Three Cues is a free electronic newsletter focusing on items taken from GDA Integrated Services' College & University Environmental Scanning (CUES) and our research. Unlike most higher education newsletters, Three CUES often looks beyond news about colleges and universities to review greater social and marketing trends and offers observations and recommendations concerning each topic. To subscribe to Three Cues, please send an e-mail request to gdais@dehne.com.
Summer 2011 Edition:
Is Student Search Dead as We Know It?
We hear it all the time: traditional direct mail search is dying, if not dead. Over the past 10 years, that flood of reply cards that used to overwhelm data entry staffs has dwindled to a trickle. Double digit response rates have dropped to 2%. How can a college justify the expense of a traditional search mailing when it no longer results in a substantial increase in the prospect pool? What about all those great, free social media options? Why write a search letter when you can Tweet?
As a higher education marketing firm devoted to helping its client invest their resources in the recruitment strategies that work best, GDA has pondered these questions. We asked ourselves if diverting the resources to a social media initiative or a stronger Web presence or virtually anything other than traditional search would not make more sense. And, if we were to simply rely on our gut reactions, we would probably counsel colleges to consider these or other alternatives to search.
However, luckily we and our clients don’t have to rely on gut reactions and ponderings. GDA Integrated Services is a research-based firm that has always built its marketing strategies on what our market research tells us about how students select colleges. We survey between 30-40,000 college-bound students each year – by telephone, the most accurate and in-depth method – and ask them directly, “What is important to you? What kind of information do you want to receive from colleges? How do you want to receive it?”
As a result of this ongoing research, we have accumulated a huge amount of data. And we decided we should review our research and listen to what students have told us about search, instead of heeding our collective institutional gut.
What the research tells us
Visibility is absolutely critical to the college recruitment process.
- Students are far more likely to open search letters or e-mails from a college they have already heard of. (This is especially true in secondary and tertiary markets.)
- Students believe prestige is automatically attached to a college that is well known.
- Name recognition, even if it is limited to the student’s immediate geographic area, gives a college a “brand name.” A student feels far more confident choosing a college that is well known in the local area than an unknown college. This is true even if the unfamiliar college is of higher quality and even quite possibly a better fit than the local one.
- There are two primary reasons students will open unsolicited admission material from a college: 1. they immediately recognize the name, and 2. the college is located in a geographic area they are considering.
- Last (and certainly not news), self-initiated inquiries are far more likely to enroll at a college. However, in order to initiate an inquiry, they must first know about the college.
Direct mail is the most cost effective way a college can gain visibility.
- Advertising, the traditional means of building visibility for many products and services, is outrageously expensive to execute correctly and effectively. Even if it were cheap, less than 3% of traditional college bound students tell us they became interested in a college they first heard about through media advertising; including radio, TV, newspapers and billboards. And, by definition, mass media does not give you an option for zeroing in on your target market.
- When it comes to recruiting students the direct mail lists provided by the College Board, ACT, NRCCUA and CBSS are still the gold standard. No other lists are available from any other sources, at any price that allow colleges to target their mailings so precisely.
Direct mail as a visibility tool should not be a stand-alone marketing technique.
- Our research shows that colleges that do direct mail in concert with a repositioning “branding” initiative, a word-of-mouth marketing campaign, or a service marketing campaign at secondary schools have better responses and develop a much stronger “buzz” of interest in the college. Direct mail simply helps to cement the message.
Just because students aren’t responding in measurable ways to search, doesn’t mean they aren’t receiving your messages.
- In every survey we have done, between 45% and 55% of college bound students say they became interested in a college based on an unsolicited letter.
- Another 19% to 24% tell us that they became interested in a college after receiving an unsolicited e-mail.
- Between 18% and 25% of college bound students tell us that they are enrolling at a college they first heard about from an unsolicited direct mail appeal.
- When asked how they typically respond to an unsolicited direct mail appeal, 90% to 95% say they go directly to the college’s Website to learn more.
- However 48% to 60% tell us that they completed and returned a reply form to at least one college that sent them an unsolicited mailing.
- All those first source applications that come out of the blue are frequently late search responses. Colleges that have cut back their searches in certain geographic areas have found that the number of first source applications declines from those areas.
Research-based search strategies
Use your search letter to brand your college. Simply sending multiple letters and e-mails expressing interest in the student is not marketing.
- Multiple print and e-mail hits to the search pool might catch students’ attention and they may even end up filing on-line applications, but it is very expensive and responders rarely become seriously interested in the college. Granted, this strategy often increases responses and adds to your prospect pool. But these ‘soft inquiries’ have a poor conversion rate to enrolled students and the cost to service them during the course of the admission cycle is significant.
- Distinctive messaging is the key to generating search inquiries that convert at a higher rate to enrolled students -- messages that catch students’ attention and help them learn about the specific advantages a particular college offers them. Yes, fewer will respond, but those who do are genuinely interested and more likely to convert. They are the ones you need to focus on.
- Students who respond to well crafted, unsolicited direct mail through traditional venues should be considered hot prospects and treated accordingly in the college recruitment process. They are actually going to far more trouble to make contact with a college than those who simply hit the button to submit a Common Application one more time.
- When a student does respond to a search mailing, it is absolutely critical to respond to that student as quickly as possible, with a piece that reinforces your initial messages. Don’t procrastinate – students have short attention spans and you want to keep the conversation going before their attention is distracted by a competitor.
Make sure your Website reinforces the messages introduced by your direct mail program.
- Given that students are more likely to go to the Web than to use traditional search response mechanisms, it is important for colleges to have a well thought out, effective, welcoming home page. Your value proposition and key positioning statements should be front and center on the admissions landing page. Don’t make students have to look for key messages – because they won’t.
- Use links to short single message mini-Websites or videos to amplify the message you want initial responders to receive.
- Don’t forget to give students a reason to complete your Web response form and make sure the Web response form is easy to find.
You would be amazed how many potential serious prospects who have resources to afford your college are in your search non-responder pool.
- Each year, GDA Integrated Services clients enroll double and triple digit numbers of students from their search non-responder lists -- students who did not respond to any print or e-mail search solicitations. We run non-responder lists through our regression analysis based predictor model and pull out those who predict to be interested in the college. These high predictors are then placed into the college’s prospect file and treated like any other good prospect.
- If a client is concerned about student need for financial aid, the high predictors -- or even the entire inquiry pool -- can be run through the GDAIS “ability to pay” analysis and given a rating.
For the last three years, one of our clients has consistently enrolled five times as many first source predictor students as first source search. That’s making great use of a search list at a time when admission professionals are thinking search no longer works!
To discuss how GDA Integrated Services can help you with your student search efforts, contact Topher Small or Bob Campagnuolo at 860-388-3958.
To Grow or Not to Grow? That Is the Enrollment Question.
While declines in enrollment – which are at the forefront of everyone’s minds right now – can be devastating for tuition-dependent institutions, a recent article “In Tough Times, Some Colleges Decide They Are Big Enough” by Scott Carlson in the May 22nd edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, illustrates the pitfalls of uncontrolled growth and growth for growth’s sake, as well as the difficulties in finding the right balance of sustainable growth.
The increased debt that comes with expanding the facilities, programs and staff necessary to ramp up for growth is made all the more complicated by rising costs, changing demographics, and a troubled economy that is making it difficult for colleges to raise money and is eroding the earning power of many families.
Before taking on additional debt, we recommend that you conduct a comprehensive analysis that:
- Reviews your institution’s academic offerings to determine which have the best potential to attract a greater number of students and which are likely to sustain enrollment or actually decline.
- Considers low-cost academic programs that are organic to your institution but that can also attract new students and contribute immediately to the net revenue.
- Develops “packaging” options of current academic and out-of-class activities that will attract students who would not necessarily attend otherwise. For example, does your institution have the opportunity to “package” current activities into a Professional Development Certificate? Are you effectively promoting the opportunity to major in two fields, one of the fastest growing areas for private colleges?
- Helps determine new academic and out-of-class activities that have the potential for attracting new students while not necessarily being difficult to provide. Does available research about your inquiring students suggest a need for a special program for students who have not decided on a major field? Would a combined five-year bachelor’s and master’s degree work at your institution?
- Analyses competitors inside and outside your region to determine the academic fields, student services activities, and even sports where your institution can more successfully compete for college-bound students.
- Reviews regional forecasts for job openings for the college-educated workforce and compares current course offerings to the region’s employment demands.
- Examines your institution’s three- to five-year enrollment trends by major discipline (e.g., science and math, social sciences, business, etc.) as well as reviewing historical persistence rates by class year, major, demographic background (women, students of color), financial aid, and distance from home.
- Assesses your student recruitment operation to determine if it can effectively handle a greater volume of students, and includes an operations evaluation as well as a review to ensure your admissions operation is budgeted for growth.
- Identifies what staffing and resources are necessary to meet academic and support service needs to accommodate growth in enrollment without compromising your institution’s mission and ethos.
- Evaluates the physical plant and facilities to determine if your institution has the capacity to increase enrollment and, if so, what changes and additions may be needed.
GDA has conducted comprehensive Enrollment Growth Feasibility and Advisability Studies over the years. Our analysis, suggestions and recommended best practices have helped many of our clients make informed and strategic decisions about whether or not to grow.
Our study and resulting report will include:
- Feasibility of increasing enrollment and what growth the institution can rightfully expect
- Advisability of increasing enrollment and by how much
- Projections of enrollment growth by current major fields and new academic programs
- Projection of enrollment growth by “repackaging” or adjusting current activities
- Projection of cost for each new program or program enhancement
- Recommendations for meeting all the projections
For more information about GDA’s Enrollment Growth Feasibility and Advisability Study, contact George Dehne at 843-971-9088.