Best Practices in Grad & Adult Admissions & Marketing

Over the next 10 weeks, I will be wrapping up one of my longer, most intense consulting projects to date. I had the wonderful opportunity to roll my sleeves up and jump back into the world of admissions.

There are few people, or so it seems, that have a neutral opinion of Donald Trump. It's hard to even find a TV newscast discussing politics that has positive things to say about the man, or his political ideas and views.

When I go into a visit with a school and speak directly with the recruitment team, one of the most common frustrations I hear is the lack of time to get all of their work and tasks completed. So, I am sharing some of the ideas and tactics I've collected over the years.

If you know much about personality types, you may recognize my Myers-Briggs type, ENFP. For the purposes of this article, let me share that ENFP's aren't the most focused of all the types - in fact, they may be the least focused. So I have had to use many of these tactics over the years to get projects completed and accomplished.

Let's start with the elephant in the room: How can I get through ALL of the email I receive every day? Well, while this concept is certainly not new, it is one that can dramatically improve the number of tasks you complete in a day.

This is the third post of our "Road Map" series. This series will help layout a model for adult student recruitment.

In our first post, we looked at the first question we needed to answer - what is the prospective student's motivation for enrolling? What is the ultimate goal that your institution's educational program will help her solve?

In the second post, we looked at the basic framework for the duration of the conversation you needed to have with your prospective student.

Now we can take that motivation and begin providing her with the information she needs to understand how well (or not) your institution fits her goals and needs.

The more I work to expand the footprint of this higher education blog and the consulting business, the more I am involved in testing various ways to keep a growing number of higher education admissions, marketing and student service professionals engaged in valuable content. 

In my work, I've found 4 terms to avoid in email because they come across as "salesy," 

and using them reduces my response rates. In looking back, I've found they are used just as commonly in higher ed recruitment emails. 

I've now included these terms in my email training sessions with clients and will share them with you here. Admissions and recruitment professionals should eliminate these terms from individual, as well as mass and automated email messages.

Reaching out

We all know that when we (especially the admissions folks) are reaching out, it's because we want to know if a prospect is moving ahead in the enrollment process. But we "reach out" because we don't want to be so bold to directly ask the prospect - "what are your plans?"

I want to share with you an excerpt of an email conversation one of my trusted advisors, Rick Roberge, had with a prospective client. Beware, it will make you cringe...