The hottest internet trend today? Try GroupOn, Living Social, and Woot. In April, GroupOn – a deal-of-the-day website - announced its intentions for an initial public offering in the neighborhood of $15 – 20 Billion.
Whatever your opinion of the social buying/couponing phenomenon its worth millions in annual sales (trend ... see Reuters) or its the latest Internet bubble (fad … see Forbes). In social buying, businesses offer products and services at a discount through a third party. Said third party then attempts to build a social community, promoting viral word of mouth thus generating fees (third party) and sales (businesses). It’s essentially online coupons and special buys you can share with your friends.
While social buying can generate sales, the real value is in having potential customers "raise their hand" and identify themselves in a highly measurable way. The deal is an offer. To get the offer, the buyer has to provide information. It’s direct response marketing.
Social buying connects the desire to get an insider’s deal with online-community building using time-tested direct response methods. But as companies move to increase their use of offers to drive more direct response, some college and university enrollment managers are moving in the opposite direction as a strategy to communicate with stealth applicants.
The Stealth Applicant Problem
Stealth applicants – students not appearing in a college or university’s enrollment funnel until application – wreck havoc upon enrollment forecasting. Over the last twenty years, there has always been some level of stealth applicants, yet the problem has become more pronounced over the last decade.
Unfortunately, how some enrollment managers are attempting to manage the problem runs counter to online marketing trends.
Who Cares if They Fill Out the Inquiry Form???
One current stealth management approach is based upon the availability of the high school student search pool. Undergraduate education enrollment managers benefit from a highly identifiable market from testing data providers such as ACT and the College Board. In fact, it’s possible to identify a majority of your potential students through these services.
To combat the stealth problem, some enrollment managers are using the search pool along with modeling techniques to estimate who might apply. Take a look at your current student body, identify their characteristics, and pluck those who look like your current students from the search pool and Voila, you have an inquiry pool.
These colleges then simply combine or "infuse" their search pools with inquiries and begin sending their messages equally as one group. So out goes the stream of broadcast messages – the welcome letter, the academic quality message, the invitation brochure to visit campus, and so on. And with email, portals, online viewbooks, and variable data printing, enrollment managers can broadcast their message – one-to-many – across channels.
In one recent industry presentation on search pool modeling, one enrollment manager made the statement, “who cares if they (students) fill out the inquiry form?”
You should.
Keenly aware that consumers are shifting their behavior to avoid mass marketing, companies are shifting their strategies to connect one-to-one. In other words, while product and consumer marketing companies are heading to more direct-response marketing with tactics such as social couponing, some higher education enrollment managers and marketers are going in the opposite direction.
The Real Cost of Enrollment Funnel Infusing
What’s the real cost of fusing the enrollment funnel with search and inquiry data? According to students, colleges and universities taking this approach are simply adding to the problem.
Consider the following student comments in some upcoming research that I will be publishing. When asked how colleges and universities could improve their enrollment marketing practices, students offered:
“Send a nice brochure or a nice letter, but after that, stop sending me letters every week reminding me of your beautiful campus and diverse community that (apparently) every other college has too, if you trust their letters. Especially Texas Christian University. I don't like you. Stop emailing me 30 times a day. TAKE A HINT, COLLEGES. Especially now that it is long after May 1st, the National Candidate Reply Date.” 18-year old, Midwest
“Emailing people over and over again is annoying. I'm not interested in college out of state or those that are private. Colleges that get my email should have the middle man ask what the family income is. I'm too poor to afford anything but in state.” 19-year old, West
“Don't send too much mail to one student. Just because 25 letters arrive from X University does not mean that I be interested or attend there.” 17-year old, Midwest
“Don't flood me with emails. if I don't respond it probably means I'm not interested and you're just making me angry by sending me email after email. I got probably 25 emails a day earlier this year from colleges I had no intention of going to.” 18-year old, Southeast
“I am so tired of receiving emails from random colleges who only know my name and nothing else about me. Maybe if they made the emails a little more personal I would actually read them and not just delete them.” 17-year old, Northeast
“I feel inundated with emails from colleges that I am not interested in. Way too many emails. I wish there was a way colleges could target people who are likely to attend their school - not a blanket email to any student who took the ACT.” 17-year old, Midwest
It would be easy to take a cursory glance at these comments and think – “high school students don’t want email. Therefore we should communicate (blast) using different channels.”
And you would be wrong.
Students don’t want more marketing, rather they desire better conversation. They expect colleges and universities to communicate intelligently using what you know about them in a way that helps them achieve their goals. The channel is a secondary consideration.
The Inquiry Form Equals Permission
Interested in solving the stealth problem? Start with an enrollment marketing strategy based upon relevance, permission, and preferences as your foundations. Design multi-channel conversations using offers, information, and stories that communicate with students based on their needs, wants, and interests. An interactive approach to enrollment marketing is about addressing the student, remembering what she says, and then communicating again in a way that demonstrates you remember what they told you.
The crowd that believes the inquiry form doesn’t matter? They are wrong. The problem is that our inquiry offers - reasons to join the funnel - are simply not compelling enough for some students to self-identify. The worst offenders? "Join our mailing list " and "Send Me More Information."
Does this mean you shouldn't model your search pool? Of course not. Any technique to further hone your audience is worthwhile. However, don't use the availability of this technique as an excuse to avoid engaging students as real inquiries.
A student raising their hand to express interest is giving you permission. You job is to honor their communication preferences (e.g., direct mail, email, Facebook) and earn the right to continue the conversation with how you treat the relationship.
How do you do earn the right to continue the conversation? Offer valuable information, be interesting, and listen and who knows, maybe you will start your own social buying enrollment trend.
