Key Takeaways:
- Personalized, timely, and relevant communication is key to engaging prospective students and meeting enrollment goals in higher education.
- Effective strategies rely on immediacy, relevance, automation, and trackability, ensuring impactful and consistent interactions.
- Omnichannel outreach, using a mix of email, SMS, print, and digital platforms, enhances visibility and builds trust by meeting students where they are.
- Data-driven tools enable tailored, personalized communication, real-time adjustments, and sustainable strategies.
Connecting with prospective undergraduate students in meaningful ways requires a thoughtful blend of strategy, immediacy, and personalization. Gone are the days when generic messaging could effectively spark interest or drive engagement. Today’s prospective students expect communications that reflect an understanding of their individual needs, aspirations, and priorities and their value to your institution.
Institutions aiming to enhance their enrollment strategies must adopt a more data-informed and strategic approach to communication. This means reaching out with the right message, at the right time, and through the right channels.
Laying the Foundation for Communication Success
Effective communication with students is built on four key principles: immediacy, relevance, automation, and trackability. Each element plays a critical role in ensuring that interactions resonate with students and influence their decision-making process.
- Immediacy: Quick and timely responses that change as students’ behaviors change demonstrate attentiveness and can make a significant impression on prospective students. Delays in following up on inquiries or campus visits risk the loss of momentum and interest. Statistics show that the school that responds to inquiries first is more likely to convince that student to enroll.
- Relevance: Tailored, personalized communication should go beyond basic name inclusion. Students expect messages that address their specific interests. Misaligned content, such as sending information unrelated to a student’s expressed major, can quickly undermine trust.
- Automation: Streamlined, automated workflows keep communication consistent and dependable, even during staff transitions or times of high demand. Manual processes, such as college fair follow-ups that sit unprocessed for long periods, can derail engagement. Automation prevents these bottlenecks, enabling timely responses even when staff are unavailable.
- Trackability: Monitoring communication effectiveness helps institutions refine their strategies and optimize ROI.
By integrating these principles, higher education institutions can deliver a cohesive and impactful communication strategy that strengthens student engagement and builds trust.
The Importance of Omnichannel Outreach
While email has long been—and remains—a cornerstone of communication, relying on it exclusively is no longer sufficient. The sheer volume of emails students receive daily makes it easy for even the most well-crafted messages to be overlooked. To stand out, institutions must adopt an omnichannel approach with campaigns that combine email with print materials, SMS messaging, voice blasts, digital ads, social media engagement, and microsites, all tailored to student interests.
Each channel serves a unique purpose for student engagement in higher education. Print materials, for example, are particularly effective at involving families in the decision-making process. A well-designed brochure placed on a kitchen table can spark conversations among family members, especially parents, who are often key influencers in the college selection process.
Similarly, integrating consistent, tailored messaging across multiple channels ensures that students receive a seamless experience. Whether they encounter an institution on social media, via a targeted ad, by SMS message, or through an email campaign, the message should feel cohesive and tailored to their interests. Omnichannel strategies, timed appropriately through the enrollment timeline, not only improve visibility but also demonstrate an institution’s commitment to meeting students where they are, thus building trust and rapport.
Leveraging Data for Personalization
Modern communication strategies must be rooted in data. By analyzing student preferences and behaviors, institutions can craft messages that resonate on an individual level. With data-informed insights, institutions can identify what matters most to prospective students—whether that’s career outcomes, financial aid, or specific academic opportunities—and address those priorities directly.
For example, students interested in STEM programs may be more receptive to communications highlighting research opportunities and faculty expertise, while first-generation students may appreciate messages emphasizing affordability and support services.
To further maximize impact, institutions can use surveys and initial engagement data to tailor their outreach strategies, which allows them to deploy resources efficiently while maintaining relevance. For example, expensive print materials can be reserved for students who show strong interest in particular programs, while a social media campaign may be more appropriate for inquiries earlier in the enrollment cycle.
Real-time data tracking lets institutions segment their strategies dynamically. If a particular campaign underperforms across the board or for certain cohorts of students, modifications can be made immediately to better align with student preferences. This agility is essential for maintaining relevance and impact throughout the recruitment cycle.
Building a Sustainable Communication Infrastructure
Sustainable communication strategies rely on the integration of advanced tools and technologies. While a customer relationship management (CRM) system lays a strong foundation, institutions often need more specialized solutions to elevate their outreach efforts. Liaison offers a suite of products designed to enhance and streamline communication and enrollment strategies, including:
- Enrollment Marketing (EM): Liaison’s EM software and marketing services help institutions manage and analyze personalized, automated omnichannel campaigns, ensuring consistent and effective messaging across multiple channels.
- Othot: This AI-driven tool leverages predictive and prescriptive analytics to optimize communication strategies and enrollment decisions, tailoring outreach to align with student behavior and institutional goals.
- Centralized Application Service (CAS): By simplifying the admissions process for students and providing institutions with tools for marketing, data management, and application processing, CAS supports efficient communication with applicants.
By incorporating these technologies, along with Liaison’s CRMs, institutions can maintain a seamless and unified communication flow so that prospective students receive timely, relevant, and personalized messages. These solutions also allow institutions to monitor campaign performance and adjust strategies in real-time, maximizing the effectiveness of resources and making messaging more impactful for target audiences. This integration reduces reliance on fragmented workflows, preventing gaps or delays caused by disconnected platforms.
Aligning tools and strategies across departments using Liaison’s technologies keeps messaging consistent and impactful, even as prospective students engage with multiple touchpoints throughout their journey.
Achieving Long-Term Engagement
Effective communication with students is about building relationships that extend beyond the initial stages of recruitment. Institutions that invest in understanding and addressing the unique needs of their prospective students position themselves as partners in their academic journey.
By delivering personalized, timely, and relevant messages through multiple channels, institutions can foster deeper connections and enhance student engagement in higher education. As the competitive landscape of enrollment continues to shift, adopting a strategic and data-informed approach to communication will remain essential for success.
Ready to elevate your communication strategies? Discover how Liaison’s advanced tools and technologies can transform how you connect with prospective students. From personalized, omnichannel campaigns to data-driven insights, our solutions help you engage students meaningfully and meet your enrollment goals. Contact us today to learn more.
About the Author
Craig Cornell is the Vice President for Enrollment Strategy at Liaison. In that capacity, he oversees a team of enrollment strategists and brings best practices, consultation, and data trends to campuses across the country in all things enrollment management. Craig also serves as the dedicated resource to NASH (National Association of Higher Education Systems) and works closely with the higher education system that Liaison supports. Before joining Liaison in 2023, Craig served for over 30 years in multiple higher education executive enrollment management positions. During his tenure, the campuses he served often received national recognition for enrollment growth, effective financial aid leveraging, marketing enhancements, and innovative enrollment strategies.