9 ways to increase college admissions and enrolment

Striking your college admissions target is not a breeze to the admissions teams. With a multitude of options available, the tech-hungry generation is difficult to be convinced. The Inside Higher Ed Survey of 2020 confirms that 69% of community college admissions officials and 55% of private college admissions officials are worried about hitting their enrollment goals.

Related Read - 9 college admission mistakes to avoid by admission director during goal setting

To those struggling officials, this blog outlines 9 ways to increase college admissions and enrollment rates.

 

1. Create situations for Prospects to react first

 

Create a platform for your prospective students to “discover” your college presence. Improving your visibility with SEO should be your focus.

This lets your prospective students raise their hands first at your college, you need to have an online presence that is of high quality and both visible. Make your college rank on Google’s top page for its relevant keywords and create an engaging space in social media.

The persuasion of choosing social media is so strong that the Social Admissions report proves that one out of every two teenagers counts on social media to research universities or colleges to apply for.

 

2. Create a story of your institution

Do you have a unique story of your institution? Then create one that celebrates your college’s culture, spirit, thought-leadership, students, alumni, faculty, and their involvement in events and communities. This helps create a brand of your own. Pitch on how the characters in your story overcame a struggle through your institution.

Your alumnus can be a great source of inspiration. String their stories on your website and market them. Let them speak the success of their past and present in the way your prospect would like to hear! Use digital channels and social media to promote them.

This way of storytelling can be a great tool for conveying your emotions to your prospective targets, who are hungry for engagement and better understanding. It could be a video, infographic, single-paste post, a creative banner, etc.

 

3. Nurturing student interest

Embarking on a college journey is the choice of a lifetime. It is an emotional decision indeed! Try emotionally tapping your prospect's interest. Get in their shoes to understand what instigates their interest and what makes them empowered. Is it better email marketing messages or SMS notifications, ad copies that prompt action? Remember if you fail to resonate emotionally, you ultimately fail

Here’s a case study from 125,000 prospective students about their goal levels.

 

Your prospect initiates an inquiry to your institution with so many aspirations in their mind, do you have enough ideas to motivate and inspire them? Follow the previous steps.

 

4. Create the hype in your graduates

 

Students don’t prefer hearing about your institutions from your mouth! But when it comes from other sources through student case studies, testimonials, events, recognitions, or awards, it adds to the credibility of your brand. When they see other students’ success, they get convinced better!

 

5. Beat the response time through Automation 

 

Today’s students expect a quick turnaround for their replies to their queries. Your admission marketing efforts are certain to go for a toss if you are unable to effectively connect with your prospects. Data experts affirm that the minimum response time your leads expect is 5 minutes or less, which may seem impossible, but not really. This target is achieved only by 7% of the surveyed companies by a study conducted by Drift.

But with Creatrix higher education CRM with built-in automation features to respond to queries, you get the chance of making your first connection the best! Following that is assigning inquiries to respective colleges’ admission teams, prioritizing certain leads, setting reminders, create scheduling for sending responses. Check out how our CRM automation can help by clicking here

 

To speed up the process, at Creatrix Campus the configurable world-best Workflow Builder that enables automation right from lead allotment to your reps to generating notifications about the lead activities, creating follow-ups as per the needs.

 

6. Active and flexible engagement strategy

The applicants you get are different. Do you have a flexible engagement strategy in mind for them? Today’s Gen Zs and Millennials are smart at evaluating the behind messages they get. They look for something personal that strikes a chord in their lives.

With higher education marketing automation you can solve this problem of personalizing at a large scale. You not only get to fetch your prospect’s backgrounds but track their behavior and sent engaging messages that are particularly segmented and unique, according to their stage in the enrollment funnel. This way of targeting the prospects in groups who belong to a similar background, location, engagement source, language preference makes a world of difference to your enrollment efforts.

 

7. Power your technology

It’s the world of technology now. College admission teams that don’t realize this will miss on their target!

When through technological automation you can reduce the time spent on analyzing and sampling, why not go for it? Again if you feel it is going to be too technical for your university or college, then you are mistaken. Technology these days come with easy plug-and-play models, which doesn’t take much of your infrastructure.

Recently they also come with autoresponders, enrollment notifications, chatbots to serve the applicants better. The best part, technology integrates with social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Mobile Apps, etc.

 

8. Try mobile application process

Create a mobile-friendly application process that is neatly designed with high responsiveness. This helps today’s prospects apply to their favorite college from any device.

This responsiveness would allow them to apply from any device, from anywhere, without affecting the user experience. This way of engaging will have a direct impact on your application and enrollment rates.

Try and plan your communication channels that are mobile compatible. Go for mobile-optimized emails too! Right from your website, application portal, contact forms, applicant portal, everything should be mobile compatible.

 

9. Make the most use of Enrollment Analytics

When there were times when enrollment marketing was only measured by either success or failure, now it is made even more clear. With admission and enrolment analytics, you can easily You can define the source of lead generation, the applicants’ drop-off points, their preferences, and take action accordingly.

You can then allocate your team in the right direction. With powerful reporting tools and dashboard functionalities, you can even analyze the performance of courses, team members, campuses.

 

Student Admission Software – The right move for successful Admissions and Enrollment

Enrolling students has become challenging. The situation is only going to get tougher in the days to come. It’s high time institutions move away from their traditional way of enrollment, which slows down the whole admission process.

A simple yet right solution is to automate the whole student enrollment process using technology, which helps in a quicker turnaround. Check out Creatrix higher education Student Admissions Management software which comes with a portal for applicants, built-in messaging, lead sorting, lead nourishing tools, in short, complete student workflow automation.

To manage student lifecycle thoroughly integrate our Admissions Management Software with Student Information System and simplify the whole inquiry to application and enrollment process. Contact Creatrix to learn ways to increase college admissions now!