3 low-effort ways to increase yield communications

3/22/2022

In higher education admissions, marketing efforts often lean into the top and the middle of the funnel, to increase both requests for information and application submissions from prospective students, early in the process.

But yield efforts to solidify enrollment don’t always get the time and attention they need, especially during the early and late portions of the admissions season. 

Throughout our time partnering with colleges and universities of all sizes, we’ve discovered a few simple marketing strategies to increase yield efforts throughout the season. These ideas can help you reach admitted students more often, and keep you top of mind as they finalize their college search — because now that process often extends well beyond the traditional May 1 deadline.

Read through the three recommendations below to see how they might fit into your current yield strategy, or consider how you could build them in for next year to improve your yield results.

Recommendation 1: Vary your communications, both in message goal and delivery format. 

From our experience, we know that deadline-driven communications get the most engagement, because the recipient usually has to take action at some point to move forward. This is the minimum when it comes to communicating with admitted students, and absolutely needs to be part of your yield communication plan.

We also know that even if a student is admitted, it doesn’t mean they will matriculate. Many factors contribute to the college decision process: financial matters, lifestyle considerations, proximity, outcomes, and more. One thing we’ve noticed across the board for Gen Z undergraduates: they crave authenticity and connection, and want to know they will belong wherever they decide to go.

 

“You have a huge opportunity to paint a more tangible picture of how they will feel as a member of your institution.”

 

As students compare schools late in the admissions cycle, you have a huge opportunity to paint a more tangible picture of how they will feel as a member of your institution. Bring forward authentic voices of current students to talk about what it’s like in the day-to-day. This can help admitted prospects differentiate you from your peers and better picture themselves on your campus. Yield is the perfect time to drive these lifestyle points home for admitted students.

Consider pairing tactical communications (those driven by deadlines and next steps) with explorative communications (storytelling pieces from actual students, in their own voices). Here the best delivery formats often pair emails with supporting SMS messages, sent directly to admitted students, which they can open at their leisure and refer to as needed.

Recommendation 2: Use paid advertising to reach accepted students with greater frequency. 

We’ve established that you can help strengthen your yield results by pairing email and SMS to deliver both tactical and explorative content. Now let’s discuss how these can be elevated through paid media

Paid media can often feel costly or inaccessible. The great news for higher education? You have so much first-party data available. With ongoing changes to apps, browsers, and digital platforms, privacy can be a huge issue for other industries that don’t often collect their own data. Higher education is lucky in this respect, since prospective students (and other audiences) often reach out of their own accord to request information. This essentially serves as their “opt-in” to receive additional communications, including paid advertising.

 

“In using paid advertising to reach admitted students, the key is allowing these ads to run the full admissions cycle, from when a student gets admitted to basically the first day of class.”

 

This means you likely have viable lists of data you can use on paid platforms to make your paid communications extremely specific across the web, beyond your owned digital channels. First-party targeting (in this case, list-based targeting) has become more accessible, and it’s often less expensive — since reaching current audiences is always cheaper than reaching new ones. This makes it a great option for pointed efforts like yield campaigns.

In using paid advertising to reach admitted students, the key is allowing these ads to run the full admissions cycle, from when a student gets admitted to basically the first day of class. This allows the ad to be seen in peripherals across the web for an extended amount of time. Today it can take anywhere from 7 to 28 times before a user recognizes an ad, so creating space to drive frequency is critical. This also means that the ads for this audience may not need as much refreshing throughout the yield season — they just need to be thoughtfully curated for keeping your school top of mind. This is how you create that mindset of “I see XYZ School everywhere, it must be a sign!”

In our experience, by combining email, SMS, and list-based paid advertising, we have seen lifts of 400 to 600 percent in applicants who became enrolled students. It’s a simple way to add new tactics to your yield campaign that see measurable results.

Recommendation 3: Don’t stop talking to students once they say they’ve committed. 

We all know that in 2019, NACAC announced major changes to their Code of Ethics and recruiting guidelines. These changes allowed students to make decisions much later in the college admissions process, and allowed colleges to continue marketing to college students after they’d already decided and deposited. This gives students more freedom to change their minds about the schools they chose. 

Your institution needs to stay top of mind during the entirety of the process — including May, June, July, and August. Spend that time giving admitted students consistent reasons to be excited about their decision to come to your school, which can help close the gap between spring admissions and fall enrollment. We recommend extending your yield communications calendar into August.

As we mentioned in the first section, the later part of yield season is a great time to dial up lifestyle content. By adding communications that familiarize students with faces, places, and experiences across campus, you can build their confidence and lessen their doubts about seeing themselves as an active student at your school.

 

“Spend that time giving admitted students consistent reasons to be excited about their decision to come to your school, which can help close the gap between spring admissions and fall enrollment.”

 

Be present during the summer months, when so many competitors get quiet. If you stay in contact, add value, and make your admitted students feel comfortable, confident, and excited about their decision, you’re bound to see a decrease in the dreaded ”summer melt.”

Recap

Here are three recommendations you can explore as you evaluate and level up your yield communication strategies. 

1. Vary your communications, both in message goal and delivery format.

2. Use paid advertising to reach accepted students with greater frequency.

3. Don’t stop talking to students once they say they’ve committed.

Each of these ideas can be used individually or implemented incrementally, but as we know with most marketing strategies, they perform best when they’re combined together with consistency.