Worried ‘Online’ Means ‘Isolated’? So Are Prospective Students.

Creating an Enrollment Strategy That’s Personal, Engaging, and Connects Online Learners to Your School

For many adult learners, especially those without experience in digital education, online programs might seem somewhat detached from the rest of the school. Given that students might never interact with faculty members or their peers in person, their concerns are easy to understand.

One of the ways to counteract this worry is to lend a personal touch to the recruitment and enrollment process, getting to know each candidate intimately and introducing them to the school. When advising and marketing teams work together to create messaging that welcomes students, connecting to them as people with goals and backgrounds of their own, it can strongly influence their decision as they seek to choose a school.

Striving to develop a direct relationship with each interested candidate during the admissions process can truly separate your institution from the pack. This is increasingly important as attracting students to online programs becomes more and more competitive. The challenge is doing this through digital tools and telephone calls as opposed to in-person interviews and other techniques used for on-campus programs.

So, how do you connect with prospective online students and demonstrate your commitment to their aspirations?

Know Your Student

Ultimately, the foremost consideration will always be empathy. Understanding your students—their background, the academic experience they’re searching for, their career aspirations, even their daily schedule—is the first step towards creating powerful, individualized messaging.

The best way to reach this understanding is by gathering information from every potential student. Whether it comes from inquiry forms on your website or direct conversations with candidates, data is critically important to building an outreach plan that works.

But having a firm grasp of students’ personal background is only one component of the process. The other is closely analyzing how they consume your materials. Which pages on your site are visitors most engaged? Are they more interested in reading a brochure about the program or a guide exploring the careers your program will help them pursue?

Online analytics and testing tools have become so sophisticated that almost every interaction a student has with program materials can be tracked and examined. Expert use of these tools can offer immediate insight into what drives student interest, providing a scientific, objective guide to what messaging tactics will resonate most.

Understand the Student Experience

Before you implement anything, it’s important to clearly map out the basics of your college’s current communication strategy. This can help you see the process from each candidate’s perspective and create a plan that’s both streamlined and compelling.

Working with both the marketing and enrollment team, you can ask the following questions to get things started:

  • What means of contact are used from the time a prospective student inquires about the program (or initially visits your website) through application, acceptance, and attendance? How long do each of these stages typically last?
  • Who is reaching out to prospective students – one admissions representative or several? Is it just the admissions team or does your marketing department also play a role?
  • What messaging is currently being utilized for each stage? Is it consistent across all materials? Is the information focused on the whole university or the college, department, or specific program?
  • What tracking and data is available? Are you able to examine things like number of calls made, frequency of emails, or email open rate?
  • This process can be time consuming, but it’s essential to have a complete picture of your communication strategy to identify any areas that could be made more pleasant and engaging for the student.


Identify Areas for Refinement

Once your current student recruitment process is clearly understood and mapped out, it’s much easier to see any holes or areas for improvement. For instance, maybe advisors are pointing prospective students to an online application without following up to provide assistance. You might realize that interested students are receiving emails from your marketing team that mirror the personal outreach sent by advisors, overwhelming the student and clogging their inboxes. In some cases, you might discover that high-level communications are being sent to students that are unrelated to the program about which they inquired.
Once you have the opportunity to review the communication strategy as a whole, you will be able to identify communications that can be added, improved, or completely cut out of the process. You’ll also be able to explore opportunities to refine your targets and keep messaging personal, streamlining the process and creating a connection with potential students.


Personalize Your Messaging

In a perfect world, every communication a prospective student receives would be relatable to them, focusing on their program of interest, their segment (alumni, corporate partner, new inquiry, international, etc.). Realizing that this is not always possible, consider the following methods to help your admissions process feel a touch more personal:

1. Be Proactive – This might seem obvious, but many schools either don’t have the resources or don’t make an active effort to engage directly with every prospective student over the phone. This can leave applicants feeling disconnected and unimportant, which may result in them being unconvinced that your institution is right for them, or committed to their success. We recommend proactive outreach via phone with supplemental emails. Messaging included in these emails should vary based on the student’s situation and current place in the process. Has the potential student been contacted by advisors about the program? In that case, it can be beneficial to send them further information, maybe about faculty members and other selling points to develop their connection to the school and keep them interested. On the other hand, that kind of communication won’t prove effective if they still haven’t learned even the most basic information about their program of interest.

2. Maximize Your CRM System – We often find that Customer Relationship Management databases are under-utilized by universities at the department-level. Customization of a CRM system can allow for the capturing of more refined inquiry data, which you can use to further personalize communications. For instance, if your program has specific concentrations or specializations, and you can capture that information from a new student inquiry, it can be very effective to create messaging that reflects that. The customization of a CRM may also allow you to set up specific campaigns that are triggered by a student’s level of progress towards application submission automatically. Think about deploying communications based on the day, time, or even a change in status (e.g. from inquiry to contacted) to further solidify your personalized strategy.

3. Take Advantage of Automation & Templates – Automation and email templates often go hand-in-hand with a CRM. Advisors can only account for so much volume by way of personal emails, which necessitates that their efforts be complemented by automated emails. As previously noted, however, the more you can customize your CRM system to accommodate an individual’s characteristics, the better. Examine your contact strategy to determine what can be automated and what needs to be taken on by an enrollment representative. In our experience, templates that can swap out messaging and imagery depending on a prospective student’s status are also effective.

4. Use Multiple Channels of Communication – Though email and phone calls are the standard these days, it’s important not to neglect good, old-fashioned direct mail. This can be a great nurturing device as students move through the admissions process. Consider ways in which these communications can be personalized to your individual student, whether you’re sending them a postcard reminding them about the upcoming registration deadline or a letter from an advisor or faculty member.

Another (often lower cost) option to consider is re-targeting through advertising mediums like Google AdSense. This allows you to engage with those who’ve already visited your site and compel them to pursue the program further through focused messaging. Maintaining top-of-mind awareness of your brand and tailoring ad copy accordingly can be a useful tool in converting students from a prospect to an attendee.

5. Think About the Little Things – Whether it’s a signed note from the admissions team, a personalized item shipped to the student’s home as a welcome to the program, or a simple Skype conversation, sometimes little things can have a big impact in a student’s opinion of a school. Gestures of caring and dedication, no matter how small, can demonstrate your university’s ongoing commitment to its students and their success.


Putting Your Plan Into Practice

Without campus visits, orientations, and recruitment seminars at your disposal, it can seem nearly impossible to form significant connections with both incoming and current students. In our experience, however, with some cooperation between outreach teams, a comprehensive understanding of your communication strategy, and the will to see the admissions process from the inquiring student’s perspective through data, schools can create messaging that engages online learners effectively and personally.

With each of our clients, we’ve faced first-hand the challenge of putting a personal, friendly face on interactions with prospective online students. Sometimes the solution is simple. In several cases, just the switch between talking directly to the audience in communications (“You’ll learn…”) instead of indirectly (“Students learn…”) can liven up content and help create immediate connections and inquiries. However, we’ve found that advanced, ongoing experimental testing and thorough analysis of visitor behavior are the only truly effective means of discovering what captures an audience’s attention. In our experience, the ideal outreach strategy lies at the intersection of creativity, knowledge of your audience, and proven, data-driven tactics.

Considerations like this, and the tips above, can help you start to build a strategy that shows students everything your school has to offer.

Click here to learn more about how AllCampus can become your partner for student recruitment and enrollment.