Over 61 public and nonprofit colleges in the United States have closed down or announced mergers since March 2020. One of the principal reasons for this is the significant drop in enrollment rates.
With admissions cycles becoming longer, universities are struggling to attract desired talent. Traditional student recruitment methods driven by broad messaging no longer resonate with the diverse interests and aspirations of students today.
To boost student enrolment, universities can:
In this three-part blog series, find out how to boost student enrolment.
Keep reading to learn more about identifying and targeting prospective students.
Today's students are digital natives, accustomed to personalized experiences in nearly every aspect of their lives—from social media to online shopping. This expectation extends to their educational journey as well. They seek personalized engagement from universities, wanting to feel understood and valued as individuals.
Data-driven personalization allows universities to move beyond generic messaging to tailor communication and interactions to individual student needs and preferences. By leveraging data, universities can create a more engaging and relevant experience for prospective students, increasing the likelihood of conversion from interest to enrollment.
Monash University harnessed the power of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to achieve a comprehensive 360-degree view of their students. By integrating historical and real-time data from various touchpoints, they personalized student experiences and saw impressive results:
This successful implementation showcases the transformative impact of data-driven personalization in higher education.
Universities can significantly enhance their student recruitment efforts and improve enrollment rates by following the strategies given below.
Nearly 40% of students begin their search for a university as early as the eighth grade. This suggests a need for institutes to start their targeting efforts much earlier than usual.
Even at such an early stage, 56% students expect personalized communication. Personalized multichannel communication is key to understanding student needs and adequately catering to them.
Students also conduct their research using various channels, making it vital for universities to be present and relevant across these channels. According to a recent study, students prefer personalized emails, text messages, phone calls, and social media channels for interactions with universities.
To effectively target students early, universities should:
To diversify effectively, universities should:
By starting early and diversifying communication channels, universities can build meaningful relationships with prospective students and guide them through their educational journey.
Initial student interactions in the form of website visits or social media ad clicks are important sources for gathering valuable student data.
Attributes such as academic and financial backgrounds, geographical locations, course preferences, extracurricular interests, and more can be unveiled during this stage. Collating this data in one place can then inform future marketing campaigns to specifically address the varied nature of queries rather than being generic.
Lytics, a data warehouse integrated CDP, can not only collate this data from multiple sources but also create comprehensive student profiles in real-time based on their online behavior.
These profiles, constantly being updated, bring university officials closer to their prospective students and let them think strategically about the best ways to take communication forward.
As students move further into their research journey, their scope widens. Consequently, the data collected from their online interactions becomes a lot more diverse.
Segmentation, at this stage, can help analyze this vast incoming data to generate a more refined understanding.
Segmenting students can be done based on data points like:
The Lytics CDP can help achieve this quite seamlessly. It segments student profiles based on a number of demographic and psychographic attributes in real-time.
Segmenting simplifies the complex student outreach that needs to be unique at different stages of the admissions journey.
Post segmentation and personalized messaging must take center stage. This includes:
All of these are informed by the insights derived from segmentation.
To ensure personalization of content and outgoing communication, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics can be quite useful.
For instance, if a group of students shows interest in an engineering program, universities can leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to customize the content of automated emails and targeted ads and even personalize website content when these students visit.
The Lytics CDP, with its inbuilt AI-driven predictive scoring, enables universities to score students based on their likelihood to apply. This is particularly useful when:
Retargeting is an important element in any comprehensive marketing plan.
Prospective students who repeatedly visit a university’s website but don’t end up completing an application can be retargeted with personalized ads.
The Lytics CDP AI will help identify these students as highly engaged and suggest retargeting action with customized messaging to nudge them to complete their applications.
Continually improving the state of marketing campaigns based on new data is key to remaining relevant to students.
By analyzing how prospective students have engaged with existing content and outreach campaigns, colleges can begin refining their strategies.
With real-time insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, universities can swiftly work on optimizing their recruitment campaigns. This directs institutions to:
This iterative approach ensures that student recruitment efforts don’t remain unidimensional and are continuously improving while being aligned with the evolving preferences of prospective students.
It is quite clear that institutions need to take control of their data and leverage it effectively to craft relevant digital experiences for students.
Still, thinking if the Lytics CDP is appropriate for your institution? Ask yourself the following:
If the answer to any one of these is a ‘yes,’ then integrating a Customer Data Platform like Lytics might just be the perfect addition to your martech stack.
At Axelerant, we’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the higher education space including MIT, Stanford, and the University of East London, in enabling them to boost their enrollment rates via personalization.
Speak with our experts to learn how you can boost your student enrolment rates through personalization.