Humanize Your Enrollment Funnel: Attract, Nurture, and Convert Future Students

Executive Summary

The enrollment cliff is nigh! Cutthroat competition looms around every corner. Expensive tech is crushing your bottom line. Your staff are on the verge of complete burnout. Dark days are predicted ahead. 

Sounds like the introduction to some Dickensian dystopia. But this is, according to Unibuddy’s recent pulse survey report, ‘A Radical Rethink: The Future of Admissions, Recruitment, and Marketing, a pessimistic outlook prevalent among enrollment teams at many undergraduate and graduate schools across the world. Enrollment is declining and the cost of attracting, engaging, nurturing, and converting prospective students to application keeps rising for what seems like a state of diminishing returns.

As a result, we found that 69% of higher ed enrollment professionals are feeling overstretched – with one in five of you on the verge of complete burnout. Meanwhile, 65% of you face higher growth targets than in previous years with a quarter of the budget. Reports of shrinking enrollment teams further compound what seems to be an unsustainable downward spiral. 

Our data also shows students are expecting unprecedented levels of authentic personalization. Consider that 72% of students use your website for their initial research into your school – with 10% leaving immediately if they do not get “good vibes.” 92% of the same group of students report a simple conversation with a current student is helpful in helping them understand what your higher ed brand has to offer. That’s a considerable nod in the direction of personalization, but initiating this level of interaction for large volumes of students can seem daunting for smaller, already stretched, enrollment teams to achieve.

But, while the pressure is real, we see room for optimism. We argue that the above factors introduce incredible opportunities for differentiating your school brand from higher ed competitors.

Our proposal? 

Humanize your enrollment funnel for more personalized, authentic, and engaging student enrollment journeys – a journey known to set the stage for positive student outcomes. By integrating technology and human touchpoints, even the smallest enrollment teams can connect with every prospective student on trusted, relatable levels – helping students persist, graduate, and flourish. 

We’ve put together this guide in five primary sections -each addressing how you can make each stage of your higher ed enrollment funnel more empathetically human for your prospective students:

Embracing personalization in higher ed enrollment funnels

In the past, higher ed journeys followed general linears paths, involving in-person interactions at higher ed fairs, meetings with guidance counselors, or even word of mouth referrals. Admissions teams also reached out through mail and telephone calls, providing generic program literature upon request. 

Prospective students immersed themselves in stacks of pamphlets, or might have physically visited a campus of interest, before applying through rudimentary digital portals or snail mail. The wait for physical acceptance letters, and subsequent decisions regarding higher ed, were, generally, straightforward, predictable, and led to reliable outcomes 

But, as you and your team know – this is no longer the case. 

Higher ed enrollment journeys are no longer as straightforward

Contemporary higher ed enrollment funnels are complex and dynamic, requiring constant maintenance to accommodate the unique needs of every student. Prospective students can enter and exit your enrollment funnel at any point and their motivations for pursuing higher ed are increasingly varied. Higher ed institutions try to connect with students on relatable terms, but this introduces significant complexity. 

Effective interaction with prospective students, according to their position in your enrollment process, is crucial to propel them forward. Interactions must be personalized on a human level at each step of their higher ed journey – journeys which can be anything but linear. Failing to achieve this can lead to inconsistent, irrelevant, and generic messaging that struggles to attract, retain, and convert student attention.

Consider that each step of your enrollment funnel might be leakier than you think. According to Unibuddy data, 85% of students entering at the top of your funnel – those initial awareness stages – are looking at multiple institutions. This is nothing groundbreaking until you consider that 75% of these students end up applying to multiple institutions, with nearly half putting down deposits at multiple schools. 

Let that sink it: they’re putting down deposits at multiple schools. This means that they are willing and preparing to leave your higher ed enrollment track right up until making their final decision to attend. For your enrollment team, this statistic suggests the need for highlighting what makes your school unique and different – to help secure a final decision. 

Other Unibuddy stats paint an even more concerning picture of a leaky higher ed enrollment funnel. Did you know, for example, that 31% of prospective students question the value of pursuing higher ed altogether? This implies that external non-academic competition, like entering the workforce directly, is also eating away at all stages of your enrollment funnel. As a result, 39% of enrollment professionals list alternative paths to higher education as their biggest challenge to attracting, nurturing, and converting prospective students. 

The humanizing effects of AI on higher ed enrollment funnels 

As your team knows, personalizing student journeys becomes challenging with high volumes of inquiries and massive amounts of student data. Handling these factors, especially for smaller teams, can be overwhelming. Enter artificial intelligence (AI) – a valuable tool in managing this complexity.

Though it may sound ironic, if done correctly, embedding generative AI – think Open AI of ChatGPT fame – into your enrollment funnel can help your team fine-tune personalized touchpoints with prospective students. 

For smaller enrollment teams, such as those at graduate schools, this means gaining more visibility into who your students are on a micro-level, from their likelihood to enroll to their key motivations for enrolling in your program. For larger enrollment teams, recruiting for massive undergraduate programs, AI enables large-scale automated personalized messaging tracks, like audience clustering.

But it’s not as simple as embedding a chatbot on your site and calling it a day. Most chatbots in higher ed were not built to leverage the power of AI into your enrollment processes. With a more robust AI-infused chatbot, you can leverage a tool which is more up to date, doesn’t require additional labor-intensive training, and is easy to maintain. 

And yet, no matter the underpinning technology, chatbots still have a reputation for repelling students rather than attracting them (just 7% of prospective students find chatbots useful in their higher ed search). But what if a chatbot-type solution existed that reduced friction in connection to humans? This is where the idea of a peer-to-peer (P2P), student-to-student, enrollment assistant comes in.

By marrying AI into an existing P2P chat system, you can answer student questions faster and point them towards the right resources or human to speak with. Unlike a chatbot, which is just a robot mimicking human conversation, an AI-powered peer-to-peer enrollment assistant serves to connect initial student interest to real human attention. Whereas a chatbot is a compromise, an AI-powered enrollment assistant is a solution to scaling human-to-human interactions.  

In terms of response times, the gold standard for initial student engagement, AI-powered enrollment assistants are available 24/7. In addition to providing immediate responses to queries, these enrollment tools can help manage high volumes of inquiries during peak periods. AI-powered clustering and summary tools also help sort, categorize, and draw powerful insights from mountains of student data to help your team create personalized touchpoints more efficiently. 

The effect of student diversity on higher ed enrollment funnels

In recent years, on-campus student diversity has notably increased. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, in just the last two decades alone, students who identify with diverse ethnic backgrounds have gone from 30% to about half of all US college applicants. Drilling down further into this available data, we also find that enrollment rates of female applicants, across different ethnic groups, have consistently outpaced male enrollment rates since 2010.

Adapting enrollment funnels to accommodate this surge in applicants from diverse backgrounds is a primary goal among most higher ed enrollment teams. 

And yet, therein lies the challenge. Where your traditional audiences of students might resonate immediately with your messaging, more diverse groups often have different wants, needs, and motivations when it comes to choosing where to study. Examples of factors influencing these groups can be rooted in a variety of socio-economic conditions, challenges unique to first-generation students, disabilities, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic considerations, and geographical barriers, both domestic and international. 

As an example, consider first-generation graduate students – 38% of whom, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), come from underrepresented populations. GMAC tells us that nearly half of this group pursue graduate degrees to better support families at home, showing less interest in networking compared to their non-first generation counterparts. This is a valuable context to keep in mind when engaging these groups.

So what is the effect of student diversity on higher ed enrollment funnels? Adding diverse student populations to the mix emphasizes that there is no longer a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to attracting, nurturing, and converting prospective students. Motivations, complex factors, and personalized journeys can work to compound the complexities of your enrollment funnel.

The effect of stealth applicants on higher ed enrollment funnels 

Stealth applicants, in simple terms, are prospective students who apply to your higher ed programs without expressing any prior interest or initial contact with your enrollment team. Whether they have made a predetermined choice to study at your school or gather information solely from your website or other brand materials, these students can make predicting yield numbers somewhat problematic.

But research from Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) challenges the perception of high numbers of stealth applicants – particularly when it comes to online applicants. RNL argues we might be incorrectly attributing ‘stealth’ status to students on account of broken communication chains. They propose that poor data collection and lack of CRM inputs creates a false impression that students are not seeking more program information before applying. 

Consider if a student calls in and it is not recorded in your CRM. When this student subsequently applies, they could potentially be labelled as a stealth applicant. The same could be applied to a student who, upon not receiving a timely response to an email inquiry, simply applies and moves on.

If communications errors are indeed inflating numbers of stealth applicants in your enrollment funnel, high volumes could indicate a need for improved communications flows with prospective students. By improving response times or providing more ways for students to connect with your team, the impact of stealth applicants can be reduced.

How human connections attract future students

Contemporary student applicants grew up in a world of two-day shipping and on-demand taxi services – without having experienced brands in traditional ways. For advertisers and big brands, this creates an atmosphere of immediacy, high-competition, and high-budget stakes – an atmosphere which costs millions of dollars to operate in.  

But maybe keeping up with the big brands isn’t the way to go for higher ed? Your higher ed brand is what ultimately attracts students to your school. They want a school that offers a place to belong – a place they can be themselves and set the stage for subsequent career growth. 

In this section we look at how you can make your brand stand out from the rest – through emphasizing real human experiences which make your school unique.

The idea of the ‘squishy’ higher ed brand 

As omnichannel customers, contemporary students engage with multiple digital channels before making a purchase. While this might seem problematic for smaller enrollment teams, already juggling multiple outreach media, effective engagement with this type of audience can be achieved by embracing the idea of brand ‘squishiness.’ 

In contrast to the static brands of old which rely on generational word-of-mouth, established visual recognition, a ‘squishy’ brand is constantly adapting to changing student demands. The objective of a squishy brand is to add a malleable, warm, emotional human connection with a new student – a connection which cold institutional tactics cannot replicate. 

Consider the branding reaction an institution can take to this stat.  According to a survey by Anthology, 44% more students are attending higher ed institutions closer to home today than they were pre-pandemic. 

For traditional higher ed brands, the idea that nearly half of students prefer schools within their immediate vicinity might be a signal to continue pursuing local student pools with messaging built around tradition and historical ties. Meanwhile, a ‘squishy brand’ might attract the remaining 64% with messaging like ‘your home away from home.’ The latter messaging is softer, more inclusive, and directly plugs into the needs of both groups.  

In initial attraction stages, squishy brand tactics could be as simple as connecting a prospective student with a current student through your website, moving beyond static pages focusing solely on program offerings. Facilitating student-to-student conversations allows your higher ed brand to break traditional confines, adding a layer of authenticity, trust, and a sense of belonging. Current students, as genuine peers, can articulate the squishy aspects of the brand, contributing to a more relatable and engaging atmosphere.

More fluid, squishy, brands are not only more adaptable – their tactics are more effective. Consider that 68% of prospective students say that the values of a higher ed institution are important to them – with 38% passing on schools who do not share their values. Without adapting to changing student demands and expectations, without being squishy and authentic, it is difficult to break any preconceived brand perceptions. 

But you can’t fake it either. Unibuddy survey data tells us that almost half of students drop off from your enrollment funnel immediately if they find your messaging ‘cringey,’ or pandering. Meanwhile, 78% of higher ed students say simply speaking with a current student is helpful – with two thirds saying that those who don’t have these conversations are missing out. These initial ‘squishy,’ unscripted human-led candid conversations not only establish trust with prospective students, they create a warm, welcoming brand experience encouraging further engagement.

Consider how Wabash College leverages user-generated content to highlight the voices of their student ambassadors. By providing student ambassadors with a platform to produce content in their own voice, prospective students are shown an authentic, human, and student-produced perspective of what it’s actually like to study there. Topics vary from what to do around their small town Indiana community to balancing school work with extracurricular activities. Taken together, this type of content paints a more three-dimensional portrait of their higher ed brand beyond academics. 

Click here for ideas on how to structure an effective user-generated content strategy for student ambassadors.

Connect students to higher ed voices they trust 

One of the biggest decisions of their lives is choosing where to study higher ed, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It can be a delicate and nerve-wracking process for prospective students. In addition to being an incredibly expensive decision, the repercussions of making an incorrect decision on where to study can seem tremendous. This is why establishing a relationship of trust from the get-go is of paramount importance – a task achieved through enabling real human connections to people they trust. 

Consider what’s at stake for these students: Ernst & Young Global reports that 48% of students initially choose programs tailored to a chosen career or to improve their career prospects. And yet, the same report finds that a concerning 21% of final-year undergraduate students say their university experience did not prepare them for the workforce. That’s a big breakdown in communication!

Perhaps the biggest disconnect might be not listening better to students – and connecting them with real people who understand their situation. As stated by Dr. Maithreyi Gopalan of Penn State College of Education: “Stop telling students they belong; show them instead that they belong.” By connecting them with their peers, student ambassadors of your higher ed brand, you connect them with people who have walked in their shoes. 

Incorporating student-centric tactics into your initial digital touchpoints, not only ensures prospective students feel warm, welcome, and that they belong at your school, but also have the chance to ask genuine candid questions to trusted peers. For these connections to be effective, they should feel light, seamless, and natural – essentially, human. Notably, almost two-thirds of prospective students prioritize efficient and accessible higher ed services, especially during crucial initial enrollment processes.

Consider the University at Buffalo, the largest institution in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. To better engage with high volumes of graduate students visiting their websites, Buffalo’s graduate schools implemented Unibuddy Chat, our peer-to-peer (P2P) student engagement solution. In their first pilot year alone, their Graduate School of Education saw a 75% conversion rate to application for students who initially engaged in Unibuddy conversations – compared to 50% for other channels. This significant increase demonstrated to Buffalo the power initial personalized human-to-human conversations can have in attracting students to your higher ed brand. 

Higher ed data is your school’s secret sauce  

It’s no secret that budgets are shrinking for higher ed enrollment teams. And yet well-over half of you say you’re still expected to meet growing annual enrollment targets. How is this sustainable? We argue the proof lies in the digital pudding – your data.

Despite the ever-creeping costs of maintaining higher ed tech stacks, 76% of you report having little to no visibility into student enrollment journeys. A further 68% of enrollment teams say their current edtech solutions offer little to no insight into prospective students’ thoughts and feelings. This suggests that enrollment teams could be mapping student journeys without actually knowing who their students are.

Sounds problematic, doesn’t it? 

At its roots, an effective edtech tool needs to offer insights into who your students are, what they want, and what they need. Access to rich data allows your team to develop accurate plans, ensuring your messaging reaches a broader audience of prospective students. This, in turn, makes your team’s efforts more meaningful, efficient, and impactful. 

Think about initial touchpoints to your website. Suppose a prospective student arrives at your school’s website seeking more information about a specific program with a specific intended career outcome. While some tools might enable you to categorize this student according to the above two characteristics, an effective edtech tool, like live peer-to-peer chat, can help further your engagement with them by providing more granular data. 

Utilizing Unibuddy Chat, your enrollment team can tap into AI-infused conversational insights summarizing key concerns and topics discussed between prospective students and your student ambassadors. Unibuddy also provides data points outlining student decision preferences. This available higher ed data helps your team understand what motivates a prospective student to enroll at your school, what excites them academically, and what they need to continue their enrollment journey with you.

At Chapman University, the enrollment team leveraged student data from Unibuddy to help recreate authentic student-to-student connections digitally. By analyzing conversational data metrics, including the number of questions asked, successful conversations, and students’ sentiment towards Chapman and their peers, the team gained insights into students in their enrollment funnel and how their digital interactions contributed to the broader context of admissions and recruitment. As put by Brendan Babish, Chapman University’s Director of Admission Communication, “We like to take a look under the hood, and prioritize quality over quantity. We judge the individual touchpoints and how those are performing versus setting strict quantitative goals, due to the many variables involved.”

See more Unibuddy customer stories here.

Flip your enrollment funnel for initial personalization

Account-Based Marketing (ABM), currently one of the hottest marketing trends, revolves around flipping the funnel – assuming an audience is already sold, with a focus on removing barriers to purchase. Translating this concept to higher ed, particularly the enrollment funnel, implies the need to proactively reduce barriers to application for prospective students through outreach, messaging, content, and shared resources. The goal is to help best-fit students in making confident decisions about applying to your school.

Here are two scenarios with two outcomes, with the second incorporating ABM tactics:

1. Alana arrives to your website looking for more information regarding engineering programs at your school. Alana finds your program page and sees that it checks the boxes of what she is looking for. Concerned about work/life balance, Alana then checks out your ‘Student Life’ page to see what it’s like to study at your school. She sees that you offer a broad variety of extracurricular activities and that students are very involved in various activities around campus – like student government. As someone who is juggling a part-time job, this all seems a bit overwhelming for Alana. She adds your school to her list and continues looking at other schools.

2. Alana arrives at your website looking for more information regarding engineering programs at your school. Alana finds your program page and sees that it checks the boxes of what she is looking for. Concerned about work/life balance, Alana then checks out your ‘Student Life’ page to see what it’s like to study at your school. Anticipating students arriving to this page with a variety of needs, you put a short form inquiring what they expect from their student experience. Alana clicks ‘Work/Life Balance’ and is immediately connected to a student ambassador who balances schoolwork with a part-time job. In their brief conversation, Alana learns about the hybrid course model designed for students with other commitments outside school. Alana continues chatting with this student and realizes that participating in student life at your school doesn’t necessarily require a full-time in-person commitment. Based on this conversation, Alana is put into a lifecycle messaging track catering to students juggling other priorities outside academics. Alana adds your school to her list and her continued personalized touchpoints with your team make her feel more confident that studying with you is the right choice.

In scenario two, your team aims to identify Alana in your enrollment funnel as a potential applicant under specific conditions. By promptly connecting Alana with a real person who aligns with her persona and shares similar experiences, you reduce friction and position your school as a viable option at the first touchpoint. The conversational data collected from engaging with Alana becomes a valuable tool to guide future interactions with similar students. That’s powerful stuff!

Student ambassadors – your best marketing voice

Serving as your ultimate brand advocates, storytellers, and content creators, your student ambassadors are your most effective marketing voice. So how do you keep your student ambassadors content? By making their roles easier and highlighting the perks of being your #1 fans. 

Want to streamline digital connections between student ambassadors and prospective students? Look for tools that help promote and enable connections with your student ambassadors across your website. Want to help student ambassadors get their content online? Look for simple tools for uploading, reviewing, and posting the user-generated content they create. 

Also, be sure to highlight the benefits of joining your student ambassador program to begin with. While these benefits might vary from school to school, they usually come down to networking opportunities, greater campus access, skills training, and resume-building opportunities. In addition to being happier, these perks can help establish a more professional rapport in their day-to-day approach.

Howard University Graduate School, a historically Black research institution, actively recruits their student ambassadors via their website. On a dedicated student ambassador recruitment page, this graduate school lists all the real benefits of joining their student ambassador team – including the practical skills learned. A strong call-to-action at the bottom of their recruitment page prompts an application. A careful blend of friendly language, with the professional look of a job site, assures applicants that they are in the right place – and that the university cares about who represents their brand.

How personalized engagement leads to higher student yield

Your website is humming. Prospective students from all walks of life are arriving in droves. Your team’s inboxes are overfilling. Your student ambassadors are being peppered with questions. Your enrollment funnel is overflowing. You have all the ingredients you need to hit your enrollment targets. 

Yet, 32% of enrollment professionals report their biggest challenge is moving students onward through their funnel towards application. 

In this section, we discuss ways you can add pavement to your student enrollment road, without adding to workloads. You’ve successfully attracted prospective students to your higher ed brand and have initiated those crucial first touchpoints. 

What’s next? How do you continue helping students move through your enrollment funnel? How do you keep student leads warm towards application stages?  

Put student centricity at the core of your lead nurturing plan

While students should be the focus of any team looking to attract initial prospects to your website, the idea of student centricity takes this idea further. To effectively nurture prospective students towards application, student centricity suggests that all subsequent engagement touchpoints should be based in student needs – not institutional wants. In simpler words, prioritize student experience above revenue targets in enrollment planning

Three interdependent points merit consideration, starting with your leadership and brand teams. Many higher ed institutions grapple with siloed teams, even within a single department, creating friction from a brand perspective. These teams may run distinct messaging, engage in competing ad campaigns, or withhold information and data that could benefit others.

In order to fine-tune your student-centric engine, start by creating a shared, campus-wide culture, and vision for strategic enrollment management. From data collection to tech stacks to governance and planning, this vision calls for an integrated set of processes. The main idea here is to create an atmosphere of brand proactivity among different teams – with the ultimate goal of creating a single, collaborative, and unified higher ed brand.  

Data plays a crucial role here, serving as a second interdependent point to consider when planning an effective student-centric lead nurturing strategy. Understanding who exactly your students are and what they want out of your school provides your team with evidence-based actions you can subsequently inject into brand touchpoints and promises. 

Let’s say that you pride your brand on its strong position within a small town community. Most students and local residents you survey view your school as an integral part of their small town life. No one can imagine your town without your brand – from Saturday football games to sponsored co-op programs with local businesses. 

Although students are at the heart of these initiatives, are these brand features really “student centric?” Are they actually addressing the real questions students have? Or are they just outward-looking depictions of how you want to appear? Are you selling the sausage without addressing how it’s made?

Sifting through student conversational data and AI-powered conversational insights, you find student concerns about small town life. There could be indications that international students are not prepared for winter weather. Cost of living concerns might exist around available housing or availability of part-time jobs. For students moving through the center of your enrollment funnel, red flag question marks like this can cause them to stall, or worse, drop out of your enrollment funnel entirely. 

A proactive student-centric approach here would be to integrate real student needs into your brand. In the above theoretical example, the school might consider promoting a more inclusive brand framework that helps students understand why and how they belong at your school.

The third point in building student centricity into your enrollment funnel involves considering the intended impact on student experience rather than focusing solely on revenue results. Delve into why a target student audience, identified through data analysis, ultimately chooses your school. Determine which messaging resonates best at each stage of their enrollment journeys, and connect data points to create streamlined paths toward application. Amplify the intended impact for an ideal student experience, optimizing existing processes and tools for better ROI. Assess which aspects of your strategy aren’t yielding results and identify missing data points you need for better visibility into student journeys. By prioritizing impact in the complex middle of your enrollment funnel, you can more reliably predict revenue results.

Consider a scenario where your objective for the upcoming year is to increase enrollment targets for a specific business graduate program. While a straightforward goal might be to add 50 additional seats, an impact-oriented goal would involve understanding why students choose this program and emphasizing its emotional, student-centric aspects. Instead of instructing your team to increase enrollment targets by 50, challenge them to amplify messaging about the program’s networking opportunities in response to the high number of queries from discerning mid-level students exploring various schools. The aim is to convince more students to apply to your target program by assuring them that their networking needs are a priority.

Taken together, these three interdependent points can help your team plan student-centric and lead nurturing strategies to move more students through your mid-funnel. Using available higher ed data, communicating intended impacts, and coordinating the leadership of your various teams creates clear and concise student enrollment pathways for more actionable and accountable goals.

As if initial attraction of prospective students to your school isn’t hard enough, keeping student leads warm can be even harder. According to Unibuddy data, 48% of students report that very few higher ed institutions remain actively engaging throughout their enrollment journeys. 

But how do you keep prospective students engaged beyond initial touchpoints? How do you lead them down the road towards making a decision about applying? As a rule, effective lead nurturing of your mid-enrollment funnel prospective students calls for engaging lifecycle campaigns. Effective lifecycle communications need to be relevant, concise, timely, and data-backed at every step. 

Data-backed lifecycle campaigns refer to the consistent communications, nudges, and other touchpoints sent to prospective students to guide them through the enrollment process. When a student first engages with a student ambassador, a lifecycle strategy involves sending them follow-up communications with additional information to stay top-of-mind.

We realize hitting all three of these lifecycle campaign components can be tough if your enrollment team alone is fielding all the questions. If you have student ambassadors, try leveraging them to help answer queries from prospective students. Not only can student ambassadors help your team manage large volumes of questions, but you might find many queries are best answered by people currently going through their higher ed experience right now. 

Also consider the channels you choose to engage prospective students on throughout your lifecycle campaign. Although email is still a preferred channel of communication for most higher ed students students, as omnichannel customers, referring to consumers who utilize more than one channel to make a purchase, or, in the case of higher ed, apply to your school, engaging lifecycle campaigns should leverage multiple channels, from peer-to-peer chat solutions to something as simple as a phone call.

To scale your lifecycle campaigns, use AI to categorize a student’s position in your enrollment funnel. Unibuddy Chat, for instance, provides AI-infused tools that offer short conversation summaries, highlight key points of interest, and provide funnel snapshots to guide your team’s next actions for further engagement. These insights can be seamlessly integrated into your CRM system for future reference.

Rely on your own data for lead nurturing campaigns

Did you know that the majority of prospective Canadian students in 2023 are seeking universities close to home? While this statistic is based on Canadian data, let’s assume for a moment that you’re a Canadian higher ed school unpacking this data nugget: Is this statistic reflective of your typical applicant? For many smaller, more rural, specialized, or graduate schools, who often rely on students coming from a distance, this statistic might be a red herring to your overall strategic lead nurturing strategy. 

In higher ed, the temptation is often to go with the flow of your competitors when it comes to guiding students towards application. We argue your own situational data can help you break away from the pack – and avoid misleading data. What makes your school distinctly unique is something your competitors cannot replicate – so why try fitting a circle into a square?

Let’s say your enrollment team is recruiting for a graduate business program at a smaller school located in a large US city. Although higher ed trends data tell you students, in general, are concerned about cost of living and being closer to home, your own data tells you that they are looking at your program on account of its reputation, proximity to a major business center, and networking opportunities. In this case, your team can have better enrollment success explaining how your placement programs work within your strategically-placed location and the impact of your program on career outcomes rather than focusing on proximity to their home.

This is why it’s so important to ensure your team has the tools and resources they need to know who your prospective students are and what they need to know in order to make a decision about your school. As discussed earlier, 68% of enrollment teams say their current tech stack offers little to no insight into who their students are – with 76% admitting they have limited to no visibility into student enrollment journeys. This makes it difficult to understand how interested students in your enrollment funnel specifically differ from student audiences in general.

Why keeping constant touch ensures better yield

Yield, the percentage of students enrolling after being offered admission, is a crucial aspect of your enrollment funnel’s bottom line. However, what factors contribute to this process? Does the yield calculation start when admission letters are sent or when prospective students accept and submit a deposit? Some argue that yield extends until students arrive on campus and beyond – the so-called ‘extended yield season’ including summer melt.  Regardless of the definition, it’s clear that the job of an enrollment professional is far from finished once students apply, accept, or even submit a deposit (with 44% putting down deposits at multiple schools).

In this section, we explore ways you can maintain yield numbers, by keeping admitted students engaged, warm, and confident in their decision to study at your higher ed institution. From community-building tactics to providing supplementary information about their chosen higher ed program, there are multiple ways you can ensure students arrive on campus (or online) excited and ready to learn. 

Student matching assures confident choices

With multiple letters of acceptance in-hand, many students may be tempted to make the easier choice – not necessarily the right one – on where to study. This is why speaking with someone who has walked in their shoes, one of your student ambassadors, can be so crucial. These short conversations are often enough to help students feel confident and in control of their decision of where to accept (or where not to).

Student matching features streamline the process of connecting with the right student ambassador, eliminating the legwork and guesswork for prospective students. This automated process links them with ambassadors who share similar interests, are enrolled in their program, or hail from the same region. In addition to removing the friction of sourcing and initiating these connections, something more daunting for the more introverted of us, prospective students can see others like them who belong under your higher ed brand.

Build student communities to curb student summer melt 

Even after a student accepts, and even puts down a deposit, you know considerable risks still exist to your yield figures. Student summer melt is a phenomenon that sees 10-20% of eligible college students drop off between accepting their offers in spring and attending school in fall. While reasons for non-attendance vary, Unibuddy data tells us that over 50% of higher ed students lack confidence in their core academic abilities – with over one in three doubting they’ll see their program through to graduation. Another contributing factor, according to the same data set, is their concern about lacking the necessary social skills to make friends, network, and succeed. 

Taken together, these factors paint a picture of doubt, second-guessing, and a sort of ‘buyer’s remorse’ experienced by your admitted students. Putting on your marketing hat and stepping back from higher ed for a minute, let’s unpack how this might look for another huge life purchase: buying your first home. 

After years of careful saving and research, you’ve finally bought your first place and are now waiting for the day you move in. At this point, you start to have the usual doubts, from whether you might fit in with your neighbors to how you plan to meet your monthly mortgage payment commitments. It can all seem like a bit much and you might start to feel uneasy about your purchase.

What can make you feel at ease about this purchase? Walking through your new neighborhood, getting to know what sort of community it is, and what the general vibe is can melt away any negative preoccupations you may have. A single smile from a future neighbor to seeing other people who appear within your general demographic can make you think to yourself: “I can see myself belonging here.”

As you already know, the same can be said about your higher ed students. Student doubts about higher ed can fester into perceived realities leading to melt. Students not only want to belong, they want to know it’s possible to be a part of something. How do you instill this sense of community and belonging into people who have yet to step on your campus? 

By creating digital communities that live under your brand, you can ensure your incoming cohorts of students can have their ‘neighborhood stroll.’ Whether they hail from a specific geographical region, want to learn more about their admitted program, or just want to meet their incoming classmates, these human-led communities serve to make students feel warm and welcome during a period often characterized by doubt and second guesses.

Students who join community groups of their peers can also discover that they are not alone in feeling nervous. If created effectively, these groups can serve as safe spaces for students to bounce concerns off (whether in group chats or via secure private messaging) – and a place for your student ambassadors to help steer conversations in the right direction. It’s worth noting that, according to Unibuddy data, 64% of higher ed students report that those who don’t get to speak with fellow students feel they are missing out.

The answer isn’t to just create a social media account and see what sticks. While over half of prospective students flock to social media with questions, these platforms don’t provide your enrollment team with the data, control, and insight you need to accurately steer them in the right direction. You might find your social content faces stiff competition from influencers who have a personal engaging touch that goes beyond a brand account – despite your efforts to include student ambassadors. 

If you do plan to leverage social media for your messaging, ask yourself a simple question: How would you use a TikTok video to reassure a student they are making the right choice to attend your school? What would be your BeReal post right now that helps make your school relatable to an incoming student? Who would be responsible for running your social accounts for brand consistency?

With solutions like Unibuddy Community, students can join or be invited to groups according to specific interests, programs, or demographics, as examples. These groups serve as safe spaces for incoming students to connect, socialize, and ask questions they might have before arriving in the fall. Some students have gone as far as to find roommates through group conversations or secure private messaging.

Consider the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), for example. To help them manage increasing volumes of international student applications, without losing their personal touch, UMBC looked to Unibuddy Community to help admitted students connect comfortably and safely before arriving on campus. After implementing Community into their process, UMBC saw increased levels of engagement amongst over 1000 active students – with 87% of their peer-to-peer communication passing through Community’s Secure Direct Messaging. “We’re seeing a lot of personal messages being sent between students, and I personally believe they’re bonding and forming friendships before they arrive on campus,” says Sarah Wong, International Student Support Manager at UMBC. “I’ve even been in webinars with students who said Unibuddy helped them build a relationship, meet up and coordinate flights to our school.”

Keep admitted students engaged throughout onboarding 

As you know, the months between accepting an offer to actually stepping on campus can be a surreal experience for many prospective students. From undergrads dealing with the prospect of leaving home to graduate students figuring out financial aid, the speed of this short period can be a shock after months of waiting for an acceptance. As a result, the crucial end of your enrollment funnel can make everything feel suddenly real very fast for students. 

Digital tools and available student data from your enrollment process can help with handoff between admissions and student success or onboarding teams. While offers of admission letters and massive ‘next steps’ emails are standard fare for admissions teams to send prospective students, what happens next? Who explains your onboarding steps and why they are needed? Who checks in on incoming students to verify all their documents are in order? Who ensures incoming students are prepared to look for housing? Who prepares incoming students for the realities of winter weather?

Solutions like Unibuddy Community provide direct lines of scalable communication to your incoming students. Whether you need to share more information, in response to common inquiries, or just want to check in on them to see how they are doing, these online community hubs help show students you are ready and prepared to support them throughout their academic journey. For international students, or graduate students, requiring extensive documentation, these groups are also ways for them to double-check all their ducks are in a row. 

Have fun – and get your new students excited

Remember the rush of getting your own acceptance letter? With effective post-admission nurturing, you can keep the wave rolling throughout their tenure at your school and beyond. As discussed earlier in this guide, happy students are your best brand ambassadors. And the best student experiences start from the minute you say ‘hello.’ 

At Unibuddy, our goal is to not only help your team start off on the right foot with your prospective students, but to keep them engaged at each part of their enrollment journey. From Unibuddy Chat, designed to help your team carve paths to application conversion, to Unibuddy Community, designed to keep students warm and increase yield, our team is dedicated to helping you humanize your enrollment funnel.

How to Source Humanizing Higher Ed Solutions

We’ve talked about how to leverage edtech tools and data in order to fortify, inform, and humanize your enrollment funnel – but how do you go about sourcing solutions? How do you make sure you’re buying a tool for its value – not its price tag? How do you ensure a tool actually helps you achieve a strong return on investment? Ultimately, how do you ensure you get an edtech tool designed to enable human contact, not hinder it?

To help get you started, we’ve adapted this guide from Gartner on how to evaluate technology vendors properly to a higher ed audience. As a checklist, use this section to vet edtech tools to ensure they actually do what they’re supposed to do, actually apply to your specific enrollment goals, and offer strong ROI for your team. 

Step I: Assemble your higher ed buying team before looking at edtech tools 

• Siloed or decentalized team environments are a common pain point at many higher ed institutions.
• Including the right perspectives throughout your sourcing process provides transparency and buy-in from stakeholders.
• Pay special attention to the different wants, needs, and requirements brought up by different teams to ensure everything works with your drivers and brand objectives.
• Example: Admissions and recruitment teams might have different CRM needs – and IT might be more concerned with implementation.
• Learn more about how we position Unibuddy to higher ed enrollment teams. 

Step II: Determine your required criteria for edtech evaluation 

There are five common categories your team can use to help determine your basic criteria for choosing an edtech tool (rank each requirement as  “low – optional,” “medium – desirable,” or “high – essential”):

1. Functional: Given what your team wishes to achieve and the type of tool you’re considering, what exactly does an edtech tool need to do? What functions are must-have deal breakers?
2. Technical: How easy is this edtech tool to integrate with your existing tech stack, CRM, and what sort of data do you need to collect? What sort of potential roadblocks can you identify?
3. Support and Services: What sort of training is required to use this edtech tool? What sort of support is offered both pre- and post-implementation?
4. Vendor Health: What sort of reviews are available for this edtech tool? How closely aligned is their culture to the goals of your higher ed brand? What sort of product roadmap do they have? Are they market-responsive?  
5. Pricing and Commercial Terms: How does the cost for this edtech tool work? Is it one-time? What are the contract and licensing terms? Also be sure to check brand usage and content ownership terms. 

Step III: Score edtech solutions according to your required criteria 

• Schedule product demonstrations and request all relevant documentation, including training and implementation guides, with vendors who fit your required criteria.
• Go through your list of criteria with the vendor and ensure everyone on your team understands how their products stack up against their needs.
• Rate vendors on a simple scoring scale. 
• Double-check your findings with third-party reviews and review any customer lists.

Step IV: Finalize your shortlist of edtech solutions and re-score them

• Add or remove criteria requirements if you find they are no longer relevant or not offered by any vendor. 
• Cut your shortlist down to one to three vendors and determine whether further conversations or product demonstrations are required. 
• Rate your vendors again according to your original criteria before making a final decision.

Step V: Make your final decision 

• Present your findings to all stakeholders and explain why this tool works best for your situation. 
• You are then ready to begin negotiating final terms with the vendor. 
• Remember: Edtech Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS) solutions, like Unibuddy, should empower you to complete your missions to enroll the students of the future. Your goal is to make your enrollment funnel more human – not more complicated.