Three Ways to Showcase My Institution’s Value During Yield Season

This article is by 3E Difference Maker Evan Brunell.

As a Senior Account Executive at 3E, I am regularly asked how to communicate an institution’s value, particularly during yield season. Here are some thoughts, based on my experience as an enrollment marketer:

1. Invite the admitted student into the community.

Admitted students are already part of the community; treat them as such. Encourage them to join campus events and help them connect with future peers and mentors.

• Home Away from Home: Provide opportunities to visit campus and see it as their new home. Help them visualize their future on campus and it will be easy to see that future. Engage students in campus events like sports games, guest lectures, comedy speakers, and academic fairs.
• Build Community Bonds: Students are eager for an environment to reinvent themselves. This starts with fitting in. Build stronger bonds and it is harder to give up on already occurring friendship and mentor possibilities. These bonds can be built via social media platforms and direct outreach. Allow space for admitted students to create a Snapchat group with each other, or host Reddit chats with admitted and continuing students. Think about different spaces to make these connections part of their daily lives. Trusted faculty members can engage in email and phone outreach to admitted students. Encourage faculty to engage in conversations at Admitted Student Days.
• Showcase Young Graduates: Admitted students identify closer with recent alumni and better connect the path to a successful career through your institution.  Connect admitted students with young alumni up to five years post-graduation who are enthusiastic about their alma mater. Even better is to connect them with alumni currently living (or were from) a student’s current city or state. How about the same academic discipline? Profile them, invite them to campus events (Admitted Students Day as a speaker?), connect them for 1:1 conversations, and host live chats and/or panels.

2. Link resources across the institution.

Expand students’ understanding of the institution beyond the Admissions office by facilitating connections with various campus resources.

• Their Life: College isn’t just about academic exploration. The soft skills matter too, and students come of age leveraging their soft skills through relationships. Showcase how your student life office helps students get involved—events, activities, clubs, trips. Consider bringing in the office into your admitted student events to speak to it. Even better, show it—host events where they can see student life in action: event flyers, a pickup game of basketball.
• Their Whole Self: Today’s students attending college want to ensure they will have the support needed to succeed. Equip students with all the information they need to understand how they will be supported beyond the blue-light system and available mental health counselors. Provide more comprehensive information.
• Their Career: The importance of communicating return on investment and outcomes cannot be understated. Students can hear directly from the career services office on how they will support them not just post-graduation, but during their college career. Offer your admitted students immediate resume reviews for anyone interested in pursuing summer jobs or internships before starting their education with you in the fall. (Don’t have a career services office? That’s OK! Showcase what you do.)

3. Support their parents/family members through a major transition.

During the admissions journey, much is made of the radical shift that students will undergo as they begin their transition to adulthood. For parents and other family members, that shift is keenly felt at home as well. Institutions that recognize, sympathize, and empower family members will influence key influencers.

• Connect With Other Parents: Identify some key family figures of continuing students to share their stories. Create these connections on a personal (1:1 communication) level and through group interactions (live chats and family member sessions at events). Connecting a college rising senior’s parents as a mentor for an admitted family would be powerful. One of the institutions I worked for had a strong system of family engagement and parent associations.
• Drive Confidence: Family members have been ensuring the safety of their student their whole lives; that doesn’t just switch off. Equip them with information on how the institution supports the student in every facet of their needs. Look beyond the educational, the extracurricular, and the professional development. How will the institution help its students be happy? To thrive? To stay safe? To address challenges? Confidence in an institution’s ability to care for its students is key.
• Empathize with Conversations: Host virtual and/or in-person panels and live chats around affordability and outcomes—these were always well-attended and engaging when I held them. Bring in current parents to speak with first-hand knowledge. Tap other offices to participate in these events. If the family member feels supported, engaged, and comfortable with the institution, they’ll pass that on to their student.

Leveraging all or even some of these ideas will make you stand out.

You will develop a relationship between the student and the institution.

You will make a difference in your enrollment.