Why Recruiting Adult Learners is a Year-Round Mission

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0:00:11.0 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Our experts today discuss how to find, nurture, and convert high-intent leads for your institution’s graduate and adult-serving programs. They also explain why recruiting adult learners is a year-round exercise. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

0:00:36.5 Rebecca Knisely: Hi and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Rebecca Knisely, and I’m a Senior Partner Success Manager at EAB, and I work specifically with programs and institutions who are looking to grow their graduate and adult enrollments. Today, I am gonna be talking with Jesse Holzbach about the importance of recruiting new students year-round and filling that enrollment funnel. Year-round is so important when you’re talking about lead gen for prospective students, especially when you’re talking about adults and graduate students. So we’re gonna talk through some strategies today and a couple of tools that can help you do that, including a tool that I work on that you may not have heard of called Appily Advance. But first, let me introduce my co-host for today’s discussion. Jesse, do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what you do at EAB?

0:01:25.2 Jesse Holzbach: Of course. Thank you, Rebecca. My name is Jesse Holzbach, and I have the honor of currently being one of our managing directors of partner success dedicated to our adult learner recruitment division here at EAB. And in that realm, I get the honor and privilege of also thinking about our Appily Advance. And organic and digital lead generation strategies to help our partners think holistically about how we approach lead generation and building year after year enrollment funnels that are set up to help them be successful in a continuous way. In both a very opportunistic but also challenging market for adult learners at this time.

0:02:06.5 RK: Awesome. So, Jesse, for the people who maybe don’t work in admissions, maybe a good place to start would be talking about the difference between graduate students and traditional first-time freshmen, undergrad students, and maybe why is it so different for these two populations?

0:02:24.6 JH: Yeah, absolutely. The population for first time freshmen, while continues to have it’s own unique headwinds and tailwinds, further recruiters out there, it is also uniquely different than adult learners for a whole host of reasons. The first would be, as you think about recruiting first-time freshmen, these are gonna be high school students who, for the vast majority, have at least a desire and aspiration to attend some form of an associate’s or bachelor’s related program after they complete high school. And as a result of that, the majority of those students and prospects are raising their hand, becoming known through a whole host of their own test-taking experiences or their own online research, the support of parents and guardians and their life counselors in their school systems. And these high school students are not only active in their own search, but they’re open to being recruited. They’re also being recruited for predominantly a fall start when you think about the traditional high school student graduating in the spring and possibly starting that next adventure in the fall.

0:03:37.1 JH: We have a great line of sight into how many high school students there are in any region, country, or market. And we can also see that a progressive timeline that many of them are on building to a fall start. It gives us line of sight to be very two-way in our conversation with these high school students. In the adult market, adult learners are much more pragmatic. They are managing really busy life adventures, whether that’s at work professionally or at home personally. And then the graduate market itself, in an effort to be more flexible for adult learners, has created not just a single fall start, but many of our enrollment recruiters and programs are offering program starts throughout the year, which could include as many as three or four starts throughout the year or as many as eight or more starts throughout the year. And so not only do we have unique opportunities and challenges when it comes to identifying adult learner prospects, we also have a unique opportunity when we think about inviting those prospects into the process of not just considering going back to school, but when would they apply, when would they start, and managing success across multiple starts is a unique characteristic. I would say also one of the things that we see in our research is about 40% of adult and graduate learners spend more than a year searching for information about continuing their education.

0:05:10.4 JH: And so with all those other factors in mind, the average adult learner is gonna take a considerable amount of time to not just research their options, but consider those real life implications. Am I going to be able to afford this? Am I gonna be able to complete this degree? And if I do those things, what is gonna be some of the personal ROI that I’m gonna receive? They’re gonna wanna validate that taking the time, the energy, the resources to take that next step is gonna have a payoff for them, whether that’s personally, professionally, or in a different area of life that they have aspirations to succeed in. And then I would also just add that one more thing is in the adult learner population, we continue to see a rise of what we often refer to as stealth shopping behavior. These are gonna be adult learners who are not only comfortable, but prefer to do a lot of their own research on their own, using tools like Google, finding institutions, websites, and researching information in an isolated way. Gathering information, gathering intelligence, talking to their own peer networks about opportunities and different programs before that they are willing to become maybe more known and interested in having a two-way conversation with our institutions.

0:06:29.4 JH: And as such, what we described is stealth shopping behavior is those individuals who are doing a lot of research behind the scenes on their own, but they have not yet made their name or their email address or their identity known to an institution, making it even harder for that institution to be persuasive in a two-way dialogue with those prospects. And so those are just some of the uniquenesses that right now we are thinking a lot about as we talk to institutions all the time about what strategies are working well for them and what are some of the incremental strategies here at EAB that we offer to help institutions be uniquely successful in the midst of and not despite those unique characteristics facing the adult learner recruitment market.

0:07:18.1 RK: Yeah, that’s great. That’s something I talk to my partners about quite frequently is how different these two populations are. And so it’s really fascinating as someone who thinks primarily about adults, but knowing that frequently the partners that I work with might be coming from undergrad and have some of those thoughts. Maybe we can sort of transmute one to one, our strategies one to the other, but it’s not quite the same. So when we are thinking about marketing, engaging adult learners, what are some of the things that you wanna make sure partners keep in mind? What are those best practices that we can share with them?

0:07:54.1 JH: Yeah, absolutely. What probably one of the most essential is to maintain evergreen content on your primary website, on your primary spaces on your.edu. This is essential for a couple reasons. One, it’s as we were talking about that growing number of stealth shoppers in this population. As that population considers searching on their own, you wanna make sure that the information they’re looking for is not only easy to find, it’s very easy to navigate. The second is knowing that adult learners are gonna do that organic research on their own timing. It’s never been more important to think about making sure your content is not only easy to find, but that it is year round and it’s evergreen in it’s value, and it’s accuracy. Your.edu site for many of our listeners has a huge impact on your ability to not just recruit the students you know, but it’s having outsized impact in recruiting the students and prospects that you haven’t even met yet.

0:09:01.4 RK: Absolutely.

0:09:03.3 JH: Per our most recent adult learner surveys, 94% of grad and adult students make it a priority to visit the website for every school they’re considering before they raise their hand or engage deeper with someone in the admissions recruiting office. Over 90% of those adult learners said user-friendly sites improved their opinion of the school. And 88% said school’s website helps them decide if the institution is the right fit. One of the things that a past mentor of mine used to always say is that the prospect, the student, or in any business, the consumer that you’re trying to work with, is that how you communicate with them and how you serve them through your website or your main portal of information is gonna speak to that user in a very real way regarding how they feel about your institution and how they perceive they’re gonna be served once they sign up or they enroll at your institution. And so while our adult learners are navigating that website, they are going to find it easy and they’re gonna wanna be able to find the information they want quickly.

0:10:14.2 JH: And they’re gonna be building perceptions about your institution and what it would be like to be a student there while they’re doing that at the same time. Said another way, over 80% of students that we surveyed said a poorly functioning website has a directly negative effect on their opinion of the school. And that’s really fascinating to think about when you realize that the vast majority of all users and students are going to your website first before they decide if they wanna have a two-way conversation or a personalized email exchange or phone call or a visit to your school. The website never before has been more important than it is now in recruiting all students, but especially adult learners.

0:10:56.6 RK: Yeah. I think that is super, super important. So the other thing that I think a lot about is if a poorly functioning website is gonna negatively impact a prospective students at the school, a good website is going to improve the opinion of a school. The things that you wanna make sure you were including are gonna be the things that folks are gonna be looking for. So how long is it gonna take me to complete this degree? Can I transfer any credits I may already have? What are the career outcomes? How much is this going to cost me and what am I gonna get out of it? We knowing that, stealth shopping is on the rise. It’s so, so important to have that info readily available for them.

0:11:39.4 JH: That’s right. And when you think about that perspective, Rebecca, making sure your content has the right social proof and content throughout is really valuable. When you think about social proof, we think about what type of content is gonna allow students to envision and see themselves as part of your community or your campus. Demonstrating through not just student testimonials, but visuals and other offers that will allow these prospects to click in and learn more about your programs, your value propositions, and your offerings, but also allowing them to see themselves in situations or visualize what success in your program would look like will really help that prospect believe as they consider, can I do this program?

0:12:30.3 JH: Will I be successful? What will success look like? The ability to build and tell stories through those pieces of content on your website wherever you can. We continue to see presents really sticky moments for these prospects and also translates incredibly well to building confidence in these aspirational students that not only will they have the benefits that they hope to have, but that you’re gonna be able to offer them the support and the consultation they need to be personally and individually successful, not just in your program, but as part of your institution.

0:13:08.2 RK: Yeah, for sure. So, let’s say I have my.edu, my website is amazing. It’s great. It has all of the information students are looking for. It’s got those student testimonials. It’s got everything I could possibly need. How do I get students there? How do I get students onto my website?

0:13:25.5 JH: Rebecca, that’s a really good question about driving organic activity to your website. We see a whole host of strategies that work incredibly well for our partners. Especially thinking about keyword search and how to optimize not just your website, but the content within your website to benefit users who are searching specific keywords on their own. One of the things that we think through a lot is how are the different types of content matching the different types of searches that students might be doing in those moments. To overkeep this somewhat simple, but also provide some prescriptive examples. Many institutions will spend a good amount of time thinking about what we would label as navigational searches. These are going to be tools and resources on your website that will help an individual dive even deeper into things like course catalogs and understanding some of the nuances about what you offer and how you support them. Understanding some of the faculty profiles or understanding how your staff is structured on your website. These can be really, really valuable for adult learners who are making their final decisions about where they wanna apply, which programs they plan to apply to, and which programs they aspire to get admitted to.

0:14:53.1 JH: However, when we think about optimizing your website for organic and stealth users, thinking more about what type of informational searches and transactional searches are gonna be prominent for these top of funnel early shoppers who are thinking about going back to school and maybe just beginning that journey. When I think about informational searches, I think about the high number of organic searchers out there who are gonna be asking questions like, “If I get an MBA, what kind of job can this provide for me?” Or basic information like trying to find what’s the difference between an MBA or an MS in management? What is the difference in those two programs? What’s the difference in type of career opportunities for those two programs? Second would be maybe more transactional searches. And this would be when a prospective student has decided on a program of study that they wanna commit to, and they begin looking for more specific details, such as what’s the best MBA degree near me, or are there MBA scholarships available for students like me? There at this moment, they’re looking more about the fit of the program and they’re thinking more granularly about at this point’s costs and scholarships and maybe modality opportunities that will help them find the most flexible program for them.

0:16:14.4 JH: I say all that because many institutions will put a great amount of emphasis on those navigational resources for students. However, we would encourage our partners to be thinking very intentionally about how to make sure the informational information and the transactional information is very prominent and scaled across your website. This will amplify your keyword optimizations. It’ll also be really, really fruitful for serving those top of funnel leads as they begin to search to find the resources they’re looking for, not just on the web, but looking for them specifically on your.edu. The biggest opportunity we continue to see to help reach these stealth students is growing your search engine presence by including more evergreen content that supports that informational and transactional searches that these prospective adult learners are doing every day around the nation and around the globe.

0:17:15.6 RK: Got it. So if we wanna find top of funnel perspective students, we’ve got to be giving them the information that they’re looking for.

0:17:22.5 JH: Absolutely.

0:17:23.4 RK: Yeah. The other thing that I think is really interesting, and I think a lot about as a millennial, we are actually not the most quickly growing group of graduate students anymore. It’s actually Gen Z is gonna be taking over a pretty large percentage of the market share and how Gen Z searches very different from how millennials search too. So Gen Z typically uses five or more keywords. They’re more likely to write out a whole sentence rather than one or two words. And so thinking about how this upcoming generation might be using Google and paid search a little bit differently than the audiences you have right now.

0:18:03.1 JH: Great point, Rebecca.

0:18:05.0 RK: Yeah, I think it’s just fascinating. Okay, so we’ve talked about that keyword optimization. We talked a little bit about specific programs. How important is it to optimize your website for specific programs or programs of interest and then push that content specifically to applicants?

0:18:27.0 JH: It’s a really great question, Rebecca, because while we absolutely want to make sure that there is the right level of information about every program on your website and available to prospective students, it’s also important to recognize that every… Not every student who when they begin their search for returning back to school, when they begin that work, do they understand what they actually want? We did some research a couple years ago. We were able to engage over 4,000 prospective students and understand the correlation between what they were intending to apply for and what they actually applied for. And in that we found that over 60% of students who we would consider adult degree completers, individuals returning to school to finish their bachelor’s degree, actually applied for a program that was different than they originally indicated in their search, at the start of their search.

0:19:24.3 JH: And then when you think about that same student group, but for graduate students, we found that over a quarter of those students did this exact same thing. Thinking that they might have an interest in a specific program or an area of study, only to then as they completed their research and they start to engage with institutions, they start to engage with the advice of counselors. They learn new things about all the opportunities and possibilities out there, and it really doubles down on what’s motivating these prospective adults the most is the ability for them to, one, know that the program is one that they can complete and achieve. And two, understand the cost and what the personal ROI is gonna be on the other side of that. And so when we think about programs of interest, it’s always valuable to know that your information is available on your website.

0:20:18.8 JH: But it’s also incredibly important as we think about lead generation strategies for these top of funnel, early shopper prospects, that we talk to them more broadly about all of the programs that you have to offer at your institution, and making sure that we are not pigeonholing these prospects into only learning about one specific program when you have so much to offer them. And inviting them to learn more about how your institution and your cohort of programs is gonna be able to support them in their personal goals and their professional goals is really, really valuable to not just meeting those students where they are, but beginning a personalized relationship where you can really nurture those prospects through their search experience and help support them in an outsized way. Again, reiterating to them exactly how you plan to also serve them and support them if they choose to apply and enroll at your institution.

0:21:20.4 RK: Yeah. One thing we haven’t really talked about is a wide variety of audiences and sort of keeping your enrollment funnel as wide as possible, using as many different kinds of audiences and audience sources as possible. I know we both work, Jesse, a little bit on Appily Advance, and so that is one strategy to find those stealth shoppers. Can you say a little bit more about that?

0:21:43.6 JH: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we continue to see that is incredibly important to us here at EAB, but also all of the partners that we get the privilege of working with is, diversifying and building the pathways and pipelines that would help us grow our lead generation strategies to not just increasing the number of prospects that we can identify and reach that have an active intent to go back to school, but also increasing the volume of leads that we can identify year after year to support enrollment success. Thinking about that stealth trend that we’ve been talking a lot about, that continues to be an incredible source of intent known leads. These individuals doing their own research coming through your website. We also see that other strategies such as paid search and digital strategies are incrementally and continue to provide good value.

0:22:41.2 JH: They also have unique challenges and opportunities that come with them. For example, paid search strategies can be really, really productive. Depending on how they’re executed, they can also become very, very expensive. And so we’re being mindful of the strategies that are gonna help us grow volume and find these prospective adult learners as early as we can. How do we create new pathways to do that? Appily Advance, over the last one to two years has become a new and really exciting strategy that here at EAB we’re using to at scale, apply some of those digital strategies to find adult learners nationwide, and better understand through them, what types of degrees, what types of programs of interest are they looking for. And as we meet them in the market, we’re validating their intent through websites like Appily.com and appilyadvance.com, where we are able to create outsized content that is focused not about the institution, but focused on helping that user in their stealth research, find resources about growing themselves personally and professionally, and offering them a whole lot of on demand content and information that could be helpful to them in their own search.

0:24:07.5 JH: That’s generating new approaches to getting what we call, high intent controlled cost leads. And this is one of the many strategies we’re deploying to increase known quantities of high intent leads at scale for our partners that can be added incrementally into the existing audience strategies that many institutions are deploying today, and to be able to facilitate year after year enrollment success, we recognize, it will continue to take a combination of strategies such as organic lead generation through your website, paid search page social strategies, and partnerships like Appily Advance, to make sure that the volume of leads is there and that the quality of leads across all those different sources can come together and can be the audience that really drives your enrollment success forward.

0:25:06.5 RK: Awesome. Okay. Last big question, I think, and this is something I feel very, very strongly about, and I know you do as well, Jesse. If I’m an institution or a school and I am working to nurture a prospective student in my funnel, how long should I be reaching out to them?

0:25:28.1 JH: That’s a great question. One of the things that we say all… Sorry. One of the things we say all the time is it can take anywhere from three days to three years for an adult learner to go through their own searching consideration stage, to make some decisions about what program they want to apply to, what institution they’re going to apply to, and actually takes the steps to enroll. That’s pretty.

0:25:51.8 RK: So it’s just that easy. Three days. Three years, right?

0:25:54.3 JH: Exactly. And it’s predominantly that way because, not because, there are so many institutions out there recruiting these prospects, but more life is the number one competitor for these prospects. Thinking about, am I gonna be able to afford this? Am I gonna be able to balance work and life and school, or factors such as those. And so, when we think about that, we would say two things. One, prepare to nurture these leads and don’t give up on them too early. When we think your ability, once you have these leads, you’re gonna wanna continue to invite them to learn more about your institution, your programs, invite them personally to explore on campus and online events you have, and you’re gonna want to give them space and time to take those steps when it works best for them.

0:26:50.5 JH: Second, you’re gonna wanna make sure that you don’t give up on these students too early. Some of these students, these adult learners are ready to apply and you will see that occur within the first few months or the first six months of engaging with them. The vast majority of them will take more than a year to go through that research on their own and make decisions about where they want to apply, what school and what program. EAB research that we do every single year continues to show us that over 70% of digital leads enroll in more than one year after they’ve initially been contacted. And so when we think about that, we would encourage thinking about it and always on campaign, that for many institutions is going to continue to run for anywhere from 24 months to 36 months at a minimum.

0:27:41.5 JH: This population of adults has never been more comfortable, knowing how to digitally opt out of things that they do not want. And so, one of the things we continue to see is that adult learners, will absolutely tell us if they would like to stop being communicated with, but no news does not mean bad news. That typically means that these prospects are doing their homework on their own. They are reading along with the communications and the offerings you’re providing to them. And they will absolutely tell us, when they’d like us to stop talking to them, if they get to that point. Otherwise, continuing to nurture those non-responders and continuing to work those leads, is an incredibly fruitful approach that many institutions often stop too early.

0:28:30.1 RK: Yeah, absolutely. That is something I talk to my partners about all the time. Being persistent with all audiences is so key to your point, like you said. The biggest competitor here is not necessarily another institution, it’s life. Right.

0:28:44.7 JH: Absolutely.

0:28:45.5 RK: Okay. I know Jesse, you and I could talk a lot about this in terms of those keyword optimizations, application behaviors, but I know that we are growing short on time. So if you could summarize in just maybe a minute, a minute and a half, what are the top things, if I only take a few things away from this conversation, what would those things be?

0:29:07.5 JH: Absolutely. I would say first and foremost, remember that your content on your website is essential and critical to being successful. Give yourself permission to think about the structure and the content of your website intentionally. Make sure that the content that you’re developing and that you’re making present on your website is evergreen in year round. That is always gonna be applicable to the adult learners that might be searching for your institution year programs or offerings that you all have. The second would be, as you’re thinking about that content, make sure that you are appropriately prioritizing the type of content that would be found in informational searches, such as what do I get in return for an MBA degree? Or what are the differences between this degree and that degree? Maybe you’ve got individuals near you in your region, in your market looking for more transactional searches, like, what’s the best MBA degree near me?

0:30:03.7 JH: Or are there scholarships available for this program that I might be considering? Making sure you have content and your website is designed in such a way that that informational and transactional information is easily defined and rises to the top, is essential to making sure you optimize for your website for those searches, but also that you can present those users when they get to your website with that information easily and quickly. And then the third would be if you’re feeling like the only pathways to identifying content leads is organically through your website, or maybe with high cost strategies like paid search, we would be the first to say those are incredibly valuable, but they’re not the only options you have. Here at EAB, we’re doing a lot to think about different in kind, low cost, high value strategies like Appily Advance, that can be incremental to those approaches and really be helpful to you as you think about not just being successful in the short term, but being successful in your aroma goals term after term, year after year.

0:31:09.3 RK: Yeah, absolutely. Keep that enrollment funnel wide. That’s one of the great strategies. Awesome. Jesse, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed getting to chat about this with you. I know we talk about it with our partners all the time, so I am really excited to be able to talk with you just in a more general way and year-round recruitment is so key with adults.

0:31:27.1 JH: Of course. Thank you, Rebecca. And thank you to all of our listeners. Please, feel free, Rebecca, and myself. Our email addresses are available on our website, eab.com. If we can be a resource to any of our listeners and follow up to today, please reach out to either one of us. We would love to talk to you.

0:31:44.2 RK: Yeah, absolutely.

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