The University of Chichester wanted to enhance its comms output using the latest automated technology and it had to do this on a small budget. This put the big-name CRMs out of reach, but Gecko has proven to be a more effective and cheaper alternative and it has significantly improved the student journey for students and staff.
With campuses in the Roman city of Chichester and the seaside town of Bognor Regis and highly ranked for teaching, the University of Chichester has a lot to offer. And, although it might not sound like it, it’s quite a small institution. Managing the logistics of a spread-out campus while retaining its intimate feel is a challenge, but one that is easily met with the help of Gecko.
We chatted with Steph Coogans, Marketing Manager, and Mae Soan, Marketing Campaigns Officer, at the University of Chichester to see how instrumental Gecko has become to their operations since its first deployment in 2021.
In answer to that question, Mae says: “I use Gecko every day. I’m working in it all the time. We use it for every campaign that we do, all of our event comms, our open-day bookings, forms, surveys, enquiries, SMS and emails, it all comes from Gecko and now we’re moving our app stuff into Gecko, so it is becoming one complete system.”
Currently, all of the university’s data is stored in Gecko, all its open days are run through Gecko and all its communications are sent via Gecko. Gecko essentially operates as its CRM.
Explaining how this has come about, Steph says that before deploying Gecko the university relied on three different systems. “We used Eventbrite to manage our events, we had another platform to send out emails and another piece of software for other management things,” she explains. “What we wanted was to have all of our comms, event management, reporting, etc. on one easy-to-use system that multiple people could access.”
Gecko managed to deliver all of that and more. “Gecko has saved us a lot of time,” says Steph. “We no longer have to do manual data uploads into the email system, we can quickly set up events and then trigger comms for those events via SMS. It’s so much more efficient having everything all in one place.”
Previously open days were hit and miss for visitors, they could turn up but find that they couldn’t get a place in the session they were interested in. Gecko has transformed the whole experience. It lets guests pre-book for open days and particular sessions to guarantee a place. This makes it easier for the team to allocate rooms for the sessions based on forecast attendance, which has the knock-on effect of boosting attendance.
Mae says that they also use Gecko to tap every opportunity to turn a lead into an application and then acceptance of an offer. “If any inquiries come in through any of our Gecko forms, whether it’s for a prospectus request or an open-day booking, for example, they then get drip-fed broadcasts. They will first get a welcome email and then three weeks on it will trigger another workflow email. Essentially anyone that gets in touch will start at the top and get drip-fed all the comms, it keeps them warm and engaged and it’s great for me as I can preschedule everything.”
Mae also likes how intuitive Gecko is to use and how easy it is to make comms look interesting. “With Gecko you can drag and drop things, change sizes and move templates around, it makes everything very easy compared to other CRM systems I’ve used. The more varied and more exciting we can make emails and other comms the better and it’s having a positive effect on open-day bookings,” she says.
Gecko is also used to drill down into the data that the institution collects. Mae says that this comes in particularly useful for audience segmentation “We’re now building more contact cells into our international student forms. This means we can pull out and segment the data further to do more bespoke international comms to segment via country and language, for example.”
Chichester is now increasingly using Gecko’s SMS service too. In 2022, 8,000 SMS messages were sent and in 2023 this rose to 15,920. The team finds these messages are most effective when it comes to reminders. ”We use Gecko’s SMS largely around key dates and for event-related comms,” says Mae. “We use it around the UCAS deadline, for graduation to remind people what they need to do when and for open days. A day before we will remind people that the open day is tomorrow, on the day of the open day we will use it to remind people to check in and to tell them when their sessions go live.”
As well as nudging students, Gecko is also being used to help prospective students be more proactive, particularly when it comes to clearing. “We’ve added an online application form for clearing through Gecko that will trigger an initial offer depending on how many UCAS points they have, so people no longer just have to email or phone in and wait for an answer as soon as they get their results,” says Mae. ”Those offers then pull through via an export onto a separate spreadsheet where the admissions team can double check that they have got the grades they say they have. That Gecko form has made the entire process quicker for ourselves and the admin team who were being inundated with inquiries from a lot of different areas. It means the speed of our offers through clearing is now immediate.”
This has also improved the user experience for students as they get a response almost instantly. And, thanks to Gecko, Chichester has managed to achieve this with a smaller team. “Before we began using Gecko’s automated forms for clearing, there was so much manual work to do on the day and we needed to expand our team to cope,” reminisces Mae. “This year we didn’t need as much extra support because there was less need for us to be constantly checking, following up and doing things. Last year there were six of us, this year there were just three of us working on clearing.”
The Gecko app is the latest tool in the Chichester arsenal, proving invaluable for managing open days. “The app allows our staff to efficiently check in visitors and access all their information on the spot,” says Steph. “While students view their event tickets through their web browsers, our team can track attendance and manage the flow using the app. I love that we can sync the data and monitor our numbers in real-time throughout the day. It’s really effective – students can browse and discover interesting talks through their digital tickets, and we can smoothly manage their check-in when they arrive.”
Steph and Mae are constantly surprised about what more they can make Gecko do for them. “Next, I’d like to start to use Liquid more to make our comms more campus and subject-specific so that we can track our students’ full journey and see which touch points have made an impact,” says Mae.
There is already evidence that Gecko is having an effect. Prospective students are now engaging more with the university with higher open rates for comms open-day and event session bookings up.
To conclude, we asked Steph and Mae what advice they would give to any other university just starting out on its Gecko journey. “I would say try to fully understand the functionality of Gecko. There are so many different elements of it. It has taken me a while to grasp how they all link together,” says Mae.
Steph adds, “When you use everything in conjunction, Gecko is incredible for event-based stuff. You can use it to host events, send all your comms including SMS, and create segmented workflows of an event so you can easily email just one group of people about an event or everyone.”
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