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TargetX Insights Dramatically Accelerates the University of Idaho’s Ability to be Data-Driven

Challenges: U of I’s CRM didn’t meet their data analytics, dashboards, and reporting needs

Adam Stoltz joined the University of Idaho (U of I) as director of enrollment marketing in 2019. He’d previously used the TargetX Recruitment CRM at the University of Nevada-Reno, but U of I used Slate. As Stoltz began to familiarize himself with Slate on a day-to-day basis, he realized it was missing something. It didn’t provide the real-time data analytics, dashboards, and reporting his team needed to optimize success. 

Stoltz craved a data analytics solution that could be customized to track towards strategic goals, individualize goals for various team members, and incentivize and nudge staff to meet them with simple, attractive, intuitive data dashboards. Particularly with the emergence of COVID-19, the team also needed to maximize their existing CRM to encourage cross-department collaboration and transparent data sharing during a time of large-scale change. Data reports needed to be nimbler and reliably actionable. Additionally, the new data solution needed to be out of the box; they couldn’t spend a lot of time and energy building something from scratch when their needs were immediate.

Solutions: TargetX Insights was the add-on solution needed to maximize U of I’s existing CRM

Stoltz had used the TargetX Recruitment Suite with Insights in previous roles, so when he discovered Insights could be used to enhance Slate, he was fully on board. 

“TargetX Insights is a plug-and-play solution that we could quickly lay over our Slate CRM to optimize our efforts towards our goals,” explained Stoltz. Insights provides visually appealing dashboards to easily see information like point-in-time funnel reports, event attendance-to-enrollment metrics, progress to application, enrollment targets, and academic performance data.

Stoltz likens TargetX Insights to a Fitbit or Apple Watch—a sleek, intuitive piece of technology that nudges users towards goal setting, good behaviors, and milestones.

“To me, Insights works like a fitness watch. If I see that my steps are low for the day, it’s going to encourage me to do what it takes to reach my step goal. In Insights, the data dashboards, like progression tracking, do the same thing. It shows me that I am 75% or 80% towards a goal and motivates me to ensure I reach 100,” he says. “As a society, we’ve become accustomed to this kind of data immediacy and the push it gives us to keep going.”

Using Insights, U of I is primed to share up-to-the-minute data in easy to digest ways with colleagues across campus, helping to meet their goal of better communication and transparent data sharing across departments and colleges.

“We’re planning to use Insights to set our big picture goals, set individual recruitment staff goals, and help our colleagues see exactly where we are and where we need to go with full data transparency. This creates accountability but also a spirit of collaboration that we are all in this together,” says Stoltz.

In addition to transparency, Insights also provides reporting immediacy. Stoltz and his team can pull up a data dashboard or report while walking down the hall or when meeting with leadership—on the fly or on their phone. U of I staff will feel more confident sharing data because they know it’s accurate. 

Insights has already shined a light on preexisting data discrepancies and inconsistencies. “As we’ve begun really seeing our data for the first time with Insights, we’re also seeing where our data looks a little funky. For example, we’ve noticed we weren’t tracking events quite right, but we only realized this because now we can visualize our data, see where something isn’t right, and fix our mistakes,” he says. “That really matters when we want to see accurate historical data over time and compare from year to year.”

Now, the marketing and enrollment team’s strategic decisions will be better informed by data they (and their leadership) can trust.

Results: Insights dramatically accelerates U of I’s ability to be data-driven

With TargetX Insights, U of I can get consistent, real-time data about the enrollment metrics they care about most and easily see how recruitment activities are performing in order to optimize, forecast, and manage enrollment goals. 

“We probably could have gotten where we need to be in terms of data analytics and reporting with Slate, but it would have taken us years. We have accelerated the process significantly by coming on board with TargetX Insights,” says Stoltz.


University of Idaho at a Glance

  • Founded in 1889
  • A public research university
  • Residential campus located in Moscow, Idaho
  • Serves 11,000 students
  • Home of the Vandals’
  • Land-grant university

TargetX Solutions

Goals

U of I needed a plug-and-play data solution that:

  • provides customizable, attractive, easy-to-understand data dashboards and reporting;
  • can personalize and visualize team member progress and goals;
  • makes data more transparent and collaborative; and
  • can overlay the Slate CRM.

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