May 2010 Lawlor Focus

Searching for Answers

Even with yield efforts in full swing to make sure deposited students (including all those double deposits) actually arrive on campus when classes start, college admission offices are also focusing attention on search and direct marketing campaigns for future new classes. Although many prospective students still follow a traditional path from inquiry to matriculant, the roadmap to considering and selecting a college is much less linear than the old “admission funnel” model would imply. Fewer and fewer students are making themselves known to searching institutions—rather than starting their progression at the funnel’s top, they opt in at all different stages of the process.

This morphing of the funnel can largely be attributed to the “stealth” marketplace, made up of prospective students who have not yet let an institution know they are considering it. The wealth of information that’s available through an institution’s web site, college search tools like College MatchMaker (from the College Board) and Counselor-O-Matic (from the Princeton Review), college search social media platforms like Zinch.com and Cappex.com, and online college ranking sites is changing the way prospective students search and learn about colleges and universities. Tracking responses to a search campaign is complicated by the fact that recipients of a search message may pursue one of these other avenues to find out more about the institution, rather than responding and opting in as the institution intended. The question then becomes whether a searched name should be considered a search respondent if that person opts in not by responding to the search campaign, but rather by some other means.

Word of mouth moved online long ago, thanks to the growth of social networking sites and tools that enable content sharing. Consequently, admission representatives are finding it necessary to not just engage directly with a prospective student, but also to engage indirectly with all of the student’s peers within his or her online social networks—creating yet another entry point along the funnel for other prospects. What’s more, the aforementioned Zinch.com, Cappex.com and other social media platforms that are specifically geared toward the college search allow students to create rich profiles full of details about their interests—and allow institutions to target these students with relevant messaging. The strategic question then becomes how to capture and utilize the personal data that’s available to institutions via these platforms in order to run a search campaign targeted toward these students.

With the stealth marketplace and social media tools disrupting traditional methods of targeting and counting search respondents, the time has come to reframe search as an ongoing campaign to build general awareness, rather than as a one-time transactional activity. Lead generation processes must be flexible enough to capture prospects at each point of engagement they themselves choose, considering that the prospects may leave and return to engage in an entirely different way or at a different point in the process. Therefore, the new direct marketing model is as much about sustaining interest for opt-in at any point, as it is about generating immediate inquiries.

Lawlor Recommends

Realize that the marketplace controls the college consideration process and that your search timetable matters little to prospective students and their families who are easily able to “pull” information about your institution whenever they wish. Just because search recipients do not respond to your “push” campaign does not mean they lack interest in your institution. Therefore, frequency of contact is important.

If you are wishing for a direct response to your search campaign, keep in mind that you’re asking prospective students not only to reveal themselves now, but also to reveal themselves in the exact manner you request. In addition to making it easy for students to opt in by avoiding what they may perceive as barriers (such as asking them to fill in too many fields of information), it is often necessary to motivate them by offering an incentive. You should provide them with a good reason to engage in the conversation in the time and manner you desire, so that your terms are perceived as mutually beneficial to them. Ideally, any incentive you offer (whether it be a fulfillment item, an idea, or a special process) should be:

• Relevant—Make sure it logically ties in with the theme of your search campaign.
• Distinctive—Choose something that can authentically reflect the values of your institution.
• Useful—Have it offer something the recipient can actually use.

In the news

The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today were among the many media outlets that recently published articles about the financial plight of this season’s new college graduates who are trying to land jobs. Meanwhile, a new study shows a record-low 64 percent of college students are confident in their ability to find good jobs, and the latest government data finds the student loan default rate rising to 7.2 percent.

Did you know?

One-third of college students qualify as “transfer students.”

Source: NACAC