Dive Deeper with RNL: Boost Your Enrollment Results Through Slate Optimization

Uh-huh.

That was like right right on the on the second. As soon as the countdown went to zero, my the clock on my computer went to 2:00 PM. It was like exact.

It knows. It knows.

All right. Good morning, good afternoon. Whatever time of day it is where you are welcome. Um, we'll give people just, just maybe a minute to kind of trickle in and then we'll go ahead and get started here. Feel free to introduce yourself in the chat if you like.

Otherwise, just sit tight and we'll get started shortly.

All right. Well, we're looking 2 minutes after the hour. I know we've got a lot to talk about today, so we'll go ahead and get started. If anyone else trickles in, they're welcome to join. Once again, welcome everybody, to this next installment of our dive deeper series. My name is Ben Willner. I'm a client support engineer.

With technicians out of our Portland office, I am very excited to have the opportunity to welcome you all to this today. I have a few housekeeping items to go over before I pass it off to our presenters to hear all about what they have to talk about, about boosting your enrollment results through slate optimization.

So a couple of housekeeping things. Umm, just to note, this webinar is being recorded and that recording will be made will be made available for viewing. So feel free if you want to watch it on playback. If you have someone a colleague who is not able to attend, it will be recorded for them. There is a closed captioning function at the top right of your screen there's a CC button that will enable closed captioning if you would like to have that turned on for the presentation. You can also go into full screen viewing through the full screen button at the top.

The right of your screen as well. If at any point in time you're having any audio video issues, maybe it's not quite synced up. We do see this from time to time. Just go ahead and refresh your window. That should clear it up pretty quick. There is a chat function, feel free to send any questions that you would like through there. Or if you don't want to deal with it, you can also turn the chat off by clicking that chat icon in the top right.

But other than that, that is all that I have. I will pass it off to April and Rob, um to kind of walk you through today's presentation.

Can't hear you, Rob.

I forgot to take myself off. Thank you. So, so, so far I'm oh for one. Hopefully the rest of the rest of the presentation goes much smoother. But welcome, everybody. Thank you for taking some time out of your afternoons to chat with April and I. As Ben mentioned earlier, we're going to talk about boosting results specifically with building communications in Slate and how your data management really affects your communication. So looking at data.

Looking at communications, how you can work with Slate but also other third party vendors like RNL. Regardless of how much you're doing in Slate, how much you're working with your partners to do, we really want to kind of talk about some ways to enhance and increase enrollment by using your slate instance. So before we dive in, I am going to allow my colleague.

To April to introduce herself. I'll then introduce myself a little bit more and we'll dive in.

Perfect. Thanks, rob. Hi everyone. My name is April Bush and I am Vice president and senior consultant with R&L. And I've been with the company for about 9 years now and started in financial aid services with the company and and have moved into a different role most recently and worked with our campuses across all different services, which is a lot of fun and so and I see a lot of familiar names in the chat.

So I'm excited to to see some some friends that are joining us today and I do work remotely from my home in Greenville, SC and prior to coming to work for RLI was a campus partner and as the director of admission at Converse College in Spartanburg, SC. And so I'm excited to be a part of this conversation today and I work with Rob on a regular basis as we work with our our kevis partners together. So excited to be here.

All right. And I'm rob tallerico. Umm, some of you may have.

Uh, seen me before, I know I've I've presented a couple of times with Slate. I love talking with the slate community, engaging with the slate community and and I also recognize a few folks from the the participant list as current campus partners. So happy to see some familiar names on that list as well. I've been with R&L for about a year now, really working with RNL to build a team that's devoted to working with campuses in their slate instance and to help.

Campuses to use slate better whether it's in conjunction with working with R&L or really just trying to help campuses to to to enhance and better utilize slate for everything else that you use slate for. So I've been Prior to joining R&L about a little over a year ago now I worked, did work for another company where I was a slate consultant and then prior to that I was campus based just like April I I worked for a number of institutions in Pennsylvania.

In New York, I'm currently based in my home in uh right outside Pittsburgh, PA. So having a difficult football season this year as my Steelers are not doing as well as they normally do. So that is something that we are getting used to. So with that though, excited again to to dive in and we will, we will start. I'm going to turn it over to April.

Perfect. So just wanted to give you a little bit of background about RNL and our partnership with Slate. And we are a preferred partner with Slate and have been working with them together for a number of years and we currently serve in just over 1200 different campuses across the country.

Behind me and about 50% of those are current slate users too. So, so great opportunity to work together in collaboration with some some different ways that we can help with slate and and maybe make things a little easier on the data exchange with with us too which is always important when we're working together and we are a a full higher Ed service company. So we can literally help you all the way from the top of your funnel to prospect and inquiry.

I'm building that piece moving them all the way through the funnel and all the way to engaging with your alarms as well. So and so if there's anything within that space that that you need help with, those are all things that that we can help doing. And then we also do consulting as well in whatever realm that is within that that funnel. So if it is specific displate, we can do that if it is on general enrollment consulting or fundraising management.

That's the thing. We can do that too.

So today, this is the the topics that we want to cover. So communications challenges, I think that's a really big one and an important one, especially right now as we are working with a lot of students who have been highly impacted by COVID. And the way that we communicate to them is just as important as how we communicate with them. So not only what we say but how we say it is super important and we will also want to talk about enhancing your data.

A lot of campuses struggle with getting their their data in a clean way and a consistent way. I'm one of the things that that I recently found out too is that sometimes we get in our own way with data. So my son, I'm graduated in the middle of the pandemic and decided to take some time off from college and is now looking at colleges again. And so we went to fill out an RFI form and we could put him in as a first year.

Freshmen, but we could not put in his correct year of high school graduation. So be mindful of those things as you are setting up the your RFI forms and because that also is impacting your data too. So not having good clean data in that way. Ultimately how do we help you improve your communications by using your slate as your CRM and then making sure that we are talking to the right students at the right time and with the right message.

They need in that that moment.

So we always want to know what's going on, what are you seeing, what are you feeling? And so this is the the first question that we have. You can just respond to the chat, but how would you rate how well you are currently using slate to communicate with your students and do we have very limited communications and we're just kind of getting the basics covered or are we fully integrated and so one to five please put in the chat what your, what you would currently say. We've got a couple of responses.

Coming in so far and but definitely want to to get a sense of of how you all would rate yourself. So looks like 234 not a lot of ones so that's good.

But not tons of fives either.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean that's pretty typical I think, right. I mean most of us know that, you know, even if we're doing some pretty good work, there's always a little bit more that we can do and and sometimes it does depend on how long you've been using slate as well, right. Some campuses that are newer to Slate might be more in that you know, 123 groups campuses maybe that have been using slate for a while, probably more in like the 345 group. So it it really depends on a lot of different factors as well.

High hopes.

I like Jennifer's response. She's A3 working up to a four. So that's we always want to be improving, right?

Prince.

All right.

So I think the first thing that we're going to talk about, right, is a little bit just the idea of the CRM. We're not going to spend too much time on this because you all are slate users and you have reasons why your campus uses slate. You know how you know how to use Slate. But I think it's important to kind of like set the stage and and keep in mind why we have a CRM, why we have slate in the 1st place, right, because that can.

Really sometimes inform where those or where those challenges where those roadblocks may occur, right. April mentioned already about the RFI forms and right, we know we want to to get data into our system, but we have to make sure that we're doing that in a way that that actually meets those goals, right. So the first thing and and some folks may have seen this before, I, I like this slide, I like this image a lot, right, but it's you know thinking about why do we have CRM.

Why do we have slate and really the the the CRM should be the the hub and you see all the different things. I'm not gonna go into each one of these individually because I'm sure those that use slate and have had sleep for a while you recognize all of these these different elements right. These are all different modules. Whether it's delivered, whether it's events, whether it's you know upload datasets, everything that you see here should be very familiar. But at the same time that tells us you know your CRM is slate is doing.

Lot for you, right? It's a complex system, and it's important to kind of make sure that everything that you're doing, all those disparate pieces of the system are working together to better enhance what you're doing. And that things haven't been set up in a way that, you know, one element is working over here and another is working over here. And you're not really coordinating all of your efforts, right, because especially when it comes to communicating with students, when when it comes to making sure you're sending the right message.

To the right students, you know, all of those different pieces do matter. And you know really the CRM and Slate is supposed to be, is intended to be the place where you can take all of that information, put it together and really develop communications that match your individual students. So, so it is important to keep in mind that that slate is your hub, but that also means that there are potential challenges in in how we do that, I always like to say.

You know the CRM and Slate is only as good as as you build it. You know I've I work with many many campuses I've worked with you know dozens and dozens of campuses over my time as a as a slate consultant and I've seen many different ways every every campus sets their slate up instance up slightly differently and so there's many ways and that's one of the things we love about Slate right is that with Slate you can do you can do the same tasks so many different ways.

Um, but that also means there's a lot of time, there's a lot of opportunity to kind of get lost, to get off track a little bit. And so we want to kind of tie that all together.

So you know I kind of touched on these altogether. You know why, why are we spending so much time building slate, building, investing in slate, the money that's spent, the time that's spent right. And it's really to develop a set of business processes that help us to achieve our goals. And in admissions and enrollment of course that is enrolling students. And so that's, you know really what you know we want is to make sure that those business processes are set up and aligned in a way that are going to do that and especially so that they are helping us.

To create those relationships with our prospective students so that we can move them through the enrollment funnel and ultimately get them closer to enrolling at our institutions. But at the same time, and I'll turn it back over to April, that does potentially present some challenges as well.

Yeah. So what kind of challenges do do we have as we are working in our our CRM, I'm like I said clean data is is one of those things that that can oftentimes pop up. And we want to make sure that as we are building out our communications plans, our responses to our RFI forms that we're looking at that on a consistent basis that we know what we're sending.

Students. So again, so I I may use my my children as examples a lot as we've been kind of in that that.

Flow here in in my my home. But when we you put in a student for to they request information how are we communicating that back out to them are we using their preferred name. So you know I think that we've got to make sure that we're the data that we're asking them for that we're using that to communicate back to them and if I tell you what my main my major is then don't just send me the broad academic program but direct me specifically.

To that academic academic program page or or a specific message about that. So I think that that those things are are sometimes where where we get challenges as we're working with our partners on student search and engagement. I think that's another specific piece. How are we segmenting our our populations out and do we have different messages that are going to freshman, sophomore, juniors or the example that I gave at the when we got started I I have.

A son who is going to be a first year freshman but hasn't been in school in two years. So if you're talking to him as if he is in the middle of graduating from from high school or going through that process, then that's not really communicating with him. We're where he is in in this moment. And so I think that we've got to make sure that that we're setting things up to segment and and target our students and like we said, right student, the right time with the right message.

And so Slate can be super helpful and and doing those, but we also have to remember our influencers too. So do we have a different parent communication flow?

If we we have a parent communication flow, I would ask how good is that parent communication flow? And again I've gotten copied and I can tell that it's a copy of an e-mail that my my son has received or I can tell when it's a very specific message and and like when it's personalized, right? Not just do our students like us to know that that we're talking to them. But I think as parents we like to to see that information too and so having his name.

Referenced in the the e-mail that that I'm getting from them is is super important to you and you are are constantly overturning your staff. So how do we make sure that as our our staff is turning over that that they're updated on some of those those pieces within slate too and and making sure that that com flow isn't broken in any ways. I I saw a reminder today from one of our consultants that just on LinkedIn you're.

Your weekly reminder and check your links and make sure that your, your links aren't broken and your, your communication flows. So all of those things are super important that we're constantly monitoring that how do we know what's coming down the pipeline and preparing for kind of that next thing in the world of financial aid. And there's this big shift, right, going from EFC to SAIC that we're anticipating maybe for fall 24, but I think that's still yet to be determined. So are we.

Using that language, EFC, and our communications flows, how do we make sure that we're taking a look at those things on a regular and consistent basis and making tweaks and adjustments where where those things are are necessary?

2nd polling question.

What are your current engagement campaign pain points? Again just put it in the chat. So one to six and one we are are struggling to create new content and six could be other. If you put in a six please tell us what the other is. We want to know specifically what these these pain points are and is it do you, are you doing a good job pushing, pulling information back on reports or is there a report that you need that maybe the President is?

Asking for regularly and we know the informations in there, but how do we get that information out and So what are those those pain points that that you're seeing and looks like new content is on the list for sure updating existing content and then there's those reports and metrics that are are are vital to you so.

How often are we creating new content I I see a lot of ones so I'm curious how often are we looking at that and and trying to make sure that that we're creating new content for for students and and again by population right. So or or stage of the different stage of the funnel that that we're hitting students thought so and making sure that we're we're talking to them you know we we think about these students and the world in which they've grown up and Amazon serves up exactly the content that.

That they want or Netflix or whatever their their viewing channel is. So are we kind of doing those same things as we were engaging with these students through the process?

Alright, so now we're going to dive into kind of the meat of the presentation, right. How can we work with you or how can you work to optimize your own slate instances for ideal communications and I think in this portion of the.

Presentation, we're going to talk about two key main areas or two key areas, not key main that's redundant, but two main, 2 main areas. One is with data integrations and you saw a couple slides back.

The, when we polled a group of RNL campus partners, really asking them what takes the most time for you, right. And you saw that data integrations was the number one challenge for a lot of admissions and marketing offices and then the communications themselves, you know, creating the content just as we saw in the poll, right, creating new content, creating relevant content, updating that content. And so we're really going to focus on those two areas, data.

And communications and we're really going to kind of tackle it from a dual approach, right at our annual we work with campuses both where some of our campus partners and a lot of our campus partners rely on RNL to manage their communications, right. We have the ability to develop communications and manage them on behalf of campus partners. And I know April and I work on a number, a couple of these projects.

With campuses where we're doing that for student search and app generation, app cultivator programs or we're managing those those communications. But at the same time my group at R&L really as I mentioned at the beginning is focused on assisting campuses with within their own slate instance. And so we also work with a number of campuses where we kind of have this hybrid approach where we're we're helping campuses to develop communications within their slate.

Instance, right, as much as possible. But then also adding in these additional pieces that R&L can provide that take the services even a step beyond what slate is capable for. And so I think we really want to talk about, we're going to try to talk about a little bit of both in terms of how can we help you regardless of what you're doing. And I think because we really see a good split of campuses that you know really kind of want more of the managed program side of things and more that want to manage things themselves within their own.

Create instance.

So the first thing we're going to talk about is, is the data, right? Because data is important when we think about building communications, right, a lot of times we think about that content and making sure that the content is updated and relevant and that it's effective for the populations. But the other, the flip side of that is the populations themselves, right? So within Slate, making sure that we can build populations, add students into the appropriate populations so that they're being communicated.

With and that we're identifying the right students to receive our messaging and really you know we can craft, craft the best messages in the world. But if they're not hitting, if they're not targeting and if they're not reaching the right students, then the campaign can fail just as easily as if the campaign. The content itself was, was not relevant was not effective. And so it really is important right to to make sure that the data that we're using.

The way that we're segmenting our populations and segmenting our messaging is is on point.

And in today's higher Ed world as you all know I'm sure right there are many many sources of data that we are working with and just managing that data can is a task in and of itself. When I was in on the in the admissions world I came from the the enrollment operations side of the House which means my team really was responsible for data and and and managing our our third party vendors bringing that data into our slate instance storing it in fields.

And prompts and being able to use it and so it it, it, it can be a challenge to do that. But I think there are definitely some things to keep in mind to, to be able to manage all of that data that we're dealing with. And the first of which is that we really need a data management strategy. And I would ask you and you don't necessarily need to respond, don't necessarily need to put in the chat, but you know just think, think to yourselves do you have on your campus and actual data management strategy, how you're managing all the vendors?

How you're managing all that data that comes in because you need to, right? Because there's just so much of it. And when you don't, you definitely have problems. You can encounter issues with the way that you're importing that data. One of the things I see a lot is that, and this is the very first one, if you look at the bullet points on the right there coordinate your team efforts. I I see a lot when I work with a campus and they'll bring data in from a number of different vendors. They buy names from the College Board, they buy names from.

In Cura, maybe they have, you know, CapEx or niche or, you know, all these different vendors where they're getting data from. And oftentimes I'll see different people on the team are responsible for bringing the data in from these different sources, right? And you create different source formats and the data is being handled differently.

And that means that it's being mapped differently, right. And, and I've I've seen where sometimes certain fields aren't mapped where they are with you know, in one source force format they are mapped and in others they're not. And you get this inconsistent data coming into your system so that when you need to build those rules for the populations, you're not catching all the students you need to. And so you really need to coordinate among your own team how you're bringing the data in from all these disparate sources because.

Right. We all know that the file layouts are all different, right? The College Board shares their data differently than incur a does, and they share their different data differently than R&L does. And so you definitely need to have that another element is, right. Just reviewing your fields and your prompts and making sure that they're set up appropriately, that you're using them appropriately, that you're using the same fields and the same prompts on different source formats for these different vendors again, so that data is going into the same fields.

I've seen it. I it's not, not often, but I've seen it where campuses will have different fields for different vendors and they'll be storing the same data point, right? Like the the the major or the OR the student type or whatever. But they're storing it in different fields for different vendors because they think they you know, in in their mind. That makes sense, but I think it does make it harder to kind of bring all that data together and use it in a meaningful way. Also periodically review your data.

You know, one of the things I do often with campuses is evaluate their slate instance. One of the services that's one of the services we offer is no matter how long you've been using slate, we take a look and I try, one of the things I try to do is build some reports that are looking at key data points, key data elements, student type, entry term major, that sort of thing, right. And it goes, the list goes beyond that and just making sure like are we actually bringing the data in, in a consistent way? Do we have large groups of students that are missing an entry?

There are large groups of students that are missing a major right and and actually building some audit queries or reports to be able to highlight where the gaps are in our data management strategy.

Moving down, you know, clearly we want to automate integrations as much as possible. The fewer things that folks have to do manually, the better and the more consistent they'll be. So certainly automate integrations and also I like to always stress the importance of one way data transfers, right. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have data going between two ways between a system, whether it's slate and your SIS, whether it's, you know, your slate instance and R&L for example. Data is definitely going to transfer both ways. But really what that means is.

That the data creation is happening on one side and being pushed to the other. Because otherwise you kind of have this nightmare situation where you're trying to update data on both sides and trying to keep it consistent, and that just makes things a whole lot more difficult.

So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to April to talk a little bit about the data that we typically use.

When we're building campaigns.

So this is just an idea of our R&L global layout that I know that image is really hard to see, but it's a lot of the things that that you guys are are collecting from your your students consistently and 1st and last name, high school and GPA, test scores, source and all those things are then are are different data points that that we think are.

Are really important and a lot of the work that that you're doing together.

I'm so just for example and like forecast plus and that is where we build a model for you and we are are able to if we're working together with and you've got slate then that's one of those things like what Rob just talked about that we can can create a report that we are going into our slate instance and we're pulling out the data that we need and we are then applying it to your model and we can actually push that that model that dated back in and why that's important is because.

And providing a really good tool for you to then narrow your focus with students even more. And so like for instance with a forecast plus score that's a 0 to one basic probability they are. And so with students who have a .5 or higher forecast plus 4, maybe we want to talk to them in a little bit different way. Maybe we want to to send them on all the different channels of communication. We want to make sure they get direct mail.

And emails and text messages and phone calls and and all those kinds of things too. And whereas a student who has a lower forecast plus score, maybe we want to just send them an e-mail. And so that's one way in which we can can really work with that that information that we're providing. But because if we're just giving you a spreadsheet, an Excel spreadsheet, that data is great, but it can also be kind of stagnant too and a model score is something that that can update.

And and can change and particularly depending on the the campaign and the way and and the timing that that score is built and we build multiple scores for students and but we can also send like non responder files back to you when and that isn't a way that you can also see just because we purchased their name and because they never said hey I'm out here and and and really engaging with you in the search process maybe they're going straight to your application.

And and applying and we want to know the conversion on on those students too. And so that's that's why all these different pieces are are super important. And again like Rob was saying you know we may be asking for for something in one way versus another company that you're working with asking it in in a slightly different way. And so that's why we want to make sure that as we are are working with with campus partners that that we're talking through and and and working on this this file layout and so that we know.

But there's expectations already know what this definition definitions are and we may use the the the phrase entry term in a different way than another vendor may may use that for you. So. So that's that's why the that data having clean data and and doing all those audits and and regular cleanup and and having good consistent data is so important. That's one of the biggest things that I feel like that we see with our Key West partners is the ability to pull.

Good clean data on a consistent basis. And so I think that that really the idea is, is that phrase that I felt fine like I used often, let's work smarter, not harder. And so having those processes in place and sticking to those processes is one way in which you can hopefully achieve that.

Yeah. And I think one of the, you know, one of the things that's that's instructive about this particular slide right is, is.

This is 1 service that RNL offers student search right? This is when R&L is working with a campus to create their engagement campaigns for student search, right. And this is the, you know, the global layout that you see there. I think it's intentionally small because it's a really complex data set. It's like 150 different variables. So the query is the slate queries to build these things are like insane. Fortunately briefcase and suitcase exist and so I often end up briefcase or suitcase thing over.

Some of these queries to make it easier but it still takes even after brief casing them or suitcase depending on whether you've upgraded yet or not. It still takes time to to build these things out so that they're they're accurate right. And you know if if I ask 10 campuses to build a the the globe the URL global layout and they're in their in in their slate instance I'd get 10 different versions of this global layout right. Even though it's it's global it's the same layout for everybody. I would get 10 different versions just because of of how complicated data.

And beat a manage, and that's just one example, right? The the files, you know, just to manage a search campaign, all the data that's being passed back and forth between R&L and a campus. It's really important to have that clean data which further underlies that need to have a data strategy within your office.

So I touched on this a little bit earlier on the slide before, right, looking at all the different different vendors. But you know, I want to talk about source formats in particular because a question to everybody and again don't have to put it in the chat. But just to think about when's the last time you looked at your source formats, when, when's the last time that you gave them some love, right, not just individual source formats and like updating the common app mappings just because it's August and you need to, but like when have you actually looked at all of your source?

Formats and made sure again that you're mapping them consistently that you're organizing that data right when it comes to being able to report on things like origin source and return on investment by origin source, whether it's R&L or College Board or wherever, right? Organizing that those imports into different folders so that you know you can use origin sources, and then create the origin sources by the source folder or the source.

Format, right, is really important. So it's not just the mappings themselves, but it's also how you're organizing that data and storing the imports within your system. And that's true in a lot of different ways, a lot of different areas in slate.

So I wanted to throw on the screen here, um, you know, just some some kind of data loading best practices. And I've touched on a lot of these already so I won't spend too much time kind of reading through this. But it really is important to review your your sort your data imports, your source formats on a regular basis and really follow, you know, some of these best practices. One thing you'll see #3 there right in the in the in the middle is in order to keep all of your.

Course formats consistent. I think it's really important to make sure that every time you're building a new source format or every time you're building a new import into your system, that you make sure you identify those key data points that you want every record to have, that you know that it's important. We need to know what entry term they're coming in. We need to know what program they're coming in, right. And really identify what are those key points and make sure that every source format you build has those key elements in it. And and when I build source formats, this is this is how I think.

About them is at the very end after I think I've mapped all the fields in after I've added all the the the value mappings all the static mappings. You know really making sure that I've I've made sure to map those key values and it includes not just things like entry term and student type and program although those are the you know perhaps the most identifiable. But making sure you've added like a tight for your for all your family members a level of study for all of your schools. And there's going to be other data points as well that are important to your campus right that you know.

Drive your processes that are going to drive your communications that you need to know and making sure that you map those. And I don't finish a source format till I know that I've checked all those boxes and made sure that those data points are being brought in that way across the board. No matter whether the name came from College Board, whether it came from R&L, whether it came from anywhere else, you know you're getting the data that you need to be able to work those students and engage with those students in a meaningful way.

Um, I mentioned origin sources before, but those can be really important in terms of reporting, right and in terms of making sure that or making sure that you know which sources have been the most valuable to you. I know April mentioned before like with with our forecast plus with Rs forecast plus model and and scoring that we do, the origin is really important and and usually is a pretty big component of that model. So being able to build origin sources and and and be able to.

Attribute an origin to all of your records is really important, not just for reporting, but also just to be able to understand what's going on with your records as well. Same thing with interaction codes.

I I encourage this encourage campuses really to streamline their or their interaction codes and to come up with a pretty I would say narrow set of codes that really explain how you're interacting with students. I think sometimes campuses will build this really long list. There's no limits on how many interaction codes you can build in slate and campuses will build this really long list and where then they end up end up only using a small number of them. I think you know that's another area where you.

Where our campus can easily kind of take a look, clean up some of the things that they're doing and make the data, the engagement data especially, a lot more, a lot more clean and a lot more effective.

And Speaking of of engagement data, UM, one of the things that URL is has really begun doing especially in the last couple of months and that we're hoping we'll ramp up even more and become a, a big opportunity for us is really you know, taking something like our forecast plus model and which kind of looks at historical data. How likely is it that a student applies, how likely is it that a student enrolls, right, but looking at that historical data.

And marrying it with engagement data. And so you kind of get this matrix, um, where you have you know, the forecast plus or historical data down the, I guess that's the Y axis and then the engagement data across the X axis, right. And you know, sometimes we like to look at one or the other and say, oh, well, these students are really engaged. We should communicate just with those or these students have the highest likelihood of of applying or enrolling. We should engage with those when really ideally we're going to marry.

The two together and and and to use that that to use both pieces really to drive our communications.

There's so many students, any, Umm, you know these days, right? Every, every campus has thousands and thousands of inquiries. You know, thousands of applicants. Where do you spend your time? Who do you prioritize? And I think this gives you this using this kind of model really gives you.

Some additional information, a different way of looking at it and I'll talk a little bit more about this later and and and how to do this within Slate, right, how you can really kind of use this sort of this idea, this matrix idea to enhance and segment communications in slate.

OK.

So with that, we're going to turn our attention a little bit from the data aspect to a little bit more of the communications themselves. And I'm going to let April kind of talk about RNN's approach when we're building a campaign, when we're built, we're building you know, an engagement, engagement emails or texts or other things like what are, how does RL approach that, you know, that that could be used by campuses.

So essentially what we want to do is to enroll students, right? So how do we do that? And I think one of the things that we have to do is what are those things that make us unique, that make us distinctive. I read a LinkedIn post earlier this week from a VP of Enrollment who said that she was on a panel and that she was the last person, I think, of a a series of private colleges and universities.

That we're presenting. And so she literally stood up and said what they said because what she actually listened to them, she didn't really hear anything that was distinctive, right. And so that's how we have to make sure that our our communications are doing is being distinctive, being unique. There was also an interesting article in inside one of the, it wasn't inside higher Ed that something like that over the last two weeks where.

A mom in communications had done this research study with her son and they put it all together on the wall and and for four years it's all the thousands of emails that they got and and and a lot of them were were the same a lot of them were were transactional and not wanting you to do something without telling me why I should do it or or about the the university and so that's where one of the the ways that I think we're we're different and and distinctive.

Is we want to spend time getting to know the campus and we want to make sure that we're reflecting your voice, whether it's a video that we're sending out on your behalf or a digital ad that we're replacing for you and any any kind of message that we are sending out on, on your behalf. And the reason why that's important is because we're sending a lot of messages out on your behalf, so.

As we think about student search and engagement and a lot of campuses and will try to manage that search campaign on on their own, but to have a really robust student certain engagement campaign, there's a lot that goes into that. And so this is just one example of what that could look like. And we're talking about multiple launches and within those launches having not only emails but multiple.

Emails that are are going out and direct mail pieces. So again we're gonna use some of the data that we have on your students to determine who we're going to send the direct mail to you. We may not if we're buying 150,000 names we're not going to send 150,000 direct mail pieces out and calling hours here. We're going to call and and and it does still work. I I know there's probably a couple of people on the the webinar today going.

Calling really are are we still doing that and the answer is yes because it is still very effective and we see response rates increase when when we do that digital boost. So how are we getting that message in front of students and and getting them to take some kind of action and we've talked about that that forecast plus inquiry model. So these are a lot of moving parts that that you are having to mean and so we can.

And help you in managing this data integration. We can push and pull that data back and forth from from Slate to us and and send it back in the into your system for you so that you've got your responders, you've got who's opening. But we can also manage all of these pieces for you in your slate instance too and really help build out your communications flow and specifically in that way so that you're getting all these these different data points measured I guess.

So while ago non responders just because they're not responding to an ad that you're you're putting in front of them or returning that reply card that they got on that mail piece or or responded even opening an e-mail but maybe not even taking action other than opening that e-mail. And you still want to understand how many of those you are making an impression on through this process and and that's where that that integration piece becomes extremely helpful.

And understanding the impact that you're having.

Yeah. And I think you know, everything that that April was just outlining with, you know, the different channels of communication. I think it's really important. And you know, you you laughed April when you were talking about calling, right. But it's, it is important to have those different channels because some students don't respond to certain channels, right. Some students are never going to answer emails anymore, right. They just don't do it. You know, I like to tell a story when I spent a couple of years where I was actually a school based.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Counselor I I was ran a college counseling office and one of my favorite students of all time that was there, right? He was a great student, but he was typical. I think of of the the age group because you know, he told me one point that he doesn't check e-mail and that he he had several e-mail accounts because his emails would just fill up with e-mail. He never deleted the emails either. And he literally had like multiple e-mail accounts where the inbox had filled up with thousands and thousands of.

Unread emails. And his response was I'll just create a new e-mail, right. They're free. Why not? And so, you know, the channel mix is important, right? And I will kind of talk a little bit about that as well, right. Within Slate, the channel mix is important because not just can you vary the message, vary the medium of the message, but because you're going to catch more students that way as well. And so it is important. And I think the other thing that's important to note here is, right, Slate can do a lot of great things. Slate sends emails and text.

Messages and and does a lot of great things, but sometimes, right, some of the things that, you know, R&L or others can assist with, right. And this is another reason why that data integration is so important, something slate just doesn't do, right. I mean you see on here like the digital boost impressions like those are digital ads, right? Slate doesn't create digital ads. Now Slate can receive the data from those and you can create new records in your system from those. But creating the ads themselves is not something that sleep really does.

So kind of having this multi approach for this varied approach or varied attack on these communications right really does make a lot of sense.

So now um to kind of turn our attention though as as April said, you know we certainly work with with schools and help them kind of enhance their slate instance to build communications more effectively themselves. And one of the places whenever I'm talking campaigns, I'm talking communications in Slate, I always start with populations because you have to start there and I always encourage campuses to streamline their populations when you're building out and you can kind of see like on the left hand side of the screen.

There was, you know, an initial build out. The campus had initially created a whole bunch of of populations trying to like, think of every different variation that they could have, like what could a possible student be? And then you often look at the campuses that have that in their slate instance, you'll often look at go to the populations page and you'll see like half of them have zero students in them because they were like, oh, well, we built it, but we forget why or we're not sure why we built it, right. So streamline those populations, make sure you have a goal. Make sure you have a purpose.

For creating that population to use as a for communications right. And then focus on now just building communication plans out for that more streamlined list and then get rid of inactivate, delete whatever you can do to get rid of the rest of those populations. So that way it's not it's not cluttering up your your slate instance.

Slate does also write. Developing the right channel mix is important as well, and I think slate is. Slate is nice because it does allow for some varied communications, emails and text messages. And you can build in some different print options whether you're using sleep print or not using slate print right. Whether you have your own mailing house on campus, whether you don't and you need an external mailhouse, certainly there are some things that are that are built in here and even calling now, right.

Um, slate can do, can assist with some calling but even if you wanted to call right I found that a lot of times you know campuses don't have the bandwidth to do that themselves. However I do have a on the next slide we'll talk a little bit about potentially calling on on campus although you know to call to the extent that you can get from external sources you know made a lot of campuses probably don't have that bandwidth but really making sure that you have that right channel mix and using slate you know within the campaign.

To develop that that Channel mix and I will say that's the other, that's another thing that that where R&L can often help in developing that Channel mix is, is all of our methods are data-driven, right. We have data on when is the right time to throw a text message on there, when how far apart should emails be spaced to maximize the effectiveness, right. We've done studies, we we have data that kind of looks at that and the the campaigns that we help campuses develop are based off of that.

Data very data informed approach.

So one of the things that I have been helping campuses a lot with is using projects and tasks. And I don't know how many campuses here that are watching today, how many folks today are using projects and tasks within your slate instance. But a great way and and and hopefully you can see this on the screen. A great idea to potentially use projects and tasks for is to help with the calling if you're trying to manage calling on your own, if you're trying to manage that with your.

Counseling staff. You can see here on the I have a task rule that I've built out in my own slate instance, and it's a calling task. You can see that that the name of the task there is is the day 10.

To date, 10 call and you know, really trying to build a call into that campaign. The filter that we're using in the rule is a population timestamp filter. So it's looking for certain students in a certain population on day 10 of that campaign. And then what we're doing is adding a task here at the action at the bottom is to add a task for the counseling staff to then be calling the students on that that particular day. So there's a particular message.

There's a particular day that task gets added to the counseling the counselors workflow or to their to their taskbar so that when counselors log in every day they're going to see the students that they need to call there. So using projects and tasks to help us with these communications I think is extremely effective. I've been working with a number of campuses recently to kind of build out these projects and tasks to assist with counselors being able to communicate more effectively to prioritize what type of communications.

They're doing um and and to really help them organize. OK, for as a counselor, I have to make so many different or I have to engage with students in so many different ways. How do I keep track of all of that? And projects and tasks is a good way to do that?

Of course, reporting is also important. There are slate allows us to pretty easily build out some basic reports, engagement reports. Again though, the soldering is important, right? As we're building our messages out, we want to folder those messages effectively so that we can easily display messages that should be tied together in that way. RNL also does a lot with reporting. I know April, you you one of the things you.

You spend a lot of time on is working with campuses just you know sharing RNL's data with the campuses and and I will say our slate has some nice reporting capability, but it doesn't compare to some of the data that we were able to share from from a full engagement campaign.

Um, so moving on, um, I did we mentioned before incorporating analytics into message segmentation, right? This is the idea of not just looking at one metric or not just looking at one thing like entry term or student type, but incorporating analytics into the segmentation as well, really trying to.

Use the the historical data, use the engagement data to potentially segment our population using scores that R&L or others can send to you. And either, you know, building a model based on a number of those scores or using the this, the R&L scores themselves to really then build populations based on how likely is a student to enroll and how much are they engaging, right. If you remember that matrix I shared a little while ago being able to.

Um, you know use the kind of the combination which which square in that matrix do they fall in and using that to prioritize whether it's within an engagement campaign, when it within an e-mail campaign or whether it's within those, those projects and tasks. Which calls should we prioritize knowing that your counseling staff probably can't call all of your your inquiries can't call out all of your applicants, they don't have the bandwidth. Who should we prioritize? And you know incorporating the analytics into that is definitely a way that.

They can use projects and tasks to help prioritize that.

And then you know further, you know pairing UTM codes with ping, and I think this is this is particularly powerful within Slate is one. You want to make sure that you're using UTM codes on all of your e-mail campaigns. That way, whenever you have links in your emails, whenever you have any call to action where a student is clicking and being taken out somewhere, you can tie that to the UTM codes and then using ping to capture that data to one measure the effectiveness of your communications.

But then also, um, using that information to drive further actions. A great example I always like to give is if you have an e-mail that's gone out and you see that a student clicked on the financial aid link, they were they went to the financial aid page of your website, ping picks up that activity, brings that back in. Let's have some additional communication or additional action taken where now we know that the students interested in financial aid, let's send something else out or let's have a call to go out.

That's geared towards financial aid and and so kind of pairing the UTM codes with the ping with ping data to be able to provide those additional.

Elements I think is really powerful within Slate.

All right. So we're closing in on our time, but the good news is we're also getting towards the end of our program. So with that, I'll turn it back over to April to drive US home.

Thanks rob. So I think the the big take away is that we want to make sure that we are using the data and using the data effectively to reach the the right students at the the right time and that that ping data what Rob was just talking about that's exactly that Netflix experience and that Amazon experience, right. So, so how do we use all those great data points that we've gathered through our interactions with with these.

Students to make sure that we are delivering just that that to them and so how do we do that three ways, right. So first we have to assess what we're already doing and and and that's one of the things that we talked about you know our our links working isn't the right person's name and the the e-mail that we're sending and we have to make sure that that we're enhancing what we're doing tracking your data using the data that we have like the ping data.

I I think that's a a huge opportunity if you're you're not currently doing that and how do we make that priority number one or at least two or three so that we can kind of use that that data because I think that that's exactly what students are expecting right now is that that we are talking to them based off the things that they are doing because that's the way they're they're so used to to being talked to in that way and then we have to invest and what does that investment look like.

I think there are a lot of ways that we can invest. It's attending webinars like this and it's making sure that that we have really a succession plan. One of the biggest things that I feel like that I hear from campus is right now that they are struggling with is they lost their their slate 2:00 PM and that position is so hard to fill. And so as you are are thinking about those pieces how do we make sure that we are we're educating our current staff that we are.

We're continuing to to provide professional development and there's like has a great conference in the summer. So make sure that you're sending folks there because although we have to make sure that we're doing all three of these consistently and so, so that we can really hit the, the enrollment results that we want and one of the things that I think that we can help with.

Is that that last point and that's making sure that we're sorry. Nope, you're right is asking the right questions. So it's not this is not just a thing for the admission office to to to do this is something that we have to make sure that the entire campus really kind of understands what that we have CRM and how we're using it and why this is important. So you I'm not going to go into all these different questions, but I think these are all things that that you have to make sure that.

We're we're considering what is it that we that we need what's that that one thing that we can do that will maybe be have a bigger impact on what's something maybe that we need to stop doing that will also have a big, big impact. So make sure that we're we're constantly evaluating and constantly asking the right questions.

So we are are here, we are available to you and you can reach out to Rob and I directly. You can go to our website and we are happy to have a conversation with with anyone who wants to talk a little bit more about how R&L and Slate are able to work together. And it's a great partnership and we appreciate the the opportunity that that we have and again to me this is one of those.

Or they're not harder things. So how do we really make sure that that we're using all the opportunities that we have available to because everyone and that I know and enrollment works extremely hard. And so this is one of those things that that hopefully can can make things a little bit easier for you. That's exactly what what Rob and I want to do is just help make your your jobs easier. If we can take one thing off your plate then I think we're we're doing that.

Well I think you mentioned I mean you hit a a really valid point April right when you were talking about campuses that have lost their their slate captain or or you know they're they're really their slate expert recently won. I see that a lot anybody who's here that's part of the the Facebook Slate group right. You probably see all the time the campuses that are looking for their next sleep Captain.

Uh, right. Because campuses lose those people all the time. And, you know, admissions folks, marketing folks, enrollment folks are great people, hard working people. I don't know anybody that works harder than an admissions counselor, right?

And it's often we work with campuses often not because they can't do these things themselves, but they just don't have the bandwidth to do them, right. We have extra bandwidth. You know, when I work with campuses, another thing we didn't even talk about is that a service that we offer is just Slate consulting, right? You have something you need to do, you have a project, you need something built in slate. We can help you do that. And and largely it's because it's not because you couldn't do it yourselves. If you had all the time right, you probably could. It's just that because you're busy recruiting classes.

Right, the the bandwidth. That bandwidth is a, you know, a real limitation. So.

Hopefully it was helpful. I know we're just about at our time maybe a minute or two over if if anybody does have questions April and I would I'm sure be happy to to respond but if not we're definitely happy that you were able to take some time out of your afternoon and and and chat with us and and learn about some of the ways to that we can use slate to work with work build better communications whether you're working with a partner.

Or not.

Thank you so much, Rob. April, this was absolutely fantastic. I don't think we've had any kind of questions come in, in the chat so far. So thank you so much for your time today. It was incredibly informative and I'm sure if folks have further questions, they'll be in touch. Thank you all for coming and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks everyone.

Thank you.