One of the biggest things I’ve learnt working in the education sector is how important it is to network. Beginning four whole years ago, attending my first education networking event as a new marketing executive within an independent school, the event quickly became a favourite of mine.
What is the British Boarding School's workshop?
Hosted by the British Boarding School’s Network (BBSN), their British Boarding School’s Workshop (BBSW) is one of the most popular boarding school's networking events globally. Agents travel from all over the world to meet with UK independent boarding schools and School suppliers to seek new professional partnerships.
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Agents may have a select group of pupils looking for particular types of specialist schools, or schools may be looking to connect with agents to recruit from new locations within their schools. BBSN is a network of members consisting of all of the above. They also host smaller scale, in-person events all year round, at a variety of school locations, connecting agents, schools and suppliers for opportunities to discuss best practices, recruitment methods and discover new educational trends in overseas markets with insightful in-depth reporting and exclusive data.
The 2021 British Boarding School's Workshop
By my third event this year I had built some great relationships with fellow school marketers, agents and the friendly BBSN staff, and when I left my role within the aforementioned independent school it was definitely an event that I was sad to leave. So, when BBSN founder Suzanne, began a conversation with us here at HubGem and kindly invited us to attend their next BBSW event, I was really excited to have the opportunity to be a part of such a positive event from a new perspective!
This time, due to event restrictions, the event was being held virtually. Logging into our new membership portal, we immediately felt a part of a community of educational organisations all looking to develop and expand their connections for better growth.
The whole process of the event was seamless with easy online booking systems to schedule individual, 20-minute introductory meetings across the 2-day event. Growth is at the core of everything we do here at HubGem, so to be able to connect with so many like-minded organisations was a great opportunity!
HubSpot CRM for British Boarding Schools
We met with some amazing schools that were interested in using HubSpot CRM for student recruitment, hearing more about how the tools can be applied within educational organisations to support departmental alignment and understanding best practise within the education sector when using CRM software.
We had some fantastic meetings with independent schools that were seeking a solution to their current disjointed or troublesome data processes and management strategies across Marketing and Admissions. Whilst no two schools are ever the same many have shared pain points and blockers in their admissions journey that they are hoping implementing a CRM system will resolve;
- A disjointed approach to marketing and admissions/sales
- Using multiple different point-solutions (Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Google Analytics, RSadmissions...)
- Relying on a legacy MIS system to handle your communications
- Struggling to track conversions at every stage of your marketing funnel
- Spending lots of time producing reports that are out-dated the second you share them
- Struggling to collaborate with other teams
- Marketing content not converting
HubGem is a, multi-award-winning, digital marketing agency specialising in helping education, non-profit organisations and businesses grow by increasing their reach and improve their engagement. We are passionate about the importance of effective, transparent communication both within an organisation and beyond. We are genuinely excited to find new ways that tech can make a difference and bringing these ideas to businesses to drive them forward in an increasingly digital world, is something we find incredibly rewarding!
The most rewarding part of my role is helping marketing and admissions teams every day to find a better way of working together. Many of my colleagues and I come from previous roles within these departments in schools and completely understand the common frustrations when looking for one, cohesive CRM system that enhances your customer’s experience. Being able to listen and speak directly with teams all over the world and provide them with a solution through a bespoke, CRM system is a great feeling!
We met really great schools at our first BBSW event and now have some fantastic opportunities to have further conversations and work with them in the future. We’re already booked onto the next virtual event in November and looking forward to the first in-person event taking place in March next year!
...In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying getting to know our new connections and BBSN Director, Suzanne’s, insightful market updates and event announcements!
If you’re a BBSN member and would like to book a meeting with us during the upcoming events, our BBSN profile can be found here.
If you're not a BBSN member and would like to book some time together to explore whether HubSpot CRM is a good fit for you, we host regular demos where we walk through how to custom set-up a HubSpot portal to:
- Capture all the required data points on prospective families
- Have one central inbox for enquiries coming in across email, messenger, live chat and online form submissions
- Automate record creation from form submission (no more inputting data manually into systems!)
- Seamless departmental collaboration via complete records of prospect communications and activity
- Automated prospect and internal communications based on actions taken (e.g Notify Registrar upon submission of the registration form and auto-send 'Thank you for your registration email')
- Visual admission pipeline
- Live enquiries and applications reports (that can be scheduled to auto-send to SLT!)
- And more..