Make the Grade integrates HubSpot CRM for the education sector

Supporting the growth of ISC Paris with the HubSpot CRM platform

Some administrative tasks can quickly become time-consuming. ISC Paris wanted to find a solution to improve their processes and focus more on supporting their students. They chose Make the Grade to help them make their data more usable on the HubSpot CRM.

Use HubSpot CRM for memorable corporate and alumni relationships

In an ever-changing world, the vocation of ISC Paris remains the same, to select and train talent for tomorrow's business. It makes it a point of honor to provide the best possible learning experience for its students, with courses connected to reality.

Transmit to everyone a taste for commitment to help build a happy world

ISC Paris has nearly 20,000 alumni worldwide, two campuses - Paris and Orléans - and a 60-year history. These figures make it one of the top 20 business and management schools in France. Today, the school spearheads action-based training, aiming to become THE reference for Action Learning.

Today, the group is developing around 3 brands:

• ISC Paris Grande Ecole, member of the Conférence des grandes écoles and AACSB, AMBA and EPAS accredited.
• ISC Paris Global Programs, expert in specialized training from Bac + 3 to Bac + 5.
• ISC Paris Executive Education, for professionals.

This business school, among the best in France, has opted for support and proximity to students and companies.

ISC Paris calls on Make the Grade agency to transform its student and partner experience with HubSpot

With over a thousand partner companies and several thousand learners, ISC Paris needed to find a solution that centralized all their exchanges with their contacts. To make the most of this data and eliminate the most time-consuming administrative tasks, they called on Make the Grade. We worked with them on several challenges, enabling them to improve the decision-making process for their students:

• Design a strong, structured sales strategy to support the school's growth challenges across all its courses.
• Build marketing emails to ensure customer relations and service actions.
• Customize a scalable CRM as the foundation of marketing and sales strategy.
• Centralize data, tools, as well as internal teams for each business unit (DBA, MBA, alternance, taxe d'apprentissage, etc.).

With this collaboration, ISC Paris was to have a customized HubSpot CRM optimized for the challenges of the education sector.

7 steps to installing HubSpot in a business school

In response to their needs, a course of 6 CRM configuration support sessions was set up. Prior to these sessions, it was necessary to clean up the initial database, in order to be able to work in the best conditions.

Cleaning the ISC Paris database for all its B2B activities, including Alternance

Data migration is an opportunity to start with a CRM optimized for performance. It's crucial to sort out and clean your CRM database as well as possible before importing it. This is the context in which we supported the school's teams, according to the necessary properties to be found in their CRM.

Here's the process we put in place to migrate all contact and company data into HubSpot:

• Verification of data fields, to enrich empty fields and keep only value-added information.
• Cleaning up erroneous data, so that teams have up-to-date data.
• Relating each contact and company to its owner, keeping information consistent.
• Removal of duplicates, as misidentification of this parameter can undermine the effectiveness of actions carried out by ISC Paris teams.
• Name of fields, civility, telephone, postal code, etc., to ensure uniformity of the database.

Once these steps had been completed, we proceeded to import the global data into HubSpot CRM. Each user was able to retrieve their portfolio as it was before the import. We then followed this up with a 6-session support course dedicated to setting up the tool. This customization time was carried out with two project leaders on the ISC Paris side and a CRM and RevOps consultant on the Make the Grade agency side.

Session 1: Integrating CRM at the heart of the school's actions

For this first one-hour session, the challenge was to introduce CRM while explaining how it works. The ISC Paris teams were able to understand all the subtleties of personalized objects, contact records and company records. We were also able to define the contact and company properties to be created, specific to the business school. After this session, ISC Paris members were able to optimize their marketing actions, with a CRM customized for the education sector.

Session 2: Customizing the conversion tunnel according to the internal departments involved

The second session allowed us to explain how conversion tunnels work on HubSpot. The different phases of the lifecycle, the transaction sheets as well as the potential for automation. With different training courses offered by the school, we had to customize the tunnel for each one, based on the respective administrative processes. We advised and challenged them on the different phases of the sales pipeline to be implemented. The objective of the session, for ISC Paris, was to have the right steps and properties for each transaction sheet.

Session 3: Automating low value-added tasks to facilitate the placement of Alternants within partner companies

After customizing the sales tunnel, it's time to automate it. By eliminating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, human actions are simplified. What we're talking about here is a "matchmaking" experience between companies and students. The aim? To anticipate a large volume of business opportunities to be handled simultaneously. We're talking here about several hundred companies to put in contact with as many students over an annual period.

With an intense rhythm and a high flow of information at the start of each new school year, it was important to set up a automatisation-marketing process.

Session 4: Creating a bridge between school tools and CRM thanks to synchronization

With the ISC Paris teams working with various tools to manage their missions, the challenge was to connect them to HubSpot:

• Eventbrite, dedicated to online or physical events, such as webinars or open houses for example. The integration enables the data of contacts met at these events to be fed directly back into the CRM.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator, to keep track of LinkedIn contacts within HubSpot.
• WordPress, the ISC Paris website being designed on this CMS. Thanks to the dedicated plug-in, it was a matter of creating a synchronization for each completed form. Aligning the CRM and the website was essential, so that in-house teams could personalize their approach when making contact.

Session 5: Be more efficient in your day-to-day work with HubSpot sales productivity features

The penultimate session focused on the sales productivity features available on HubSpot, which are:

• Diaries, to automate appointment scheduling without exchanging emails. This feature allows students and prospective students to directly access the ISC staff calendar and opt for a slot based on availability. Appointment information is also synchronized directly with the CRM.
• Email templates, to save similar content and save time. Repetitive blocks are stored as templates, while retaining the ability to personalize and adapt content according to recipients.
• Text blocks, designed to be reusable within multiple media. Information sheets for contacts, companies, in e-mail templates, in chat, when recording a note, etc.
• Conversational guides, used to create all the resources needed for prospecting. These guides enable ISC Paris teams to structure their note-taking. An essential feature for keeping track of important data.
• Task queues, helping to manage each action to be performed. With each completed task, ISC staff are redirected to the information sheet linked to the next task.
• The list is not exhaustive, as the HubSpot universe is constantly evolving.

Each of these functions was consistent with the phases of the sales tunnel defined upstream. The objective, to optimize team productivity as much as possible.

Session 6: Driving sales and marketing activity in real time via dashboards

Here it was time for the sixth and final session, the creation of performance monitoring dashboards. Each dashboard contained reports tailored to the needs of ISC Paris. We offered them two specific templates:

• "Macro-economic" dashboard, necessary to have an overview of sales productivity in real time.
• Customized dashboard for each team member, enabling them to pilot their activity themselves, always in real time.

At the end of these 6 hours, we took the time to talk with the business school teams. This moment was essential to confirm that we had been able to meet their expectations and initial challenges.

In addition, we issued them with a CRM charter of good conduct, guaranteeing the quality of the data integrated. Among the many tips in this charter, here are a few examples:

• Create custom properties in HubSpot, so that data is intuitively well used by teams :
  • Contact properties, "Is this person an ICS Paris alumni?
  • Company properties, "This company is affiliated with which ICS campus?"
  • Transaction properties, "This applicant would like to enroll in which course?"
• Respect the right nomenclatures, while customizing properties specific to the education sector.
• Customize the display of information sheets, to facilitate the daily life of CRM users.
• Segment the database with dynamic contact lists, created according to their properties or activities.
• Install the HubSpot extension on your mailbox, to track and keep track of contact engagement via emails.

All these tips were aimed at making optimal use of the tool vis-à-vis the sales actions undertaken by ISC Paris.

Use email marketing to deliver personalized messages to students and companies

In parallel with the HubSpot CRM integration, we designed marketing email templates in the ISC Paris portal. With three entities within the Group, the aim was to develop a template for each:

• ISC Paris Grande École.
• ISC Paris Global Programs.
• ISC Paris Executive Education.

As the day-to-day marketing activity was voluminous, a lot of contacts came back, for which a personalized pitch was needed. We ran workshops with the teams, to find out the essential elements to disseminate in these emails. These included news such as open days, sharing training-related content and brochures, alumni testimonials, etc.

Creating the templates for these marketing emails required several phases:

• Development of the graphic mock-ups of the email templates.
• Validation and challenge of the ISC Paris teams.
• Integration of mock-ups into HubSpot CRM by the consultant in charge of the project at the agency.
• Timing of models according to the entity concerned and the topics to be discussed.

Personalized emails are essential for building a relationship of trust and proximity with your contacts. A true pillar of inbound marketing, it's a frighteningly effective conversion and nurturing tool.

Welcome and pair coaching for all ISC Paris teams on its two campuses in Paris and Orléans

Following the previous two stages, we had all the context to begin the final part of this CRM optimization coaching. This involved training ISC's internal teams. Each unit using the HubSpot solution was able to benefit from training tailored to its specific needs.

A total of 5 pairs took part in these one-hour training sessions. They covered several poles. Doctorate of Business Administration, Master of Business Administration, Alternance, Taxe d'apprentissage et Fond de dotation, and Formation continue. Here is the agenda for each pair of onboardings:

• A round-table discussion to bring up the business challenges to be solved via CRM for each participant.
• A contextualization of HubSpot CRM, its contact, business and transaction objects.
• A connection between the email inboxes of the members of the pair and the HubSpot extension.
• An inventory of email-related tools, i.e. templates, meetings, instructions and follow-up.
• A synchronization of their calendar with HubSpot and then the addition of an appointment scheduling link.
• A presentation of the conversion tunnel and its proper use
.

Transferring skills is a value to which we attach great importance. That's why we were keen to give ISC Paris all the keys they needed to make the best use of their CRM tool.

ISC Paris capitalizes on Hubspot CRM to focus on new challenges

This comprehensive CRM support enabled ISC Paris to structure its internal organization, while improving the experience of its students and corporate partners. Teams reinforced their knowledge and practices through 6 sessions dedicated to setting up the HubSpot tool. With 3 email marketing templates developed for each entity and tailor-made training sessions, ISC Paris has ensured optimal use of HubSpot. However, new challenges were taken up during this journey, such as that of the customer experience to be fluidified with the help of dedicated landing pages.

Their aim is to go ever further in their support, to help their students find the right companies. HubSpot CRM is an essential lever for the business school to be able to focus more on its core business - learning. After seeing how to customize HubSpot CRM for the education sector, find out how to align it with your website. For this, our case study on the redesign of the École Hôtelière de Lausanne website is ideal.