Blog Recap:
As the academic year draws to a close, higher education institutions face the critical challenge of keeping students engaged and committed through the summer months. In Episode 94 of the Higher Ed Demand Gen podcast, hosts Shiro and Jeff Ebbing, alongside guests Rock Hall, VP for Enrollment at Ithaca College, and Kelly Nolan, Director of Admissions at the University of Montana, delve into effective strategies for reducing summer melt and retaining student interest.
Kelly Nolan emphasizes the cornerstone of student retention: relationship-building. According to her, institutions must foster meaningful relationships with students from the moment they enter the admission funnel. This consistent outreach helps in creating a strong sense of affinity and loyalty to the institution. She argues that effective retention strategies cannot wait until May or June; they need to be woven into the entire enrollment process.
Rock Hall discusses the importance of marketing and its capacity to galvanize actions. He highlights that marketing efforts should not only be aimed at attracting new students but also at reassuring and engaging the admitted ones. Especially for first-generation and lower socioeconomic students, sustained communication can significantly lower anxieties and affirm they are making the right choice.
The panel underscores the role of technology in enhancing these processes. Jeff Ebbing notes the increasing affordability and accessibility of technology and its potential to transform smaller institutions. He sees AI as a pivotal tool that can take over routine tasks, thereby freeing up counselors to build more personal, meaningful relationships with students. This sentiment is echoed by Kelly, who stresses the need for institutions to embrace new technologies to stay relevant and efficient.
One particularly successful strategy highlighted was the online photo scavenger hunt, which engaged hundreds of students and became one of Zimi’s most active communities. Engaging events like these help showcase student personalities and common interests, thereby fostering a deeper sense of belonging.
The panelists also discuss the pitfalls of ineffective methods, such as the strain and burnout caused by making thousands of cold calls to unresponsive students. They emphasize the importance of more relational and segmented communication, aimed at building trust and easing the enrollment process.
Finally, Rock Hall advocates for a campus-wide initiative to retain students, highlighting that it takes continuous engagement from all facets of the institution to create a nurturing and committed community. Shiro concludes the discussion by emphasizing the importance of a balanced approach to adopting new technologies while maintaining consistent, year-round engagement with prospective students.
In summary, the insights shared in this episode underscore the need for higher education institutions to continually evolve their strategies, leveraging technology, personal relationships, and community-building activities to keep students engaged and committed through the summer and beyond.
Read the transcription
Shiro:
Great. I’d love to introduce our guests here today joining the panel. I’ll start with myself. My name is Shiro Hattori. I am the director of demand generation at Concept 3 d. I also host a podcast called the Higher Ed Demand Gen Show, which we cover marketing enrollment web topics, and I’ve had a lot of guests on, that had mutual connections, which is how I kinda found the the panel here today, which has been great. I’m also, joined with Juliana, who is going to help moderate and go through the q and a questions as well. And then, yeah, I’d love for our guests, starting with Jeff, to start with a quick self intro.
Shiro:
And can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your institution as well?
Jeff Ebbing:
Sure. Happy to be here. Jeff Ebbing, director of marketing and communications at Southeastern Community College in West Burlington, Iowa. Small community college as far as, those are concerned within the the state of Iowa. Been here for what seemed like forever, a number of years, seen a lot of things as many of my colleagues, I’m sure, also have as well. And I’m also the past president for the National Council of Marketing and Public Relations and that is the professional association for people like us, the 2 year community college marketers, across the country. And so it’s great to be here.
Kelly Nolan:
Good morning. I’m Kelly Nolan. I’m the director of admissions at the University of Montana. I’ve spent my entire career in higher education, so more than 25 years. The last 15 have been in admissions. So I came to Montana last summer. Previously, I was at Colorado State University for 14 years. Now at the University of Montana, we’re Montana’s flagship institution.
Kelly Nolan:
We’re Montana’s flagship institution. We’re a medium sized school located in Missoula, and I’m really happy to be here today.
Rock Hall:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Rob Hall, and I’m the vice president for enrollment, at Ithaca College. I’m fairly new to Ithaca. I’ve been here for about 4 months. I’ve been in the higher ed space north of 25 years. I’ve worked at institutions large and small, East Coast and West Coast, the University of Southern California, the University of Utah, Arcadia University, just to name a few. Very happy to be here with you good people today, and I am looking forward to a good conversation.
Shiro:
Awesome. Thank you so much, everyone, for your intros, and it’s great to hear all the the wealth of knowledge that’s about to be dropped on everyone. So a quick quick housekeeping item. I’ve mentioned this before. You know, we love engagement, so please be active in the chat and q and a. And I’d I’d love for everyone I know Gavin’s actually gotten ahead of this, but please share your hometown in the chat, and I will as well. Cool. So just real quickly.
Shiro:
Right? The goal for today is to learn from our guests about strategies, ideas, and tactics to retain students over summer. And in terms of the agenda, we’ll start with some poll questions to gauge the audience. We’ll we’ll go into 5 questions if we have time for all 5, and then at the very end, we’ll cover q and a. And if a q and a is relevant to the topic we’re discussing, we’ll also cover it on the spot, so don’t be shy in that q and a bar. Real quick before we do jump in, I do have a message from the sponsor and the host of today, which is Concept 3 d. I do work for Concept 3 d. And why are we hosting this webinar? The reason is we believe in providing value to the communities we serve, and that community that we serve is higher ed. And so we help power a lot of higher ed, digital digitally, from websites to communications.
Shiro:
And on average, over 4,000,000 students and other users are on our platform every year, and we serve over 700 campuses across the US and in Canada as well. What’s concept 3 d do? So we do help support with student engagement and communications through our digital solutions. We have 3 flagship products, which is the first is our interactive campus map. 2nd is our centralized events calendar, which we call localist events, and then we have a virtual tour solution called 360 tour. And recently, we launched a solution called My Campus Experience that actually creates a personalized tailored view of the 3 solutions put together or by stand alone to help support more personalized engagement with students as well. So that’s a very brief overview of concept 3 d. And with that, we’d we’d love to move on to a poll question to help gauge the audience a little bit more. Actually, mixed spread here today.
Shiro:
So 30% said they’re part of admissions. 2020% was both enrollment and marketing. Student success actually also was at 15%, and then combination of 2 or more was 15%, which I thought would was gonna be a little bit higher. So interesting. Great. And then just to to get more wheels turning on, you know, what what are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing, can you just, in a short answer, explain what your biggest challenge in reducing amount is at the moment as we head into summer?
Rock Hall:
Oh, I would think, you know, broadly speaking, maybe one of the largest challenges in relation to discount rate, financial leveraging. You know? What’s the tipping point with your discount rate before you start to lose net tuition revenue? And so, you know, I think this cycle, some have kind of adopted a spin to win kind of a mentality. While I don’t prescribe to that, I don’t have a big issue with it because you basically pay money to retain talent. If you’re in a corporate organization, if you’re recruiting top talent, you pay money to get them. And so as we’re paying to get student talent, this idea of discount rate and net tuition revenue start to come into the conversation. So that’s my 2¢ for now.
Shiro:
Got it. I can actually share some of the results here, if on my screen. Hopefully, everyone can see it. I got a little trigger happy with the clicking, but great. So yeah. So keeping students engaged, competition, meeting enrollment goals, like you pointed out with revenue, staff limitations. Again, it looks like engagement’s the answer I’m hearing the most. I was expecting one answer, so there it is as well.
Shiro:
So enrollment engagement and, financials seems like the top comments here, and I’ll save those for the end as well. Thanks, everyone, for participating. Well, let’s jump in here. Okay? The first question we have for discussion and our topic will be around, what factors contribute to summer melt amongst admitted students? And I’ll actually pass this off for you, Rock, to to cover first.
Rock Hall:
Yeah. I think there are a number of factors contributing to student melt. You know, if we take a 50,000 foot view of it years ago when the, agreement, the understanding between schools were removed that once a student deposits, you can’t really engage with them any longer. So we have a landscape now to where colleges and universities can literally actively recruit a student up until census. And so I think that right there really impacts kind of the ebb and flow of it all. In my opinion, I think that causes, you know, maybe some more, frustration within families that lack some sophistication and know how. I think it kinda gamifies, the academy to a certain degree that I, you know, question. And so I think that’s one of the biggest factors contributing to it, the fact that we’ve commodified our population of young people, and we can kind of, you know, pick them away at any point in time within the funnel.
Rock Hall:
And so in addition to that, let’s talk about the FAFSA. I think the FAFSA, you know, that’s more at a 20,000 foot level. The FAFSA caused a great deal of instability in the wake of COVID kind of healing itself. You know? Right when we got past the COVID shakeup, we were kinda stabilizing. Some schools saw some rebound. Some schools saw growth. And right when that started to kinda flatten out and we could start projecting numbers again, the FAFSA hit. And so with that, you know, it caused, a a a bit of bifurcation.
Rock Hall:
Going back to COVID, when that was going on, everyone kind of agreed that we’re gonna go to a June 1 commitment date. Now with the FAFSA, some camps are May 15, some camps are June 1. And so even within my strategies right now, we pushed out our aid offers weeks ago. Today is our commitment deadline. But we know for a fact that the coonies are releasing their packages on May 18th, and their commitment deadline is June 1. And so we have to build projections and strategies to run up against that to kind of, you know, help us meet our class, and those things are kinda, you know, ebb and flowing. I think if we jump to the other side of the, desk, you know, families are really frustrated. Again, if you are 2nd, 3rd generation college student, if you kind of been through the process, you understand the ebb and flow, but there’s a large contingency of families who are first generation, who are of lower socioeconomic status.
Rock Hall:
And this process is so daunting when it runs well. Now we have a situation to where it’s not running well at all, but we’re still asking them to commit. Essentially, we’re asking families to put money down on an education, which is the, amount of a mortgage before you know how you’re gonna finance. So I think FAFSA impacted it. I think the new rules of engagement are impacting families. And, just an overall, I think, lack of direction from the federal level on how families should best respond. You know? It feels very episodic right now, and I think that’s hampering our our larger efforts.
Kelly Nolan:
I would build on what Rock said about the FAFSA. That’s a significant impact for us here in Montana. Our FAFSA filing rates are really low, not just here at our institution, but across the state as they are around the country. And so even though we’ve been able to get some of our financial aid packages out, we haven’t gotten all of them, so we know that there’s a delay in responding. Another factor is the number of soft applications that we have. In our state, there are very specific, requirements that students have to meet that actually aren’t very competitive, and so we end up admitting about 90% of our students. In fact, when I started here last summer, I was surprised to learn that we don’t even have a deny letter. If students aren’t admitted to our university, we admit them to our embedded community college.
Kelly Nolan:
And so admitting a large number of people means that, obviously, a lot of them are not going to choose to come here, and I think soft apps with the number of, the number of applications increasing that students are submitting, you see those numbers on the reports coming up from the common app with the rise of direct admissions. There are more students that are being admitted to our school, so it’s a lot more competitive than it’s been in the past. I would also say that we’ve had some self inflicted wounds, in terms of our processes. Last summer, we had a huge melt and so when we went back and we looked to see where students fell out of our funnel, it was really surprising to see that it was on the admitted student checklist when they were, being asked about their immunizations and the state requirements to show their measles, mumps, and rubella, and then also answer questions about tuberculosis. We lost a lot of people at that point. So, this year, we’ve taken out some of those barriers and trying to just make it easier. And then, finally, I would say that staffing. Our staff works so hard as I’m sure many of you have staffs that put their heart and soul into it, but we’ve been working at half staff for most of the year.
Kelly Nolan:
And so just the the sheer amount of work that each counselor has to do, it’s a huge responsibility and something that we’re trying to find other ways, you know, other, vendors who can help us in order to work smarter, not necessarily harder.
Jeff Ebbing:
I can build on that a little bit too. As a community college, we’re certainly in a different situation than both of my colleagues here and in our case, we’re we’re 60, 65 percent first gen families and so that’s a big hurdle for us to overcome. We can get folks in the door like we’re talking about, you know, we all are familiar with inquiries and and maybe visiting campus and everything. But, really, in our case, it’s life. People just have things come up in their in their in their life, job, family, whatever it is, and we’re tired of really overcome those. Certainly, FAFSA is having, impacting that with us as well. Hopefully, we’ll actually be able to to maybe see some positive gains from where my colleagues might have some struggles with some of those things. We could become more of a financial option for folks who maybe otherwise had aspirations for another school.
Jeff Ebbing:
So, in our situation, really, we’re we’re dealing with mostly life challenges and folks which are very difficult to overcome regardless of what we’re able to do because we can’t, you know, we can’t control some of those things.
Shiro:
Got it. And and, Jeff, I actually have a follow-up question for you on that. Is is a lot of what you’re testing in terms of mess is it is it a lot of messaging that you’re doing over your outreach or trying to figure out the value prop that will get a a student to really be interested, with South Eastern Community College? Like, what is, like what are the levers that you’re pulling?
Jeff Ebbing:
I think the biggest thing really in our case, again, to to continue with, with the financial aspect is really the value the dollar value proposition that we have. We have amazing, relationships with a number of certainly 4 year schools for transfer, and I know that’s even the 4 year schools are really working with more community colleges to build those transfer pipelines even stronger than they were before. And so that’s part of what, you know, we lean into that part, and certainly too even the folks who are who are in the in the the 1 year diploma or even the 2 year certificate or sorry, the 2 year degree type, programs as well. We we lean into those for, the types of jobs that, you know, and, that that we in which we serve our community. And so that is that is, we didn’t hit those as hard, I would say, pre COVID because a lot of it was intimidation with the size of the budgets and resources at bigger schools. Even though you’ve mentioned, that sometimes even, you know, when you’re running with half your staff, right, to get some of these things done, your your marketing budgets can go a lot farther than what ours can. So we were always afraid to poke the bear, but now we’re leaning into that as one of our strongest competitive advantages and and, and also highlighting the student success of the students who, again, with 60% first gen, we’re able to get them in and and really make and sell that, and the and the the the value proposition we have with regards to the quality and the and the return on investment. We we lean on that much more heavily than we ever did before.
Shiro:
Thanks, Jeff. Kelly, I also had a question as well. So it you you pointed out a very specific blocker that you saw in your in your enrollment around immunization questions. Were you just able to figure out a different way to ask the question or, like, provide more education in ways that students could figure out how to answer those questions? Like, what is what are what are you testing there?
Kelly Nolan:
Mhmm. So we shortened the forms because when we first looked at them in the fall, they were pages and pages of scrolling with a lot of jargon and a lot of complicated language. So we’ve simplified the form itself so that there are separate questions on each page, which makes it easier to click through. One of the big factors last year was that we put immunization holds on students’ records, so they couldn’t register for classes until they submitted their immunization records. And then there were specific ways that they had to submit those records. So this year, again, simplifying it, they can just take a picture of their shot record and submit it that way, but we also removed the hold so that this summer, our registration rates are significantly higher already than they were last year. The thing that we’re working through now is how do we get those immunization records from our students once they’re here on campus? Does that mean that we’ll have to put registration holds on their records for the spring and that has implications for retention? But I think just making that whole thing easier and and getting students into their classes is part of melt prevention so that they can see what they’ll be taking when they get here in the fall. It’s easier for them to imagine what their life might be like.
Kelly Nolan:
They’re building a relationship with us, and it, it allows them to be a little bit more committed to us. So removing that hurdle has made a difference for us.
Shiro:
Fantastic. Thanks for sharing all that. Alright. I will move on to our second discussion topic here as well. So how are the jobs to be done for marketing and enrollment? This could include admissions as well. Different. And so, yeah, I think I’d I’d love to pass this off to you, Kelly, just to get started.
Kelly Nolan:
Thank you. So we talk about this a lot at the difference between building the brand versus building the class, and, obviously, it’s a partnership. We rely on marketing to come up with amazing publications, really great, initial messages that paint a picture for the student of what life would be like here in Missoula as a student. And then at some point, once students apply, there has to be a pass off to enrollment, to admissions, and that’s where we really, I think, excel if we can have the staff available for the relationship building piece to help students through the next steps of being an admitted student and what it takes to actually enroll at the institution. So to a certain, affect a certain, in a certain way, enrollment becomes transactional. I think a lot of times we talk about enrollment as a funnel. And if you think about a funnel, you pour liquid into it and everything just naturally comes down and it goes and flows really easily. But all of us who work in enrollment and admissions know that that’s not really the case, and it’s very passive.
Kelly Nolan:
So at my last institution, Colorado State, we talked a lot about the enrollment stairs. So, helping students get from one step to the next, and sometimes you have to push, you have to pull, you have to push and pull at the same time, and it’s not just one person doing it. It has to be a variety in order to get students from the bottom to the top. So in a lot of ways, the work we do is transactional, helping students do the, you know, to tell us that they’re coming, to submit the the records that we want them to, to register for classes, apply for housing, all of those things, and that’s how I think enrollment communicates a little bit different from marketing, which on our campus tends to be a little bit more about branding.
Jeff Ebbing:
From the marketing perspective in my realm, I totally concur with everything you’re saying. I’m able to say on the marketing side of the fence, I can say the more fun things. Kelly has to be more of the pesky parent, you know, get this, do that. I think she’s talking about it to get people through. And so in our case, it’s really definitely still selling that vision, you know, making sure that they can see themselves here throughout this process. You’re you’re almost there. Those kinds of things. We we really focus a lot on still maintaining and and improving that, that connection as as the others do as well with with with, with our institution to get them through here.
Jeff Ebbing:
And it’s always in support of, certainly, what the transactional things that still need to be done. We’re able to tell that story a little bit more with a little bit more flavor than what, than what some of the just literally step 1, step 2, step 3 that that are required to get someone into the door just through the stipple process.
Rock Hall:
Yeah. And I I’ll chime in 3rd and and agree with the thread here. I’ve always said that, you know, if marketing works well, you galvanize people towards action. And so like Kelly said, you know, marketing is very much the broad strategy, and enrollment, they’re the tactics. And if we can galvanize people around a single truth, get them to, posture and move towards action, we’ve done our job. So like you said, within that funnel and I love that analogy of, you know, you pouring water in and it coming out. Because in most funnels, there are holes all throughout the funnel, and people will leak and spring out at different points, whether it’s, you know, inquiry to applicant, soft applicant, or incomplete applicant to complete applicant. And so there’s a lot you have to kind of manage within that funnel.
Rock Hall:
It’s not as well constructed as you would like to think. And so I think marketing, it really helps to kind of, lower anxiety with parents. It builds awareness. It builds community. But if you’re really doing it right, it mobilizes and galvanizes people towards action. You drive them towards your website. You drive them towards deposit. You drive them to get in those pesky Measle, registration cards that you’ve been looking for.
Rock Hall:
And so it really is an art form, not so much a science. But when you can strike the right balance, it’s beautiful, and it works well.
Shiro:
Thanks so much for sharing that. This this conversation actually reminded me of, something I was talking with Allison Turcio on, on when she came on the podcast. And one of her biggest jobs, and this is not just specific to MeL, but just for retaining students and getting more applicants or, sorry, more decision day and commitment day, applicants is is making sure that the student feels like they’re making the right choice, like, as a whole. And and I feel like, you know, everything you’re saying, Rok, in terms of the funnel is is getting the student to that point in conclusion that they’re making the right choice and they can feel good about that. What what do you feel about that?
Rock Hall:
I agree. You know, I think a lot of what we are doing on the private side, the public side, the community college side, essentially, we’re building relationships. You know, we’re telling parents and families, if you drop off your young person, not only will we take care of them, but the hope is they’ll come back a bit better informed, you know, and a better global citizen. And so I think, again, going back to this idea of marketing, marketing, you can crowd raise, you know, kind of get people into the funnel. You can help better inform to get people to move through your funnel. And then most importantly, you can get people to commit deposit at the end of the funnel. But I think a lot of that boils down to your comms and how you stage them. My philosophy is, you know, I think if you’re doing it well, you create an omnidirectional kind of, ecosystem to where parents can go to the website.
Rock Hall:
They can go to a mobile app. They can call the school. At every touch point, no matter what device they use, it drives them towards an answer. It drives them towards the website. It drives them towards deposit. And so while that is in certain ways transactional in in essence, but I think it’s also transformative because at a certain point, you do hit a tipping point to where the parents are so comfortable with. Oh, I’ve seen you a half a dozen times. I’ve talked to Kelly 3 times last week, or I got 2 emails from her.
Rock Hall:
And that familiarity, I think, helps along the way when it comes to, decision making.
Shiro:
Alright. With that, I will move on to the 3rd discussion here. So, you know, just plain blank, what’s working? It can be social events, personalization, something not listed here. I just picked 3 that seem to be popular at the moment. But, yeah, what’s working for your institution? It could also be a a prior institution as well because I know there’s been 2 job changes within the panelists. But, yeah, I would love to hear from everyone, and, I’ll actually pass this off to you, Jeff, to get us started.
Jeff Ebbing:
Sure. I agree. A lot of what we try to do as far as what works is to build that relationship. They they’re it’s all based on trust. Once they trust that they’re making the right decision for their future and whatever that looks like, whether it’s a, b, or c, they we all wanna feel good about the choice that we made. And so how do we do that before they get in the door? It’s they gotta have the comfort level that in that relationship. So a lot of what we do really focuses on building that prior to and certainly once they’re already here. So how do we do that at the Community College of Louisville? A lot of it certainly is done just through through a lot of our our outreach and, we do spend a fair a lot of time certainly as you I’m sure do as well and on social platforms, paid and earned.
Jeff Ebbing:
Same is true for email. And even again, also, we are also aware that that, this postal mail really is is a good way to follow that up as well, set up things to to follow-up with retargeting and and our other aspects that that are part of that too. And in my case too, I’m always trying to find ways to get in front of folks that maybe I’m not, reaching right now. We all we have to go to where they are. And so nowadays, every time you launch one of your apps, there’s some new, promotional or ad product that that particular platform is is testing and trying to get you to use. And I’m gonna rely the fact that they they know their system and the capabilities more than I do. So I typically try to try them and test them, and I have a fair amount of my budget always allocated towards trying something new or different. I have used this example before, but if you’ve watched the movie Glenn, Gerigan, Ross, Alec Baldwin’s character, you know, he’s the guy it’s coffee is for closers.
Jeff Ebbing:
A b c always be selling. Well, in my case I’m sorry. Always always be closing. Excuse me. Well, in my case, it’s a b c always be comparing. So always test something and have some aspect of what you’re doing, that you can get a chance to to play around with that. So is it working? Oftenly often those things sort of change over time. So in my case, making sure we’re committed to trying some of the things different in this space no matter what it is, platforms, platforms, messaging, whatever the case is, is really crucial to what we do because everyone’s moving and changing.
Jeff Ebbing:
And eventually, they sort of flow in and out of our channels. And so that’s that’s really important to us with 1st generation families and, and working families. It’s, it’s making sure we were in the places where they are sometimes can be very, very one to 1 transactional in the person in the course of retail. And you’re literally, it’s a one to one relationship. So, we have a fair amount of outreach where we’re in community areas outside of this campus where we’ll have some folks that’ll attend different types of events, not necessarily like like an organized event, but they might be doing something and they’re working with some of the local clubs or we’re doing something at community events here in town just to have be have that presence and be there and to build that connection. We’ll see some folks and we’ll have we don’t have high expectations to make big big scores and and enrollments from theirs, but part of what we do is making sure they see us and they trust us in our community. So hard hard to quantify that sometimes, but it’s it’s a it’s a big support to what we’re doing on more of the intentional aspects as well.
Rock Hall:
Yeah. I I agree, and I’ll pursue that, a few steps further. I think a combination of many things are worth it. You know, I think we’re kind of in a phase in a cycle, where you really have to take a multi pronged approach and be kind of omnidirectional in stance. The shop used to open at 8 and close at 5. Now we’re in a true 24 hour cycle to where if a parent contacts you at 2 PM or 2 AM, the expectation is to get some kind of response. So at a very micro level, I think bots are working. We implemented bots recently, and they are 24 hour kind of at the ready, source of information.
Rock Hall:
How do I deposit? What’s the housing commitment date? You know, when are the 1st day of classes? Just little things like that that help, you know, keep parents better informed. I am a huge fan of social media. I think, you know, its impact within the industry is, you know, still being better understood, but social media works. It’s that peer to peer engagement. Young people like hearing from other young people. Parents like hearing from the president. The president can pick up, you know, her phone, his phone, give a quick message, and push it out to our parent engagement portal within a matter of minutes. That real time, that active, that omnidirectional, that in front, I think that’s what’s really working within this day and age because the last thing you really wanna have within any of our processes is a cooling off period.
Rock Hall:
You know, there used to be time after May 1. Remember that? You could close the books and kinda, you know, plan your summer vacation. Now a lot of schools are fighting for their classes well through the, July 4th holiday leading up until August. Some people count noses up through census. And so I think, you know, Jeff said it best. You gotta try new things. You gotta be fluid. You gotta be a bit mendable.
Rock Hall:
He touched on it, and I agree. Always look at your data. Understand your data. Kelly said it earlier. At certain points within the funnel, you’re gonna lose people. Understand where, why, and how the softening is happening, and work quickly to correct it.
Kelly Nolan:
And I would just, briefly add that similar to Jeff, we also use the ABC, but we say always be counseling, because you just never know when you’re gonna run into a family here in Montana. It’s actually even though we’re a gigantic state in terms of geography, it’s very small in terms of people. And so, when we’re out in the community, we’re regularly running into people who have a sister or brother or cousin or friends, friend of an aunt, you know, that sort of thing who has applied, and so we’re always at the ready to help students with that counseling piece. Similarly to Jeff, we’re also doing a ton of outreach events to try and build affinity with the institution starting from the time that, you know, kids are just coming up, all the way through some of our older alums and having them interact and speak positively about the institution. Those things I think will provide, rewards down the road, and then at some point, it does switch from becoming transactional to transformative, which I I really liked when Rock said that. And it takes people to make it move to that next level so that students and families can really imagine themselves being here. I think some of the ways that we become transformative, even if it’s just very simple, is in kindness and quick responses and being understanding and simplifying the process. A lot of our students and family members do interact on social media, so we post regularly, to different platforms, but we also have an admitted student community.
Kelly Nolan:
We use Zeeami for that and we have a very active community. We do a lot of events online in order to get students to participate. At my last institution, we used the schools app and we would regularly, you know, joke about, oh, this is the time of year when students start posting their prom pictures or look, this is when everybody’s posting the pictures of their dogs, but it’s those shared experiences that help students answer what is maybe the biggest question about any institution, which is, will I fit in? Will I find my community? You know? Am I going to make friends? You know, what what’s that going to be like? And I think social media platforms, admitted student communities allow students to start those relationships before they even get on our campus.
Jeff Ebbing:
I’ll add onto that a little bit or carry it a little bit farther forward. We really also spend a lot of time, you know, influencing the influencers. Going back to our situation, so many first gen folks, so many Pell eligible folks, just the overwhelming majority of of our of our, student body, they’re they’re not always making the decision by themselves and especially with their adult students. I’m sure you know even through your through your from everyone’s efforts, adults are we so many things in our life are slowest down from week where they don’t apply in August, September, October, November, December, they’re applying April, May, June in our cases, we get over half of our applications from April to August. And so our melt is kind of the, the inverse, the more the later you apply typically, the more likely you are to enroll on our case Open institution, a lot of different open enrollment, lot of different situations that we have versus versus, paid and applications and deposits and everything else. But that’s a huge part of what we do and how do we get those people across the finish line. It’s oftentimes making sure mom sees us up just like you’re saying or even cousins and aunts, uncles, whoever it is, influencers in that realm, we focus oftentimes as much about that message with them as we do even to our direct prospects because it could be just that one person that gets them to have the commitment to see themselves here and to wanna make that next step.
Shiro:
I love I love these examples. Kelly, are there, like, specific virtual events that you’ve been hosting and testing that, like, really work to help engage students? I’m sure you’ve tried a lot of things through Zimi and other virtual events, but, yeah, I just wanted to hear if you had any examples.
Kelly Nolan:
We did a a scavenger hunt, an online photo scavenger hunt a couple of weeks ago where we just asked people to go and find things in their house and take a picture or, you know, it was like show a a picture on your phone of a campus visit or things like that. And we had, a couple 100 students participate and for that week, we were one of Zimi’s most active communities. And considering that we’re a smaller institution, we felt really proud about that. So I think things where we ask students to showcase their personalities and to find things in common with others, those are where we’ve seen, the most success.
Shiro:
Thank you for sharing that. And, you know, I love the common themes I’m kinda hearing just from this topic, which were Jeff, I think you nailed, like, knowing your audience, like and knowing, you know, what your pool of students looks like. You mentioned 1st gen students. You’re trying to figure out who they are, what are their needs, parents. You it looks like you’ve identified or others’ constituents as important to them. So that was really good. I think, Rock, you mentioned shifting dynamics in in in the consumer market. Right? So, like, the expectation that you you can get a response super quickly now is probably the expectation a lot of people have for higher ed too, so that was fantastic as well.
Shiro:
And, yeah, Kelly, like, events. Right? I think people are having a harder time connecting now than ever, especially after COVID, and so I think offering virtual events is fantastic. These are great. Yeah. And if anyone ever has any questions to follow-up to, please ask them in the q and a section as well. So to be a bit of a devil’s advocate here, let’s let’s talk about what you what you should not be doing to fight MELT or things that you’ve tried in the past that just didn’t turn out well to to save everyone some time and headache as well. And I will pass this one off. I believe it was Kelly, I think.
Shiro:
Yeah. Kelly. Yep.
Kelly Nolan:
Thank you. So what not to do, do not wait until May 1 or June 1 to start thinking about MELT prevention. Obviously, we should start thinking about it from the time that students enter our funnel and are admitted, all the way through, that affinity building process. We want them feeling committed to the institution so that when we get into that area after they’re committed to the institution, they pay their enrollment deposit until they’re actually on campus. You know, we want to make sure that we have a good plan in place for the summer months to keep students engaged. Something that definitely does not work is 7,000 cold calls to students who haven’t responded. That’s what we did here last year at the University of Montana and all it really served was to burn out our staff And we had an incredibly high staff turnover rate after the summer, and it left us short staffed for the entire recruitment season. And it’s only now that we’re starting to have a a full staff.
Kelly Nolan:
So what what else doesn’t work is burning out your staff. So you have to find ways to do that, you know, to simplify the process for our staff too. It needs to be specific. They need to know what the mission is. You need to be able to show that it’s making a difference. So this year, we’ve partnered with EAB on a yield survey, and we’re contacting students to ask them, are you coming? Are where are you in your decision making process? If they tell us, no. They’re not coming. We’re just putting them to the side and not getting in touch with them.
Kelly Nolan:
We’re focusing on the ones that are telling us, yes. We’re coming or maybe. And then we’re working through what they say they need in order to make that commitment. I think the last thing that I would just add about, what doesn’t work is that, assuming that only admissions is responsible for melt prevention. There’s so many other offices on campus that we don’t have control over, but if they have negative interactions with our students, whether well, I’m not gonna call it any offices in particular, but we all know that there are other offices on campus that maybe are not as friendly or as inviting or as engaging as the admissions office, and one negative interaction with a student can turn them off. So trying to get the campus to commit to, yielding students, to engaging them, I think that’s that helps, with housing, orientation, all the different student support services where students are gonna be able to see themselves on campus. It’s not just up to our admissions counselors to close that deal. It really has to be a campus wide initiative.
Jeff Ebbing:
I can add to that. When it comes to what’s not working is I think sometimes we can all, in our realm, fall in the trap of I need this now, and I need this my way. And that’s not a real, customer focused, approach to do things. So don’t send an email that has 17 things we need you to do. All those 17 things might be very important, but that’s overwhelming. You have to give this you have to feed this information and request this type of content in a way that that they can take these nibbles off and they can bite. And they or they can build some momentum. I give you these 1 or 2 things.
Jeff Ebbing:
Wow. I’m almost done, then they can roll through. But if we send them all this stuff because my x y z department has to have this information right now, that’s that’s sort of counterproductive. Yes. It helps us to do our jobs better and and and get people on the door. But you you can only go to a large degree at the pace of what the student wants to go even if they are committed to you. We can nudge them along, but, ultimately, they have to commit. They better be the one to actually get those get those steps done.
Jeff Ebbing:
So, again, when it comes back to you talked about the some of the departments that are not, as polite. Sometimes they have processes in place that makes them inflexible because there’s either money or there is not money. There’s either this or there’s that. But there are certainly ways that we can certainly work with those folks to soften that or to find ways to help help make that less painful or give them some options as well. That’s time invested in making that process better for the for the prospective, for the student, for the for the customer is oftentimes was very well spent.
Rock Hall:
Yeah. And and I’ll follow-up and and bat third on this one. And I think Kelly really, said it well. You know, this idea that you take a legionnaires approach to yielding the class, That’s very reactionary. It’s very last minute. When you send out bulk emails, when you do bulk calls, you know, there’s a lack of sophistication that turns people off. You know, on the flip side of that point, segmented comms works. You know, you have to understand the population, what areas are yielding better, what areas are are are not yielding so well.
Rock Hall:
Gavin kinda mentioned that in his question, understanding your student population. What what student groups are more fatigued? What student groups are more frustrated? What student groups are selling through without a problem? You have to understand each and every one of those pots, create segmented comms to address each one of those communities, and they continue to build the the relationship almost in a small batch kind of fashion. So I think broad brushstrokes don’t work, when it comes to a yield or anti milk strategies. I think and and Jeff said it. When you send out this email with a a million different bullet points of what to do with all these blue and yellow and and black links attached to it, you will turn people off. It’s relational. It’s one student at a time. I would encourage people to lean on technology a bit more.
Rock Hall:
I think technology has made us better. It’s made us a bit leaner. You know, I joke about the the the the pre, rep visit days. You know, rep visits is the the napster of of our, enterprise. You know, it really kinda helps move things out. And so continue to lean into the technology, small batch it, and, you should be okay.
Shiro:
Thank you, Rock. And, Kelly, I I liked your point about, you know, the initiative to retain students over summer or focus on retention as a whole, maybe even, you know, throughout the whole student life cycle, which should be a campus wide initiative and not, talked about through multiple departments, not just segmented. And I think this goes perfectly into our next slide, which is, you know, what changes do you see in the future when it, pertains to MELT and or retention, and do you think, you know, setting up committees I’m I’m just think trying to think of the right word for this, but maybe committees that take ownership in retention and, reducing mels. Is that something that you foresee as as something that institutions would pick up in order to help prevent more MELT?
Rock Hall:
Yeah. I I do see that. You know, part of my portfolio is student success and student engagement. And, you know, if we work so hard to get them in, more than likely, we want them to stay the entire time. I think, well, there’s many frustrations within enrollment. But one of the frustrations is, you know, I’ve always said it takes about, you know, $1800.18 months to recruit a student. If they stay all 4 years, it pays for itself. If they stop out 1st to 2nd year or 2nd to 3rd year, essentially, you have to spend that money and that time trying to reengage them and have them come back while you’re also looking for another class.
Rock Hall:
And so I think this idea of student success, I think this idea of also working to increase your retention of current students, of lessening the melt between 1st and second year and second to 3rd year, I think those things do come into play. I believe Kelly said it earlier. It does take a team. You cannot look at enrollment to cure it all. We can provide strategy. We can provide direction. We can galvanize groups of people to work towards an end goal, but in no in in no way, shape, or form do we do it all on our own. And so for the future of, MELT, I said it a few moments ago, this idea that it’s a never ending cycle.
Rock Hall:
It’s not 8 to 5 anymore. It’s 247. And every moment you’re not engaging with the admitted student, chances are, another college or university, they’re engaging with that student. So, I think that’s the new norm in where we are today.
Jeff Ebbing:
I think for small departments as well, sure there’s some smaller institutions on this call right now. You don’t have the resources that that maybe my colleagues do with some of these aspects. And, what I have noticed even in our institution is that as the tech is available and it starts to mature, it starts to become more affordable for smaller schools to pick up. It starts to be more simplified for fewer staff members to be able to incorporate into their workflows. You don’t have to have somebody who is this master Jedi specialist to use this tool, which is amazing. But now over a couple more iterations, we’re able to all adopt that type of technology. I see that continuing going forward into the future, and there are things that we don’t even know exist yet. Who knows where AI is gonna play the role in some of these things? It’s gonna certainly leverage my ability to do my job in my realm.
Jeff Ebbing:
And I don’t know what that looks like yet. I know it’s coming. I think that’s a big part of it as well. And certainly with retention, now it doesn’t specifically address MELT. We had an opportunity about 5 years ago to invest more within the institution with retention, a recruitment, and me, as the recruiting guy, said we need to put this into retention. I wanna see our students graduate. I wanna see them be successful. Certainly, we all know that, you know, the the current customer is better than the new customer and the and all that kind of stuff.
Jeff Ebbing:
It was a good way to to in, to invest those resources at the time. Now we’re coming back and picking up some of these things that we’re talking about with these tools and helping the smaller, departments be able to to leverage some of that tech. It’s it’s it’s it’s that’s where I see my job going in the next couple years.
Kelly Nolan:
I agree with all that. I think we’re in a time of great change in admissions and enrollment work, seeing students and prospective students and families questioning the value of higher education to begin with, whether or not they even wanna apply or go to college, what the return on investment might look like, but then we’re also trying to balance our own budgets and I don’t have the same amount of money to send my counselors all across the country to do high school visits and college fairs, and students aren’t showing up at those events in the numbers that they used to either, so the return there isn’t what it used to be. I think we have to be willing to to do what Rock said, which is lean into the technology. Jeff mentioned AI. I think I think we really are on the precipice of some big changes, and AI will take things off the the plates of our counselors, some of the more transactional parts of the work that we do, and it’ll free up time for counselors to do the relationship building piece. I don’t think that some student is going to decide to come to my institution because they had a a great conversation with a chatbot or, you know, some sort of AI, but if they come to campus and we treat them with respect, we give them the information they want, we can show them that they have a place here, during the tour, then I think those are the things that will have the the real return. So I think we have to be willing to let go of some of the more traditional aspects of recruiting and enrolling students and lean into some of the things that will free up our counselors to do the things that really make a difference.
Shiro:
Amazing. Thank you. And, Jeff, I really like what you said about like, we we’re a small team here at Concept 3 d. And so when, like, AI all the AI things started coming out, you know, I was really eager to just start getting in there and spending all my time, trying to learn this new technology and tool, but I realized, like, that’s not the best investment of my time. Right? So wait a few months. I think the rule of fast following is almost as good as or better than early adopting, and so I I I love that point you made because it’s so true. Like, don’t you don’t have to, get the full shiny object syndrome, especially if you don’t have the bandwidth, and, like, the good things will come a few minutes down the road. Well, great.
Shiro:
Well, I think we can cut a little short, everyone. I think this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much, Jeff. Thank you so much, Rock. Thank you so much, Kelly, for joining us today. I know we have a few months ahead of us, and we just got past commencement. But as I think Rock pointed out, like, you can’t you can’t close the books for May or June anymore. You gotta be on.
Shiro:
So, I wish everyone luck in their summer and working towards reducing melt and, yeah, in their institution institutional work. So thank you so much again for joining, and thank you for attendees.
