Three ways to improve your college’s recruitment program

Colleges’ recruitment efforts are based on large amounts of student data.

In today’s competitive climate, institutions face a significant conundrum: the need to simultaneously increase student enrollment and reduce student recruitment costs. This challenge has motivated institutions to stretch beyond their traditional recruitment boundaries.

In fact, admissions offices across the U.S. are taking a deep look into how they manage the student enrollment process. In many cases, institutions have adopted a business approach to enrollment management.

The admissions offices at these institutions apply a robust set of tools within their Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system to assist them with targeting and reaching specific student populations, often outside their traditional target population.…Read More

More college marketing cash going to social media

Fifty-two percent of campuses spent more on social media marketing between 2008 and 2009.
Fifty-two percent of campuses spent more on social media marketing between 2008 and 2009.

Massive social media advertising campaigns have proven effective for colleges and universities large and small, and a new analysis shows that institutions that invest the most in social media ads spend less per student on marketing than do campuses who stick to traditional strategies.

Campuses considered “moderate-to-heavy” investors in social media marketing to alumni and current and prospective students—using popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—spend $83 per student on advertising costs, while “light-to-non-investors” spend $121 per student, according to a study released last month by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Lipman Hearne, a Washington, D.C.-based marketing and communications firm that serves nonprofit organizations.

The higher-education market analysis also reported a rise in overall investment in social media advertising: Fifty-two percent of campuses surveyed spent more on social media marketing between fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2009, and 55 percent of colleges invested more in interactive online tools.…Read More