According to the 2019 Survey of College and University Admissions Directors, 52% of colleges couldn’t meet their enrollment targets by July 1, 2019.

Also, only 37% were able to achieve their goals by May 1, 2019 as the pressure grew and deadlines approached, enrollment reps struggled with the same challenge. What’s the solution?

While the admissions teams own the entire enrollment funnel, marketing must continuously feed the top. Let’s discuss how you can get the best out of your teams to reach the finish line before your competition.

Anticipate the learner’s questions

Choosing the right college for higher studies is certainly the essential career decision for a learner (and by extension, for their parents because they are the ones bankrolling the fees). You must understand that, before filling out the application, a learner will research their college choice thoroughly using third-party websites and social media; they will also consult advisors, talk to college alumni, and take campus tours. They also engage with the college enrollment reps and seek their support frequently throughout this entire process. Anticipating learners’ questions at each of these points and helping them along the journey would help your college stand out.

Once you know what the student wants, utilize this info to influence their decision.

By the time you reach out to a prospective learner, they are already halfway through deciding the college, class, and campus they are interested in. It’s essential to showcase what differentiates you from all the other colleges on their short list. Show the learners how they can upskill and reinvent their career at your institution and why they should select you instead of everyone else.

Fast and continuous communication with learners can help you convert them into enrollments faster than your competition. Remarketing techniques can help you engage those leads, which might have gone cold before making any decision. For example, you can retarget a learner who dropped off while completing an application form for a class by designing specific ads related to that class.

Use the power and promise of edtech

The admissions process can be very tedious. The right tech can offload some of your team’s work and help your prospects avoid never-ending queues and long wait times. An end-to-end education CRM platform can help you do quick follow-ups before your competitors, to recruit the best candidates for your institute.

A CRM platform should be easy for admissions reps to utilize so that they can benefit from improvements in the admissions process. Choosing a CRM that will increase your team’s efficiency and academic performance must be a priority. Any tool that you select must help your admissions team to automate all their manual tasks for timely follow-up, thus saving time and money. For instance, you should be able to capture, distribute, and prioritize inquiries, using the automation feature of your enrollment management process.

Track your enrollment performance using reports and analytics  

As soon as the admissions season comes to an end, admissions reps all over the world are anxious to know whether they’ve hit the mark. Enrollment analytics and academic performance reports can help you get over this anxiety. Knowing where you stand in the enrollment targets can help you take a more aggressive approach in the application cycle.

Your enrollment management software should enable you to generate reports based on several data points, including on-campus academic performance, lead source academic performance, application analytics, enrollment analytics, admissions and marketing team performance, best-performing recruitment channels, response time analytics, and more. A detailed application life cycle report would help you determine at which stage and in how much time applicants tend to drop off.

Concluding thoughts

Reaching enrollment targets on time will not be difficult if you have the right strategies and the best tools. To sum it up, you have to contact your applicants until you are not 100% sure of losing them to your competitors. After all, if you’re not interested, then why they would be? Hopefully, these tips will help you conquer the low enrollment rates for your institution and provide you an edge over your competitors.