Communications

Calling & Texting

Top Priorities for Calling & Texting Encourage action. Calling and texting should be restricted to campaigns. In other words, you should have a specific reason for calling or texting, encouraging action. Avoid marketing messages. Any calls or texts should be helpful, timely, and relevant. These are not appropriate channels for general marketing messages. Again, focus on a call to action. Target specific populations. If you have an audience segment that you wish to target, calling and texting could be ideal. For example, you may be trying to increase enrollment from a particular group. A call or text may be perfect to [...]

Bethan Owen2023-05-24T13:52:36-05:00Communications|

Email

Top Priorities for Email Focus on your email strategy. Email is one of the most direct methods of communicating with our audience, and in-house surveys show it's the number one way students wish to be contacted by us—so you'll want to make your emails count. Know who you can communicate with. Review our audience policy for more information. Follow our email best practices. Review our email policy for more information. Encourage action. It's important for your emails to have a strong call to action, whether that action is big, like signing up to attend an event, or small, like exploring a page [...]

Bethan Owen2023-05-23T16:27:24-05:00Communications|

Advertising

Top Priorities for Advertising Build and strengthen brand awareness. As with any advertising, building and/or strengthening brand awareness is a top goal. That's why it's important to brand your ads appropriately and target the right audiences. Generate new leads. Ads are a great way to reach prospects. Planting a seed is great, but if you can also provide an easy conversion method such as an email form for more information, we can use ads to build our inquiry pool. Target specific demographics. Increasing exposure can happen through organic methods, but advertising allows us to target specific demographics. It's a great way [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T10:01:53-05:00Communications|

Websites

Top Priorities for Your Website Make your inquiry form easy to find. Ultimately, you want to convert your prospective student traffic into inquiries. This means your inquiry form should be front and center on all pages. The best way to do this is to incorporate it into your navigation. Focus on relevant, engaging content. What do prospective students want to know? What will get them interested in your programs? Videos, student stories, and outcomes information are all great for engagement. Integrate this content into your pages. You goal is to keep students on your site and convert them into inquiries. Optimize [...]

Bethan Owen2023-05-24T15:57:05-05:00Communications|

Handouts

Top Priorities With Handouts Focus on your content. With content pieces, make sure the focus is on your unit/services. Avoid including admissions content or anything that runs the risk of changing. Share stories and make the material as engaging and worthwhile as you can. Consider the quality. Cheap handouts will be ignored and find their way to the trash quickly. Invest in high-quality pieces, such as booklets, die-cuts, or keepsake items like swag. Fun items attract attention and are more likely to last. Build and strengthen brand awareness. Aside from making sure your content is on brand, try to produce lasting [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T10:00:27-05:00Communications|

Presentations

Top Priorities With Presentations Brand appropriately. Make sure your presentations have the appropriate branding in place, including logos, colors, messaging, etc. It's critical that all of our materials fit together, both through appearance and content. Be engaging. Audiences come to a conclusion on what level of engagement is necessary within the first 90 seconds of your presentation, so it's important to be engaging. Keep things concise and understand your audience. Give them what they want and keep them interested. Complement the presenter with your slides. Presentation slides should not simply display text that is read by the presenter. The two roles [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T10:02:16-05:00Communications|

Social Media

Top Priorities for Social Media Engage prospective students. Make sure you post content that is appealing for teenagers and addresses their interests and needs. It's also important to consider what platforms are most relevant for high school students. If posts elicit comments, try to interact with your audience. Generate leads. Direct social content to landing pages where students can easily sign up for more information. Share information. This may seem obvious, but it's important to share the right information. Your social channels are perfect for content specific to your area of campus. Talk about classes, faculty, projects, and anything else that [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T10:01:08-05:00Communications|

Video

Top Priorities With Video Entertain and inform. Students are watching how-to videos and being entertained on YouTube. To meet them where they are, we must create entertaining ways for students to digest information they may need. Encourage YouTube subscriptions. It's good practice (and quite common) to build a prompt into the end of your videos encouraging subscriptions to your channel. Don't fret about production quality. High school students are accustomed to seeing user-generated content from phones and tablets by amateur videographers. That's the nature of YouTube and other social platforms. Prioritize making engaging content over high-production-value output. Upload regularly. Set a [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T10:01:36-05:00Communications|

Direct Mail

Top Priorities for Direct Mail Be strategic with populations. In order to reduce both physical and financial waste, you should be as strategic as possible with the populations you choose to engage through direct mail. This could mean sending to admits only, or sending to top-tier inquiries (those that have signed up for more information directly through our inquiry forms). Focus on yield. When a student is admitted, we have their address and we know their program of study. Plus, we know the student is more serious about enrolling. Direct mail can be much more effective at this stage. Consider ROI. [...]

Bethan Owen2022-04-20T09:59:20-05:00Communications|

Tips for Creating & Sending Emails

Email is the most important communication channel we currently have, so it’s critical that we make our emails as effective as possible. Here are a couple tips to ensure we do just that. Keep It Simple Many of our emails go beyond text only and utilize HTML to create more visually appealing designs. This can often cause us to overcomplicate things. In fact, sometimes text-only emails are the most effective, and they’re certainly the most simple. Text-only emails, especially sent from a person instead of a unit, can feel more personalized and elicit higher open rates. Branding can be incorporated by [...]

Doug Burgett2023-05-23T16:10:22-05:00Communications|