Tips for Climbing the Enrollment Cliff

We’ve heard a lot about the dreaded “college enrollment cliff” in higher education lately.

The cliff stretches as far back as the Great Recession of 2008 when an unstable economy and rising unemployment rates was linked to a subsequent fall in American birth rate figures.

Fast forward to today and, as a result, we’re faced with smaller pools of graduating high school students, combined with a higher cost of living, and record inflation. As an unfortunate consequence, these conditions are the perfect formula for a complete drop-off in student enrollment – hence, the “cliff.” Several smaller universities and colleges are already feeling the squeeze, with nearly 100 private schools closing since 2016.

The enrollment cliff is steep, but climbing it and staying on top is not impossible. The key is to be proactive and leverage new technology and digital tools to help you maintain your recruitment, admissions, and enrollment edge. 

Here are three tips for higher ed teams looking to tackle the enrollment cliff

1. Maintain at-scale authenticity with digital tools 

Gen Z craves authenticity, especially from the higher ed institution they’re considering attending, so it’s vital that you’re able to strike a balance between informational and authentic. In addition to combing your website for information, incoming cohorts of prospective students want to speak with actual people who have walked in their shoes – your student ambassadors. And, while there is no stand-in for in-person interactions, digital SaaS tools, like Unibuddy, can help your team scale your outreach efforts and get your higher ed brand top-of-mind for more students.  

Why? Because digital tools enable you to provide authenticity at scale. Unibuddy offers  direct lines to student-generated content or student ambassadors. As the bonafide trusted peers of Gen Z, student ambassadors are voices prospective students trust. This enables your team to get your message across without sounding scripted or generic.

Related: How to Foster Authentic Personalization in Student Recruitment

To start, you can prompt students to connect using traffic drivers that are embedded throughout your website. Whether they’re to link prospective students with student ambassadors, staff members, or groups of student ambassadors, you’ll point prospective students toward the next step in conversion.

Using Unibuddy Chat, your student ambassadors can speak directly to new students – which 92% of Gen Z says can help them decide where to study. At the University at Buffalo, for example, graduate and professional schools saw a 75% conversion rate to application in students who spoke to student ambassadors using Unibuddy Chat.

Unibuddy Community creates a safe space for groups of prospective students to get to know each other, student ambassadors, and faculty members in what we call Groups. These Groups can be based on anything, from majors to interests, and they help students find their people – enabling them to feel at home by the time they walk onto campus in the fall.

Giving students an opportunity to build connections before they arrive generates a buzz your institution can’t get with traditional marketing. It’s what’s going to give you a competitive edge and help you fight diminishing returns.

Just look at the University of Leicester – launching Groups on Unibuddy Community earned them a 23% enrollment jump.

2. Understand what students want with rich data insights

As student pools grow shallower, the importance of knowing what’s going on under the surface becomes ever more important – and visible. Without the added benefit of deep prospective student pools, you need to be on-point with your messaging to ensure you are interacting with the right student audiences. 

Having in-depth student data available at your fingertips can help you understand what exactly students want, what they need, and what they expect as they begin their higher ed journeys. Unibuddy data even tells us that Gen Z bounce from your website in seconds if they do not feel immediate “good vibes.” You need to be right on target immediately with your messaging, which means being on-point with your available data. 

Usually it’s about having the right tools to harvest this data. In addition to its powerful front-end conversational applications, Unibuddy is also a powerful backend marketing tool that will help you glean invaluable insights into your target audience. 

With available AI-powered conversational insights, available through the platform’s admin dashboard, for example, your team can sift and gather valuable insights into key themes and topics prospective students are concerned about – and talking about. And, with just a few more clicks, you can drill down even further into what matters based on things like location, interests, and area of study. 

Related: How to Advertise a University to Students

But it’s more than just immediate action. With the click of a button, you’ll know where you fit into the higher ed ecosystem, where to find prospective students, and what your angles should be. It’s the kind of data that will shape your future marketing efforts and keep you competitive amidst shallower waters and steeper enrollment cliffs. 

3. Leverage data-backed student audiences

To scale the enrollment cliff, your team needs to create a marketing plan that differentiates your school from the competition. But that’s no small feat, regardless of the budget your recruitment and marketing teams have.

To keep up with your competition, you need to understand whose attention you are competing for. As such, leverage higher ed data to understand more about who your target audience are and where you should be focusing your marketing efforts and resources. 

You might, for example, be a mid-sized engineering school located in the American Midwest. Who is your audience and where are they in their higher ed journey? Are prospective students coming from your immediate catchment area? What position of the higher ed funnel are they coming in at? What higher ed funnel position are they melting away at? Are there opportunities to grab student attention from large east coast cities? The right data can help you decide where you can win and who you need to market to for maximum yield. 

Because Unibuddy gives you the power to help segment and identify target audiences, figuring out exactly what’s working – and what’s not – in your marketing plan is simple. The data you’ll gather from this segmentation will help you create a list of actionable to-do items that can inform and transform your recruitment plan.

Related: How to Map Students to Your Higher Ed Funnel

Moreover, the platform also enables you to filter your prospective students by characteristics like country or geographical place of origin, funnel position, and interests, which will allow you to dig even deeper to identify holes you need to fill in your efforts. 

The best part? It integrates seamlessly into your existing CRM and uses AI to give you an even closer look at the needs, demands, concerns, and wants of the students you’re trying to reach.

That kind of integration unlocks endless potential for automation. For instance, follow-up actions can be triggered by incoming student decision data, almost in real-time, allowing you to scale your personalization. As we’ve covered, that sense of personalization and authenticity is what will increase student yield.

Chances are, the dreaded enrollment cliff is about to change college in America for the foreseeable future. But you can ensure your team is prepared and ready to climb whatever is ahead of them – regardless of how steep things get. 

Learn more about how Unibuddy can help your higher ed team tackle the enrollment cliff.