Gecko has all the functionality you need to function as a lightweight CRM. Here are 5 reasons why this could be a good option for higher ed teams.
Sometimes schools, teams or departments don’t need an enterprise-level CRM, with all their bells and whistles. Or perhaps teams need CRM-like functionality, but they want their data to sit outside of their main CRM (either temporarily, or longer-term). In these cases — and others — Gecko can be a great option.
Gecko is famously easy to use, especially when compared with enterprise CRMs such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics (not to mention Higher Ed CRMs like Slate). Teams who “do the work” will actually be able to do the work, and not have to rely on a system administrator or CRM Ops team.
You don’t have to be a tech guru to run student engagement campaigns with Gecko, and that makes our platform a big favourite with many teams.
Org-wide systems like enterprise CRMs can be incredibly complex. This leads to teams being afraid to make changes, as they don’t want to break something that affects another part of the system.
To counter this, teams use Gecko as an accessible way to engage students. They have full control over their workflows, safe in the knowledge that the rest of their (institution-wide) tech stack will remain unaffected.
Many teams have realised that relying solely on emails isn’t enough to drive your students to take action. But to move from a simple email tool like Mailchimp, to an enterprise CRM like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics or Slate feels like a huge leap.
Gecko is a natural progression from email-only tools, and allows teams to leverage multi-channel campaigns quickly, without implementing more campus-wide tech.
Gecko’s platform is intuitive to use straight out of the box. But that doesn’t mean that we leave you to figure it out on your own. Our dedicated Implementation Team was created to help our partners get the most from Gecko, and get up-and-running as soon as possible. Whether it’s a group training session on-campus or a last-minute refresher over video call, we’ll get your campaigns running ASAP.
And unlike other vendors, you won’t be waiting months to launch; most clients have gone through our implementation process within 2 few weeks of coming on-board.
One of our longstanding partners described Gecko as “a CRM on top of our CRM”. Although slightly cryptic, it means that they use Gecko in tandem with other tools in their tech stack. In practical terms, they:
This structure gives them the best of both worlds. They have 100% control of their workflows within Gecko (while also leveraging functionality that isn’t available within their CRM, like live chat and AI chatbots). But they can also retain their legacy tech systems, which are baked-in to every corner of their campus (and which their IT teams have little appetite to modernise in the short-term).
Gecko is used in hundreds of different ways, by Higher Education teams large and small from around the globe. Check out these use cases for more inspiration.
