Engage Students Better with Audience Segmentation

The days of all college students being recent high schoolers or undergraduates are over. The higher education market serves a diverse range of people, which includes various generations and demographics at different times of life and career.

In a competitive industry where many institutions offer similar services, it’s important to have a clear understanding of which market segments to serve and how to differentiate your school to reach the right students. Segmentation and analytics can help.

Every page view, click, form submission or like on a social media post reveal insights about an individual. This data about individual users can then be collected and sorted into distinct segments and cohorts, revealing previously unseen patterns and behavioral trends. Higher education websites, apps, systems and platforms are generating this data at volume. Analytics can transform this data into actionable insights that benefit the institution in advancing strategic outcomes, like boosting enrollment and developing new programming.

Smart Segmentation

Basic segmentation might create generic groupings such as undergraduate vs. graduate students, online vs. residential, or full-time enrollment vs. microcredential program.

Smart segmentation is more useful and actionable because it further identifies visitors through shared behaviors, like preferred channels, times of day for contact or pages visited. By respecting those preferences in how, when and through which channels you communicate with that segment, you can generate goodwill toward your school. Segmentation can also enable you to identify a group’s likelihood to enroll so you can allocate appropriate time, budget and resources to nurturing them.

The most sophisticated segmentation can even identify personas, like The Parthenon Group (now part of Ernst & Young LLP) did in their 2014 study of The Differentiated University. They identified six segments: aspiring academics; coming of age; career starters; career accelerators; industry switchers; and academic wanderers.

While we might define those personas differently in 2023, the concept is valid: Each segment has unique priorities and interests that could be identified through the behavioral data a school collects and the application of analytics.

Capturing Cohorts

Cohort analytics can measure user engagement over time to observe how their behavior changes. These insights can tell you the optimal timeframe to reengage page visitors and identify key stages in their consideration period.

For instance, you might create a cohort of users who visited certain pages of your site after following the link in a digital advertising campaign. Did they visit again? Progress through linked pages? Submit a form? Add this to the other metrics you are using to get a broader picture of campaign impact and performance.

The Frictionless Funnel

Analysis of site or app visitor data can also alert you to conversion issues. Gen Z students in particular are sophisticated consumers of digital interactions and have high expectations for a smooth and intuitive journey — and they are quick to cast judgement when they don’t have that experience.

Funnel analytics can reveal hiccups in the enrollment journey, such as students starting a campus visit sign-up form but not completing it. A student researching multiple schools will be presented with an array of registration and follow-up interactions. You want yours to stand out … in a good way.

The Science of Engagement

With fierce competition for the attention of the same student population, admission teams that use data and analytics can successfully usher any individual, cohort or segment through the enrollment journey. If you need help, Collegis is here.