Search Strategies in a Competitive Market
Dr. Doug Spadaro, Ph.D.
President
Premier Communications
Mr. David Waggoner, M.A.
Vice President
Premier Communications
Today?s high school juniors and seniors (and increasingly, sophomores) are inundated with literature from hundreds of colleges and universities. This article explores the various search strategies, methods and materials that make a search more effective and efficient.
A typical high school student will receive mailings and e-mails from scores of colleges and universities throughout their high school career. The mailings, almost universally, consist of either a letter from the Admissions office, in a brightly colored envelope with the institution?s name and logo prominently displayed. Or, in some cases, more aggressive (and over-budgeted) marketing consists of an expensive viewbook or brochure. The e-mails are usually generated on a ?one-size-fits-all? basis that attempts to capitalize on the internet marketplace, but rarely succeeds.
The end result? Mass mailings usually end up unopened in a landfill. E-mails, if not carefully administrated, end up be-ing caught by a spam filter such as those routinely used by AOL, cable internet providers , etc. Even if an e-mail suc-cessfully reaches a student?s inbox, it is usually deleted by the student as unrecognized before it is even opened.
Premier Communications routinely uses actual high school students who save all of their incoming college mail for our evaluation. When the students deliver their ?bags? to us every month, we invariably find that 99% of the mail is unopened. Why? ?It is the same old junk,? is the typical answer.
On the other hand, when we ask why a certain piece was opened and considered, the usual answer is, ?They really seemed to know who I am and what I want to do.? Again, consider how your mail might be viewed by a typical student. Is it mass produced with an ink jet address? Is it on your college letterhead like everyone else?s? Does it really indicate to the student that you know specific information about them, or is it a universal letter that can apply to anyone?
It is not surprising, then, that search response rates have plummeted. Despite this trend, Premier does see significant opportunities for institutions that use their searches and search budget in a well thought out manner. Although there are numerous private organizations that collect high school student data, we remain committed to our client?s use of the College Board (SAT) and the Educational Opportunity Service (ACT) as the mainstay of their recruiting efforts. While the private data firms collect data on ALL high school students, SAT and ACT are a self-selected group of students that are actually planning on going forward with their higher education. Students that pay the test administration fee and actually undergo the stress of taking the exam are obviously serious about their college plans. So, in a limited budget environment, it makes sense to use one or both of the testing services that account for virtually 100% of all college-bound students.
Search design, although tedious, must be done in a thoughtful manner. Both the College Board and EOS have numerous student characteristics to help you refine your search parameters. The first step in designing an effective search is to clearly define the goals of the enrollment area as enumerated by the college community. Once these goals are defined, they must be realistically assessed based on current student demographics and the institution?s ability to provide a fit with potential candidates. For example, if the majority of your enrolled students are ?B? average students in high school, does it really make sense for you to expend your scarce search budget on attempting to recruit ?A+? students? This is a matter of managing expectations within the campus community.
Premier believes that improvements in student quality can best be made incrementally in small and affordable steps.
For example, all of our long-term clients have moved well beyond the basic global search technique to the point where they are systematically refining their search parameters on an ongoing basis. These refinements include emphasizing specific modestly higher GPA and exam scores, expanding geography, expanding diversity, or implementing new majors and programs. As such, Premier routinely performs ?what-if? scenarios for these clients using actual search data.
Consider the picture below of actual college recruitment literature as photographed and posted on Twitter by a high school senior:
Does one mailing piece catch your attention more than the other ?huddled masses?? The piece that you are focusing on was designed and produced by Premier based on a comprehensive search plan developed with our client ? a large east-coast private university. By utilizing all of the student characteristics made available by the College Board, we were able to target in on a specific group of students that were likely to go to this university, could be successfully admitted to this university, and could find a major at this university in their anticipated field of study. In this case, that major was in the health professions. Further, by combining SAT data with our own demographic databases, we could also determine that this student could afford to attend this university. This was all done during the search design process, before any budget was expended on production and mailing costs.
This search piece, in relative terms, is inexpensive. Obviously, it is less than a viewbook or brochure and may often be less than many of the color-laden envelopes that you see in the picture. Yet despite its cost-effectiveness, it does emphasize to the student, ?We know who you are and what you are about!? This particular client uses 7 versions of a personalized variable data printing (VDP) card based on major. Premier has clients that utilize up to 20 versions of variable data printing in their searches based on majors, gender, interests, etc. In other words, we use specific student characteristics to both design the search for our clients and then to produce the mailing medium as well.
Variable digital printing also permits personalization of the copy on the back of the cards on the basis of factors such as intended major, geography, gender, scholarship ability, etc. In addition, the postcards incorporate a personal URL (PURL), e.g., David.Waggoner.MyPremierMailUSA.com which combines the recipient?s first and last name and a domain connoting your institution. This personalization generates a novelty factor that further enhances response rate. When the PURL is keyed into a browser, a personalized website opens. This website provides information about your institution and includes an Information Request Contact Form that can be submitted via the Internet. Premier records all visits to the PURL site, matches them with the student search record and supplies them to the client for follow up.
It appears as though the college recruiting cycle keeps mov-ing earlier and earlier in the student?s high school career. Both SAT and ACT offer the ability to purchase sophomore high school student names. Several of our clients take advantage of this, however, most continue to start the recruiting cycle in earnest when the student reaches the junior level in high school. Regardless of whether or not you choose sophomores or juniors, you MUST have a communications plan in place to stay in touch with these students after the initial contact. Searching a sophomore student only makes sense if you have a plan to regularly communicate with them throughout the remainder of their high school career. You might even do more harm than good by contacting a sophomore via a search and then ignoring them for a year or more until your regular communication flow begins.
Premier has developed comprehensive communication strategies that begin at both the sophomore and junior high school levels. We have found the key to be the pace at which student contact is made. When we start a student in the recruiting cycle as a sophomore, we communicate with them less frequently than if they are started as a junior – but we do communicate. The pace picks up so that in their senior year they are receiving information from our clients in various forms two or three times per month.
Finally, all student search services offer the ability to cus-tomize searches based on numerous student parameters such as geography, major interest, sports and extra-curricular preferences, educational goals and grades and scores. Additionally, Premier has developed a search technique that allows us to determine an individual student?s scores and grades directly from the search data. This technique has proven invaluable in offering our clients the ability to discuss specific scholarships and awards available to the student in the initial search mailing, so as to catch the students? and their parents? attention. We have found that the ability to communicate financial incentives at the beginning of the recruiting cycle dramatically improves search results.
Premier has also pioneered the use of using student search parameters specific to the goals of the college and the particular majors offered. For example, one of our clients has an undergraduate program that is unique and nationally recognized. As we design their search, we target a national audience for that program with different GPA and test-score criteria than for their other programs where geography may play the most important role in a student?s college choice. Many of our clients also have as a goal increased diversity on campus. By careful manipulation of the search criteria, we are able to meet this objective.
The media abounds with news stories, magazine articles and books about the college selection process. At the same time, parents and high school counselors are pushing students to consider college at an earlier age. Consequently, high school students today are more savvy consumers than in earlier generations. They realize overtly expressing interest in an institution is often the prelude to a barrage of letters, brochures and phone calls from personnel in the Admission Office ? an outcome they are eager to avoid. The result is what has come to be known as the Stealth Marketplace. They?re out there, and they?re interested, but they?re in no hurry to make you aware of their interest. Instead students are more likely than ever before to spend a long time researching your institution ? on the Internet, via college resource guides, on social networking sites. etc., – before they contact you. In fact, one current Premier client informed us recently that fully a third of their Fall 2010 enrolled freshman class had been mailed a search piece by Premier, but did not respond. Then, the first contact to the college initiated by the student was an application for admission!
Under these circumstances, relying exclusively on the traditional admission funnel with its focus on building an inquiry pool and cultivating this group to generate applications and enrollments is obviously an outmoded, losing strategy. While inquiries remain one?s best source of enrolled students they can?t be one?s only source. Perceptive enrollment management professionals ? those meeting their enrollment targets ? have adopted the strategy of contacting Search non-responders numerous times as a means of supplementing those enrollments produced from the inquiry pool. Unfortunately, repeated direct mail campaigns is an expensive approach when one?s target group numbers in the tens of thousands and even when telephone numbers are available the common practice of screening calls makes it difficult to reach prospective students via the phone. Email is thus the most budget friendly, proactive strategy for cultivating the non-responders pool.
The downside to email as a standalone search strategy is that unrecognized or unanticipated email is often sus-pected of being SPAM and deleted before it?s opened. Therefore, depending on email alone as a Search mechanism or as a means of cultivating non-responders is an ineffective strategy. However, as noted above, Premier?s personalized postcards are a unique Search strategy that make it more likely our clients will cut through mailbox clutter and create name recognition and a positive first impression; and HTML email received after name recognition has been created is much more likely to be opened and read and produce a positive result. In other words, combining personalized postcards and HTML email is a winning strategy! Clients who have adopted this strategy achieve the complimentary objectives of generating inquiries with both the initial postcard campaign and each of the follow-up emails, and cultivating the non-responders who constitute the Stealth marketplace in a cost effective fashion.
For more information about incorporating personalized imagery and systematic HTML email follow-up into your student search and recruitment efforts please feel free to contact us at Premier.
Premier Collegiate Communications was founded in 1992 by college administrators who recognized the need for specialty communications in the admissions arena. Mass marketing techniques were viewed as ineffective as they often did not reflect the quality of the institution, the personal nature of the admissions process, nor the importance of each potential candidate. In response to these issues, Premier pioneered the use of personalized communications via multiple channels along with a consistent schedule of communication tailored to each student. Premier provides its customers a unique combination in admissions marketing, as we are able to design, produce and physically or electronically mail all of the communications required by college admissions professionals. This provides a ?one-stop shop? for admissions where the responsibility for the effectiveness of communications is concentrated in one vendor, rather than spread out among many firms that often have competing goals.?