92% year-over-year increase;
  • 600 keywords were no longer purchased, as they reached positions 1, 2, and 3 on Google;
  • Over 23,000 conversations were conducted via chatbot.

Continuous Improvement in Student Relations

In 2022, with a more mature operation in candidate engagement and new student acquisition, the teams began focusing more on relationships with existing students and retention efforts, driven by the following departments:

  • SAE;
  • Administration;
  • Careers;
  • Internships;
  • Executive Education;
  • Marketing.

Operational Evolution with a Service Software

To enhance relationships with its existing student base, ESPM decided to take the next step in its HubSpot operation by also implementing the Service Hub.

The IT department played a pivotal role in advocating for this process, helping to engage course coordinators, administrative staff, and student support teams in creating a unified operation on a single platform.

The implementation of the Service Hub marked a milestone for the team, enabling ESPM to organically expand the use of an integrated platform across multiple areas of the organization.

"Today, HubSpot is present throughout the entire relationship cycle with our audiences. The tool provides us with a complete view of interactions, enabling metric tracking. HubSpot has not only optimized our processes but also improved team integration, ensuring a more efficient workflow and concrete results," adds Jean Almeida,Corporate Systems Coordinator .

Below, you’ll find some initiatives implemented with the Service Hub.

Service Requests and Student Requirements

The student portal was integrated with HubSpot to create tickets for requests made by students. Examples include grade review requests, document requests, course changes, credit transfers, among others.

Here are some key benefits:

  • Improved student experience for submitting and tracking their requests.
  • Generation of reports to monitor requests with higher submission volumes, response times, delays, and more.
  • Enhanced internal processes for the departments involved in request approvals.

In-Person Service

ESPM also implemented a new structure for the in-person service queue, with a dedicated form for each unit where students can fill out their information and join the service queue.

Here are some key benefits:

  • Increased efficiency, as staff no longer need to manually create tickets. They simply pull them from the queue and complete the necessary fields.
  • A unified service queue, simplifying the call order.
  • Improved data tracking, with a specific view for in-person service data.

Career Program Scheduling

In the area of student engagement, ESPM has gained greater control over its career program by tracking appointments completed, canceled, or missed by students through HubSpot.

This is achieved using the HubSpot calendar, which allows students to easily find the scheduling link and generates automatic tickets for monitoring appointments.

Student Refund Requests

With an automated system, ESPM has also empowered students to open their own requests without the need to contact the institution via email, which could otherwise delay the process.

Forms are used to generate refund tickets for former students or for students who purchased Continuing Education courses that were canceled due to insufficient enrollment.

All this is managed through data dashboards to monitor requests and a unified system to oversee all student demand processes, even when they involve multiple departments.

Internship Documentation

Internship program documentation, which was previously managed in spreadsheets with a high risk of data loss, is now organized using a ticketing system. This system tracks the submission of documents, start and end dates of internships, average salaries, companies involved, and other details.

Now, whenever it is necessary to consult documentation, there is no need to search through spreadsheets. A simple search in the system retrieves all information related to a specific student.

Organized Administration

Even the administrative offices at ESPM benefit from automated processes. For example, all services previously handled exclusively via Teams are now recorded in a system, ensuring that the entire team has visibility and can more easily locate and address issues.

Management of Scholarships and Financial Responsibility

The teams also developed a new process to manage communication with the financial guardians of the courses. This involved creating a HubSpot form for ticket creation, demand registration, and automated communication.

As a result, over 60,000 tickets were generated in just 6 months, serving more than 15,000 students.

Optimized B2B Operation

It's important to note that ESPM's CRM strategy isn't exclusively student-centric. The institution also functions as a B2B business unit, actively promoting events, forging corporate agreements for in-company training programs, offering consulting services, and developing customized courses designed to meet specific market needs.

Before using HubSpot, sales information was recorded using a checklist in spreadsheets. Now, everything is logged in HubSpot tickets. Here are some additional benefits for the B2B operation:

  • Email communication: ESPM has significantly reduced email exchanges with partners, as all parties have access to the tool and can log questions and changes directly within it.
  • Process improvements: The process has become more efficient, thanks to a comprehensive form that captures the essential information needed for the operational team to proceed with delivery. Additionally, the process has been standardized on a national level.