Dive Deeper with Niche: Now You're Speaking Their Language!

Hi everyone.

Welcome to today's dive deeper session. Today we have a webinar with will patch from Mitch and it's titled now you're speaking their language so we're excited to have you here and excited to get started this afternoon. But before we do just want to go through a couple of housekeeping pointers just in case you need a refresher on how to use flatshare. There are some key buttons in the top right.

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So with that or want to hand things over to will so take it away.

Great thank you Hillary and thank you to everyone for coming out today. My goal this should take about maybe 4045 minutes. I want to leave plenty of time to have conversations and answer questions at the end and just make this a chat so you're not listening to someone talk at you for an hour straight. So yes, we're going to be talking about now. You're speaking their language. So how do we better speak to students and parents and the way they want to be presented? Information what what matters to them?

My name is will patch I'm senior. Normal insights leader for higher Ed here at niche before coming over and Nechan 2019 I spent nine years at Manchester University working first in recruitment and then leading admissions operations throughout their writing, social media and then digital strategy and and all the fun that goes along with that.

The information we're going to be sharing today is coming from feedback from over 30,000 students, and that's coming from the 2021 net senior survey. Every year we do enrollment survey to understand how students went about researching colleges, how they ultimately made their decision. So that came out actually just before the MCAT conference, we have the niche enrollment funnel analysis, so we did a free service for partners where we looked at all of their students and how they move through to enrollment.

And then we have a partnership with National Student Clearinghouse. So looking at some of those National Student Clearinghouse data and sharing that as well, and then some was reviewed data actually. So you get a really the first look at a couple of surveys that are coming out in the next month, the first being the class of 2022 falls senior survey. So that's where we look at this senior class where they at right now. Where are they thinking about? Or are they concerned about how are they going about their college search? And then we have our 2021 college searching parent survey.

As well, so looking at parents involvement and the whole process, and in what matters to them and where they were in line with their students where they differed.

I want to look at everything today through a framework of relevance, though we hear a lot about personalization, but I like to think of it and better terms as being relevant.

Are you providing the right information at the right time and the right channel 0? Think of everything we do today with that framework.

And.

I just want to look at the differences and why I say relevance instead of personalization.

When we talk about what personalization is personalization is that act or process of making a general statement to work in something that is particular to the individual. So you're speaking to that individual, but relevance is condition. Being relevant dog, but also it's connected to the matter at hand, so it's not just I'm speaking to you, it's I'm giving you what you need when you need it.

And so.

Why relevance?

Let's look at a couple of examples. I have system some fake emails here to, I think will really help illustrate the difference between personalization and relevance.

The first message here just saying I will. I'll pumpco bike pumps are ideal to fix your flat and get you back on the road fast in Indiana. That's personalized. It's speaking to me.

It's speaking to where I'm at. You know you're making it speak to the individual, but it's not relevant. I mean if I'm driving this piece of heavy equipment, you give me a bike pump.

That's not going to be the right tool for the job. It's not the right message at the right time.

So that is personalized but not relevant.

We move on.

Hopefully we can move on.

There we go. Oh, this message is relevant but not personalized, so get your bike on the road faster than kolumb when you see this type of language. Think digital ads. Think something that is relevant. It's targeted, but it's not personalized. It's not speaking to the individual.

So this is something that is relevant, but it's just not personalized to me.

Last one here. This is both personalized and relevant. Hey, Will Winter is coming? Did you know that we also have indoor bike trainers for those Indiana winners? Let me know if Pumpco has can help you stay fit this winter. This message is both personalized. It's speaking to me as an individual speaking to my situation where I'm at.

But it's also relevant. It's the right information at the right time. If you're telling me about winter and indoor training, and March, April may not really the right message, but it's the right message, right? Time, right channel? So This is why I prefer relevance over personalization. Personalization is easy. That's the bare minimum. Relevance is speaking the right thing at the right time in the right place.

And when we're talking about emails, calls, texts from colleges, this can really be easy to provide both relevant and personalized information. 'cause we know a lot about the students.

But the students don't agree that they're getting it, and it's going in the wrong direction. 20A review here. With class of 2022, only 7% of students said that they receiving personalized and relevant content from colleges and 2021. It was 17%. I would say both are not acceptable given the amount of data we have about students.

But to go from 17 to 7%.

There's a major problem. Their students are just getting bombarded with information that doesn't speak to them and just says we don't know anything about you. So I think that there is a big call to action here. A big goal that we should do a better job review your calm flows. Make sure they're targeted correctly. Make sure they're set up properly.

'cause that's what students want.

So we're going to take a look at a traditional enrollment final. We start at the top.

With the awareness phase, we have students who are just learning about colleges. You know what are we? What colleges are out there? Who do we know about? You know after awhile they start engaging. Maybe that's the come on campus for a visit. Their opening emails, engaging with ads, fill out inquiry forms. They're taking those actions. Then they move on to Philly on application. You know, once they're a senior they can go through that process.

Hopefully that's just a short period of time that they're an applicant, and if they're accepted again, move on and really build that fenety and narrow down the list to what works best for them, and ultimately we want them to enroll, right? We wanted to make that commitment show up on campus and then eventually graduate, so this is sort of the way we typically think of a funnel.

Personally, I like to think of it as a dance or a Congo line in which students can really move forward or backwards. You know, they might have some awareness they might engage. They might go cold for a while, there's some back and forth. Sometimes it's going a little bit faster, sometimes not.

But there's it's not just the straight line we think of a funnel, things put in at the top ultimately fall to the bottom. If we think of a dance, though, if you start dancing, it doesn't mean you're still going to be dancing then to the night. So I like to think of things as a dance that's not all linear.

Alright, so how do we speak to students in the right way at every stage of this funnel? Well, you'll see, I'm a fan of alliteration, so we're going to start off by amplifying awareness.

With this, how do we talk to the students in this awareness phase? You know, if we're talking about just the awareness phase, they haven't taken any actions. They haven't requested information they might not know who you are. These are students who think about the number of times that someone fills out something when they're taking a standardized test, another bombarded with mail, emails, phone calls, you know they don't know all these schools. They might not be a good fit, might not have what they're looking for.

So with prospects we need to be opting in qualifying them, but not annoying them. So think about how do we provide information that entices them to ask for more? Do not treat these kids as inquiries because they're not the same.

They don't know who you are. In all likelihood, you know they need to.

They need they need to have your. They need to have you earn their trust and their attention. You know you need to be able to give them information that makes them say OK. I want to learn more about your college and whatever you do, don't propose on the first date. If someone's a prospect, your first messaging should be educational. It should not be applied today. Visit today because they don't know anything about you yet. You're coming in hot with the biggest CTA is immediately for actions they're not ready to take yet, because they haven't.

Asked to

you know.

There's three types of students that really fall in and enter here in the awareness phase, the first being prospects.

You can think of prospects as your lists of student names traditionally purchased in bulk. Maybe they never heard of you might not be looking for your type of institution. You know they might come from testing agencies, bulk buys. You're hoping that information is correct and that you're targeting correctly.

So you have to earn that attention. You need to focus on what makes your program institution right. For them you try and drive them back to your website, you know, speak to what you do know about them, but also realize that when students are just bought in bulk.

What they filled out a form a couple of years ago might not be true anymore, so make sure that if you're prospecting, if you're doing it in large numbers, especially that you're qualifying them first.

Ask them, you know, hey, if you're interested in learning more, you can fill out this form. Learn more.

From them, and that's another way that you can make sure that these prospects are going to be the right people. You can engage with on down the road.

A second student who enters up here at the awareness phase or your referrals.

Now referrals can come from many places. They're great because they're typically free and likely have some connection to somebody at your institution, so that might be referrals coming from current students. You know they're referring their friends, your alumni office who might have some contacts, their counselors or alumni referrals, who just call in and say, hey, I think this student would be great for your university.

You know you get bonus data here that you have a person that you can reference in your outreach and speak to their relationship, but also when you're communicating with referrals, just realize that they might not realize that they were referred, so you have to rely on that. Refer to have accurate information.

And know that they think the student is a good fit.

So whereas if you're doing traditional prospecting, you get to choose we want students in these areas with these interests. With a referral, it might not be the type of person who really is a good fit, but they just have someone who says I want them to go there. I think they would be a good fit. I want them to talk to you.

The third type of student has an entry point up here at awareness are the look likes and cross interest prospects.

And this is a way to improve on traditional prospecting and you're finding students who look and act like those who are already engaged and rolling. Or my preference, find students who look like the students were graduating and there are two different ways to get at that. The first is doing look alikes. You know that requires you to do an analysis of who is considering enrolling, graduating, build personas. You know purchase student names. Another option is to then use those pursuit personas and build look alike audiences for digital marketing and have them qualify that way so you're targeting students.

Look like your graduates, hopefully.

Another way is using cross interest prospects. That's something we're able to do here at niche that allows you to reach out to students who are considering your competitors but not you know they've opted in to be contacted by similar colleges and they're open to expanding their search. So you see this a lot. We give students three options. They can either choose to not be contacted by colleges contacted by those that they add to their list, or contacted by those who are similar to those add to their lists, and these students tend to yield better than prospects. However, they're not going to yield as well as inquiries.

Because there's still prospects, it's hard to beat a student who comes to you and says hi, I'm will. I'm interested in more information.

One of the things I always recommend is to try using your traditional prospect com flow against one that speaks to why they should consider your type of institution. But what makes you different than your competitors 'cause they're already looking for your type of institution? They're looking for a school like you. They might not know you exist, though. Especially, I worked for nine years as small college.

Not everyone had heard of us, but they heard of schools like us.

And maybe we were a great fit and they just didn't know we existed yet.

Zero through the enrollment funnels analysis that we're able to do. I just wanted to show this comparison for prospects. Overall, we have about 70 partners that we looked at and we had .3% overall conversion rate for prospects. So meaning if someone came in, they had that name. How likely were they to actually enroll?

And then we have the cross interest prospects. These students who say yes I'm interested in hearing from colleges similar to this one almost four times as likely to enroll.

Because they are really interested in your type of institution. So there is that improvement there.

One thing I want to point out here as well. You know there's a lot of people who will do prospecting by buying a bunch of names of 9th and 10th graders, but when we asked students when they started actively looking for colleges, only 17% said they started before their junior year, so there's just not a huge reason to do a large scale prospect in that early. If students are coming to you and inquiring and asking for information that early, and you know they're actively searching, great, talk to them.

But students who aren't quite there yet.

It doesn't really make sense to try and do these large scale, some awareness and branding might make sense, but just because you can buy names for younger students doesn't mean they're ready for it yet. So we have 28% of students starting during their junior year then, which means 55% of students. Majority of them wait until a little more than a year out from when they enroll to actually start actively searching for colleges. So it's really important to have this timely response to juniors and seniors. That should be a key strategy for you. How do you get active searchers into your funnel?

Right away, start finding that relevant information right away. You need to have daily uploads into your system. Niche being a platinum third partner, we do.

We're able to put names into your systems same day, get them in quickly 6% of students then said they started during spring their senior year, so don't count out your late apps because these are students who are actively looking. Yes, they may have started late, but this is a different type of student too. We see half of them being first generation students, so they're going to need a little bit more support. They might be less aware of expected timelines. It's also interesting that only about half of them.

So that they had a counselor who was able to help support them in their college search. So being educational and supportive about what to expect about the timelines about what you need is going to be really important for these students who started a little bit later.

So you really need to emphasize here, understand your students timelines so you can provide the right information at the right time and be there to support that search. Be a partner. Be supportive, don't start bombarding, bombarding freshman sophomores with message about coming for college visits. And hey, we're going to start emailing you every week. You know they're just not ready for it yet. If they come to use an inquiry and they say yes, I'm actively looking, that's one thing. But buying half a million sophomore names is not a great use of money.

So when we look at this awareness stage, our prospects, our goal should be to build awareness and qualify interest. How do you get these students to engage and say that they want more information?

So your CTA's need to be all about inquiring and gauging how do you get them to ask for more and start behaving like an inquiry.

So I'd really recommend customizing your introductions to the sources that are coming from, you know, treat a referral differently than you would across interest differently than you would just a bulk buy prospect. I'll teach them things, excite them, don't try and push these high value ctas immediately because they need to know more about you and like I always say, don't propose on the first date. Don't start pushing applications to prospects.

OK, again I love alliteration. So we're going to entice engagement now these students have started interacting with our materials. Maybe they interacted with a digital ad and inquiry form. They came for a visit.

Consider how they engaged you know that should be first and foremost with how you respond to them. If they filled out an inquiry form, think about where that was an inquiry form on an academic program page should have a different response. Speaking to that, then one that would be on athletics page or one off financial aid page. A digital marketing campaign inquiry form can speak directly to what the topic of that campaign was.

There shouldn't just be a one size fits all, and I can't tell you the number of times that when I've been secret shopping, the auto responder for an inquiry form is just pushing me to alley.

If I wanted to ally, I would have applied, right?

Think of it that way. A request for information is a request for information. You should answer these questions they have and give them what they need, rather than just telling them Ali because they know they can do that already. That's not new information.

I'll think about who are these students who are new inquiries coming in at this stage versus the prospects who qualified and started engaging. So really segment out, you know, speak to their academic interests or extracurricular interests, their athletic interests, arts interests. How are you making this as relevant as possible, and this is where you should really focus on building relationships to your counselor should be talking to them. Ask them what what's their pain, points you know what would prevent them from enrolling. Do they have any fears?

And concerns that you can address early and get out of the way so you don't wait until the very end. Be really smart about pushing conversions too. If someone is just learning some information, don't start pushing that out right away. If someone's already come for a visit though, you can treat them differently and definitely bring in the parents you know. I can't tell you the number of times someone says, well, we don't know how to contact the parents you do because you know how to reach the student.

If you know their students address, address something there to the parents you know. If you know the students email address only, just send them a form that says, hey, would you like your parents to be kept in the loop about deadlines, important information? And I am willing to bet you a lot of them will. And I can say that someone who did exactly that.

Send them the form, let them fill it out and give you their information.

So inquiries by far highest level of interest by this stage.

These are students coming from multiple sources. You know they might come from your own forms on your own site, landing pages, digital marketing, campaigns, visits and travel. Don't forget about those or from niche. You know from secret shopping you know that personalization. The relevance is really low. You know when I when I filled out inquiry forms, I told them what I was interested in in terms of major. Less than half of the colleges sent me anything about the major. I said I was interested in and I'm requesting information about it. You know that needs to be the response.

I even had one college send me information about a different program. Maybe they wanted me to switch matrix the academic program we know is one of the most important things to students right up there. I mean, affordability is always number one, so if you're not speaking to that first thing in your response.

That's a big that's a. That's a mistake. That's a big lost opportunity.

More data from our enrollment funnel analysis for inquiries overall we see a 60% conversion rate zero from someone coming into the system to enrolling 1.6% of them recruiting activities so things like fall travel, college fairs, you're just general on the road business as usual type activities. We see two point. 3% of those students converting inbound marketing so your digital marketing, your referral sites 4.1%.

And then the niche qualified inquiries. Students who are actively searching. We saw 11% of those students actually enrolling 0.

There's a lot of things that you can be doing.

But you need to be really looking hard at how well are they actually moving through to enrollment.

One of the things we always ask students in our enrollment survey is about important characteristics to them. We stop asking about financial aid because I was always 100, so assume that's the most important thing to students.

This year we had safety being top of mind for students you know, followed closely by clubs and activities, and then diverse campus.

That these are big things for students. They want to know that you have a diverse campus, so you have lots of active opportunities for them to engage with each other. But first and foremost, they want to be able to afford it and feel safe.

How one thing that I do want to call out here at the bottom? It's interesting while HBC use and eyes were not critically important to students. Overall when we look at response rates by race or ethnicity, nearly half of African American or black students said the college being an HBCU was important to them. And what's an outlier there as well? 23% of Hispanic or Latin X students. So the Hbcu's are important to them, so there's this significant outlier that there are students who say that this type of campus is very important.

Status is less well known than Hughes, just in the public discourse. But 55% of Hispanic or Latin X students said that the designation was important.

So that's something that should be touted if you are in hi.

Like I said, college costs affordability. Always the most important thing last year was the first time we ever saw the majority of every income quintile eliminate colleges based on the published total cost. And it continued this year for the class of 2021. Seventy 3% of students eliminated colleges before ever applying. Based on that sticker price. So rather than wait and see how much aid they would receive after filling out their FAFSA, you know they eliminate it because they thought that it was too high. I just don't see this.

Reversing until sticker prices start going down. A teaser here. It increased again for the class of 2022.

So this is going to be a major pain point for years to come.

We asked them exactly where is that that breakpoint for them 13% of students said they would only consider applying to college if the total cost is under 10,000 a year, and that's not an insignificant number of students.

Things start dropping off quickly once you hit $30,000 a year, and only a third of students said they would even consider going to a college if if the sticker price is over $50,000. So this is a topic that has to be tackled with financial aid offices with leadership, but has to be addressed because it's eliminating students before they even have a chance to look at you.

Uh, another thing I want to point out here, you know visits are a high engagement point. When a student actually visits campus, that's a great indication that they're very interested. But we're seeing students taking fewer and fewer visits.

We had already been a small trend in declining visits in 2020, though it doubled the number of students who weren't taking any campus visits prior to enrolling. We almost doubled again this year.

You know 28% of students did not visit any campuses prior to setting foot in the fall.

And the number visiting five or more continues to decline.

So this is something that you need to keep thinking about. How do we reach students who aren't setting foot on campus? What experiences do we have so they get the same information and the same type of experience without having to travel?

So I really think we need to rethink this snapback. Ten person. We've seen students saying they want to get further from home and that that rubber band has snapped, you know, last year there was a big push to stay close to home. This year they want to get further away a few hours away. So when we asked the class of 2022, this is a little bit more. Teaser data from the survey that's coming out later this month. You know 45% of students said they were very likely to visit a campus this year. 35% so they were very likely to meet with the college.

Visits their school and only 27% say they're very likely to attend to college fair.

Zero. How are you reaching these students who aren't doing the things that we traditionally try to do to get in front? You know, having that strong digital presence, having strong digital marketing campaigns, having a great experience, virtually so that students can still feel like they're part of the campus is going to be extremely important.

We also a little teaser here with parents you know, we start talking to parents more here at that engagement point and one of the things that always comes up, you know, we we tout lots of numbers, lots of data. So I thought I'd throw this in here as well. The most important things that parents use to evaluate the overall quality of a campus graduation rate. Job placement rate. That's what they care about the most.

Acceptance rate retention, much less important to them. You can see that that's not really where you need to be focusing.

Tout those graduation rates tout those job placements. Let's talk outcomes from the very beginning. That's what's going to matter.

So your goals at this point, you know, respond to the entry point for engagement. If they filled out inquiry form, know where that form was and respond accordingly if they came in through a visit address that who did they meet with, what experiences do they have? Follow up on that?

For things like safety and diversity, don't just tell them that you are show it. How are you showcasing in your videos and your photos and your language? How are you showing that they are safe and diverse campus? If you're not, don't try and pretend that you are because that's going to start off on a bad foot with them.

Oh, it's just to visit expectations. Students were taking fewer visits, so maybe that's not your main called action. Maybe it's more virtual experiences. Maybe it's more one on one connections with faculty students admission staff.

Address costs head on. That's always the most important thing for families, so don't wait until the last minute you know. Address it here. It's a pain point, so let's talk about early. Get out of the way. Another big thing. Don't just tell them to ally the number of times that secret shopping I've got postcards that just say apply today.

That's doing nothing. Don't tell them to apply. They already know that. Make them want to ally. Give them information that's relevant and exciting. Something that's going to help them see themselves on campus.

And give them a reason to be an alumni. You know that's what we should be focused on.

OK, continuing my trend of alliteration, we're going to advance applications.

So when we get to this stage.

You know, hopefully at this point we have students who are coming in to the application stage, but you need to realize that if someone comes in as a stealth, uh, they're going to have an incomplete calm flow.

You know you need to have more information. I'll that helps them catch up.

You know how are you speaking to what they need for this next step. What comes next now that they've applied? You know, stealth apps are really just high intent inquiries. They're filling out an inquiry form essentially, but just with a lot more information.

So make sure to catch them up on all that great information they were giving to your prospects and your inquiries. That awareness, engagement phase, and this is the final entry .0. Make sure that you have a strong response to that application. It shouldn't just be they alley and then maybe a week or two later they hear from you. You know this should be thought of as an inquiry form because it's really no different.

Just like we saw with some changes in the visit trends, we see the same thing with applications. We have students applying to more colleges, though they're spreading a wider net. 59% of students now are applying to five or more colleges. This is going to hurt yields. It's going to really reduce your likelihood to enroll a student when they apply, because they're just less sure they want more options.

Really think of the applicant stage as a layover too. So think about can we have a self serve hub for materials? How do students know that they are still missing a letter of reference or they still need a transcript? You know, provide these timelines for decisions so they don't feel like they're just in limbo and you can focus your energy on providing that relevant information and building those relationships. If the student is, wait list or denied provide pathways back, you know. Continue that relationship so they can come in later.

You know, don't make them feel like, well, I'm not wanted here you know what's your pathway back? If they start a Community College, if they start another college how can they come back to you?

There's really A2 front here. You know you need to have the one on one relationships built with applicants, but don't forget about this digital presence. Be where they are all the time. So leverage re marketing to stay top of mind. How do you keep in front of these students regardless of where they are? So you have the counselors and staff and students.

Making these one on one relationships, but then you also have digital marketing supplementing.

Providing information providing ways for them to further engage.

So your goals here? Remember to treat stealth as differently. You know these are students who are coming in high into inquiries.

But they need to be caught up. You know they aren't going to have all this background information. That someone who's banned your system since the sophomore year would have.

Uh, if you have, you know now that we're getting more applications per student. These are softer as there needs to be more relationship building. You can't just automate everything. There needs to be someone on one. Really getting to know them while they're pain points were there must haves, but then also really trying to be sticky be a connector, think about the students, think about your faculty, things about arts and athletics. How do you can create all these connection points for the students?

OK, our last stage here before they make a commitment, let's ascend these acceptances. How do we raise the bar?

You know they're they're in now. You know you've welcomed in the community. There's a lot for them to do yet to enroll, there's going to be all sorts of forms they have to fill out. There's a deposit to be paid. Most times. You know, there's a lot to do yet before they actually show up on campus. They have a lot of options, so don't take it for granted that just because they're accepted, it's an easy road now because they're they've been accepted to more colleges before. And make sure to address any final fears they have if they're accepted. But they're still really worried about, you know. I don't know if I can cut it, you know?

Was I was I just barely admitted or am I one of the best of the best? You know, provide ways for them to connect on campus to resources. How do you provide ways for them to feel like they're part of the community before they ever make the commitment?

One of the things we asked this past year and the senior survey was what's most likely to have a student remove a college from their consideration. So they applied. They've been accepted. They're interested what makes them cut it out? The most common was going to be cost average financial aid.

You know this comes down to what they were offered. Family needs that falls more in line with financial aid modeling and where all they're looking. Not always a ton we can do about that. Two bigger factors that can be controlled though. 11 students said they had bad interactions with staff and 8% said they had a bad visit experience. So having well trained staff, well trained student workers, that's going to be really important. You know, I think it's also really important to make sure that you are paying your student workers. You know this should not be a volunteer position. You're going to get the best quality students, and they're doing work.

To generate revenue for the university, there is no reason they shouldn't be paid.

When we look at extracurricular activities, 3% of students said they eliminate colleges because there was a lack of artistic opportunities compared only 1% for lack of athletic opportunities. Zero here and then elsewhere, and other questions and other surveys. We keep seeing signals that fine and performing arts are more important to students now than athletics. That's been a shift over this past year. So how are you recruiting differently for that? How are you showcasing on social on your digital presence and your emails and your conversations? How are you showcasing the arts?

On campus, because that's really important students both as a participant and they are saying they want to be involved as a as someone just taking in the arts as well.

So like I said, we have more and more students being accepted to more and more colleges. You know you have to realize that we can't really model things in the same way. There has to be a lot more one on one build their relationship, make them feel like they are part of the community because that's going to be a lot harder for them to say no. Then you know you want them to feel welcome and see themselves on campus.

So our goal is here. Once they've been accepted, it is really creating that community. You know how the student wants to be contacted for what type of information addressed, what things they have to have in a college, and what their pain points are.

And then have honest conversations about the next steps and make sure they know how to say yes or no to. That's another one. The number of students who just wind up ghosting the college and you never see them again. Make sure they know that it's OK to say yes or no and you'll be here if they change their mind. How do they come back?

So.

Final stage here. Let's get excited about enrolments.

You know, once they've made that commitment, be sure to keep in touch so they don't just fall off your radar. It's all about again connecting building community. Get them excited for the coming semesters coming years, talk about what it's like to graduate, you know, think long term with this.

Not a lot to do here because you are, you know it's going to be a lot of one on one, so build robust plans for preventing melt address concerns without forcing them to ask. That's a big one, you know, how are you messaging the common pain points? How are you connecting them to resources so they don't have to raise their hand and say you know I'm going to need some counseling support, you know, make sure they know that they can without feeling like it's a stigma, so there's not going to be a lot of automation here. You know this is all about that one on one.

Relationship.

So submit questions in the chat window. We have one we had a few come in. I'll advance as well, but before we get to those is the questions come in. Just want to talk about what nitches so if if people aren't familiar, niche is the largest platform for college searching. Students were largest platform for preschool through grade school. Search last year had over 27 million students. Families looking just at the undergrad college sign. You know we have over 2000 partners that we're helping build connections with.

So those can then turn into visits, applications, and the goal is ultimately enrolments. Our goal is to make the college search easy, transparent and free for students. How do you provide them with the information they need and what they care about, and make it something you don't have to pay extra money for.

I mentioned earlier our partnership with National Student Clearinghouse. So just wanted to share some context here. This is looking at the 1600 four year colleges with a plot with a profile on match. Those 1600 profiles were viewed over 65 million times in 2020. So students are coming back a lot of students reviewing a lot of colleges. You know, they're they're building their lists. They're deciding where they want to apply. They can actually track their progress and then share that list.

With her counselor with their parents with friends and track their progress through to enrollment, we had 2.4 million connections made as well, so these are students clicking back to your applications and query forms. Visit pages. Other high value pages. Whatever your called actions might be, we were able to verify through the National Student Clearinghouse data.

That we had 563,000 verified enrollments for the class of 2021 class of 2020.

And of those 414,000 so, about 73% enrolled at college that they initially had on their list as well. So these students are building very targeted lists, and they're finding the colleges they want to find now. Anyone who's worked with National Student Clearinghouse knows that we're not able to match all the users, so this is just a portion of them, you know.

We threw that though. If we see about $20,000 average net cost for colleges across the US, that's $7.5 billion in just first year. Revenue driven by students using the platform.

So we're doing a lot to try and help partners and non partners like.

A lot of ways that you can partner with niche. We help you apartment. We help you market where the students are being the largest platform for search. You know we have ways that you can freely claim your profile, provide more photos, more context and help represent your school and brand where the students are actively researching. You know, really highlight what makes your school unique. I have premium profile. You can also add in things like a academic program, spotlight, you know visit.

Modules you can promote all sorts of different things on there with CTA's back to your website as well.

We also do re marketing so as students are looking at your profile, look at computer profiles. We can help you stay top of mind and really help consider why you might be a good fit for them and then we have also the inquiry and the cross interest Prospect solutions where you can find the right students and we can get those into slate for you as well. If you're just interested in the additional resources, the research we do, that's all on the Enrollment Insights blog. A short way to get there is nitb slash insights. You can find all of our webinars.

Our podcasts, all of our research over there.

OK, so we had a few submitted questions and banse.

So I'll get to these first. First one. We'd love to hear your thoughts on text communications with students and how to achieve the right tone. Once a student Op send or receive text, how can we make sure we're not being annoying? The parents want to receive texts from college admissions? I'll answer the last part first, because I've been working on the parent survey and they'll be coming out in early November. Absolutely, parents are receiving text now. As long as you have their number and their opt in to receive, you know, just sending them.

Little reminders about deadlines of things coming up. You know that's going to be key with students.

You should be asking them what their preferred way of communication is. If they say text is their preferred way to receive information, that should be the primary targeting you know. Don't worry about being annoying as long as it's relevant information. If you're just texting them to say, hey, how's your college search going? That's a waste of time, but if you're saying hey, just want to make sure you you saw this piece. We had this great new project in the business department. I think it's something you would be really exciting about, excited about participating in.

Next year you know something like that is very high value and relevant. You know seeing them in text if they haven't visited yet and say hey, we've got some visit days coming up to any of these work for you. Is there something that might work better for you?

That is great high value content, so be sure that when you're doing it, it's not just a check in mass text type thing.

Make sure is highly segmented and highly targeted.

Second one here we have a fairly good sense of wire prospects and inquiries. Want to hear more about through survey responses that tie directly to their slate records? That's awesome. I like that. I'd love to hear more about effective calls to action and address those topical areas. We often provide blog posts, videos and or events as our main characters. What are we missing? What are other schools doing offering that?

That generates strong engagement metrics.

So we actually looked.

Data dive about call to action links. Actually on the net profile and the big things we saw, financial aid was a big one. Areas of study.

But one that really stood out was a little bit different, is YX. Whatever the the College university is? Why this school? And you can put a number of things there, whether that's student, alumni testimonials. Whether it's what actually makes you different, you know you can't say we have small class sizes. Everyone says that regardless of whether or not it's true, you know you can't say we have caring faculty. Everybody says that. So what legitimately sets you apart?

Speak to those things because that was something that really got a lot of engagement, but definitely financial aid, affordability, scholarships, areas of study, really providing great video content.

That's going to be great ones. Try to think about user generated content as well, so maybe not the hyper polished marketing pieces but.

How are we providing this piece that was shot on someone's phone in the dorms? Just showcasing an event, you know?

How are you offering those you think about micro influencers? Things like that. How are we showcasing what's going on on campus and serving it directly to students rather than waiting for them to find it?

Oh those are all gonna be great. So the more data you have, the more you have to think about what assets we have that will help drive that engagement that interest. And whether it's you know whether it's it's something that's going to be a two way communication, you know. Hey, we've got this great piece. Do you want to do a chat with some of the students in our physics department? You know you can set up these little experiences.

What's the best way to use niche to help recruit high school students for pre college summer programs? So we do a lot of re marketing. We do event digital marketing adds. Those would be great ways. We've used those for summer programs for summer camps and things like that. That's a great way. You can also use it on a profile. There is a block for academic programs, so highlighting it there and have a link back is a great way to get in front of students as well.

Oh yeah, so that's a couple. A couple of great ways to really highlight what you're doing. Think too, about changing out your call to action links throughout the year. So rather than heavy at static, you know in the spring, maybe that's when you start highlighting your called actions. Driving back to your pre college programs and your summer visits. Things like that rather than having a static list of links that never changes. I liked seeing that too for the for the header images, there's colleges.

That change that with the seasons. Love it, you can change it to be topical. I I really love Millsaps college. At one point I don't know if they still do, but they had a. They had a great.

Oh, a photo of the of a statue on campus with a Millsaps mask on very topical, and something that could only be on their campus. You know, great, great thing there.

OK, and now for other questions. If you want to follow up as well, you can get in touch with with Netsh on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also reach out to me directly. Will patch at niche com or on Twitter at will, patch or LinkedIn. Will Patch happy to chat any of those places. First question that came in what percentage of students choose to be contacted by other colleges beyond the ones they add to their list? I would have to look that up. It's something I can absolutely.

I'll get in touch if you just want to send me a quick email, I can look and see what what percentage that is. It is a large number because students are actively looking. They they can update that once. They really narrow down their list. But yeah, they there's a lot of students who are very interested and sort of widening their who they're looking at.

It looks like Lisa answered that one, Yep, so the recording is available and we'll have that available.

I'll wait for any more questions coming in.

There was one extremely important one I wonder is, is Chris Hardy on the.

Doesn't look like he's here live. He had a very important question about about barbecuing ribs. Personally, I'll give you the quick version. I like to do a three hours with just a basic rub that that I've got up. Everyone has their own preference. You put it over my preferences, either apple or pecan for three hours rapid and some in some foil with some butter for another two hours. Sauce it with your preferred sauce. Personally, like a bourbon glaze.

Wrap it up and then let go for another hour or so and then the bones should just fall out. It's delicious, so that was that was very important question that I hope Chris gets to see the answer on.

Yeah, thanks for joining Jim.

Alright.

OK, so Jay asks Will excellent super do you have a sense of whether schools are ranking or tearing their prospects and inquiries? Dear 123 based on engagement levels. Absolutely that's something I used to do. Actually at Manchester we would do essentially prospect scoring. There's a number of ways you can do this, but based on what types of actions they were taking they would get different numbers of points and when they hit thresholds they would get different messaging, different types of communications.

So where you could essentially just try to limit some of these resources, things like print that you know students do want mail, but it tends to be very expensive, so if you can save that until you see that you know an inquiry is starting to engage and then you start mailing them things, you might have different types of print campaigns as well. Sending out print campaign to all your prospects isn't going to be a great a great use of funds.

Because it's expensive and again, prospects don't always know who you are, so nurturing them, teaching them who you are and then doing the more expensive, more tiered pieces you can do the same things with faculty outreach where faculty might have very limited time. If you can say OK, once a student has engaged this number of times, or they've come for a visit, they've done something to really show. They move up to this next year, and the faculty member calls them text them, email them, send them a note card.

That's where you can start doing this scoring and have that all set up.

Hopefully that answers your question. J let me know if we didn't quite get there.

Uhm?

OK.

Genesis ask do you have a sense of how bilingual so Spanish, English, etc content is resonating with students and their families? If So what modes? This is something that I've had some experience with. Honestly, it's something I I need to to to to ask a little bit more about, but what I've seen both in Spanish and in the Burmese community having.

You know it, it can be a little tough trying to have the right.

You know, I. I think if you have someone who can translate print pieces, well, do that. Personally, I've seen more success with the one on one communications, so we had native speaking students who would do just general outreach and could speak to the parents. And it was just night and day. There was a college fair I went to with a student who was a native Spanish speaker and the parents you would watch them going around to some boots and the parents are just standing behind. Not really engaging but.

When she was able to speak to them, they just lit up having having that ability to you know someone who can speak it natively is going to be important because you get into some of the terminology and some of the things that we throw around don't translate well if you don't have that context. So as long as you can have it translated well and don't rely on something like a Google Translate or something like that, that's where you're going to have some success. You know if it's a couple postcards inviting them to do.

One on one or a video. If you have a special event, you know once a month, something like that where you have Spanish speaking, Burmese speaking, French Canadian speaking, what? What have you parents, students who can share their experiences and help build that comfort level? That's something that's going to be really important, because there's there's typically other concerns and other fears there as well. It's not just the normal process you know. For me, I live in Fort Wayne, IN.

Large refugee populations. There's a lot of people who the parents want to be really involved, but they don't know you know the process necessarily. In some cases, there's some language barriers. Even so, if you can have someone, students, parents, faculty, who can really speak in a way that's going to be authentic to their experiences, that'll really help.

A insight on the impact of handwritten correspondence from counselor current students. It's really appreciated from students. That's something that we see they they like that level of personalization. They appreciate mail. It's about.

About half of students say that it's that print is impactful, so again, it's not something that you should be trying to hand write something to every prospect in your system. I don't imagine most of you have that level of staffing anyway.

Having students, faculty counselors, actually doing something handwritten when I've done secret shopping. It's maybe 2% as an inquiry. We're sending me something handwritten and it definitely stands out.

Do we have a sense from the survey data? If students care about the design of the email versus the content?

That's a good question that we can add. I don't one of the things we do ask is about sender data, whether they prefer it to come from an individual or the university, or they don't care. Most said they didn't care, but those who said they had a preference definitely preferred individual over university, so it's not going to hurt to have that level. But yeah, no, that's something that we can definitely add to future surveys. So thank you, Jay.

Diane asked, do you think personalized print makes a large impact? First name on the piece versus same piece without personalization.

Oh, I don't know about first name. I mean yes you can put it. But if you've received that, it doesn't necessarily feel personalized when it's you know.

Will come to our group. Visit event. OK, well, that's clearly just being sent to everybody. If it is an on demand print piece where it's will. Here's some information about the business program you're interested in. Also see you're interested in cross country, so here's some information there. You know you might be interested in our theatre department too, and here's information about that.

The personalization and the relevance together.

That's spot on, that's great, but just slapping on a first name. Something like that. You know, that's not. Personalization alone is not going to make a huge difference. It's that relevance beats that needs to be added to.

Loving all the questions, I'll give it another matter to hear to see if anything else comes in. Thank you to everybody for coming. This is great. I love having these conversations. Happy to follow up and have more conversations. If you want to find me, LinkedIn, Twitter, email.

Always happy to chat.

So I love about the field.

OK, looks like that's it. Thank you to everybody for coming and the recording will go out tomorrow.

Have a great one.