Are you feeling pressure about not hitting your enrollment goals this year? Have you exhausted all your ideas to improve your admissions strategies and processes?
At Enrollment Builders, we hear these struggles from admissions leaders on a regular basis. We've compiled a list of enrollment management best practices to help you take back control and improve your enrollment.
In this article, you’ll discover six key enrollment management strategies higher ed institutions should use to improve recruitment efforts and increase student enrollment:
By the end of the article, you’ll know which admissions strategies to prioritize first to make the biggest improvement on your admissions performance.
Before implementing new enrollment strategies, it's essential to analyze your current admissions funnel performance. This involves examining the various stages of the admissions process—from initial inquiry to enrollment—and prioritizing the biggest opportunities first.
Once you understand your current performance, you can compare it to industry benchmarks to identify areas where you fall short or exceed expectations.
For example, if your Inquiry-to-Application Rate is lower than the benchmark, it may indicate that your initial outreach efforts need improvement.
On the other hand, if your Admissions-to-Enrollment Rate is falling short, you should focus on strategies related to that area of your admissions process.
Don’t know which metrics to analyze? Wonder what the industry standard is for each one? Download the free Admissions Funnel Guide to discover how your conversion rates stack up.
A common trait among admissions processes is the primary focus on emailing prospective students. However, these students have changed over the years, and so have their preferred communication methods with institutions like yours.
For the highest chance of success, your enrollment strategy should include multiple contact methods that work together. The most common methods we recommend include phone, text, voicemail, website chat, and email.
Additionally, according to an MIT Study, a lead contacted in the first 30 minutes is 300 times more likely to enroll than someone contacted within 60 minutes. Since many prospective students inquire online about multiple colleges at once, quick, effective communication is crucial to maintaining their interest and guiding them through your admissions process.
Because of these factors, auditing and optimizing your admissions outreach is one of the most impactful ways to increase your Inquiry to Application Rate!
Continuous professional development is essential to keep your admissions team informed about enrollment management trends and best practices.
Professional development helps your team stay updated with industry changes, improves their skills, and enhances their ability to effectively engage with prospective students.
At Enrollment Builders, we’ve found that many institutions not only need more leads - they also need to better mine the potential within the list of prospective students they already have.
One of the best ways to do this is by engaging with your aged prospects and inquiries. Aged leads are prospective students in your funnel who have exhausted all of your previous outreach attempts. As a leader, you probably aren’t sure what type of outreach these leads consistently received in the past. They may have lower contact and engagement rates when you reach out to them. The combination of these factors typically results in teams writing off these leads as "dead leads."
However, a prospective student may still be a valid lead for several reasons. In many cases, they just may not have been ready when you were. This is especially true for adult and nontraditional learners - life happens, and a prospective student’s initial plans or timelines may have changed.
If you build a strategy and a process to re-engage old inquiries, you can qualify those still interested and move them further in the admissions process.
For more detailed information on how to implement an aged lead re-engagement strategy, read the full article: How to Increase Student Enrollment by Working Aged Leads
Prospective students often face several barriers that can prevent them from enrolling in your institution. Understanding and addressing these concerns proactively can significantly improve your enrollment rates.
By alleviating these concerns, you can create a smoother and more reassuring experience for potential students, making it easier for them to confidently choose your institution.
The four most common concerns prospective students have are:
The priority order of addressing these concerns may vary depending on whether you are communicating with traditional or adult/non-traditional students and which programs you focus on. Be sure to reflect on recent admissions conversations to identify the most prevalent concerns with your institution’s prospective students.
Leveraging technology can provide a significant competitive edge in the evolving landscape of higher education. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming various industries, and enrollment management is no exception.
Incorporating AI into your enrollment management strategy can enhance your recruitment efforts, streamline processes, offer valuable insights, and provide personalized experiences for prospective students.
As an admissions leader, you hold the key to your institution’s enrollment success. And now, you’ve explored a range of enrollment management strategies, from analyzing your current admissions funnel to incorporating AI.
With these strategies, you are better positioned to take actionable steps toward boosting your new student enrollment. By committing to implementing them, you’re not only improving your current enrollment processes and strategies - you’re setting the stage for sustainable growth in the future.
However, when your team is already stretched thin, knowing what strategy to implement and finding the bandwidth to do so effectively can feel overwhelming. When facing these challenges, admissions leaders like you consider outsourcing part of their admissions process so their team can focus on connecting with the most qualified prospective students.
Higher education enrollment leaders partner with Enrollment Builders to turn more prospective students into qualified applicants. If you’re frustrated with your current admissions performance, we’re here to help. We aim to get to the root of your enrollment problems and find the right balance of support your admissions team needs.
Click below to schedule your call and start optimizing your enrollment management strategies: