Conversion rates and capture rates in higher education are important pieces of online marketing. But there’s more to the enrollment management story than what happens with marketing and lead generation.
Successful recruitment is about the hand-off: managing inquiries from wherever they’re sourced and nurturing them to apply to your college or university.
Unfortunately, many higher ed marketing and admissions teams do not collaborate to improve each other’s efforts. Instead, admissions is only focused on optimizing their strategies after marketing has passed them a lead, and marketing is only focused on increasing conversion rates to hit lead volume targets regardless of lead quality.
In this article, you’ll learn five best practices to improve the student hand-off from marketing to admissions at your higher education institution.
After reading, you’ll be ready to build a plan to improve your lead hand-off, which will increase your admissions conversion rates and, ultimately, student enrollment!
Before you can optimize any enrollment management strategy, the goals must be aligned across your marketing and admissions departments. Conflicting goals and KPIs will lead to disjointed efforts, cross-department frustration, and even incorrect reporting on how each team is performing.
To align higher ed marketing and admissions, identify the shared goals the teams will commit to achieving together. Some key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important at the early stages of the admissions funnel are:
At this stage in the funnel, recruitment relies heavily on marketing to identify the right student prospects. At the same time, marketing relies on recruitment to reach out to students in a timely manner and to utilize appropriate follow-up strategies.
Overall, these indicators will help both teams measure progress and identify areas for improvement.
Consistency in communication is crucial for maintaining trust and interest among prospective students. Marketing typically handles outbound materials, social media content, and website messaging, while admissions often develops the messaging for emails and personal outreach. However, the voice, tone, and messaging don’t always align, which can confuse prospective students, especially if the value proposition changes.
To avoid this, develop a unified messaging strategy that outlines crucial messages, tone, voice, and value propositions for both marketing and admissions teams.
When creating your messaging strategy, consider including these key aspects:
By developing a unified messaging strategy, you can create a seamless and positive experience for prospective students as they are handed over to your admissions team. This cohesive approach improves engagement and conversion rates and strengthens your institution’s reputation.
Admissions teams often receive leads without fully understanding how they were generated. This lack of understanding can lead to missed opportunities and ineffective follow-ups, ultimately hindering conversion rates.
Tracking lead sources can prevent these issues and improve your enrollment management by providing:
Overall, lead source information drives a crucial feedback loop between marketing and admissions, ensuring everyone focuses on the most impactful work.
Regular, structured meetings between marketing and admissions teams are essential for maintaining alignment, fostering collaboration, and ensuring continuous improvement in your enrollment management strategies. These meetings provide a platform for both teams to discuss trends, share feedback, review performance metrics, discuss select admissions experiences, and plan future actions.
Three benefits you’ll gain from scheduling weekly or bi-weekly meetings between Marketing and Admissions are:
Overall, consistent meetings between marketing and admissions will ensure everyone is on the same page and help both teams be more effective in increasing and converting qualified prospective students for your institution.
Promoting communication in informal channels beyond scheduled meetings can further enhance collaboration and performance across marketing and admissions teams.
To cultivate a truly collaborative relationship, help the team members understand how their roles impact each other and the overall enrollment process. Consider holding workshops and training sessions where marketing and admissions teams can learn about each other's workflows, goals, and challenges.
Additionally, physical proximity can significantly enhance communication and collaboration. Consider reorganizing office spaces to bring marketing and admissions teams closer to encourage interaction and information sharing.
If possible, organize regular team-building exercises and other informal events to further boost the collaborative spirit.
When marketing and recruitment professionals view enrollment management as a collaborative path rather than a set of distinct and isolated tracks, students win. Institutions can encourage this thinking by making conversion rates a part of performance goals and fostering a culture that supports information-sharing and strategizing across departments.
But your enrollment management strategies don’t stop here. Once you've implemented them, it's crucial to ensure that your admissions outreach to new leads is up to par.
If your admissions team doesn’t contact prospective students quickly or consistently, leads will slip through the cracks.
In fact, one of the most common issues we see with admissions teams is their basic outreach isn’t happening like it should - and it’s holding them back from reaching their enrollment goals!
Understand your opportunity to improve contact rates by requesting a Free Admissions Outreach Audit. It will help you determine if this is the critical issue hindering your enrollment success.