How can you develop a comprehensive enrollment plan that includes collaboration with multiple departments?

The first question really should be, “which CRM are we working with?” That will help you figure out how much work you got ahead of you before you can even start to assess your current situation!

How about ensuring that all departments KNOW the enrollment plans/ goals and are on the same page. Can we all honestly say that all Financial Aid teams, Academics and Career Services Teams know the enrollment goals each session/semester/module etc.? Let's start there.

The key is in the trinity of people, process, and product. These items come from the second trinity of marketing, enrollment, and academics. Most strategic enrollment plans lack one of the key elements. You can’t generate interest without relevant product. You can’t fill classes without great people talking to students with speed and service. You can’t be effective in enrollment if you don’t measure conversion. If you do all of this - post enrollment activities in financial aid and registration can be ineffective if they are slow. In summary, people, process, product, and SPEED!

I have found that many internal parts are in place for enrollment success. We hire professional admissions, financial aid, and retention directors. They know their trade and how to find data. The most significant gap I have found is getting the institution at large to participate in enrollment. Enrollment departments should assess the willingness of the institution to participate in the enrollment process. Ask questions of the academic departments about their desire to assist in recruiting and retaining students in or interested in their department's majors.

Generative AI tools are revolutionizing university admissions, fostering cross-departmental synergy. They help academic affairs analyze application essays, assist marketing in identifying student trends, and enable finance for predictive enrollment modeling. Student affairs and alumni relations can also leverage AI for personalized student engagement and networking. This integration streamlines processes and aligns departmental strategies, marking a step towards a data-driven, student-centered enrollment approach.

Budgets and enrollment goals should be worked on and aligned across departments every year. The key is alignment across all departments on the key fiscal year's goals and priorities. These goals are not just for admissions teams, or marketing teams, it really is a concerted effort across the entire instiution. If your goal is to increase enrollments by 10% for your MSN program, what are the key drivers and objectives across the different departments to impact this. For marketing, it could be marketing channel diversification or improving landing page conversion rates. For admissions, it could be improving communication or outreach. For financial aid, it could be simplifying the process. Key: Alignment across the institution.

Avoid a top-down approach that assumes you are the only expert in the room. Authentic collaboration depends upon mutually beneficial relationships, which means you need to listen carefully and learn how the new enrollment plan will/can impact each group. Recognize that each constituency has different relationships with students in their daily working lives, and respect the expertise each group can contribute to the success of the plan. Don't overlook the people who spend the most time with students--academic and student affairs staff. These stakeholders may help you identify low-hanging fruit in terms of recruitment and student support. Because these groups will be implementing the new plan, they are critical to your success.

Before allocating resources, you need to determine the strategies that is likely to work and then prioritize them according to the ones that are likely to use less resources but achieve maximum results and impact.

A significant resource is creating materials for stakeholders to assist the enrollment department in recruiting and retaining students. The department may have to create email and text templates for academic departments to use to engage new students and keep existing students.

Have clear dashboards and reporting that is shared across the institution. Make sure the reports are shared timely and consistently. Have each department highlight a few of their key KPIs to track and monitor against enrollment goals. The worst thing you can do, is have different reports for each of the departments and not align on how each team impacts the overall goals. Marketing should have a clear understanding of how its metrics and performance impacts all other key metrics, such as enrollments, retention, graduation, and even placement rates. When everyone is aligned and monitoring as a team, then is easier to work together to make improvements.

These AI generated essays are absolutely void of specific insights. The only valuable additions are those made by commentators (unless they themselves use AI).