Improve Communications across the Community College Student Lifecycle
As student preferences and motivations change, community colleges must remain nimble in their communications strategy in order to effectively convey their value. The first step in creating an impactful campus communications strategy is to audit your current practice.
Once you’ve audited your current practice, standardize your communications by creating a year-round calendar. Learn about the various touchpoints prospects receive in a sample “drip” marketing campaign after they submit an inquiry but before they apply. Discover how and when to send automatic, pre-planned communications to prospective students in practice six of The Shifting Enrollment Landscape.
Academic terminology confuses prospective students, lengthens their enrollment process, and frequently causes stop-outs. Determine where your institution uses jargon that may confuse prospective students and provide examples for how to create alternatives.
Use the Gunning Fog Index (GFI) to assess the readability of your new marketing materials and provide an exercise to help staff adopt jargon-free communication. Leaders should ensure messages to prospective students are tailored to each student segment and their level of understanding. Use strategy three of our Eliminating Enrollment Pain Points study to perform a jargon reduction audit.
Drawing upon industry best practices from across the public and private sectors, the web presence and online audit service provides Community College Executive Forum members with an objective assessment of their online presence and highlights areas of excellence and opportunities for targeted improvement. Contact your Strategic Leader to request an audit.
Community colleges boast genuine markers of educational value— they are well-connected to industry, they offer transfer pathways, and many have spent years crafting program maps and meta-majors that connect to long-term student goals.
Yet few effectively translate these offerings to their online presence. Websites are often outdated and difficult to navigate, further diluting marketing messages. Audit your institution’s web and mobile presence to benchmark your current state, identify areas of improvement, and build consensus on online strategy.
Text messages have become the go-to communications channel for many Gen Z students. Ensure that your texting and other digital communications are aligned with student preferences.
Support progressive marketing with the assistance of text-message vendors. Use tool two of The Shifting Enrollment Lanscape‘s Implementation Toolkit to learn about the different text messaging vendors used by higher ed. Then identify the vendor that best serves your institutional needs with our vendor scorecard in tool three.
After selecting a text message vendor, review recommendations for texting students to ensure smooth communications. Use Appendix C: 20 tips for texting students in our Integrated Prospect Communication Plan Toolkit to discover when to send messages, what to include in the messages, and how to organize and staff enrollment offices for effective text-messaging.Â
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