By Jeremy Tiers, Senior Director of Admissions Services
2 minute read
Last week I had a conversation with a Director of Admissions who we’ve partnered with before on staff training and always asks good questions.
She wanted my help in figuring out why a recent email campaign to their admitted students wasn’t successful.
According to ongoing Tudor Collegiate Strategies research, ‘student outcomes after graduation’ remains one of the four most important decision-making factors for this generation.
Knowing that information, the Director worked with her college’s marketing and advising teams to connect with recent alums (two years or less) and asked if they would be willing to speak with admitted students interested in a similar major about the path to their career and how different people at the college helped them get there.
The majority of alums were on board so the admissions office sent out an email to their admits (as well as some of their top junior inquiries), asking if they were interested in having that conversation. Very few took them up on the offer.
I told the Director her idea was great! The execution was the problem.
Ultimately the ‘ask’ was just too big. They wanted a teenager to set up time to have a conversation with a complete stranger – for many that feels weird and what if the person isn’t nice or easy to talk to. And, they expect the student to know what kinds of questions to ask, while also suspending their suspicion that the conversation will eventually turn into a sales pitch about the college.
The overwhelming majority of students tell us they have one or more fears during their college search – including not knowing what to say, and saying the wrong thing. I believe that’s a big reason why the original idea fell flat.
Here’s the alternate strategy I gave the Director… you can use it too.
Get your recent alums to record either a short video on their phone (then send it to you) about their experience at your school, and how it prepared them for their current job. Or, have them write a testimonial and include their email address if the student is interested in asking follow-up questions.
You then send those video and written messages over a period of a few weeks, with the messages coming from the student’s admissions counselor who connects the dots.
The key is to make hearing those experiences as easy and convenient as possible for the student. Don’t set the communication bar too high for them.
If you found this article helpful, please forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it. You can also encourage them to subscribe to the weekly newsletter here.