What’s It Like to Work With a Strategic Enrollment Partner?

National Student Clearinghouse’s latest report shows that postsecondary enrollment dropped 4.1% in spring 2022. With over 1 million fewer students enrolled now than before the pandemic began, increasing your applicant pool is not always possible – but finding your right fit student and increasing engagement through your enrollment funnel is.

If you’ve already decided that your enrollment needs help, read more about what the process and relationship can be like when you work side by side with a strategic enrollment partner to improve engagement in your admissions funnel.

Six Ways to Boost Enrollment

1. Centralized enrollment data that drives prioritization and effective activation strategies to deliver results.
2. An “organic” approach to marketing and inquiry generation vs. reliance on paid media.
3. Personalized recruitment and engagement supported by strong people, process and technology.
4. Technology infrastructure and expertise that can meet evolving demands of the market.
5. Hyper-focus on programmatic innovation & differentiation.
6. Corporate partnerships that provide the ability to pivot from the traditional higher education model to support the growing demand to upskill in the labor market.

While a holistic approach often yields the best results, any service package should be customized based on your needs and priorities. Your institution is unique, and your enrollment partner should meet you where you are to work with you in a transparent, highly collaborative relationship to move your institution forward.

The Onboarding Process & Strategy Creation

A good onboarding process is a 45–90-day engagement period that lays the framework for data enablement, technology and marketing. Your partner should jump right in and learn as much about your institution as possible to discover its opportunities, goals, brand reputation, student body demographics, admissions staff training and more.

From there, you should receive a strategic plan that encompasses your goals, strategies, tactics and success metrics. One of the biggest benefits a strategic enrollment partner offers (in addition to increasing engagement within the enrollment funnel) is keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the market and translating that to opportunities for your college or university, ensuring you’re prepared for any changes or challenges. This agile approach allows you to adapt your enrollment strategy to meet the needs of an ever-changing market.

Aligning Technology

During the onboarding process, you want a strategic enrollment partner to collect, connect and activate your data to provide insights and drive strategy while also ensuring metrics are tracked across all channels. Tools like Google Big Query can be leveraged to merge data in a centralized location seamlessly from your CRM, SIS, LMS, ad platforms and other systems.

A good strategic partner knows that your data should be brought to life in digestible, easy-to-understand, transparent dashboards that can be accessed by you at any time for consistent visibility into the metrics that are most important to your organization. All data that is relevant to understanding your prospective students’ demographics and journey from discovery to enrollment should be integrated and comply with FERPA regulations.

The Strategic Enrollment Partner for Your Institution

When it comes to nurturing your marketing inquiries and getting them to enroll and then start, proactive outreach and communication is paramount. A strategic enrollment partner can help you connect with prospective students through a variety of channels, including personal calls and coaching, progressive text messaging, automated email workflows, and chat and text bot options. Communication should have a consistent voice and messaging, whether coming from your own employees or from a communication from your enrollment partner.

But it is not just prospective student communication that is important. You need open, constant communication between your institution and your partner to track progress, status and performance to make adjustments and continuously improve.

Learn more about what we’re capable of and start a discussion with us today.

Collegis Education is a strategic partner with the people, processes and tools to help improve enrollment performance. We’ll work with you to create customized, data-driven experiences that engage students from their first search through life as alumni. Read more about our capabilities and start a discussion today.