Three CUES is GDA Integrated Services’ free electronic newsletter. In each edition, we focus on only three items taken from our College & University Environmental Scanning (CUES) and our GDAIS research. Unlike most higher education newsletters, Three CUES often looks beyond news about colleges and universities to review greater social and marketing trends. Produced on a regular basis, Three CUES not only provides information, but also offers observations and recommendations concerning each topic.
Spring 2008 Edition:
Now Is the Time to Take a Yield Inventory
No one can predict how the uncertain economic times – housing crunch, credit-lending squeeze, rising fuel costs, increased inflation and the recent developments in the student loan market – will affect student yield. Regardless of whether or not your applications and deposits are up or down, now is the time to take a “Yield Inventory” to help ensure you convert the requisite number of applicants to enrolled students.
While the Yield Inventory described below is designed for the admitted and deposited applicant stages of the student recruitment cycle, you can also follow similar exercises for other groups, such as prospective students who have been accepted but have not deposited and students who have not completed their applicant files – but who appear to meet the college/university admissions criteria
Qualification of admitted applicants
The first step is to qualify your pool of admitted applicants, especially if the number of admitted applicants is very large, so that you can target and segment into tiers for more effective follow-up. For example, can admitted applicants be “qualified” and “ranked” according to the quality (and number) of their contacts with your institution, and, if desirable, according to quality indicators such as standardized test scores, out-of-state residency, ethnically underrepresented populations, etc.?
Next, based on these rankings, your admissions staff should adopt some or all of the tactics described below and fine-tune your processes by addressing the issues and questions listed under each one.
Direct Mail (including electronic mail):
List the sequence of all mailings (including emails) for the accepted/admitted stage of the student recruitment cycle and ask the following questions:
For financial aid mailings, how are the various mailings and communications relating to financial aid issues and questions coordinated with admissions office mailings and communications? Does each office know the mailing schedule of the other office?
And, does all correspondence suggest a “next step” or a “call to action” on the part of the prospective student, and do the mailings contain a postage-paid business reply card for easy reply?
Telecounseling/Telerecruiting:
The telephone is one of the most effective tools that you can use in the recruiting process and should be utilized at this stage to further personalize your relationship with the prospective student.
How are students’ questions about financial aid or scholarships handled?
Yield Publications:
Are you utilizing yield publications? They can help reinforce the student’s decision and get them excited about being part of the college community. Some ideas for yield publications include:
Yield Receptions:
Many times, one more visit to campus or a face-to-face meeting may be needed to persuade the student. What off-campus and on-campus informal events are planned to help deposited students solidify their college choice? What is the role of current students, alumni, friends of the college, or administrative staff in these receptions?
“Hand-off” of deposited students to other campus departments:
Streamlining the process to help ensure that the prospective student has a positive experience at all touch points can be the deciding factor.
If you have any questions or would like a more detailed Yield Checklist, please email us at gdais@dehne.com. You can also contact Topher Small at topher@dehne.com or 860-388-3958.
Deloitte's State of the Media Democracy Survey provides some excellent insights into how Millennials communicate. It conclusively finds they are adopting and using new media faster than other age groups. While it is important to note that they are embracing the latest communication technologies, the key to getting through to Millennials depends more on letting them spread the word for you through their own channels. This is because word of mouth is still the most important factor to cementing a brand in their minds (and don't forget GDA’s research shows word of mouth is still the number one way in which enrolling students first hear about the college of their choice). They trust each other more than they trust what you try to tell them, so any marketing effort is only as good as who is forwarding it.
As Millennials build social networks to communicate with one another, it becomes an online version of word-of-mouth marketing meets viral marketing. These technologies and online social networks are really just facilitating a system of personal endorsements. If you or your institution tries to co-opt their social networks directly, it's seen as an invasion of their turf.
Therefore, colleges should focus their marketing time and resources on the creation of informative and engaging content. If you have good stories to tell, make sure you tell them well and that they are easy to share. Millennials will take over from there; they will do a much more effective job of spreading your stories and messages among themselves than you could trying to place them where you think they will look. As an institution, you can do quite a bit to facilitate how Millennials spread the word, but the most effective marketing messages should be informative and engaging enough that they will want to share it within their personal networks and start new conversations among themselves.
Here are some key findings from the Deloitte survey:
To discuss strategies and tactics for communicating with Millennials, contact Jonathan Steele at jonathan@dehne.com or 617-395-8330. You can also contact Topher Small at topher@dehne.com or 860-388-3958. More on the Deloitte survey is available on their website.
Get the Best Out of the Millennials on Your Admissions Staff
For small colleges with low visibility, personal one-to-one communication is the most effective form of marketing. Successful recruiters typically make contact with prospects, listen to the student’s interests and concerns and align these with the features and strengths of the college. The relationship that develops out of this conversation and subsequent contacts will typically be among the most important elements in the student’s final decision to enroll.
Ideally, to attain this level of success, you will need a bright, highly motivated, independent, well-trained, and stable admissions staff – consisting of a well-balanced mix of seasoned veterans and youthful, enthusiastic entry-level employees – with personal responsibilities and accountability as well as clear career paths. However, as Millennials begin to fill a great deal of the entry-level positions, many employers have not been impressed with the abilities or the work ethic of this generation.
To help you get the best performance out of the Millennials on your staff, here is an overview of six lessons that Carol Philips, who teaches college marketing courses, wrote about in an Advertising Age article entitled “Get the Best Out of Millennials by Tweaking Habits”:
1. Eliminate Ambiguity: Millennials are goal-oriented; they focus on what it takes to meet expectations and then work toward the goal. The downside is that they don’t tolerate a change in direction once they get started. The key here is to set clear goals and timelines – and resist modifying them.
2. Think of Time as a 24/7 Resource: Flexibility is important to Millennials; they view time as a 24-hour resource and have developed the time management skills to achieve a comfortable work-life balance. Therefore, focus on results, not process. Tell them when it's due, not when to do it.
3. Combine Work with Play: Millennials are collaborative, take advantage of social networks and come to view many of the people they work with as friends. As a result, they are likely to continue the dialog on work-related projects with colleagues outside of the office setting and long after the traditional 9 to 5 workday, which tends to blur the lines between work and play. So, allow Millennials to form their own work teams when possible.
4. Make It Worthwhile: Menial work is not a high priority for Millennials; they like to be challenged and are confident, perhaps overly so, in their abilities to handle complex tasks. Assign them tough problems, not just the ones you think they can handle.
5. Handle With Care: Millennials are an anxious bunch and take everything very seriously. They need to know how they are doing, but many – having grown up in an environment of positive re-enforcement – aren’t able to handle negative criticism very well. Therefore, it’s important to use criticism sparingly and frame feedback positively.
6. Play to Their Strengths: Millennials are technically savvy multitaskers, have positive, socially responsible attitudes and have a truly global perspective. By giving Millennials the freedom to follow their interests, you may be surprised at what they achieve.
GDA has experienced mentors who can work with your admission staff in group or one-on-one settings. To find out more, contact Topher Small at topher@dehne.com or 860-388-3958.
