Ideas, insights and inspirations.

With strained budgets, weakened endowments and the anticipated demographic cliff the college bound undergraduates are beginning to shrink. Colleges are developing strategies for winning an outsized share of a shrinking undergraduate market. Our higher education marketing and enrollment clients have started asking us to prepare a playbook for successfully recruiting and growing undergraduate student enrollment. In increasing enrollment for undergraduate  programs for the past 25 years for numerous colleges and universities, we have learned two things: First, students can’t buy your programs or buy-into your university unless they can find you; Second, you can’t bore students into enrolling in your university. To succeed, universities must invest in first impressions, and deploy a unique balance of the marketing air-game, boots-on-the-ground game and follow-up contact strategies. ASSESS THE SITUATION Appraise the college’s situation by immersing yourself in the college data and touch points: Asses your brand. Are you a local brand, regional brand, state brand, super-regional brand or a national brand. Your … Continue reading

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The era of traditional high cost, high-volume and low-performance student search services is over. Here’s how traditional student search services used to work: first, when taking SAT and AP tests, students gave permission to the college board to share their contact information with prospective colleges; in turn, the college board licensed (for one-two-use only) the student names to potential colleges at 50 cents per name; then, colleges bought boatloads of names from the college board; finally, colleges bombarded the prospects with commoditized emails/direct mail, hoping some would raise their hands, and praying some would convert.  Traditional student search worked initially but, over time, it started to backfire. Students and families got tired of being spammed by colleges and they got smarter. They started taking control of their college search. They are now consulting their peers, families and friends about which colleges they should consider. They are searching on Google for the college that’ll suit them the best. The privileged ones … Continue reading

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In serving over 100 colleges and universities, we’ve learned that it takes a coordinated effort on three mutually enhancing fronts to create enrollment success: To help new vice presidents of enrollment succeed in their new consequential roles, we’ve distilled our key learnings and developed the following checklist: 1. Key Strategy Questions What’s our unique position in the marketplace? Uniqueness and distinctiveness make a brand stand out. What’s our institutional brand? In the sea of sameness, brands always win. Which students generate foundational revenue for our college/university? Undergraduate, graduate or online students? Are our marketing budgets allocated proportionately? Enrollment best practices vary for undergraduate, graduate or online students? Are we deploying the appropriate best practices for each? Signature and stalwart programs bring an unfair share of revenue? Are we defending our core revenue while trying to grow the rest? For undergraduate admissions, what’s the breakdown between traditional, non-traditional, online, transfer, Pell and full pay, athletes and international students? Are our marketing … Continue reading

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The Covid pandemic has changed the landscape of enrollment management. Counselors aren’t able to travel to schools and meet prospective applicants face to face. Many students aren’t visiting colleges and aren’t able to take SAT and ACT tests. So how does a college enroll students in the absence of travel, the ability to purchase College Board lists or meet students face-to-face? Here are 10 tactics for growing enrollment in these challenging times: 1. Abandon Traditional Student Search Models. Hunt Like Sharks. Don’t Feed Like Whales. The era of buying prospects names, spamming them, seeing who sticks, and praying some convert is over. Tell stories of successful students and alumni; let like-minded prospects find them. Embrace new digital methodologies based on micro-segmentation, machine learning, big-data algorithms and affinity groups. Think right-fit, admission pipes and inverted admissions funnels, not traditional admissions funnels. 2. Hold Scholarship Essay Competitions Shift existing scholarship dollars to support a national Scholarship Essay Competition. Use owned, paid, and … Continue reading

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In 2020, higher education marketers are battling to win an outsized share of a shrinking pool of domestic and international students. Future students are expected to be more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before. Increased marketing funding by for-profit colleges and some large public universities has unleashed a marketing arms race. Workforce preparation for non-traditional students has been thrown into the product/revenue mix. Students and families are expecting to receive larger scholarships. To offset these, here are the 10 innovative responses by enrollment managers that we are seeing: 1. Supporting Diverse Student Populations Racial, ethnic, gender and age diversity are all on the rise in colleges and universities. Enrollment managers are catering to the needs of these audience. Enrollment managers are infusing signals of diversity in every digital touch point including websites, social media channels, search engine meta-descriptions, paid campaigns and brand anthem videos. They are hiring admissions counselors and faculty from diverse backgrounds, fostering creation of clubs and … Continue reading

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This manifesto for effective enrollment management is a distillation of our key learnings from our team serving more than 100 colleges and universities in the last 25 years.

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In the past 25 years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with more than fifty college chief marketing officers. Whether they are recruited as a change agent or a strategic visionary, they are increasingly expected to liberate new growth for college by focusing on the 3 R’s of prosperity: Revenue, Reputation and Rankings. These three currents flow under the fifteen practices for managing and running a successful college marketing operations in this manifesto: 1. You become the story you choose to tell.It’s how institutions make meaning from the arc of their history, and operate with a sense of destiny to create purpose that propels them into the future. This story is what students, parents, donors, funders and partners buy into. A brand rarely exceeds the size of its ambition and the story it chooses to tell about itself. 2. Students, not the institution, are the real heroes of your story.The best colleges and universities realize that students, alumni and faculty … Continue reading

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Admission numbers are trickling in. Highly selective and less selective colleges are both missing their enrollment targets. We believe that enrollment VPs and college presidents ought to be examining their shared, but ineffective habits, instead of blaming the usual suspects: unfavorable demographics, increased sensitivity to the rising cost of college, society questioning the overall value of a college degree, reduction in international student applicants, and students applying to multiple colleges. Not that these forces can be ignored, but the real test of leadership for enrollment leaders is to claim an outsized share of an uncertain and dwindling market. In our view, Enrollment professionals share, and must break, the following ineffective habits: 1. Buying names of high school seniors and juniors instead of cultivating names of right-fit prospects. Instead of attracting right-fit prospects with inspired marketing, they are employing tired enrollment tactics from firms who buy names in large numbers, then throw commoditized direct mail/email at prospective students, hoping to snare a … Continue reading

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Enrollment managers at colleges and universities are running a machine. Whether it has a soul or not depends on the mindset they bring to their jobs. The most admired enrollment managers are running a humanized enrollment system. In serving more than 100 enrollment managers, we have gleaned the following best practices: 1. Balance Institutional Priorities and the Greater Good. Create a healthy school culture by enrolling the best-fit students. Honor institutional priorities by enrolling legacy students, full-pay students, donor students, athletes and other priority students. Create a sustainable society by recruiting and providing support for both under-served and under-represented students. 2. Invest in First Impressions. Brand your college because in the sea of sameness, brands win. Speak with one brand voice to all audiences striking different notes for each audience segment. Tell a better story. Fortify every touch point – including websites, social media, open houses, information sessions, grounds, classrooms, tours, and admissions office décor. Celebrate your star students, alumni … Continue reading

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Every year, a silent, high-stakes dance takes place in all the 4,000+ colleges and universities in the US. To meet their enrollment targets, the colleges look for the best-possible group of students who will apply, and then accept the offers extended to them. Lead generation with College Student Search is the first step in this ritual dance with a singular objective: to generate an initial list of best-fit, most-likely-to-apply-and-subsequently-accept high school students. Like everything else in enrollment management, digital has disrupted the traditional College Student Search: Traditional College Student Search Campaigns – Buy A Large Set of Names and Whittle The List Down This was the textbook strategy for student search. Enrollment professionals bought tens of thousands of prospective student names from various sources – at a price ranging from 20 to 40 cents per name. Then they sent them a series of emails and direct mail pieces with the hope of getting some of them to raise their hands … Continue reading

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