Dive Deeper with Waybetter Marketing: The Results Are In: Waybetter Portals Drive Apps, Deposits, and Action

Welcome everyone. We're excited to have you first stage of the day. Hope everyone's in the right classroom. This is dive deeper with way better.

Get started in a second. Let everybody funnel in. Hope everyone's having an excellent start to their afternoon or still late morning. For our West Coast folks, get everyone situated, this is dive deeper with way better. The results are in way better portals, Dr. apps, deposits and actions. We're excited to have you. We have two wonderful speakers today, both directors of Slate are way better. Alex Trainer and Clay Myers, they're going to talk to you a little bit about all things portals quite in depth. So step lock in.

Put your seat belt on, it's gonna be a good one. A couple of housekeeping things this reminder, this webinar is being recorded and will be made available for viewing after to all festival pass holders. Closed caption can be toggled on the top left as well as the full screen button. So if you're having trouble viewing the PowerPoint, the presentation or screen share later, feel free to remind her. Full screen on the top. If you have any syncing with audio or video, just go ahead and refresh the page. We'll still be here. That should do it. And then reminder, please use the chat, I'll be in there way better people will be there as well. So.

That we can monitor all of your questions. We'll be able to hit them as we go, but also throughout the at the end of the time we'll have some time for Q&A at the end. With that, I'll let Clay get us started.

All right. Thanks so much, Ben. So really excited here to have everyone with us this afternoon to learn a little bit more about way better portals. Also how we're able to gather some of the great data supporting our work too. Hopefully they'll be some great takeaways for your own instance as well. My name is Clay Myers. I'm one of the Directors of Slate here at Way Better Marketing. I've been part of the Way Better team now for the better part of a year. And here alongside Ally, I spearhead a lot of our technical initiatives, so things like.

Full scale implementations to strategic reporting to everything in between really falls within my purview. I've been part of the slave community, been a slate user for the better part of six years. Most recently I was the slate captain at Loyola University Maryland. So I oversaw all of Loyola's day-to-day slate operations. So for all the folks on the university side, certainly have been in your shoes and know the unique challenges that you and your teams face really each and every day. I'm joined here by my great colleague Ali Shriner.

Really.

Hello everyone. Super excited to be back on the Seats sleep stage and be speaking with you all today. As Clay said, my name is Ali Shriner, one of the other directors of Slate here at Way Better, Been with Way Better, just about six years in a role really completely dedicated to helping partners and prospective partners really making the most of their instances. Today we're doing active work within 50 plus instances, instances of institutions of all shapes and sizes, public, private. Prior to way better, I was with the Chronicle of Higher Education for just over five years.

Working in audience development circulation, I helped to onboard their automation platform Eloqua at the time and supported The Newsroom. So obviously learned a lot about higher Ed.

All right, absolutely. So a bit about who we are here at way better. You know the core philosophy, the core tenant for us is that we want to help Dr. enrollment, We want to help Dr. Deposits for our partners both inside and outside of slate. This is really at the core of everything that we do. Whenever we are taking on a new project or if we are building something in someone's slate instance, we always have this question in the back of our minds, how is this going to help our partner to drive deposits, to drive enrollment. This fuels everything that we do.

And we really view portals within slate as a great tool to help drive that enrollment.

And we have been doing this work for a very long time. We better first opened its doors back in 2005. The company itself had its first marketing automation campaign. It was multi channel even back then. Back in 2009, the company decided to work exclusively in the higher education space and we've been exclusively in higher Ed really ever since. Now flash forward to today our team works in a total of eight different marketing automation platforms.

In house. So it means that we learn skills from one platform, We can help leverage those skills in another platform. It really keeps us nimble. It keeps us adaptable. Slate is one of those marketing automation platforms that we work with every single day. We are a Slate Platinum partner, so it slates highest level of partnership. That means that we are able to offer excellent slate support and slate experience to our partners every day. In the slate world, we've helped over 100 different schools with various projects, again ranging from implementations.

To communication flows, of course, to portal work and really everything in between. The other big side of the house for webinar marketing is search campaigns. So since we first opened our doors in 2005, / 100 million students have entered into a way better campaign. So it's a lot of experience and a lot of learnings too. But today we're here to talk to you about portals. So Allie, maybe let's set the stage, what's the portal that you get right out-of-the-box from Slate and really what can be done beyond just that out-of-the-box.

Portal.

Yes, when it comes to your implementation, you will receive a portal like this. Your implementation itself though, is really never ending. There are many key decisions you have to make. You know, critical ones like data architecture, key decisions around fields and prompts and their export values, and decisions. Less critical, like selecting an SMS or voice number as a part of your delivery or configuration. As a part of any implementation though, there are just certain things you have to have when it comes to facilitating enrollment. And of course you have to have.

The student status portal and Slate of course sets you up with some of the basic out-of-the-box functionality, one that will display a checklist, collect a payment, release a decision. Now comes your next choice. Do you settle for this? Because the default is purely transactional, it's entirely off brand, and because Slate is the go to CRM of the higher education space, it looks exactly like many of your other competitors. And ultimately, if we're being honest with ourselves, it's rather boring. So we know.

We all know it can be so much more and it should be really given its role in the enrollment process. Students navigate to this page at one of the most critical moments when they're seeking an admission, when they're seeking their admission decision and then in turn really kind of making one of their own. And it's all about yield, you know, obviously a very important KPI, one that was very talked about I'm sure with everyone with May 1 just recently occurring. You know, yield rate of 30% sounds great, but that still means 70% of students that you said yes to.

Said no to you. How can we change that? How can we convert 1 more student, you know, 15 more students, Thirty more students. And as with most things in Slate, it comes down to data. You're going to hear us talk about that a lot today. How can you harness the data? How can you leverage it to go beyond the transaction to deliver a portal page like this One that is completely consistent with your brand, one that you've been building likely for years across all channels, and one that stands out. It's different from your competitors and it tells you.

Story, not that default one, And finally one that makes really the most of this opportunity goes beyond that transaction and is really anything but boring. It's again another choice you make in your implementation. Do you want to add up the box portal or do you want one you know that really drives action. So as you head into cycle prep, make it a must do on your list and way better. We always say that you'll begins with first touch. You know you're winning a student really with every touch point, but that doesn't mean you should.

Over the finish line either you know, don't fall short again when you know students are taking these critical steps on the way, hopefully to your campus, You know, create a portal that drives action, action, that drives app completion, that drives deposits, and that really keeps students engaged all summer long. Because we can promise you it will be very worth it.

I think maybe sitting back and saying, well, why does it matter, you know, why can't we just use that slate out-of-the-box portal? It matters because if you're expanding that portal, it will give you some great results. In a lot of the slate reporting work that we've done, we have found on average a 62% increase for our partners in the average amount of time students are spending on that portal page per session. So it's really an excellent result. We'll share with you a few additional results in a few slides, but for every single second, for every single minute that a student.

You're spending on your portal. It's time that students are not spending on your spending on your competitors portals or your competitors websites. And we know that college admissions for for your team of professionals is not getting any easier. You know, there's a lot of extraneous factors out there contributing to enrollment, of course, College Board and in search names being a, you know, a key challenge you know among them. So you know, making sure that the portal is sticky and appealing for students you know is going to be crucial for driving those results.

So what can you expect from us this afternoon? Well, we're going to speak on three main topics. First is the overall portal approach for us here at Way Better and also the results of that approach achieves. Next we'll talk about maximizing student engagement. You know how exactly we are creating our portals, why we are creating them the way that we are creating them again with the goal of maximizing student engagement, you know really very much at the forefront for us. And then finally we will flip the script a little bit.

Going to talk about these student experience as your students you know are going on to these portals. Of course it's great to maximize engagement. It's great to have great content for students to engage with. But we also want to make sure that that admissions process, well it can be complicated at certain points is as easy and as clear to pose as possible and we're communicating that that clarity to students within that portal. So again these these three main topics, if you want to tweet at us, please feel free to do so as well.

So a bit about our portal principles here at Way Better. The first thing and the most important thing is we want to make sure that we are customizing that student experience. Students, as they are choosing a university on either the undergraduate or the graduate side, likely are not interested in 90% of the offerings that you have as an institution. For example, your business students. They want to hear about pretty much exclusively your business programs. Your science students want to hear about these science programs that you have humanity.

Students, in the same way want to hear about your humanities programs. If you are presenting information about business programs to humanity students or to science students, it's not going to hit home. So making sure that we are using the data that's present in Slate to drive a completely customizable experience is really at the forefront of what we want to do with our portals. Next is we want to facilitate enrollment. We of course want to drive deposits for our partners and we know that the portal is a place where students will go for those very important.

Transactional steps like completing their application, viewing their admission decision or perhaps submitting an enrollment deposit as well. But we know that this portal can be so much more than that. This port, this portal should be a place that students are going on a weekday or weekend to learn more about your institution, even if they're not necessarily about to access their admission decision or submit an enrollment deposit in that same session. Next. We want to make it abundantly clear what that students next step should be.

Again, for students who have submitted an application, likely there are additional materials that student has to submit. We want to make it as clear as possible that in order to have a completed application, students need to upload those materials. Same thing for admitted students. You know, of course being offered an admission decision is very exciting for a student, but of course too for your purposes. Likely you have a deposit or you have a reply form that students need to complete. We are highlighting that and showcasing that front and center so as to not cause any confusion on the students.

On the students part, you know of course the admission process can be challenging. We want to make it clear as possible what students have to do to move through that admission funnel. And next, we know that you and your team spend a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of resources making the case for enrollment for your institution. This is going to be present, say in few books, in web pages. We of course also want to showcase that in the portal too. We want this to be a place where we are telling your university story and we are offering.

A compelling case for enrollment. All in all, we want to make sure that these portals are sticky. We want to make sure that this is a place where students are coming back to again and again and are way better portals. We have the data to back that up. So for our partners, again, on average they will see a 62% increase in the average amount of time spent on the portal page per session. But we also see some great statistics when it comes to overall portal logins and then median time spent on page per session as well. All of this is possible.

With slate reporting, so for our partners year over year they should expect to see a 35% increase in raw portal login count and a 99% increase in the median amount of time spent on the portal page per session. So the first step and the third step here we're able to get at that with ping data, So wonderful use of ping data. And of course within slate there is a wonderful base called portal logins. We're able to get at that information with that portal login base that that that overall portal.

Plug in count number.

But for us and for our team, that type of reporting doesn't just end in sleep, you know, we also want to employ features like Google Analytics to see goal conversions, to see where students are clicking within that portal. So if this isn't something that you're doing, get in touch with your web team, get in touch with your marketing team and really employ things like Google Analytics in the portal to see, again, how students are interacting with your current portal. It's something that we do for our portals as well as we're building them in partners instances.

Just to keep iterating and to keep making these portals a better product.

Within Google Analytics, we don't just get things like goal conversion and where students are clicking. We're also able to see things like scroll depth as well. So we're able to see where students are spending the most time in the portal, which section of the portal specifically. And we're able to bifurcate that between mobile and between desktop as well. So really Google Analytics coupled with native slate reporting functionality gives us a lot of great data and really gives us an insight into how our portals are performing. And again, I think.

Partners are quite satisfied with the results that they see.

So I'm going to kick it back to Ali now. You may be wondering, well, what do these portals look like? You know, what kind of goes into it? What are the widgets? I'm going to kick it now to Ally to do a screen share. I'm going to go ahead and go off broadcast so folks can get a good view of the screen. And then I'll be back in a few minutes.

Ashley said we're going to take a couple steps back. You've seen the results, you know the impact it can have. Now we'll really show you the building blocks that made it all happen. To show you, we're going to take you to a PDF of design that is representative of a live portal today, complete with test student data. PDF's of course are a flat file, but in the portal and our partners instance is obviously anything but that. I'm going to go ahead and start screen sharing here.

So obviously with the with the screen share, I know that the the view here is a little bit small even with Clay going off of broadcast, but not to worry, a lot of the elements that you're going to see here we're going to dive deeper into in just a bit. This is really just to give you an overall sense of the wireframe as well as you know the strategy that we employ.

So as you'll see from the page here, this page is completely dynamic. It's completely customized to the student, personalized to who they are, what their status is and really always encouraging that next step because when something is this personalized, this authentic, it really becomes the go to resource, that one stop shop everyone always refers to, you know, to really facilitate all steps. You know in the admissions process. Today we're looking at an admin portal, but just no same principles.

Alley upstream with you know students that are applying, you know, pre decision calls to action on this page are governed by decision code. But as an applicant they would be governed by application status, waiting, submission if you're reading submission pushing them to complete the app or waiting materials, you would obviously direct them on to the checklist. So just wanted to kind of give you a sense of the full view of the page and again we're going to kind of go down through and talk about some of the elements that are at play here.

So the student is admitted. So of course we're pushing them to confirm their enrollment, you know, here, here within the button and pushing them to, you know, dip deposit, you know, those are the next steps. The call to action is clear. There's no mistaking about what we're asking the student to do next. We talked a little bit about data, data and using it and really harnessing it on the portal to encourage those next steps. Your merit scholarship, this is likely information that lives in your instance today. Most of you decide to include it in your decision.

Pairs, which is great, so why not display it on the portal? It's transparent and frankly it's one of your best offers to the student. It generates excitement, so use it at a time that really matters most. The page then, as you can see kind of broken out into the navigation here. And then in the sections that that that follow are broken out into key sections that we want the students to pay attention to. The first housing, all of those important next steps. Students, like I said, can pay their deposit. They can also reference their checklist.

Checklist are great. They're one of the greatest strengths likely of your portal today, because it really kind of, when we talk about something being completely custom, completely dynamic, that's what a checklist is. Being able to set and satisfy items automatically based on status, based on student action, and we want that to be front and center. You know that's not going away.

We also want the portal to be self-service, so we actually have a material uploader here that students can take action on any appropriate, you know, checklist item.

And the easier a student can navigate this process on their own means less friction on the page, better chances for engagement and conversion from a user experience perspective, and more importantly, less calls to your staff, you know, with questions.

We also talk a lot about data and dynamic content. But relevancy is not just driven by the student, who they are, what their status is. It can also be driven by date and time. And while I love a good checklist, it oftentimes lacks a sense of urgency. Here within the important dates carousel we're showcasing, you know, upcoming deadlines, key events based on population of course, and also highlighting ones that students may have missed. Again, giving them a sense of urgency, a little bit of FOMO so they can have a look at what was missed.

And kind of what's upcoming?

The next section is financial resources. The students of course can collapse these sections at anytime. Again, you saw in the navigation there they can kind of jump to quick links that anchor them down the page and really get to the information that they want. And the goal here is to really be helpful to be that go to resource for their college search and decision process. We want to train the behavior, train them to come back to this portal again and again. You control the messaging here, you control you know what you surface in terms of next steps and you can now begin to see.

How these portals get those increased login numbers year over year?

So early in the cycle we'll learn all about affordability and their funding options. But now as an admitted student, we of course have scholarship information. We can introduce them to their specific, you know, financial aid specialist. I've also been accepted to the honors program, so I'm being reminded of that of that here along with an alert to complete the FASFA. So the Faso push is a great example of many things. You know, a main tenant I would say have a way better portal is that number one, we will never ask a student to do something that's not applicable.

To them and #2, we will never ask them to do something that they've already completed. My test restore is domestic. You know, living in the United States, I have not like completed the FAFSA. But if I was international student or if I had submitted the FAFSA, this content block would go away. Or I would show different content, you know, based on status.

Next comes visit. Well, we'll always have direct kind of application, admissions. Next steps. There's never a time where we wouldn't want to encourage a visit. So this of course is a portal events widget, just stylized here and it's being governed by event folders, you know, specific to population. We also are highlighting 3 key you know, visit options, which of course can be dynamic and can change based on current date and time, based on population, admitted students, we'd be pushing them to extend accepted student days enrolled.

Didn't speed be pushing them to attend? You know, orientation?

Next, we want students to know who to reach out to. You know if they want help or if they have questions. But this isn't your normal contact us page. It's just like a link tree, you know that they would have to navigate on their own. It's completely personalized to the student. You put a lot of effort in your staff assignment rules and likely continued effort with staff turnover. So use it. I would say today. If nothing else, take this as your quick win. Make the introduction to your staff assigned counselor on your portal if you're not doing it now and there's really no magic.

They're on in the back end. These are simply just field merges, which we are surfacing here on the portal Next. I would also say to strive to connect students with a faculty member and their major interest here. They can learn more about program research, internship opportunities, and sure, we're being helpful by forging these connections, but we're also starting to paint the picture here. A student can meet who they're going to learn from.

And next, we're going to show them who their friends are going to be. Students are encouraged to complete a student profile when they're just an applicant. After becoming admitted, they then are being introduced to other admitted and deposited students. And of course, this concept of connecting classmates is not new, but it likely doesn't live in Slate. Today you have Facebook groups, you have ZEMI, these kind of disparate platforms and systems. But here, bring the conversation and more importantly, the data. You know, back to sleep Students can toggle through after they make their selections.

You can toggle through these selections here to find students like them. They then can take the conversation where they likely log most of their screen time anyway which is TikTok and Instagram with the students provided handles. You can further paint the picture on by bringing your social feeds and then allow us. Don't just allow this to be static but allow a student to join in the conversation via specific hashtag.

The final section here that can again be quickly navigated to or collapsed is the fun stuff. I would say aptly named because we can't forget about the fun. Just like with the student yearbook, you're likely doing giveaways already, so why not bring that again kind of back into sleep, back into your portal strategy and really make it a one stop shop?

This one stop shop also gives information related to major of interest, but this doesn't mean you need content and student quote for all 90 of your major prompt values. Use content blocks in conjunction with translation tables to really bucket your major into larger academic groups. Those larger segments you know. Here my test record is exercise science student, so I'm seeing science content and a science student quote, and that personalization is enough. It's enough to be manageable for your staff internally to build and maintain.

But it's also enough to drive relevancy with the student, Even if I change my mind which students tend to do. Our research shows though, that students likely stay within those larger academic stay grants. So perhaps I go from exercise science to biology science. Content here is very much applicable, and again, is very much still relevant.

So that's really the backbone of, you know, a portal that you know drives action, you know, one that can have, you know, an immediate impact on your class. So now we're going to talk about ways that you can really kind of maximize engagement on your portal.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, Allie. So before we dive into talking about maximizing engagement on the portal, I think we would be remiss to say that a lot of your efforts taking place outside of the portal should really be pushing students towards the portal. And this is true of students in a wide variety of places in the funnel. For example, if students are in and awaiting material status, you should be sending your students to the portal so they can't upload their materials and if students have been offered an admission.

Decision. You should be sending students to the portal so they can submit an enrollment deposit or submit their reply to offer form. So while of course there are many things that we do and it's inside of our portals to maximize student engagement, we also want to make sure that students are getting there in the 1st place as well. Really the three things that we keep in mind when it comes to engagement within the portal is to impress your students, to be helpful, to offer a lot of value to students, to really be relevant to where students.

Are in the admissions process. And then of course to make sure that the content that you are offering is tailored and is personalized based on all of the data that you know about the student. So first, be impressive. You know the first impressions really are everything here, not just in the portal but beyond as well. And really, you know, the first thing that students should see in the portal should be whatever is most important, whatever is most relevant to students at that point in time. So for example, if students.

Are still working to complete their application application showcasing that dynamic CTA to students up front to make sure that whether it's submitting the application or submitting awaiting materials, there's no doubt on students mind as to what that next step for that student should be. But also too if a student has already been offered an admissions letter making sure that we are presenting that admission letter front and center. So really exciting point in the students life certainly but also too you definitely want to make sure that that information is not missed.

By the student as they were logging into that portal. And then also if you have any sort of scholarship data present in the system, likely that's offered at time of admission, making sure that that information is clearly related to students as well. If you're offering students any sort of merit based scholarship, chances are you really want that student to enroll at your university. So again, highlighting this, making this front and center is crucial and making sure that this is at the, I would say top of the fold in terms of real estate is going to be.

Two, you know, a lot of the research that we've done, students will spend a lot of time at the top of the portal. You know that scroll depth is quite high in the initial stages of the portal. This is true, of course, of the portal, It's likely true elsewhere. But really utilizing that first portion of real estate to the most important items in the student process is crucial for us as we seek to maximize engagement in our portals.

Next is being relevant for students, being helpful for students, showcasing information that students might not be able to find elsewhere on your website. So things like affordability, that's going to be huge for students at both the application stage and point of admission to. So we choose to showcase that showcase this very prominently within our portals.

But also too, not just affordability, but also the financial aid process. Ali touched a little bit on the FAFSA and the importance of showcasing that information. But also if there's any sort of data present in our partner system tied to financial aid, we're going to utilize that data heavily. If we know that a student is eligible to submit the FAFSA and they haven't yet submitted the FAFSA, we really want to encourage students then to submit the FAFSA. On the other hand, if students have already submitted the FAFSA.

And if they've maybe received a financial aid package, we want to show students information about that financial aid package, whether that's linking them to a financial aid decision in Slate or linking them to an additional website where students can access more information on their financial aid. Again, making this personalized dynamic and relevant to students is going to be crucial. Next is showcasing at showcasing important contacts. So this is, you know, the students admissions counselor and we know from a lot of our research.

That oftentimes students not only do they not know who their admissions counselor is, they don't know who an admissions counselor is, period. They don't know what that what that term means. So putting a name to a face and pointing out that you know the admissions counselor is there for that student as they're going through the applications process to be a resource for that student to help students out along the way making that connection, putting a name to a face is going to be important aspect of the portal here too.

And then also showcasing key faculty contacts. So again, working in your shoes, I know that, you know, prior institution I've worked at, there were maybe a dozen or so professors that were truly excellent. They loved interacting with prospective students. And if I sent a student there to speak with that professor, I could say with, with you know, some confidence that student would ultimately end up enrolling at the university, likely at your campus. You have some of those contacts as well. We want to showcase those.

Contacts in the portal. We want to point students to those faculty contacts so that if these students have very specific academic questions that maybe your admissions counselors aren't exactly trained on answering, but those students have a good point of contact that's going to be helpful for them and also engaging who's also going to be able to tell the story of your particular university. So again, we want this to serve as a great resource for students as they're working in that decision making process, especially at point of admission there's a whole host of other personalizations.

That we bake into the portal ally. What are some of the ones that we utilize most frequently?

Yeah. When it comes to personalization, I'm soundly who broke a record, but it really comes down to the data you have and the data you're able to collect on a student. But we haven't really touched on. Also the data you're able to pass back to Slate, the integrations with Banner, colleague and other s s systems we all know and love. It's really then up to you to leverage this data to deliver that completely custom page we just saw, you know how to use status, you know, with clear calls to action. So then it comes to financial aid, again using Merit scholarship, using the FAST.

Is missing status. The same goes for academic interest. You know beyond affordability, student site programming as a critical factor in their decision. So use it and use it to help in their in their decision. Next come citizenship. Your admissions process is likely very different for a domestic student versus international. So the portal content should really change accordingly. Think about those next steps, the things they should do, those should really be updated and dynamic. And finally, staff assignment, again, we've talked about it. Don't forget this as your quick win. Open up those.

Kinds of communication to the dedicated person that can really help you know a student throughout the process.

So with these points of personalization, with the data profile you've been diligently collecting across your forms, event templates, your application, now is the time to use it. The portal will be personalized to their interest, again, showcasing program outcomes, student quotes. The more students can visualize it, the more students see and see it, the more students see like them. This is when personalization goes beyond just a best practice marketing tactic. It's very genuine, it's authentic and ultimately it's, you know, completely accustomed to this.

So now you've maximized engagement. Harness the data that you have. Next, we're going to focus on the student experience, really the user experience kind of overall of the portal. So you'll always look to paint the picture, you know, we talked about that, telling your story, not the default one. Always be transparent in what you're asking them to do. Build a community of really the most important students in your pool, your admitted students, your deposited students, and to create excitement because let's not forget what this means to us.

Student Remember that fun section? You know, it's a it's a stressful time for all involved. You on your side of the desk, admissions office is really living on edge, you know, leading up to May 1 and from the student side, making a very critical decision in their lives. One of the most expensive decisions they'll ever make, and one of the most important ones we'll ever make too. But with that obviously comes a lot of excitement.

So paint that picture, tell your story. Everything else will really fall into place and give students information in a way that's easy for them to understand, but most importantly easy for them to consume. We conduct a lot of research and focus groups and it's just out there, you know, in relation to, to, to Gen. Z. And the bottom line is students like to hear from other students. They also like video, short and sweet, just like their tick tock and Instagram feeds, all the reels. And they like fast facts, things that can be recalled, frankly better than anything else.

So be very deliberate about what those things are. Be very personalized. Here you can have a video around the transfer admissions process. Use student type to display that. And keeping with this transfer student example, let them know they're not alone in the facts. Facts. Here you can showcase how many transfer students come to your campus every year. Again, use the data you have, not just on your students, but institutional data, you know, marketing data that can really again look to tell your story.

We've touched on this a lot in terms of clear calls to action, but if we can offer one additional piece of advice, I would say is to use very, very simple language. Be explicitly clear in those same research groups. You'd be surprised the number of students who didn't know.

What a deposit was and these were seniors, you know, it was they were coming to time where it was going to be time to deposit. So don't you know, don't take anything for granted in terms of what they know. Just be very explicit and clear about what you're asking them to do and you know really to always look to meet them where they are. That's why we love the use of a sticky navigation, obviously hard to showcase in a PDF or a flat file. But the student, when they're scrolling through, you know on the portal, we'll always have the sticky NAV that's kind of following them along. It will follow them along with their.

Goal and whenever the user is ready to engage, ready to take action, they can see their application status and then they can really kind of take the appropriate next step.

So next we want to lean into the excitement of the decision. Give them a reason to come back to the portal again and again. Again think about us driving that login activity. Do this with monthly trivia, which are all slate forms, you know and ones that have deadlines and activation so students can't get into, you know, June. They can only answer maybe trivia. Right now students will get to know you and have the opportunity to win some free swag. Plus they'll see their own engagement that you can see that we surfaced here By tracking portal logins, making that visible to the student, we can issue a grand prize.

The unit to the most engaged student that's deposited and while increased time spent on page and repeat log activity certainly showcased the results of tactics like this for trivia specifically, we find over 38% of deposited students engage with trivia and and really at this point it's not just a yield tool but really an anti melt tool as well you know to keep them engaged all summer long.

So finally building that community. One of the most common fears, again cited by students, is about their search is fitting in. So dispel this by allowing them to connect with their classmates. You know, find a friend, Find a roommate. The portal shouldn't just be the place where they upload a final transcript or pay a deposit. You know, offer other ways to connect. Students here have similar engagement. Over 30% of deposited students create a profile, and by encouraging them to do so early, as early as it started applicant, you're painting the picture and truly enhancing that student experience.

All these points of engagement in the portal that we've shared can have a big impact. Clay shared kind of the over compassing results that we've had for our portfolio, but they can have an immediate impact on your class too. We recently launched a portal for way better in within this cycle and it's all an immediate impact on their class.

Yeah, absolutely. So to, you know, paint a bit of a picture here, our team had the pleasure of working with a very prominent HBCU here in the Mid-Atlantic region. We're based in Columbia, MD. So certainly our general geographic area. And we launched this portal for the university right in time for peak yield season. We launched this portal right at the end of March.

And in the first two weeks of April, we saw some really, I would say, astonishing engagement with some of these portal assets. Almost 900 students in those first two weeks entered to win that April trivia. They entered to win that monthly giveaway by answering a fun question about the university, 310 students shared their intent to enroll. So another feature that we built into our portals is what we call the intent to enroll form and this is really built to serve as a pulse.

That first students, as they're making that final decision, students can say, yes, I intend to enroll. Great. The follow up to those communications is to officially accept their offer of admission or place an enrollment deposit based on whatever the the partners, you know, official procedure is. But it's really for students who are on the fence, who are really undecided where this tool makes a world of difference. If students in the intent to enroll form say that they are still undecided, They're still not sure if they want to attend that university.

We're then presenting students with a number of key factors, and then we're asking students to list, you know, what's the most important factor for you? What's really on your mind in the last few weeks of April? Maybe it's academics, maybe it's the campus, maybe it's financial aid or a whole host of other options. And then based on that option, we would then send automated communication to students. A few days later, I'm telling more information about the that particular factor to the student. There's also an area where students can write in.

Whatever might be of most concern to them. And then there is some back end communication that would then send to the admissions counselor. So admissions counselors would see, you know, first hand on an automated basis as soon as that form is submitted, what is most on the mind of their students as they're making that final decision. We really see a lot of great results with this tool and I think it's a good pulse. Check again for counselors as they're reviewing their territory and their students.

Finally, two, we saw almost 1000 students submit that yearbook profile. So a student as soon as students were submitting that profile, they then had the opportunity to connect with other students on Instagram and on TikTok. There were plenty and plenty of students to to connect with. You know again as soon as that portal was launched in just those first two weeks. So again, this tool is, is certainly key for yield and again I think this is really nicely illustrated here just in those first two weeks of April.

Immediately following that portal launch.

I would say though what we are most proud of is another particular institution whose portal we constructed this past August, so right in time for the fall 2023 application cycle. Now this was a portal that I created for this partner certainly had a lot of help from the way better team, but I was the main architect. So not to brag, but we saw a lot of great results here year over year. So 2022 to 2023, this particular partner saw a 117%.

Increase in the average amount of time students were spending on that portal page per session, a 156% increase in the median amount of time students were spending on the portal page per session. But what we are most proud of, what we are most excited about is that this partner saw a 16% increase in their year over year net first year domestic deposits. So again we all talk about here at way better how we want to drive enrollment, we want to help Dr. deposits certainly students engaging with our.

Portals is is wonderful stuff, wonderful stats to have, but again, it's really that deposit number that we care the most about and certainly these stats are from just one cycle. You know, we're really excited to see this partner and how they're performing in 2024-2025 and beyond.

Now when it comes to portals, the applicant status portal is not where this all stops. You know there are plenty more opportunities to create some great tools in your slate instance in the form of portals, both gated portals and non gated portals. So a gated portal is a portal that is hidden behind a login or as a non gated portal is one that is not hidden behind a login. Generally it is more public facing. So there's some great examples of other gated portals that can be constructed.

Anything from athletic portals to financial aid portals to internal portals for your slate users to access. One of our favorites being the Counselor command center. More on that in a few slides. And then another great example of a gated portal is a parent portal. You know, we've had a lot of partners ask us, is a parent portal even possible? The answer is yes, and this can be a great tool to have prospective parents of accepted students or students who are applying Learn more about your university and to engage with the university.

As well some great examples of non gated portals include things like a visit page, digital ad support and many many others. And in fact when we are creating non gated portals for our partners we are utilizing much the same general principles as that gated portal. So on the left hand side of the screen here you can see a visit portal and of course this visit portal replaces A universities visit page and since it is public you know we don't have a lot of data baked in to know who exactly that.

Visitor is, But in that case, we're simply asking that visitor in the least amount of clicks possible to tell us a little bit more about what they're looking for at the particular university. First, are you a senior? Are you a sophomore? Are you a junior? Are you a transfer student? Obviously for schools with many different visit opportunities, the amount, the sheer number of event types that students might be able to access is immense. So just knowing who students are from the from the jump, you know, certainly can help limit those options next.

Are you interested in on campus opportunities or are you interested in virtual opportunities? Are you interested in something like a class visit or simply a campus tour? If you're interested in on campus visit opportunities and based on those responses, we can then present students with the most relevant visit types to who that student is and to what experience they are seeking. Again, this really I would say, simplifies the process for students and for their families as they're looking to visit your campus or otherwise engage with the university.

Another great example of a non gated portal would be a portal that supports a digital ad campaign. So you know, perhaps your marketing team is spending a lot of resources on having a web presence or a social media presence in those types of non gated portals. We want to take information from that particular digital ad. Maybe it's an ad promoting a nursing program that your university offers. And then on that portal, once students click through that ad, we want to showcase information about nursing, we want to showcase information that's going to be relevant to students.

Based on how they got to that portal, this isn't simply just a form that students are filling out. And of course, the goal is to get students to let us know who they are to join the inquiry flow. But we're offering so much more you know in that portal, making it personalized, making it appealing for students as they're seeking to join your inquiry flow.

Finally, there's plenty that can be done in the world of search as well. So with these types of non heated portals it's using information that you were obtaining via search. Things again like the students major, but again also what they might be interested in outside of the classroom as well, and then serving up customized tailored content based on those students interests.

I would say all of these portals that we create on a daily basis for our partners, they follow these two simple rules. You know, it's something that we really abide by again here at Way better, do something, try it out and continue to make it better, continue to improve that product. Again, here at Way Better, we're doing all sorts of reporting on portals, whether it's native slate reporting or things in Google Analytics to make sure our portals are doing what we want them to do. And of course this is something we encourage our partners to do as well, continue to try.

Continue to innovate. You will be surprised and shocked with where you are. Six months, eight months, one year down the road.

And of course we hear a way better are supported by a very large team. Here are just a few of the slaters that are part of the team. A number of us will be present at the Slate Summit. So definitely stop in. We'll be on that main concourse. So of course we'd love to talk with you about portal best practices or anything slate related. It's something that we that we love doing. So we'd be happy to connect with you at that summit. Hope to hope to see you there. Now finally, we alluded to one very special gated portal.

But a few slides earlier called the counselor command center. This is really something that I would say we have developed quite recently and we're really, really excited, you know with with how it is, how it's turning out. And this is again the counselor command center. The counselor command center is a win for three huge constituents in your office. Counselor command center is a huge win for your admissions counselors. You know, way back when I was an admissions counselor, I knew all the unique.

You know challenges that these counselors face. Anything from reading applications to hosting events to contacting students via e-mail, call or text message. The thing though is if you're not a, you know, super technical user of Slate, it can be challenging to identify what it is exactly that you need to do on a daily basis. It could be challenging to find out even how your territory is doing how your students are doing. What the counselor command center seeks to do is it seeks to compile all of that information in one place. You're key tasks.

And your key reports are going to be present and very easily accessible to you. There's also I would say some friendly competition here. You know we're showcasing some weekly leaderboards so you as a counselor can see how your deposits are stacking up with peers, how your applications reviewed are stacking up to just to again seek some some friendly competition and hopefully you know that Rising Tide will will raise all ships. You know, when it comes to you know again performing some of those daily tasks from a VP perspective, it is a huge win.

Because you get to see how all of those counselors are doing. So we're baking in some key administrative reports to monitor things like applications read, students contacted just so VP's can get a sense of how their team is performing and where certain resources might be best allocated in terms of their team members. From an operation standpoint, it's a huge win too. You know, if you are a slate OPS captain, chances are you are inundated with data requests, perhaps on a daily basis or even more frequently than that by showcasing.

Some of these key reports, both for VPS and for counselors. Hopefully you should be receiving many less of those internal form submissions or internal emails from your team. So we will have a, let's say, a pretty big reveal of this feature in a webinar coming to you very, very soon. So if you are interested in learning more about this counselor command center, give that QR code a scam. I'll give you a couple of seconds here. If you'd like to join that list, we would love to have you as part of that.

Short reveal and at this point in time I do want to take a look at the chat to see if there are any questions, so go for that one.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think the better team's been great about answering a lot of them. But I did just want to touch on the Yearbook feature again. A lot of the questions have been addressed, but just as a whole, the Yearbook feature is completely built, you know, within Slate, as Esha had mentioned, kind of powered by, you know, custom forms and queries. The, you know, the the query that is looking is constantly updating. So it's constantly including students that complete the profile and it's constantly looking to suppress.

Students, we don't want, you know, we're collecting that profile early. So we don't want it to students denied of the students withdrawn. We truly wanted to be a connection point with admitted and deposited students. So that is, you know, constantly being updated in terms of the auditing of that. It's a great question. It's one that our partners, you know, have asked, you know, when it goes live, you know, we kind of give very comprehensive documentation around to kind of portal management. Fortunately, I would say that it's not something that comes up very often, you know, students and I would say we're very prescriptive.

About what this is, you know, students know that their profile image will be utilized to connect with other students. So I think we try to get ahead of that, you know, early on. But beyond that, you know I would say that in terms of auditing you would really look to apply the same practices that you would apply across your social channels. Like if anyone is commenting, you know things on on various posts, it really is is generally the same practice and then it's very easy then to manipulate you know, profile within the yearbook to either remove it to update it.

Sometimes students want their name updated in terms of their preferred name. How students will will will reference them so all of that you know can easily be manipulated.

Yeah, just to you know kind of layer in you know we we obviously create these portals for our partners, but we also want these to be as easy as possible to update cycle over cycle. You know we know that there's a lot on your plate when it comes to cycle prep. You know as part of these portals we provide a lot of great training and management documentation and we also want to purposefully reduce the amount of work that you will have to do on a cycle of recycle basis to keep the portal relevant and to keep the portal fresh. So you know again that is.

Really, I would say core what we do for the portals, we want to make sure that it's manageable for you as a partner and it's something that we, you know, succeed at when it comes to delivering.

Perfect. Clay, there was 1-2. I'll, I think I have an opinion. I would love to hear yours. Jonathan Grimmer, hello, nice to see PC and hear from you again. Had asked technicians out-of-the-box portal tabs have been a great feature for internal portals, but they don't look great on mobile where a lot of students browse the Internet. Do you have any suggestions how to break out certain aspects of the status page rather than one long single page? So first I would always say that we can offer best practices. We can talk to you about what we've seen, but I would say really let the data dictate your strategy.

We saw you know in terms of the reporting that Clay, you know and we have running on the back end of all of these portals, ones directly built within slate, ones that are you know powered by Google Analytics looking at scroll depth really allow that to be the ultimate judge. Because at the end of the day, you know you could think some piece of content is super engaging and will really draw students in and perhaps it's working and perhaps it's not. I think it's understanding that these portals are living, breathing things that should be updated and you know and maintained over time and I would also suggest.

To that in terms of the tabs, I think the portal that we had showed, you know you could kind of see it from the full wireframe perspective. It kind of gave the illusion of tabs there at the top in terms of navigation, but they are just kind of quick anchor links. And then the student again has the ability to collapse certain sections maybe that aren't important to them or just not applicable to them maybe at this point in the process. But to also know that the propensity, the research that we've seen, the propensity for the scroll is much higher than you might think, think about.

Like your social media feeds, they're never ending. Obviously they want to keep you engaged and keep you kind of scrolling you know in perpetuity. So I would say that the scroll is you know and we can see it with scroll depth in terms of those analytics is, is quite high. But ultimately I would say let the data lead you you know to where that is. It's just as you mentioned in terms of tabs, you know we don't want to hide any content, you know especially on mobile where a lot of people are navigating.

All right, great. And there was a few questions on the use of forms. So when it comes to some of the features that we talked about a few slides prior, things like trivia and the intent to enroll form and the yearbook, the student profile, yes, those are all forms. So you know, of course this is something that you will be able to see on a, you know, up-to-the-minute basis you can see any sorts of new forms.

Commissions, any sorts of engagement data that you might be running perhaps if you have any sort of scoring present, it's very, very easy to then bake those form submissions into some of those metrics. So you know with these portals we of course want to again give the keys over to our partners and to you know again make sure that they, the partners have have ultimately control over, have ultimate control over those assets.

I want to give everybody a chance to add any questions in the chat and also throw up this slide with clean and Allie contact everything. Lingering questions. You need to talk to them. Need to see that portal live? I get it. Feel free to reach out to them. Thank you everyone at Way Better. Obviously Ali and Clay here, but also all the way better. Folks in the chat have been answering questions the entire time. We appreciate the time. There's so many poignant points about portals, different types of portals, the different types of users that can enter portals and the and the calls to action that are required.

My students and parents and all the other constituents that are involved in keeping the student successful in getting them engaged and getting them enrolled and happy at the institution. I want to leave this slide for as much as possible so I'm going to stall for as long as possible if you have any. If you've seen some great stages like this one, feel free to tag us on socials via the hashtag Slate stage. A reminder for all Festival Pass holders. This recording will be available to you as well as all of our previous stages. We also have stages through the end of next week, the 19th so.

You know, keep an eye out on technicians.com and home slate for those and there's another one coming up at 3:00 o'clock and 6:00 minutes via about a dashboards. So another great compliment to what we talked about here. Obviously we'll see though way better team and all of us at Summit at the end of the month. We're so excited to have you and we're looking forward to it. But otherwise feel free to reach out to the way better team with more questions and we will see you at the next stage. Thanks everyone.

Hi all. Thanks for the time.

Thanks so much. Take care.