While it is heartening to see that the demand for higher education has started to recover in many countries, university admission offices are still figuring out how to demonstrate ROI and attract new students.
Amid continuing uncertainties about what the next semester will look like, clear university messaging will be a differentiator for new prospects as well as for students have already deferred or dropped out mid-semester and are re-evaluating what they want out of their university experience.
University marcom as a competitive advantage in higher education recruitment is hardly a new concept. Unlike existing students, prospects cannot rely on their own lived experiences of the university to determine whether they’re satisfied with the institution. Instead, they rely on stories to determine whether a university is the right choice for them: stories from friends that attend the institutions, stories told through online reviews on social media, and the stories told by the institution itself through snail mail, emails, social media platforms and phone calls.
After a year and a half of university age students spending more time online, however, the challenge for universities is not just to tell the compelling stories about what students can expect to accomplish at the institution but to do it for an increasingly digital audience:
are all impacting what messages work and in what format.
As we look to the next hybrid recruitment cycle, the messaging challenges that higher education institutions need to address will be a mix of new (post-pandemic) and old:
As a technology evangelist, I look to hardware and software to solve for emerging communication challenges in higher education.
Certainly, technology lends itself well to determining trends and patterns in market data, in prospect sentiment and engagement behaviour. Getting the right message to the right ‘customer’ at the right time is also increasingly possible with the help of innovative technological tools and platforms.
However, I think that it is the blending of these capabilities – dynamic data models and real-time, personalized messaging – that will enable a personal touch and sway prospects towards institutions that take this digital leap.
At campusM, we make it easy for admissions and for other departments supporting recruitment efforts to create engaging, delightful, and valuable content. Here’s how we do it.
University admissions offices are engaged in a high-stakes game of show and tell. With more prospects tuning in online, universities can leverage digital storytelling for recruitment by curating stories for different prospective audiences based on their goals, wants and interests. The campusM student engagement platform enables universities to deliver this personal touch at scale through intuitive automation options, enabling admissions offices to amplify their reach and increase their wins with greater ease.
campusM is a powerful campus app that helps universities improve student engagement on a daily basis. For more information about how campusM’s student engagement platform is making it simple for universities to provide outstanding mobile student experiences and services, click here.
