Although communications might be tracked by individual departments on campus, taking inventory of the cumulative assortment of outgoing emails, letters, or phone calls can uncover duplicated or contradictory messages. These disconnected points of outreach can cause confusion and frustration among incoming students, resulting in a negative first impression of interacting with your institution.
EAB’s Communication Inventory Template can help you centralize communications across all departments that engage with students after deposit. The Template assists department communications leaders in tracking the date, subject, type of communication, audience, and intended goal of all student outreach efforts in one common place. All communications to new students, regardless of medium, should be catalogued.
Every office reaching out to students post-deposit should be included in the inventory process. Distribute a copy of a blank Communication Inventory Template to a leader in each department, and consolidate all responses into a master workbook when completed.
While logging all student touchpoints in a spreadsheet is an efficient tracking method, visually displaying the communications can reveal features of the outreach schedule that may not stand out in a spreadsheet. There are two key benefits of convening key personnel from each office for a workshop.
First, visualizing all communications helps identify errors, such as conflicting messages sent simultaneously or with off-brand imagery. Arranging printouts of student communications by month helps pinpoint instances of these mistakes. Second, workshop participants can discuss changes live. Communications flagged for being asynchronous or jargon-heavy can be discussed by both the owner and other department leaders, ensuring that all communications adhere to their original purpose while also serving the broader goals of the…