In January 2020, FACTS doubled down on its commitment to school enrollment. We assembled a brand-new development team solely dedicated to streamlining your school’s entire admissions process into one central, easy-to-use system. Now the time has come to unveil our new features.

I led a June webinar detailing these enrollment-optimizing features titled, “Using FACTS’ New Inquiry Experience to Nurture Leads,” which you can access on-demand.

Schools can now collect, track, and interact with inquiries, as well as schedule tours and events all within FACTS SIS. Check out the webinar for an in-depth look at how to operate this new suite of helpful tools such as:

  • New inquiry queue
  • Simplified navigation menu
  • Advanced email filter and segmenting
  • New mass email capabilities
  • Email templates with mail merge, logo, and image abilities
  • Task management
  • Event management for open houses, tours, testing, etc.
  • Improved checklist experience
  • Auto-linking an inquiry to their application

Before tinkering with all the new features, take a minute to stop and map out your perfect inquiry process. Write out the ideal path prospects would go through after initially contacting your school. Here a few suggestions to spark ideas:

  • Follow-up phone calls
  • Email sequences
  • Open house invites
  • Pair prospects with a parent ambassador

Once you have an inquiry process road map, enjoy this highlight reel of powerful features covered in the webinar.

New inquiry queue

Pull and view your prospect’s data quickly with FACTS’ new inquiry queue. Now you can:

  • Sort and filter columns by fields such as grade and inquiry status.
  • Pick and choose which information displays from your inquiry forms.
  • Forget about exporting information to a spreadsheet.

Navigate to your inquiry queue under Admissions > Application & Enrollment > Inquiry.

New inquiry queue in FACTS SIS.

Email segmenting

Send emails quickly to just the right people with FACTS’ new email segmenting feature. This example shows how schools can email an enrollment reminder to parents with one child already attending and a sibling inquiring.

First, go to the inquiry queue and sort to your desired list of names.

You can go to the inquiry queue in FACTS SIS and sort to a desired list of names.

 

Then, click the arrow icon at the top of the list of names to send an email.

Here you can view recipients and draft your email. Watch the webinar to learn about more advanced email features such as mail merge tags and creating email templates.

Email templates in the FACTS SIS.

 

 

Checklist

You know that ideal inquiry process you sketched out earlier? This is where it comes to life. Go to FACTS SIS > System > Configuration > Admissions Checklist.

Here you can tailor your checklist exactly to your school’s inquiry process. Then, track your prospect’s status in the inquiry queue.

Tailor your checklist configuration in FACTS SIS.

Email your prospects at the perfect time without touching a button. Our checklists enable you to automate emails at specific points in the inquiry process. For example, you can create a field to track whether the prospect’s financial aid information has been sent. Then, configure an email notification to send automatically once that checklist item is marked complete.

Configure an email checklist in FACTS SIS.

Event management

Event management in FACTS SIS.

Say goodbye to tracking down parents with event sign-up emails. Now you can integrate event sign-ups directly in your inquiry form. And you can control event dates, capacity, and cutoff registration dates.

Use this new feature to organize events such as:

  • Entrance exams
  • Shadow days
  • Private tours
  • Open houses
  • And more!

Here’s how to create an event on your inquiry form:

Navigate to your inquiry queue, then go to “Setup” and scroll down until you see “Additional Questions for Parent.” Click “Add Question” to create an event for parents.

Add question for parents in forms with FACTS SIS.

Be sure to set “Question Type” to event. Then under “Options” you can add your event and set location, host, times and other advanced features.

Add question type to forms with FACTS SIS.

 

We hope these feature highlights give you an idea of the exciting inquiry updates for FACTS SIS users. For a more in-depth understanding of how to optimize the new inquiry experience for your school, check out my full webinar, “Using FACTS’ New Inquiry Experience to Nurture Leads.”

Finally, know that FACTS loves to hear your ideas. Are you using FACTS SIS and notice something that could be even better? Go to User Voice and submit feedback to potentially see your idea in the next round of updates!