To secure increasingly competitive enrollments, colleges and universities need to make the most of every piece of communication students receive between deposit and matriculation. Uncoordinated messages from multiple departments, overly complex words, and unfamiliar jargon can inhibit a student’s ability to comprehend and act on emails, letters, handouts, and other written materials.
The Enrollment Management Forum created this toolkit to help enrollment leaders:
- Create a centralized inventory of all student communications sent from various departments from deposit to matriculation
- Streamline student communication timing, methods, and branding by conducting a visual communication audit workshop
- Revise communications for clarity and effectiveness
- Learn more about student texting preferences and best practices
Download the full toolkit or explore each section below.
This resource is part of the Improve Communications from Deposit to Matriculation Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Step 1: Conduct a post-deposit communications audit workshop
Improving communications between deposit and matriculation will require a coordinated effort across many departments. To successfully execute on this endeavor, EAB recommends creating three committees. Institutions will then need to inventory all communications sent between deposit and matriculation in advance of an audit workshop.
Download the Communication Inventory Template: a spreadsheet to keep track of every outbound communication by office, date, audience, and method
Step 2: Revise approved post-deposit communications
Unreadable and off-brand communications can create a confusing or subpar enrollment experience for students, and keeping students engaged past deposit day is more important than ever as competition increases. Following the communications audit workshop, committees should take the communications flagged for revision and evaluate them for two key criteria: readability and branding.
Step 3: Finalize a post-deposit communications plan
During the final step of the audit, participants should have created a first draft of the Post-Deposit Communication Plan by documenting whether each tracked communication should be kept, revised, or eliminated. Use the following guidelines to ensure that the final Post-Deposit Communications Plan effectively paths a student through the enrollment cycle and gains buy-in from different areas of campus.
Appendix: Guidance for texting admitted students
Many students ignore emails. Text messages present opportunities to engage students but also pose risks: if text messages are not executed properly, students will ignore them, too. Learn what to consider when texting students, discover the best message types to send via text, and see text message examples for key decision moments.
You may also like
To secure increasingly competitive enrollments, colleges and universities need to make the most of every piece of communication students receive between deposit and matriculation. Enrollment managers can use this toolkit to track, streamline, and revise all post-deposit student communications sent from various departments.
This resource requires EAB partnership access to view.
Access the tool
Learn how you can get access to this resource as well as hands-on support from our experts through Strategic Advisory Services.
Learn More