Adding Empathy to Your Enrollment Marketing Communications

Technology keeps handing us new tools and dashboards to make marketing more efficient. But students don’t experience your school through a system. They experience it through the words and moments you put in front of them…and those moments either feel human or they don’t.

Behind every message is a student trying to navigate one of the biggest transitions of their life. They’re deciding who they are now, who they want to become, and how to pay for it often while leaving home for the first time.

So before we draft another email or plan another campaign, how often do we stop to put ourselves there? Not nearly enough. And yet, the more empathy we bring into our communications, the more likely they are to matter.

The Funnel on Paper vs. The Funnel in Real Life

Most of us organize our enrollment communications around what we know as the funnel. It’s the familiar sequence of emails, print pieces, and ads designed to move students from first hearing about us to eventually committing. On paper, it looks straightforward. In practice, it’s anything but.

The problem is that when we look at the funnel only as a series of information exchanges, we start to lose sight of the human experience within it. What feels like a neat progression on our spreadsheets is actually a messy, emotional process for students. And that’s why empathy has to be part of the way we think about the funnel, not just the information we place in it.

Empathy Creates Connection

At its core, empathy is the ability to imagine what someone else is thinking and feeling, and then to respond in a way that shows you understand. It means putting yourself in a student’s shoes long enough to see the process through their eyes, not just through your marketing plan. Listen with curiosity, validate what you hear, and remember that what feels routine to us often feels monumental to them.

How can we develop empathy for our audiences? Well, we have to take a step back from the information we need to send and uncover what our audience might be feeling. Empathy maps help us do just that.

It’s a simple framework, but it forces us to slow down and ask the right questions. What are students thinking as they move through the process? What facts are they chasing, what tasks are they trying to complete? What are they seeing, not just in our communications, but in their social feeds, in conversations with friends, and in the world around them? What are they doing every day, and how do college search tasks fit into lives already filled with school, jobs, and family obligations? And most importantly, what are they feeling as they carry all of that?

The answers to these questions won’t be the same for every group of students, which is why the exercise works best when we do it with them. Focus groups, one-on-one interviews, even quick surveys can help uncover what students are really experiencing. And when you map those experiences segment by segment, you begin to see not just what information students need, but how that information will land in the middle of everything else they’re thinking, seeing, doing, and feeling.

How Students Feel vs. How We Talk

Here’s where things get fun. Let’s connect this back to the enrollment funnel. 

Students are feeling so much through this process, and it isn’t all rosy. At first, they’re dreaming, maybe optimistic, but also hesitant. They get progressively more confused, anxious, and overwhelmed, with a few moments of elation in between. Then they oscillate from excited to terrified, happy to sad.

Here’s what this roller coaster of emotions might look like for them.

And yet, here’s how we communicate.

A student deep in anxiety might receive an upbeat message about how their residence hall has air conditioning. A student grieving the idea of leaving friends and family might get a presumptuous email declaring that “the rest of your life starts now.” A student worried sick about affordability might be told that “millions in scholarships are available,” without any clarity about what that means for them personally.

The gap between what students are feeling and what we’re saying is wider than we realize. And without empathy, our messages risk sounding tone-deaf or even alienating.

How Do We Add Empathy?

It’s really simple, actually.

It starts by remembering that communication is sharing information to them and sharing the moment with them. If students are anxious, name it. If they’re excited, celebrate with them. If the process feels overwhelming, acknowledge that complexity instead of glossing over it. Empathy doesn’t mean adding sentimentality where it doesn’t belong; it means meeting students where they are emotionally and walking alongside them, rather than speaking at them from a distance.

That shift doesn’t require new technology or extra resources. It requires attention, honesty, and a willingness to see the process through a student’s eyes.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, information alone doesn’t build connection. In fact, if all we send are facts and deadlines, we risk sounding like every other institution in a student’s inbox. Empathy is what transforms a message into a conversation. It’s what takes a transactional process and makes it feel like someone is actually paying attention.

The goal is empathy because this is a life-changing moment for them, and they deserve to feel seen while they navigate it.