September, the start of the new academic year, the smell of fresh notebooks, and if you were anything like us growing up, it was always the excitement of getting a brand new pencil case that usually only lasted a month. But beyond the nostalgia of new stationery, September marks the beginning of the education sector’s most demanding period.
Whether you are a school, academy, or online educator, the back-to-school season is the beginning of a very busy period, and as student enrollments surge, parents have countless questions, and you can guarantee that admin tasks continue to multiply. There ends up being a web of relationships with students, families, alumni, employees, donors and other stakeholders. But how do you manage this scale of communication and organisation without dropping the ball?
A CRM platform is fast becoming essential regardless of the size, location or sector you are in. With students relying on different forms of digital communication, you can find them, segment them and meet their needs via various channels.
It is far from being just a sales tool; modern CRM platforms have now evolved into a way for educational institutions to manage their relationships, operations, execution and offer the best experiences to their audiences. Find out more in this article on why it is an excellent tool throughout the lifecycle.
1. Automated, Personalised and Smarter Communication
You’ve got class updates to send, event reminders, forms to chase, and probably a few welcome packs to go out to. Managing hundreds or even thousands of emails manually? Not ideal. A CRM platform lets you automate these communications, personalise them, and make sure they go out at the right time, to the right people.
WeDoCRM Recommends: A really good example where this can be implemented is for those of you working in a secondary school; you can set up a “Welcome to Year 7” email series to go out in August, complete with helpful info packs. Follow that with automated nudges about uniform collection, timetables, or parent-teacher night in September. No last-minute panic required. Get ahead with scheduling and have more time to do other tasks! What about those dedicated parent-teacher communication portals? You could schedule meeting reminders with mobile app notifications for instant updates.
2. Segmented Messaging for the Right People at the Right Time
Briefly touching on emails going out at the right time to the right people, are you planning on sending mass emails? They are a no. Targeted and relevant communications? They are a yes. A CRM platform allows you to segment your audiences based on roles, so parents, students, teachers, year groups, course types or even behaviour, mass emailing… is OUT. No more sending everything to everyone, no more unnecessary spamming.
WeDoCRM recommends: Send a reminder about coursework deadlines only to Year 11 students, or email parents of new pupils or students with everything they need for the first week. It’s communication that feels intentional and useful. You could even put people into different groups, parents get one set of emails, students another, and it can be broken down even further by year group, preferences and subject they are studying.
3. Save Valuable Admin Hours With Smart Automation
Enrollments, welcome packs, endless forms, last-minute changes and hundreds of questions flooding in. For admin teams, it’s all hands on deck, but it doesn’t have to be quite so overwhelming!
A CRM will help eliminate the tedious repetitive tasks that are manual by introducing automation where it matters most. You can create workflows inside your platform that will do it all for you. Some platforms provide biometric attendance tracking that instantly provides alerts for absent students or those with poor attendance.
WeDoCRM Recommends: For universities and colleges managing large cohorts, automatically send personalised reminders to students who haven’t completed registration, follow up with missing documentation, or confirm attendance for induction events. This can save so many hours a week! For smaller teams running niche online courses or workshops, this will help you stay focused on quality delivery instead of all that paperwork.
4. Track Engagement, Identify Gaps, and Improve Student Outcomes
From the conversations we have had with some of our clients in the education sector is that one of the biggest challenges is knowing who’s engaged and who’s quietly drifting away. With a CRM, you get clear insights into which emails are opened, which links are clicked and which students need a little nudge!
WeDoCRM Recommends: If you have postgraduate students not interacting with lecture resources, your CRM can be set up to flag that drop in engagement and automatically follow up with support or other materials that might be beneficial. If not, it is a chance for staff to intervene early and check to see if everything is okay with the student.
5. Support Digital and Remote Learning
The education landscape has changed so much since the COVID pandemic; it is now blended. Whether you are running an in-person class, presenting virtual courses online or even a mixture of both, CRM platforms help manage all the steps from the onboarding process, communication, to re-engagement and retention.
Modern CRMs integrate so easily with tools like Zoom, Teams and other learning management systems; they are the single source of truth, the central place to manage all your learner journeys!
WeDoCRM Recommends: Invest in a CRM platform that can detect when a student hasn’t logged in for a week and trigger a personalised message with resources, next steps, or an invite to book a 1:1 with a tutor. Keep support strong and learning growing.
Smart CRM Solutions for All Types of Educators
Whether you’re a university, educator, or online course creator, we want to chat.
At WeDoCRM, we work with educational organisations of all sizes — from global institutions to growing online teaching brands — helping them set up CRM systems that simplify operations, enhance communication, and make learning experiences better for everyone involved. Some of our clients include Pearson, Oxford Summer Courses, and Cambridge University Press. Let’s chat about how we can support your academic team before the September rush hits.
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
