When it comes to keeping the house full, many marketing and sales managers end up doing everything they can to try to get more money for a campaign or even decide to bet on a larger team of employees in the loyalty sector.However, the secret to a higher student retention rate may be right under your nose and much less complicated than you might think, basically consisting of a set of specific techniques that can actually prove to be less costly than the options mentioned earlier.
Do you want to know what these techniques are and how they can help you succeed in your student retention strategies? Read on to find out!
There's no point in insisting. You probably already know that attracting and retaining students go hand in hand and that there's no point in spending tons of money on the first process without an adjusted strategy for the second. After all, what matters in the end is the student's LTV (Lifetime Value), i.e. how much they represent, in the long term, as an "asset" to the institution, making monthly payments for their education.
What we mean is: if you have a bottleneck in your loyalty process, all your efforts to attract students will be in vain. And this ends up being evidenced by your ROI (Return on Investment) rate, which will most likely show decreasing numbers.
The indicator cited comes from the[PNAD Continuous Education 2019] and refers to young people aged 14 to 29 - not 14 to 39 - who have not completed some stage of basic education (because they dropped out or never attended). In this group (around 50 million), 20.2% were in this condition. Maintaining this precision avoids confusing dropout with school exclusion and brings the text into line with the IBGE's definitions.
So, the fact is: at the start of the semester, everything looks wonderful: new freshmen with all that spirit ofuniversity joviality and a very favorable climate for student satisfaction, however, it is already known that, according to data collected by the National Household Sample Survey, PNAD, on school dropouts points out that of 50 million Brazilians aged between 14 and 39, of these, 20.2% have failed to complete any of the stages of basic education.
In relation to the pandemic scenario, the figure observed by the Datafolha Institute points out that in 2020, around 4 million students aged between 6 and 34 dropped out of school.
To put the data from [C6 Bank/Datafolha (2020)] - which captured the peak of the pandemic - into context, it's worth bringing in more recent evidence. In 2023, the [PNAD Continuous Education 2023] report highlights that school dropouts are concentrated from the age of 16 and disproportionately affect black and brown people (71.6%); the North and Northeast continue to have the worst indicators of school delay. In 2022, the [UNICEF and IPEC] survey also pointed to exclusion from school and impacts on mental health, reinforcing the need for continuous policies on school retention.
Having understood this scenario, let's get straight to the point: how to retain more students with some essential techniques.
Image: Student Retention Techniques: How to Maintain Educational Engagement
Since we're talking about what's essential, let's start with what's absolutely essential for better student retention: the right CRM software, combined with an appropriate strategy.
This is the basic thing you need to do to start a relationship that will perpetuate the student's academic life at your institution. After all, it is within the software that data will be stored regarding the process of attracting students and the activities they have carried out to make their way through your institution's marketing and sales funnel, as well as contact information such as name, email and telephone number.
One such CRM software that is proving its worth more and more is HubSpot's, a complete solution for marketing and sales that provides a complete data intelligence and analysis center, allowing you to concentrate all your operations within the same platform.
Market evidence: [EDUCAUSE] shows that institutions that invest in CRMs focused on the student journey and analytics migrate from reactive support to proactive interventions, increasing satisfaction and permanence. The CRM centralizes academic/administrative data, generates risk alerts and orchestrates contacts between areas, shortening response times - a direct differentiator in student retention.
And it is precisely with the right CRM software and strategy that you can start the other indispensable technique for maintaining a good relationship with your customers, which is the nurture flow.
This strategy can be used right from the customer acquisition phase, using appropriately designed communication rules to keep the level of interest and engagement of the lead high.
With an efficient automation strategy, it is possible to build a flowchart or drawing of the "path" that the contact will take from the moment they enter the CRM database and then understand their source of origin (be it paid traffic, organic traffic, social media, ebooks, among many others), as well as generating better communication through email marketing, WhatsApp messages and SMS.
To sustain engagement throughout the cycle, an [email nurturing flow] with onboarding, mid-semester check-ins and clear transactional messages helps reduce common frictions (financial, academic and bureaucratic). Segmenting by stage, testing subject/copy and prioritizing useful content (not just promotional) tends to increase opens and replies - behaviours associated with longer retention.
You can also invest in producing content written specifically to address your student's pain points and send it to them periodically via automation.
This is therefore a "wildcard" strategy that can be sustained over time, from attraction to retention. Remember that the important thing is to show interest in helping the lead or student so that they feel supported by the institution.
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More necessary than ever, AI is proving that optimizing processes and gaining powerful insights are becoming more and more constant through its use.
And within this robotic world, there are some tools that stand out for their efficiency as part of a retention strategy. These are
Student dropout can occur due to different factors, varying from case to case. However, it is now possible to map the weight that these different factors can have on a student's decision to leave the institution
Using Machine Learning techniques, it is possible to create systems in which artificial intelligence learns, using its own data, to identify patterns and thus better understand student behavior and monitor the manifestation of signs related to churn, as well as generate a predictive diagnosis that will help managers of educational institutions make better decisions related to student retention.
There is empirical support for this path: recent studies show gains in accuracy when predicting the risk of dropout with machine learning models, combining academic history, engagement and administrative data. These models make it possible to trigger interventions before students drop out, strengthening retention policies and personalized support. See an up-to-date overview of research and applications in [artificial intelligence for student retention].
The use of chatbots for customer service is another great tool provided by Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning is also present, so that the little robots can learn from the results of the conversation itself.
The bots are programmed within AI software in such a way that they can answer the most diverse student queries based on specific programming, put together by analyzing the robot's audiences, as well as by understanding the particularities of the student's own context.
Surveys of institutions show that chatbots increase 24/7 support and reduce waiting times for academic and administrative questions, factors linked to satisfaction and retention [EDUCAUSE] recommends, however, paying attention to privacy and security right from the design of the solution - a prerequisite for scaling the service with confidence.
Now that you've understood this, you can say that you know which techniques can't be missing from your student retention strategy, and it's certain that by applying them correctly, the chances of a decrease in your educational institution's dropout rate will be much greater!
Summary: Retaining students is just as important as attracting them, as it guarantees greater LTV and financial sustainability for educational institutions. Essential techniques include the use of an integrated CRM, which centralizes data, organizes the student's journey and allows for quick interventions, as well as the creation of automated nurturing flows that maintain engagement with emails, messages and personalized content throughout the academic cycle. Artificial intelligence is also an ally, offering predictive diagnoses of dropouts, chatbots for 24/7 support and insights that anticipate risks. By applying these strategies, the institution reduces evasion, improves the student experience and strengthens loyalty. The result is more predictable revenue, positive ROI and a stronger relationship with students.
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Recruitment and retention go hand in hand. Without a solid loyalty strategy, all the effort and investment in attracting new students loses value. Retention guarantees greater LTV (Lifetime Value), predictable revenue and a positive ROI for the educational institution.
A CRM centralizes academic and administrative data, organizes the student journey and generates risk alerts. This allows the institution to act proactively, shortening response times and strengthening the relationship with students. Tools such as HubSpot CRM are used to improve management, communication and retention.
Nurture flows allow for continuous and segmented communication with students. Through e-mails, messages and personalized content, the institution keeps the student engaged from the moment they enroll until they finish their course. This strategy reduces friction, strengthens trust and increases the likelihood of students staying.
AI enables predictive diagnoses of dropouts based on academic and behavioral data. In addition, chatbots offer 24/7 support, answer questions quickly and reduce waiting times, improving student satisfaction and experience.
By integrating CRM, nutrition flows and artificial intelligence, the institution reduces evasion, strengthens relationships with students and ensures greater predictability in enrollment. This translates into financial sustainability, loyalty and consistent long-term growth.