So, you’ve created and activated your marketing campaign for your childcare centre, and the enquiries are starting to roll in.

Now what?

Having a clear and comprehensive post-enquiry contact strategy and nurture program is essential to turn your enquiries into booked Centre tours and (hopefully) into new enrolments.

What you do when a new Family enquiry hits your inbox or CRM will determine not only the return on investment you receive from your marketing spend, but also the success of your enrolment opportunities and the brand experience your Families receive.

Not sure what this process should look like? Here our team explain how to create and optimise your post enquiry processes for success.

Be quick with your response

Do not wait around. That lead you have just received is HOT, so you need to capitalise on that interest and get in contact with them quick smart. Modern Families are time-sensitive and shop around for their childcare. It’s no good responding to a new Family enquiry days after it was received – chances are that Family has already moved on to your competitor. With sector-wide competition only increasing, it’s so important that you respond to your enquiries before your competitors to position yourself at the top of the list.

Ideally, you would want to be attempting contact with each new lead within a few hours after it’s received (hopefully you have collected all their contact details as part of your marketing campaign). First try calling them. Hopefully they will answer, and you can begin forming a relationship with the Family, discussing their needs and weaving through your Centre sales pitch.

If they don’t answer, leave a message, and try again later. In the meantime, send an email letting them know you’ve tried to be in contact and you’re here if they have any questions or if they would like to book in a Centre tour. Keep following up with them using a range of communication methods until you receive a response or feel that you have exhausted the lead – for our Enquiry Management teams, this is often 5-6 contact attempts.

We know it can be a lot of leg work contacting and following up new enquiries, so if you don’t have the resources to respond quickly or continue that follow up process, why not give us a call and see how we can help your team.

Give them an action to follow

Booking Centre tours should be your number one goal. Quite simply, the more prospective Families through the Centre door, the better chances you have of gaining an enrolment.

Now, there can be a myriad of reasons why a Family may choose to, or not to enrol with your Centre that as a Provider you have no control over.  That’s why the goal of every new enquiry should be to convert them to a booked Centre tour and work hard on that tour to create a lasting positive impression of your Centre – this will help to tip the scales in your direction. Our team have rounded up their top tips for creating a lasting impression with Families here.

Nurture your leads

Often Families don’t enrol after the first call. In fact, according to SEMrush, it takes on average 10 points of contact to convert a new lead into an enrolled Family – and we have seen it take far longer than that in a childcare setting.  

“From answering the initial enquiry to organising a Centre tour, following up, liaising with Families about their enrolment requirements and forms, booking orientations and answering all the questions in between – the enrolment journey can be long and span many weeks, even months” says Jane Monaghan Managing Director at Enrolment Hub.

So, it’s important that you take the necessary time to nurture new Families and continue to cultivate that relationship with them throughout their entire enrolment journey to ensure you are always top of mind in their decision-making process.

How do you do this?

• Create a comprehensive lead nurture strategy. You can learn more about that in our blog here.
• Front-load your nurture journey in the first few days and weeks after their initial enquiry as this is when they are most likely to pull the trigger on a decision.
• Get them to tour your Centre as soon as possible to make that personal connection with the Family.
• Build multiple touchpoints into your nurture strategy using a variety of channels such as email, phone and SMS.
• Use and integrate marketing automation software (such as Childcare CRM, Hubspot or Kidsoft) to increase your success in executing your nurture strategy long-term. These programs will also allow you to report on your leads which in turn assists your marketing efforts.

Lead nurturing doesn’t happen overnight. You have to continue re-engaging and nurturing leads over time with a comprehensive contact strategy – which is no easy task. But thankfully our in-house Marketing Team are pro’s at developing and implementing multi-channel nurture strategies and creating the multitude of communication pieces that go with it. They’d be happy to walk you through the process, so get in contact here.

Create a comprehensive lead pipeline

Triaging your leads is key. Just like your Families, Centre Managers are often time poor so it’s important to focus your precious time and energy on real prospects.

Firstly, focus on your newest leads first as the speed to attempt to contact a prospective Family is crucial. If the initial call is not a success, set up reminders to make successive call or contact attempts.

Prioritise leads based on the number of contact attempts (lowest to highest) and by the enquiry date and time (newest to oldest). After 5 attempts at contact via a range of communication channels (email, phone calls etc) it’s safe to say the Family may not be interested. You can then move them to your long-term nurture strategy to ensure you still remain front of mind, but the ball is now in their court.

Know and use your data wisely

Data is your friend to ensure you’re always funnelling your assets and resources to the right place. Data segmentation and analysis will help you understand which segments of your audience respond best to certain forms of communication in your nurture strategy, and help you develop more targeted and sophisticated messaging. This data can also help to refine your marketing activities to ensure you’re receiving the best ROI.

This is where a CRM system, such as Childcare CRM, Kidsoft or Salesforce can come in handy.

It’s also important to look at when you’re getting the highest influx of enquiries and ensure you have the right number of team members available at that time to respond in a timely manner to maximise your success rate. There’s no point having your team answering enquiries in the morning only, if you receive 90% of your enquiries in the afternoon.

To ensure you’re connecting with your new enquiries in a timely manner it might be time to start looking at creating, or hiring a team dedicated to managing your enquiries and booking centre tours – leaving your team to focus their time on connecting only with qualified leads that have a genuine interest and possibility of enrolling at your Centre. You can learn more about that here.

Sing the same song!

Being able to talk to Families in a familiar may, whilst still checking off your unique selling points is a skill – and not one that comes naturally to every person. Spend time training your team to be skilled conversationalists, who know how to ask the right questions, identify a Families particular needs and goals, and clearly articulate how your Centre and offering can meet their needs.

“What we have learnt over the years is that effective enquiry management is a two-stage process,” says Jane Monaghan, “on one hand we need to ensure that enquiries are answered, and parents are happy and on the other hand team members are consistently sharing the same message and level of professionalism in all of their engagements.”

At Enrolment Hub, we provide comprehensive sales training to all team members to support effective phone engagement and tour optimisations with run sheet templates that ensure consistency of message for all team members involved in the sales process.

Allocate your time or outsource.

Developing, implementing, and successfully running a post-enquiry contact strategy and nurture program is no easy task. If your team are already time poor (as we know many Centre Managers are due to increasing regulations and requirements on their time), it may be time to look at outsourcing this task to an experienced team who can focus on answering enquiries all day.

If you’re not sure where to start with developing your post-enquiry process, our team can help.

Our Enquiry Management service is specifically designed to help Providers and Centre Managers with 100% confidence that every enquiry received is answered quickly and professionally.

We currently answer every call within 3 seconds and convert over 91% of our client new leads to a Centre Tour or to the waitlist. Can you say the same about your team?

Why not get in touch with the team here, or give us a call on 02 8123 2300.

ENROLMENT HUB – LEADER IN EARLY EDUCATION ENROLMENT,
DEBT MANAGEMENT, AND SO MUCH MORE

We are provide a full service offering including Administration and CCMS support, occupancy and enrolment strategies, brand marketing assistance, debt recovery, new provider set up, CCMS Transfer assistance and consultation services.

Our team are experienced, professional and knowledgeable, and know all there is to know about enrolments in the Early Education and Childcare Sector.

Enrolment Hub are an extension of your team, working in partnership and caring about your business just as much as you do.

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