A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article about the many new factors that make it so hard to know just how many students are actually going to register in the fall.
First, there’s the new problem of “stealth applicants” who gather information online, anonymously, before applying. It’s very hard to predict or track these applicants, and once they do apply it’s still difficult to read their level of commitment and interest.
Then there’s the “melting” phenomenon–some who are accepted don’t enroll, and some who enroll just don’t show up in the fall.
How can you address this problem?
Our short answer is to keep the lines of communication open. The corollary is that you should offer a few open lines to begin with.
Online, you can encourage stealth applicants to reveal themselves sooner by offering ways to interact, from surveys to message boards to live chats.
As you get more and more applicants interested in your institution, you can use summertime chats to cement the relationship. Inviting your applicants and enrollees to meet faculty, staff, and each other through live chat is a low-cost way to establish deeper relationships early on.
This will help shorten the time that stealth applicants remain in the shadows. And if it doesn’t positively increase the number of applicants who ultimately register, at least the level of involvment in these chats will give you a rough gauge of the level of genuine interest.
Best of all, these summertime chats will pay dividends over the long term. You’re creating a positive experience for incoming Freshmen that will help build a stronger campus community. You may inspire the newcomers’ younger friends and siblings to apply in the future.
Summer is traditionally a period of downtime in academia, but if you’re willing to liven things up a little bit, you’ll be well rewarded further down the road.
There is one solution to address the Stealth Applicant Issue….Retargeting
What is Retargeting?
Simple Definition: Re-connecting a publisher with past website visitors so there is an increased likelihood of a completed desired action or transaction.
Inherently, visitors to a website have expressed an interest in the institution since they went through the effort to find and visit it. With the placement of a simple code on select pages of the website, retargeting enables a school to identify visitors and repeatedly expose them to messaging that’s relevant to the previously expressed interest on the school site.
How retargeting works
When a visitor comes to the website, a simple piece of code is placed in their browser which identifies them and records which site pages they have viewed. Within minutes of these visitors going to any other website, banner ads can be served instantly displaying the schools message inviting them back to their site. This works extremely well when your message is relevant to what they were interested in, especially when they were considering an action-step (like downloading an application).
The concept is simple, requires little effort from the admissions staff, and is amazingly efficient (affordable).
Comment by Steven Bogue — July 16, 2009 @ 11:05 am