This checklist is designed for new presidents sizing up an enrollment department and prospective vice presidents for enrollment as they size up a new job opportunity.

1. Key Strategy Question

• What’s our unique position in the market place?
• What’s our institutional brand? In the sea of sameness, brands win.
• For undergraduate admissions, what’s the breakdown between traditional, non-traditional, online, transfer, pell and full pay, athletes and international students?
• Given that diverse student populations are growing and white student population is shrinking, what are we doing to intentionally target diverse student communities?
• Which students generate foundational revenue for our college/university? undergraduate, graduate or online students?
• How much annual endowment income is available to fund student scholarships and improve student experience?

2. Right-Fit

• Who thrives here?
• Who considers the school as their #1 choice school?
• What percentage of applicants use us as their #1 choice and as a safety school?
• What percentage of our applicants are athletes? transfers?

3. Key Metrics & KPIs

• What’s our total marketing budget?
• Marketing budget as a % of overall college revenue? (should be greater than 10%, but most colleges are investing between 2% to 5% only).
• What’s the ratio between Digital vs. Traditional in our marketing budget? (digital now leads traditional).
• What are our cost-per-lead, cost-per-enroll, yield and melt rates? How do we stack up vis-à-vis competitors?
• What’s our website lead-generation rate? How do the website leads compare with paid advertising leads? (websites typically generate three times as many as paid leads).
• What’s the number of prospective student names we buy annually from ACT/NRCCUA, GRE/GMAT and other sources?
• How many Google page 1 rankings do we have?

4. Signature Programs

• What are our top 5 signature programs?
• Do the web pages of signature programs look as strong as BMW 3 or 5 series pages?
• What percentage of our enrollment is driven by these signature programs?

5. New Programs

• What’s our process for creating new academic programs?
• What budget do we allocate for marketing the new programs?

6. Enrollment Marketing Tactics

• What tactics do we deploy? What’s working best? worst? How do you plan these initiatives to mutually reinforce each other?
• What’s our best argument for the specialty of education we offer?
• What geographies do we consider to be our primary territories?
• In our paid advertising, do we engage in A/B testing, look-alike marketing, micro-targeting and machine learning?
• What’s our SEO strategy? How many page 1 Google rankings do we have? How many of our programs are ranked on Google page 1?

7. Boots-On-The-Ground Activities

• How many high schools do we visit annually?
• How many college fairs (virtual or physical) do we attend annually?
• How many high school principals and teachers do we meet annually?
• How many college counselors in high school do we meet annually?
• How many related trade shows do we visit annually?

8. Follow-up & Lead Nurturing

• How many counselors/representatives do we have?
• What are their territories?
• How many open houses do we hold annually? How are they organized?
• How many discovery days do we hold annually? How are they organized?
• What tactics do we deploy? What’s working? and what’s not?
• What’s the role of program chairs and Deans and faculty in follow up and yield?
• What tactics are we deploying to improve your yield and melt rates?

9. Retention

• What’s our retention rate?
• Do we have a first-year and second-year student engagement plan?
• Do we have a student retention committee?
• What’s the #1 reason for students transferring out of our school?

10. Technology

• What CRM are we using?
• What marketing automation technology are we using?
• What lead attribution software do we use?
• What A/B testing tool do we use?
• What brand sentiment tools are we using?
• What’s our best enrollment marketing weapon?

If you are seeking higher education marketing agencies to grow your enrollment, endowment and reputation, view our enrollment marketing capabilities and consider partnering with us.