Slate CRM Solutions for Small and Niche Schools

Launching your Slate instance can be extremely stressful for admissions offices large and small. Many decisions made during this period will dictate your business process going forward and our team can guide you based on your institution’s individual needs. From full implementation services to overall strategy and project management, we can work with you on a custom solution by

• Building out the fields and prompts that make up your applications and forms.

• Creating dashboards to give your team quick access to the information they need the most.

• Setting up your users and giving them the correct access to the sections of Slate they need through roles and realms.

• Importing historical data from your previous database.

• Connecting your current payment processor or setting up Slate Payments to connect all of the payments in your application process.

• Creating material types for all of your application requirements.

• Integrating material sources that provide test scores, transcripts, and prospects so that your team does not need to manually process documents.

• Customizing your decision letters for every population within your applicant pool.

• Designing a status portal that gives applicants quick access to everything that is expected of them and cuts down on emails and phone calls to your staff.

• Developing the application reading process and creating custom reader training documents specific to your process.

• Providing special expertise in collecting and reviewing portfolios and auditions for the performing & visual arts.

Students are applying to more schools than ever; making sure that your application is easy to complete and giving your applicants the tools to understand the process and requirements on their own can make a huge difference in the workload for your admissions team. The Best Fit team will work with you to be sure that you are getting the most out of your Slate application by

• Creating the periods and rounds needed by your institution.

• Building all required fields and prompts.

• Setting up your application logic and ensuring that no application is submitted without everything required.

• Managing automated application communications.

• Strategizing and implementing your review process and creating a bin structure that works for your team.

• Building a checklist that gives clarity to your applicants about what is required and what has been received.

• Integrating your payment processor to collect application fees and deposits.

• Creating users and granting permissions based on their role in the process.

• Providing special expertise in collecting and reviewing portfolios and auditions for the performing & visual arts.

• Developing custom reader training documents specific to your process.

While your admissions staff will be interacting with Slate year-round, faculty reviewers and application readers will often only do so in one or two periods during the year. This can leave them frustrated by having to relearn the mechanics, and that in turn will put a burden on your team. Ensuring that your review process is easy for your readers in addition to being well documented and explained to them in a way they can understand is critical to its success. Best Fit will develop a custom reader process for your intuition by

Building a reader process that works in the most efficient way for your application readers and faculty reviewers.

Reader Bins.

Reader Layouts.

Reader Review Forms.

Automated Bin Movements and Queuing.

Reader Dashboards.

Setting up user permissions so that readers only see what they need to.

Workflows for processes that happen in the reader at the same time readers are reviewing applications.

Creating documentation of the reading process.

Quick guides for readers including video examples.

Reader training in person or virtually.

Making sure that your prospects and applicants understand your institution and requirements is critical to strengthening the quality of your funnel. The deliver module in Slate is a powerful tool to make sure that you are getting in front of students in as many ways as possible. From email to print, Best Fit will ensure that your marketing strategy can be successfully implemented and be as automated as possible.

Develop drip marketing campaigns to allow you to tell your institution’s story to all of your prospects and applicants effectively. We can help will many types of populations and goals including

Application generation campaigns

Yield & anti-melt campaigns

Transfer campaigns

Graduate campaigns

Adult/non-degree campaigns

International campaigns

Deliver consultations with Best Fit can help you to feel confident that you are getting the most out of your Deliver Module. We will take a look at all aspects of your communications running in Slate and give feedback on what you are doing well in addition to making recommendations on what you can improve or new features to take advantage of, including

Communications plan development

Audience segmentation

Drip-marketing campaigns

Ping and UTM Tracking

Slate Print

Slate Voice

Text messaging

Implementation of new Slate features.

Best Fit will take a holistic look at the setup of your Slate instance and work with you to be sure you are following best practices. We will provide feedback on how to make your process more efficient and how to be sure you are getting the most out of the power of Slate.

The enrollment process doesn’t end at the point of acceptance and the time that follows an admission decision is critical for the yield of your class. We will help you build a process that is easy for the applicant to complete and gives your staff quick access to important information on how the class is shaping up by

Creating decision reply forms to quickly collect enrollment decisions from your applicants.

Collecting deposit payments and displaying these to your applicants on their status page. We can also help to integrate your payment processor.

Developing a yield communications strategy using drip marketing through the Deliver Module.

Managing the waitlist through reader bins and queries. This way you can keep track of who is still interested in being accepted from the waitlist quickly and process their acceptance.

Implementing a deferral request review and processing if your institution offers that option.

Setting up your status page or portal to display updated requirements and events for admitted students.

Events and visits are one of the main ways to collect information on your prospects for your institution. Best Fit can help you build out your visits and events within Slate so that students can easily register, RSVP, and attend your events. Some of the areas we can help with include

Generate event templates to make creating events easier and save time on generating the automated communications that go along with each event

Strategize the layout and fields on your registration forms so that you are collecting all of the data you need, and not collecting extraneous data.

Automate event communications so that you can ensure that all of your attendees have the information that they need.

Registration confirmations

Cancellation notifications

Event reminders

Create dynamic landing pages so your prospects can see similar events all in one place.

Set up queries and reports to track the success of your events and have the data at your fingertips.

Efficient event check-in setup so that your team can spend more time talking with your guests.

Audit your technology for in-person and virtual events to make sure your team has everything they need for successful events.

Our services go much further than what we have listed here. With our experience in enrollment management, we can help you think about your workflow and processes even beyond Slate. We would be excited to talk with you about how to best connect you with your students.

It can be extremely hard when you lose a critical member of your Slate team. Best Fit is here to help by assisting your institution with this work until a replacement can be hired. In addition to taking over processes during this time, we can also train new staff members on using the Slate as it has been set up by your institution.

From virtual webinars for the whole team to one-on-one sessions with key users, we can be there to help make sure your team knows how to get the most out of Slate, and also stay on top of the latest updates. In- person training is also available where necessary, but these services are best handled remotely so that we can share recordings with you for future viewing. In addition to the recordings, we will provide documentation that is specific to your process to add to any training materials you already have in place.