Enhancing University Enrolment By Personalizing the Student Journey

Introduction

The drastic decline in student enrolment rates in 2023 and 2024 led 41 universities across the United States to shut down permanently. 

Experts at EAB, a leading insight-driven solution provider for higher education institutes, predict a continuing decline in enrolment. By 2030, 449 colleges are projected to experience a 25% drop in enrolment, with 182 colleges facing a 50% decline. 

The situation is expected to worsen by 2040, with 566 colleges seeing a 25% decline and 247 colleges enduring a 50% decline.

The most prominent reasons why universities are expected to continue facing these challenges are:

• A lack of clarity on the entire student admissions journey
• An inability to understand and cater to student challenges across stages
• No strategy to improve outreach based on student interaction data

Implementing an AI-driven Customer Data platform (CDP) to personalize student experience across diverse touchpoints will help boost student enrolment.

Discover how your institution can use a personalized student nurture plan to boost enrolment in part 2 of this three-part series.

Why Student Nurturing Is Important

Nurturing strategies across different industries are known to facilitate over 50% increase in sales-ready prospects. 

In higher education, student nurturing strategies can help:

• Generate deeper insights into student requirements across different stages

• Personalize communication to leave a lasting impression
• Provide data for optimizing outreach campaigns for improved engagement 

All of this will eventually ensure more students move down the admissions funnel and ultimately enroll.  

But the question remains; how does one craft an effective nurturing strategy to keep students hooked? 

Effective Nurture Strategies To Boost Student Enrolment

Employ the following nurture strategies across the student journey to boost enrolment.

1. Map the Student Admission Journey

2. Personalize Communication across channels

3. Leverage Predictive Analytics

Map The Student Admission Journey

The first step is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire student journey, from initial awareness to enrolment.

Diverse student groups demand that institutes identify core student motivations and tailor their offerings accordingly. This can only be achieved by effectively leveraging different digital touchpoints. 

Prospective student interactions, like the following, are important sources for gauging potential.

• Navigating websites to discover different courses
• Learning about faculty accomplishments 
• Engaging with alumni experiences
• Signing up for regular newsletters
• Clicking on digital ads 
• Engaging with social media polls
• Showcasing interest in attending physical and virtual tours 

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Lytics can aggregate data from these different interaction sources to create unified student profiles that are a holistic representation of their interests.

Lytics also facilitates continuous data synchronization to ensure that student profiles stay up-to-date. This helps universities continually refine their outreach and communication strategies to meet the changing interests of students.

Personalizing Communication Across Channels

Once a holistic understanding of student interests has been acquired, the next step is to personalize student experiences. 

Students actively seek authenticity that is devoid of generic fluff. Personalized communication, therefore, remains at the core of any good student nurturing strategy. 

How Ferris State University Boosted Website CTR By 2800% With Personalization

Officials at the Ferris State University identified that GenZ students expect personalized experiences from universities.

They implemented website personalization to guide students through the lead, inquiry, and final application stages of the admissions journey. This led to: 

• 115% increase in CTR for potential leads
• 66.67% increase in CTR for inquiries
• 2798% increase in CTR for applications

Further, the content was personalized using geotargeting capabilities to specifically cater to out-of-state students. This led to a much larger application pool. 

The Lytics CDP can help achieve similar outcomes by:

• Implementing inline personalization for websites 
• Crafting and executing personalized ads 
• Running personalized email remarketing campaigns

Leverage Predictive Analytics

Managing a large number of student visitors and potential leads can make it challenging for universities to prioritize them. It's crucial to determine each student's stage in the application journey, their likelihood of engaging with a marketing campaign, and the best way to guide them forward.

Leveraging Predictive Analytics to accurately score potential student leads can help do this efficiently. Lead scoring involves assigning numeric values to each prospective student to determine communication that would best suit their requirements. 

How Georgia State University Increased its Revenue by $22 Million With Predictive Analytics

In 2012, Georgia State University adopted predictive analytics to better support its students. By tracking 800 risk factors for over 40,000 students, they facilitated 90,000 interventions in just one year. These timely interventions, prompted by early alerts, helped students avoid costly mistakes and stay on course.

Since implementing predictive analytics, Georgia State University has seen a 7% increase in graduation rates, saving students $18 million in tuition and fees.

For every 1% increase in retention, the university's revenue grew by $3.18 million.

This approach significantly benefited low-income and first-generation students, leading to a 103% increase in bachelor's degrees awarded to African-American students.

Important Metrics For Lead Scoring

Lead scoring accounts for a number of behavioral metrics, including:

• The number of site visits

• Average time spent on a particular course or faculty page
• The number of clicks to sign up for a newsletter, view events, consume content, or to perform other important actions on the website

• Open-rate for emails sent
• Click-through rate for various links included in different email campaigns

Lytics uses Machine Learning (ML) to evaluate behaviors, demographics, and engagement patterns. It assigns scores based on the likelihood of prospective students applying or enrolling. 

This allows universities to prioritize high-potential leads, tailor communications, and allocate resources more effectively.

Analyzing And Optimizing Campaign Performance

The Lytics CDP is well-equipped to capture real-time data and provide detailed analytics on the effectiveness of different campaigns and touchpoints. This enables users to:

•  Analyze Student Journeys: Universities can track key metrics such as email open rates, website engagement, and application conversions to identify strategies that have worked and areas for improvement. 
• A/B testing: A/B tests can be run successfully on different messages and touchpoints to analyze what works best. 

Here’s What You Should Do

To effectively address the challenges of declining student enrolment and enhance your institution's admissions process:

• Implement A Customer Data Platform (CDP):: Leverage a robust CDP like Lytics to collect and unify data from various student interactions. This will help you create detailed student profiles and keep them updated in real-time.
• Map The Student Journey: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the student journey from initial awareness to enrolment. Identify key touchpoints and motivations to tailor your offerings.
• Personalize Communication: Use the insights from the CDP to deliver personalized communications across different channels. This will create a more authentic and engaging experience for prospective students.
• Utilize Predictive Analytics: Implement predictive analytics to score potential leads, prioritize high-potential students, and tailor your outreach strategies accordingly.
• Continuously Optimize Campaigns: Analyze the performance of your outreach campaigns using real-time data. Conduct A/B testing to refine your messaging and strategies for better engagement and conversion.

By following these steps, you can enhance your student nurturing efforts and boost enrolment, ensuring a more sustainable future for your institution.

Need more help in boosting your student enrolment?

The experts at Axelerant can help.

Schedule a call to know how.