CRM System for Higher Education | University CRM 2025
Do your recruitment teams use spreadsheets and email chains to work?
At a time when what students expect is like consumer experience, universities need systems that provide consistent, personalized outreach through the entire student lifecycle - prospect to alum. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for higher education centralizes all communications and automates routine operations and provides analytics that enhance recruitment, retention, and alumni engagement.
Furthermore, universities that implement CRM software can achieve higher applicant engagement rates; and institutions that have implemented data-driven CRM strategies have shown large increases in student retention.
In this article, we are going to discuss the CRM software for universities, its advantages, and the most appropriate CRM in universities of Canada.
Overview of CRM software for universities
CRM for universities is a dedicated application designed to handle relations among possible students, existing students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It monitors the interactions (emails, calls, events, applications), automates the targeted campaigns, and stores data that drives segmentation and reporting.
In contrast to generic CRM, university CRM tend to have admissions-focused workflows, Student Information Systems (SIS) integrations, stewardship, and fundraising modules.
The major purposes a CRM university can perform:
- Prospect management and lead nurturing.
- Monitoring of application and offer.
- Learner participation and case management (advising, counselling).
- Fundraising pipelines and alumni relations.
- Conversion and retention institutional analytics.
Features & Benefits of a CRM in universities
Core Features
- Contact & lifecycle management: One profile of prospects, applicants, students, donors.
- Campaign automation: Periodic nurture plans, occasion notifications, application notices.
- SIS and data integration: Bi-directional integration with student records, transcripts, financial holds.
- Case and activity management: Follow-up history, advising notes, and interventions.
- Segmentation and personalization: Target messages by Program, geographic, behavior.
- Security & compliance: Role-based access, audit trail, privacy controls (important in PIPEDA/Canadian privacy laws).
- Extensibility and limited-code tooling: APIs, connectors, or education accelerators to fasten custom builds.
Benefits
- Increased conversion rates: Automated, personalized touches maximize the application and enrollment rates.
- Less manual work: Admissions teams will save time that was used on repetitive messages.
- Better student support: Case workflows and early alerts minimize the risk of dropouts.
- Greater relationships with the alumni: Regular stewardship enhances fundraising outcomes.
- Actionable insights: Real-time dashboards drive strategy and budgeting.
Choose the correct CRM
These are key steps and actions that are used to assess the right partners:
- Define clear goals: Determine whether the CRM should be recruitment-based, enterprise student life cycle management, alumni and fundraising or a combination of all.
- Map data flows: Inventory SIS, LMS, finance and HR systems; specify the data that you need to synchronize.
- Prioritize must-have features: Automation, case management, SIS integration, security, and analytics.
- Demand learning materials: Ask case studies of comparable sized institutions and review timelines of implementing.
- Pilot with quantifiable KPIs: Conduct a pilot of a specified program and quantify the conversion, time-savings, and user satisfaction.
- Plan governance and training: Determine user roles, data ownership, and adoption training before going live.
- Estimate total cost of ownership: Encompass licenses, integrations, data migration, and maintenance.
Note: Experience of partners matters as much as the software. Knowledge of Dynamics 365 or education patterns of the selected CRM (implementation partner) will minimize risk and speed ROI.
Best CRM software for universities
The eight most popular and reliable CRM software used in universities are listed below and all are reported to have increased student engagement, university operations, and overall efficiency.
Microsoft Dynamic 365
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a full set of recruitment, admission, student services, and alumni relations management. The Higher Education Accelerator has added university-specific templates, which saves the time of customization.
Features:
- Pre-built data models in higher education.
- Office 365, Teams, Power BI, and SIS integration.
- Recruitment and student success role-based dashboards.
- Power Platform low-code customization.
- Scalable and secure cloud-native architecture
Ellucian CRM
Ellucian provides CRMs that are higher-education-based for recruitment (Recruit) and student engagement (Advise). It can be smoothly integrated with the Banner and Colleague SIS systems, so it is perfect with the existing clients of Ellucian.
Features:
- In-built applicant tracking processes and communications.
- AI-based advisory and student achievement systems.
- Recruitment pipeline tracker dashboards that are customizable.
- Integration with Ellucian student and finance system
Salesforce Education Cloud
It is an education CRM cloud platform that global universities have embraced to handle admissions, student services, and relations with their alumni. Its Education Data Architecture (EDA) is the one which supports full lifecycle management.
Features:
- Single learner profiles and journey management.
- Predictive analytics with the use of AI through Einstein AI.
- Campaign automation with the help of the Marketing Cloud.
- Powerful ecosystem of education applications and partners.
HubSpot
HubSpot CRM is known for ease of use and inbound marketing potentials. In the case of universities, it is an excellent choice of outreach management, email marketing, and communicating with potential students regarding events.
Features:
- Graphical user interface to control leads and emails.
- Email sequencing and marketing automation.
- Real-time reporting and tracking deals.
- Forms, landing page integrations, and ad integrations
Slate
Slate is a CRM Software that is higher education specific. It is particularly used in Canadian and North American universities to deal with admissions and enrollment.
Features:
- Automated email marketing and one to one communication.
- Real-time reporting and dashboards
- End-to-end application lifecycle management
- Event registration and travel management for recruiters
Element451
Element451 is a higher education CRM and marketing automation platform that uses AI as a single system. It assists universities to make the student experience more personal with the help of data.
Features:
- AI-based individualization and predictive scoring
- Recruitment and communication through workflow automation
- Inbuilt analytics and customizable dashboard
- Cloud-based integration with SIS and communication tools
Oracle CX
Oracle provides a CRM platform as part of the CX (Customer Experience) suite that is to assist with the engagement of students and institutional progress.
Features:
- Centralized communication (social, email, SMS)
- Oracle Analytics Cloud with advanced analytics
- Pre-configured advanced-ed data models
- Secure, compliant data management to global institutions
Headstart CRM
Headstart CRM aims at streamlining the processes of recruiting students in small and mid-sized colleges. It is intuitive and it combines well with online marketing tools.
Features:
- Document management and tracking of applicants
- Websites & forms integration
- Inexpensive and easy to implement
- Task automation and workflow tracking
Final Thoughts
As we have already discussed, CRM is a strategic resource that bridges all the lifecycle of a student. A properly executed CRM in universities makes the difference in terms of attracting the right applicants, maintaining the alumni contact, and facilitating all operations in the universities, which results in an increased number of satisfied students.
In Canada, universities implementing solutions such as Dynamics 365 CRM, Salesforce Education Cloud, or Ellucian CRM are realizing measurable improvements in the rate of conversions and retention of recruits. When properly implemented, these systems do not merely store data but convert it to insights that make administrators make smarter and faster decisions.
To implement university CRM successfully, institutions require certified and qualified partners that are knowledgeable in technology, as well as the education workflow. Dynamic Square is among the top Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partners in the Canadian market.
Being a certified Microsoft Dynamics 365 and CRM partner, Dynamics Square has assisted many Canadian educational establishments in designing, integrating, and implementing Dynamics 365 solutions specifically to higher education.
Their experts specialize in:
- Workflow mapping workshops to discover university workflows.
- Integration of SIS and third-party systems.
- Fast-track pilots to show ROI.
They are the ones who take the universities through every stage of the Dynamics 365 adoption process, i.e. planning to be training, and make sure that the adoption is not stressful at all.
If you are one who are also struggling to find the right CRM, feel free to contact their experts via call at +1 778 381 5388 or you can also drop a mail at info@dynamicssquare.ca.