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Key Insights

• 40% of responding private and independent school professionals reported that they did not believe they had all the tools they needed to effectively perform the duties associated with their roles. In addition, feedback from open-ended responses indicates that integration among existing platforms is a widespread challenge. This is a significant contrast with the 88% of district and charter respondents who said that they believe they have all of the technology tools they need to perform the duties associated with their roles. 
• 36% of schools are planning to invest in website redesigns in 2022-2023, but only 9% of responding schools could confirm that their school websites were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design. While this isn’t as thoroughly regulated or monitored for private and independent schools, it is a best practice. 
• 84% of responding schools regularly collect and analyze data regarding their enrollment funnels—if you’re among the 16% that do not, you’re missing out on critical data for evaluating the performance of your recruitment efforts and admissions experience.

Jump to Results by Category

Getting the Job Done

Private School Technology Investment

Websites and Enrollment Management Tools for Private Schools

Email and Family Communication Tools for Private Schools 

Organization and Project Management Tools for Private Schools

Summary and Methodology

With an ever-growing list of options for marketing and enrollment software for PK-12 schools, choosing the right vendor for a new website, customer relationship management (CRM) system, or text messaging tool can feel like an impossible task. Where do you start? How much should you spend? And then there’s the eternal question: What are other schools using? This survey was designed to answer these questions and more; giving school marketing, communications, and admission professionals a resource for researching the tools and software you need to get things done. The private school version of the survey was open from April 15-May 9, 2022, and sent to marketing and admissions professionals at PK-12 private and independent schools across the U.S. The results of a public school district and charter school version of the survey can be found here. For private schools, we received valid responses from 25 boarding/boarding-day schools, 60 non-religious private/independent schools, and 107 religious private/independent schools, for a total of 192 responses.

Resource constraints were a common theme among marketing and admissions professionals in PK-12 schools so we wanted to know from the outset of the survey whether these professionals believed that they had all of the technology tools they needed to perform the duties associated with their roles. Despite the increasing range of available options in the market, 40% of total respondents to the private and independent school version of this survey said no. This is an interesting contrast to the 88% of district and charter respondents who do believe they have all the tools they need to perform the duties associated with their roles. 

However, this sentiment may have less to do with the quantity of software used by schools and more to do with the lack of integration between tools. In many cases, software for marketing/communications, admissions, and fundraising are chosen in siloes; leading to a proliferation of tools that solve specific problems for specific teams, but with redundancies in functionality and an inability to “talk to” one another. As school marketing, admissions, and development professionals think about their future software needs, it will be important to collaborate across teams to determine how to best meet short-term and long-term needs on a more global scale. It will also be important to consider staffing limitations that may be standing in the way of getting the most out of the tools that are being used. 

It will also be important for other members of senior leadership to understand the visible and invisible factors that drive enrollment results for their institutions. 

Our 2021 PK-12 State of Enrollment & Marketing Survey showed that boarding schools were most likely to have the largest marketing budgets and that also translates to budgets for marketing and admissions-related software. Boarding schools (24%) and non-religious private/independent schools (18%) were most likely to have budgets of $25,000 or more. Boarding schools (20%) were also the most likely to have no budget assigned to marketing and admission software tools. Non-religious private/independent schools (28%), religious private/independent schools (27%), and boarding schools (24%) all had relatively high percentages of respondents who did not know their budgets for marketing and admissions software, which speaks to the lack of centralized budget ownership for these items in K-12 schools. 

We also looked at which technology tools and software schools were planning to increase their investment in going into the 2022-23 school year, and website redesigns were a recurring theme across school categories with 36% of schools prioritizing website redesigns for the coming year. Customer relationships management (CRM) systems were next on the list for boarding schools (28%) and religious private/independent schools (27%), while non-religious private/independent schools were more focused on website analytics (35%) and outsourced search engine optimization (SEO) (32%). 

Website Operations

The vast majority of non-religious private/independent schools (98%), boarding schools (92%), and religious private/independent schools (90%) manage their websites in-house and many have gone the open source route with their content management systems (CMS). WordPress was the most popular choice for boarding (36%) and religious private/independent schools (21%) while Finalsite was most widely used by non-religious private/independent schools (38%).   

In addition to content management, we wanted to learn more about how schools are handling administrative marketing functions like search optimization (SEO) and website analytics as well as website functionality like translation and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design (ADA). 

Despite its complexity, more than half of schools reported that they manage search engine optimization (SEO) in-house, with boarding schools leading at 60%. The most popular tools for SEO management were Google Search Console (72%) and WordPress SEO plug-ins (26%). Nineteen percent of responding schools reported using translation services on their websites, with boarding schools leading at 32%. This is likely due to the wider international audience that is often served by boarding schools. Google Translate was the most popular website translation tool at 75%. 

Only 9% of responding schools could confirm that their school websites were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design (ADA). While ADA compliance is not as heavily monitored or regulated for boarding, private, and independent schools, making your institution’s website accessible to a wide range of audiences should be considered a best practice. And with 36% of schools planning to invest in website redesigns in 2022-2023, this is an important consideration. Monsido was the most popular tool used among boarding schools while religious and non-religious private/independent schools that reported having ADA-compliant websites used tools that were built into their CMS platforms. 

Eighty percent of schools reported collecting and analyzing data regarding their schools’ website performance in-house and Google products were dominant for serving this purpose. Ninety-five percent of schools reported using Google Analytics and 23% reported using Google Search Console. If you’re a Google Analytics user, which appears to be highly likely, you’ll want to make sure your school is ready to transition to Google Analytics 4 if it hasn’t already. 

In this section we’ll look at the tools schools are using to engage families on their websites at different stages of the funnel; such as CRM systems, online meeting scheduling, and emerging website features like chatbots. While your school website is the hub of all things enrollment marketing, a CRM system can serve as a critical dot connector between prospective parent behavior and your institution’s efforts to recruit them. Sixty percent of schools reported having CRM systems in place, with 20% of schools using SchoolAdmin, 18% using FACTS, and 12% using Blackbaud. Among boarding schools, Hubspot, Veracross, and Salesforce were all tied with Blackbaud and FACTS at 8%. For non-religious private/independent schools, Ravenna tied with Blackbaud at 16%.

Fifty-four percent of schools reported using online scheduling tools to allow prospective families to schedule appointments with admission officers or other admission-related meetings. For schools that haven’t made this option available to families, we recommend that you consider it as having to send an email or make a phone call to schedule time with a member of a school’s admission team is an unnecessary source of friction for prospective families. Calendly was the most popular solution for schools (28%) followed by SchoolAdmin (23%). A much smaller number of schools reported using Google Forms, Hubspot, or Zoom. 

When it came to modern engagement tactics like using website chatbots and SMS messaging for prospective families, adoption among private and independent schools is still a work in progress. Sixty-four percent of consumers think companies who text value their time, are progressive, and would recommend them to others; and 68% of consumers like chatbots because they provide quick answers to burning questions. However, 84% of responding schools are not using chatbots on their websites and 71% reported that they do not use SMS messaging to engage with prospective families (SMS messaging for prospective families is addressed in the next section). 

The chatbot tools used by the small percentage of schools using them varied widely. While the numbers were not statistically significant, the most popular tools reported were LiveChat (boarding schools), Facebook Messenger (religious private/independent schools), and Pure Chat (non-religious private/independent schools). The most popular SMS messaging tools were SchoolAdmin for boarding schools (38%) and non-religious private/independent schools (27%)  and FACTS for religious private/independent schools (16%). Thirty-six percent of non-religious private/independent schools also reported using personal or departmental smartphones to send text messages to prospective families. 

For online applications FACTS (22%), Blackbaud (16%), and SchoolAdmin (14%) were the most commonly used among all school segments. The Enrollment Management Association’s Standard Application Online (SAO) was also fairly common among boarding schools (16%) and 23% of non-religious private/independent schools reported using Ravenna for online applications. 

Finally, while ongoing analysis of your school’s enrollment funnel is critical for evaluating the performance of your recruitment efforts and admissions experience, 16% of responding schools do not regularly collect or analyze data regarding their enrollment funnels. Among the schools that do, the tools that were used varied. Blackbaud (20%) and School Admin (16%) were most popular for boarding schools, FACTS (38%) and Blackbaud (17%) were most popular for religious private/independent schools, and Ravenna (23%) and SchoolAdmin (17%) were most popular for non-religious private/independent schools. 

In many schools, email is the primary vehicle for communicating with parents, donors, and alumni, so it’s important to get it right. School leaders need the right tool to ensure deliverability, offer flexible design options, simple list management, and robust data to inform decisions and measure impact. Among our survey respondents, this was an area where more mainstream platforms (platforms that are not designed specifically for K-12 schools) dominated and there was a lot of consistency between constituency groups. For emails to prospective families, 33% of responding schools use Constant Contact, and 21% use MailChimp. For emails to current families, 33% of responding schools use Constant Contact, and 21% use MailChimp. For emails to donors and alumni, 33% of responding schools use Constant Contact, and 22% use MailChimp. Honorable mention goes to Blackbaud Pushpages—13% percent of schools use the platform to email prospective families, 14% use it to email current families, and 14% use it to email donors and alumni, although it was used the least for that constituency group by non-religious private/independent schools. 

The use of SMS messaging to communicate with current families is far more common than it is for prospective families with 65% of schools reporting that they use this method of communication. However, there were differences in the tools used. FACTS was the most widely used platform for religious private/independent schools (24%) while SchoolMessenger and Blackboard tied for boarding schools (14%) and BrightArrow was the most common for non-religious private/independent schools (14%). When asked about additional tools that are used to communicate with current families, Google Classroom was the most commonly used (43%) followed by SeeSaw (20%). 

Project and Social Media Management

The ability to manage the many tasks, requests, and deadlines that come through admissions, marketing, and communications and development offices is virtually impossible without a project management system—but many schools have yet to make that leap. Only 35% of responding schools have project management systems in place with their teams (beyond spreadsheets), and religious private/independent schools (23%) are the least likely to have one in place. If yours is one of the many schools that have yet to implement such a system, we have some ideas from your peers. Basecamp was the most commonly used by boarding schools (20%), while Asana was the most common for religious private/independent schools (36%) and non-religious private/independent schools (35%). Next, Asana, ClickUp, and Monday were all tied for second place among boarding schools (10%), while Trello took second for non-religious private/independent schools (27%) and religious private/independent schools (12%).

Sixty-nine percent of schools reported having social media management tools in place, with 50% choosing to use Facebook’s free Business Suite as their primary tool. Twenty-three percent of schools also reported using Canva, despite its limited posting and management capabilities. Hubpost rounded out the top three for boarding schools (21%) while Hootsuite was in the top three for religious (31%) and non-religious private/independent schools (26%)

Design and Asset Management

Seventy percent of responding schools reported having tools in place for managing photography assets, with boarding schools being the most likely to have such tools in place at 80%. Google Drive was the most popular tool at 35%. From there, Google Photos, Smugmug, and Photoshelter were all equally popular among boarding schools (15%), while religious private/independent schools also reported using Smugmug (13%) and Dropbox (11%). Other tools for non-religious private/independent schools included Vidigami (14%) and Smugmug (14%).

When asked about resources for graphic design, 22% of schools reported having in-house graphic designers on staff, with boarding schools being the most likely to have this resource (32%) and religious private/independent schools being the least likely (14%). Despite nearly a quarter of schools having in-house design resources, Canva, a tool typically used by professionals who are not professionally trained in graphic design, was the most popular tool used by schools (85%), followed by the more traditional design software Adobe Photoshop (56%) and InDesign (54%).

Seventy percent of schools reported using video editing software with Adobe Premiere (59%), iMovie (60%), and Canva (35%) being the most popular tools.  

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This survey is intended to represent the pulse of the market and not a definitive statement on market share for the vendors named in the results.