The Great College Planning Dance

What’s Working in 2025 (From Both Sides of the Desk)

Ever wonder if enrollment professionals and students actually speak the same language? Fresh data from RNL’s 2025 Marketing and Recruitment Practices for Undergraduate Students and the forthcoming 2025 E-Expectations reports reveal some fascinating alignments (and a few mismatches) between how we recruit and how students actually make decisions.

The human touch still rules (surprise!)

Remember when we thought Zoom would replace campus tours? Well, the data tell a crystal-clear story that shows the importance of face-to-face connections.:

• In-person meetings hit 100% effectiveness across all institution types
• 88% of students who visit campus find it helpful
• College fairs are crushing it with 85% helpfulness ratings

Translation: In our AI-everything world, humans still want to talk to actual humans. Revolutionary, right?

Digital sweet spots (when we get it right)

Here’s where it gets interesting. Both students and enrollment leaders agree that digital works best when it’s personal and purposeful.

What’s working:

• Mobile-responsive websites: 100% effectiveness at private institutions (but only 77% are using them – make it make sense!)
• SMS messaging: 100% effectiveness across the board
• Personalized videos: 96% effectiveness when used (but only 49% of private institutions are creating them)
• Student connection platforms: Up to 100% effective when used properly

The email plot twist

Breaking news: Students read your emails!

• 89% engage with college emails
• 88% find them helpful
• 96-100% effectiveness rating from institutions
• 61% either like or expect personalized experiences

The secret sauce? Personalization that doesn’t feel like it came from a robot.

The AI elephant in the room

Some interesting gaps here:

• AI chatbots: 74% of students find them helpful (and 68% are using them)
• Live chat: 79% helpful (71% usage)
• Digital advertising: Up to 100% effectiveness for institutions

Key insight: Students are more open to AI than we think—they just need to know these tools exist.

Your game plan: 3 key takeaways

1. Keep it human: Those perfect effectiveness ratings on in-person meetings aren’t accidents
2. Double down on digital personalization: But please, make it authentic
3. Mind the gaps: Your most effective tools are often your least used (looking at you, personalized videos)

Stop choosing between high-tech and high-touch—you need both. Just make sure your human connection has a mobile-responsive website to back it up. Because some things never change, and some things really, really need to.

Find out more in our reports and even more at the RNL National Conference

These results come from the 2025 Marketing and Recruitment Practices for Undergraduate Students report and from our forthcoming 2025 E-Expectations Report (coming June 2025).

We’ll also be diving into these reports and much, much more at our 2025 RNL National Conference, July 22-24 in Atlanta. Check out the program for more details on our 120 conference sessions.