Maximizing Reach with a Multifaceted Audience Generation Strategy

Over the course of their longtime partnership with EAB, the university achieved strong growth despite challenging contexts with EAB’s Enroll360 premier solutions: Cultivate, Apply, and Yield. But in 2020, like many other colleges across the country, they experienced a decrease in interest from their national audience. Test taking among prospective students dropped, which, when coupled with uncertainty among students about what their first term would bring, caused the institution’s inquiries to fall by 7% and their enrollment to drop by 9%.

Through research conducted with their EAB Marketing and Enrollment Strategic Leader, the university uncovered an alignment between their primary in-state markets and their secondary and tertiary out-of-state markets. They realized that many of their out-of-state markets produced high-affinity inquiries and applicants to the level of their long-primary in-state markets. They also realized that 80% of their inquiries and applicants were in Naviance. EAB then saturated the university’s primary markets by finding and engaging right-fit students through Intersect and Appily.

By realigning their alternative list source strategy with EAB’s help and combating declining availability of test-takers the university saw a 15% increase in inquiries, of which 9,300+ were sourced from Appily and 10,000+ were sourced from Intersect. Among its 10 peer institutions, the university was one of only 4 to increase enrollment and strengthen yield between 2020 and 2021.