How current is your institution’s playbook? An overview of the latest keys to enrollment success

How effective is your campus enrollment team at managing continuous change and at monitoring the changes in today’s students? Is your enrollment strategy “playbook” in need of updating?

For an overview of the latest keys to enrollment success, I encourage you to attend Noel-Levitz’s upcoming 2015 Enrollment Management Workshop Series. At this workshop, I will be presenting a top-line overview of the ever-changing world of enrollment management, including the complexities of responding to changing demographics and the critical elements of a successful student recruitment and marketing program. My observations will be drawn from over 50 campus visits I’ve made in the last year or so, and from keeping an eye on the latest research.

I won’t share everything here that I’ll share at the workshop, but I will share some key points. In the current environment, understanding and organizing for the “new normal” isn’t an option. To be effective, campus enrollment teams, together with their senior colleagues, must address today’s increasing calls for accountability, affordability, and efficiency, while delivering enrollment and revenue outcomes, relevant academic programs, and improvements to all aspects of the student and prospective student experience. Adding to the pressures are increasing levels of competition and an accelerating use of technology and data to continuously fine-tune strategies and react to changes.

How I see colleges and universities responding to today’s environment

In response to these and other challenges, I observe today’s colleges and universities finding ways to become more strategic, efficient, and effective through initiatives such as:

• Developing longer-term plans
• Identifying and eliminating barriers to enrollment
• Knowing the profile of the persister
• Cultivating current students
• Identifying and responding to the marketplace
• Integrating campus silos
• Conducting meaningful market research
• Mobilizing the campus to assist with recruitment, marketing, and retention

The use of data is growing, too, as more campuses are employing analytics, tracking, and research to drive their decision-making and goal-setting.

Critical elements of successful recruitment and marketing programs

My portion of the workshop will specifically focus on recruitment and marketing programs while my colleagues will address retention and other areas. In the marketing-recruitment area, the opportunities I see for campuses to respond to the changing environment include the following:

1. Setting annual and longer term enrollment and revenue goals, not just projections
2. Knowing as much about your primary market as possible
3. Identifying and securing sufficient resources to meet enrollment objectives
4. Developing an annual marketing and recruitment plan as well as a three-to-five year strategic enrollment and revenue plan
5. Devoting equal time and effort to retaining students as attracting new students
6. Strategically building and managing the “top of the funnel” – effective prospect and inquiry pool development
7. Tracking the effectiveness of each marketing and recruiting activity
8. Implementing technologies, systems, and procedures for qualifying and grading prospective students at each stage in the college selection process
9. Incorporating a strategic communications flow with the right message to the right student at the right time with the right medium
10. Using student financial aid including grants and scholarships strategically to attract and retain students.

Again, many of these opportunities are focused on understanding and responding to data. In addition, there are frequent parallels to student success and retention, and to strategic enrollment planning, that my colleagues will be addressing.

Think incrementally

I want to share one specific suggestion before I wrap up this post. Whether you are seeking more students, different students, or students likely to persist, I encourage you to think incrementally. How can your institution find one percent opportunities to increase enrollment success in the areas of:

• Prospecting conversion
• Inquiry conversion
• Percentage of admissible students (by major, geography, diversity, etc.)
• Percentage of accepted students who enroll
• Percentage who are satisfied with educational experience
• Percentage who complete their intended purpose for enrolling

We have seen that improving conversion percentages in these areas even slightly often has a greater impact on long-term enrollment rather than focusing only on the raw numbers of students at each stage.

Join us at a workshop this winter

Our Enrollment Management Workshop is coming to seven cities across the U.S. and Canada from January-March 2015. I hope you will join us. In the afternoon, you’ll have your choice of two breakouts focusing on retention or marketing/recruitment. Also, savings is available for registering early and bringing a team of colleagues.

Questions about this post? Please contact me.

My best wishes for every success in 2015!