THREAD: Talked with a pair of colleges today that are finishing up year two of partnering with us. Both are still very close to being on track as of April 21 to hit their enrollment goals for the fall. Still have a ways to go, but here are some of the big reasons why. #EMchat

For context, both are small private colleges and they haven’t had to get crazy with their discount or admit rates. And when I say they partner with us, that includes ongoing staff training and ongoing enrollment communication work.

Their communication with the Class of 2020 started last summer when that group was juniors and has remained consistent throughout. The mediums used are a mix of everything - email, direct mail, phone calls, texting, and minimal social media mainly because of their bandwidth.

Their recruiting strategy is much more relational than transactional. Just about every single communication we create for them comes from the admissions counselors, feels personal, and tells a story and offer value points that are based off data/surveys from current students.

Each communication tries to engage the reader (prospective student or parent) through the language and tone used. There is a separate stream of messages each month specific to parents. When the reader engages, the counselors understand how to keep the conversation moving forward.

Two of the biggest ways the counselors are able to do that is through asking intentional questions and consistently leading the conversation. Doing that helps them figure out the how, why and what - how are they feeling, why haven’t they taken the next step, what do they need.

Consistently doing those things reiterates how important a student or parent is, and it makes them feel like they counselor is making the process about their wants and needs. That then allows students to understand why taking the next step makes sense and no need to delay.

Does every student/parent engage? Not even close, but this strategy gets much higher levels of engagement/action than most colleges/universities can create on their own. It also allows students to figure out faster when its not a good fit which actually benefits the counselors.

In turn this allows the counselors to manage their territories more effectively & efficiently. They have another measure of true interest & can focus their efforts on those “hand raisers” while ongoing comms try to generate even more interest/action from students at other stages.

Here are a few other key things that both of these colleges do well that has contributed to positive results: They have embraced phone calls (even though most of their counselors dislike them significantly). They understand the value of calls and how to get students to answer.

They understand how to effectively use texting to do things like set up calls, alert students to emails being sent & remind them of important things; They aren’t afraid to pivot when it makes sense; Leadership overcommunicates with their team & their team feels valued/supported.

Leadership also understands that they work for their team not the other way around. They also do a great job of over communicating with our team and other campus partners like their visit team, MarCom, and fin. aid; Both admissions teams have also had little to no staff turnover.

I’m sharing these things not to brag, but because I’m proud of the hard work of both our team & everyone at both colleges. Achieving goals isn’t easy it takes a ton of hard work. We are partners & we are committed to being in this together. Plus seeing people grow is so much fun!

If you made it to this last tweet in the thread hopefully you can take something I shared and make it work for you/your team. I’m always up for taking more about anything I shared. DMs are open or you can email me: [email protected] I’m here for you #EMchat

**In the third tweet when I said their communication with the Class of 2020 started in the summer when they were juniors what it should have said is those communications started during the summer right before their junior year. Wanted to make the correction after rereading.