By Dr. Tom Green, Ph.D., Director of Strategic Enrollment Management, Salesforce
Enrollment managers are probably the last ones who need to be reminded of the headwinds facing higher education today. Faltering confidence in the value of a degree, shrinking high school graduate pools, smaller community college enrollments, stretched budgets, and record discounting rates are just the regular morning news today. These facts haven’t released the pressure to grow, grow, grow, and do so with ever-increasing metrics of student quality. In these headwinds, however, there are some very promising emerging technologies that may mitigate or even defy them.
Two shifts in approach are helpful as the starting point to understanding the opportunities and tools that are in front of us today. The first is a shift in focus on the main recruiting targets, at least for most colleges and universities. The decrease
in high school graduates in nearly every state has not resulted in smaller entering classes at public flagships or top private universities, leaving a disproportionately smaller pool of students for everyone else. We are seeing what Nathan Grawe predicted
would come to pass as these shifts occurred. The booming potential market is not high school graduates but the “some degree, no college” population that now approaches 40 million Americans (plus nearly as many working adults with no postsecondary
history). While we often talk about serving adult learners, it has (for most schools) been a sidebar to the main event of high school graduates.
The second shift comes in the ways that we can reach our audiences – traditional, adult learner, graduate, and international. They are market-savvy and not willing to cough up their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to just anyone. The significant
drop in test-takers for both ACT and SAT exams means significantly fewer names will be available to start the conversation, especially for those institutions that may be less well-known to college-bound high school students. Higher education has long
competed for the attention of its audiences. It is now urgent that it rebalance historical tactics of list purchase and outreach activities to competitive digital marketing techniques used by companies to target those same people. List purchase, college
fairs, and high school visits still have their place, but sophisticated digital marketing and communications must become more dominant.
So what new or improved tools can help enrollment managers mitigate the headwinds and make these shifts in approach? Three tools hold great promise.
- The first is omnichannel marketing. This integrated approach ties together digital communications, digital advertising, and user preferences and behaviors. While many institutions buy some digital keyword advertising, pay for placement,
run a few social media campaigns, send emails to prospects, text/SMS, etc., these are multichannel, at best, using multiple channels to send messages, hoping to reach key audiences on one or more of those channels. Omnichannel unifies all advertising
and communications into a single “pane of truth” about how and when prospective students engage with the institution, which campaigns are working for which audiences, which channels are working to deliver those messages, and shifting
advertising resources and messages to optimize the source, channel, and preferences of each key audience. This is especially important for institutions with small advertising budgets, where finding the right mix is critically important and there
is little room for error.
- The second tool is the intelligent chatbot. These newest versions far exceed the capabilities of older models that provided limited responses and options for users. They have the security and interaction with institutional systems
to authenticate a user, provide real-time status information from application records and data, refer students to knowledge articles or other resources on your website, and more. These are helpful resources for any audience, given the preponderance
of students who work today, but especially helpful in reaching adult learners, graduate, and international audiences, or any student who may need to gain important information outside the hours when a live agent or office may be available. They
also help make staff more effective in their work. Their enhanced ability to answer routine questions, even to include specific information from the student’s record (Did we receive that transcript? Is my balance paid?) means that staff
can spend more time with students who need that distinctly human touch or fall into the smaller number of questions that can’t (yet) be handled by an intelligent chatbot..
- The third tool is, not surprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI). Its ability to supercharge marketing is somewhat established but blossoming into new uses. Using neural network approaches to data analysis, paired with today’s
lightning computing speeds, AI can run thousands of models in a fraction of a second, then determine the model that best fits the data. Which campaign is producing the best results for prospects in Arkansas? Which “channel” does each
student prefer and can I optimize the messages to flow to that preferred channel? Send-time optimization analyzes when we are most likely to open our email, then places the message into the inbox about a minute before, so that it sits right on
top! These are just some existing abilities of AI; work is underway to allow it to draft marketing messages, knowledge articles, and other content using natural language understanding, which has made significant advances.
When used to enhance predictive modeling, AI can provide much richer and more nuanced information. How likely is this admitted student to enroll, based on all the data about past prospects and applicants, and the real-time data about the current pool?
More importantly, what actions could a counselor suggest to raise that likelihood?
To be certain, AI comes with some critical caveats. It should never be used unattended or without regard to how it may treat certain data, or without regard for the sources of its information. It cannot discern truth from fiction. Like any predictive
scoring, it can emphasize those historical enrollment patterns at our institution and without the governance of the data it uses, reduce scores for students who historically have not been represented in higher education, or who have experienced equity
gaps, once enrolled. Learning more about how AI works is important for all enrollment managers today. Likely, you will be called to lead (or may have to bring light to) discussions and actions on how AI will be ethically applied to enrollment
work at your institution.
AI is only as powerful as the data it can use in its models, which compels institutions to integrate data across disparate systems and sources. This has always been a challenge; there will be a new urgency to solve integration issues as AI pushes further
into practice. Institutions that can integrate data across systems will have a significant advantage in enrollment strategy and practice. Be assured that there are new, rather amazing tools for those, as well.
In the coming years, we must be laser-focused on reaching our key audiences/enrollment target groups and with crisp precision deliver the right messages that resonate with each group. The competition for their attention is fierce but with sharper arrows
in our quiver, we can cut through the noise and hit the bullseye much more frequently. Once we succeed there, we must then offer an outstanding digital experience that can engage and hold their attention over the weeks and months or even years (for
adult learners) of recruitment efforts. These tools can help enrollment managers compete effectively in a challenging market and turn headwinds into tailwinds.
To hear more about how new tools are helping enrollment managers battle the headwinds facing higher education today, register for the upcoming webinar: New Tools for Student Recruitment: AI, Marketing Automation, Predictive Analytics, and More on Thursday, June 8, 2023, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time.