The Decline-by-Default deadline is behind us, Clearing is open and we’re now in the final stretch towards the September 2021 intake in what’s been another atypical and uncertain student recruitment cycle.
This point in the cycle always feels like the busiest but it’s also one of the most opportune times to deliver focused conversion campaigns that will bring all of your hard work over the year across the finish line.
Here, we’re sharing 3 Home offer holder conversion campaigns we manage on behalf of our university partners which have proven successful in getting students excited for the term ahead.
Welcome from Faculty
Students love to connect with Faculty. We work with our partners to facilitate opportunities for this across the student journey, but now is really the time to home in on building these relationships.
Faculty, of course, have busy schedules and it’s not always feasible or sustainable to have them on-call to communicate with students directly. But, there are ways to intelligently automate the process so students feel the Faculty are invested in them without Faculty feeling overstretched.
One way we support our university partners with this is through dynamic email. Building email journeys that include dynamic content – customised email content that’s triggered by audience demographic and/or behavioural data – we work closely with Faculty to deliver highly personalised messaging that’s automated. For example, we have built dynamic email journeys that begin with welcome letters from Deans and are followed by more personalised emails, focused more narrowly on messages from academics of particular courses. Students are delivered messages from the relevant academic based on the course where they have their offer.
Pre-arrival webinars
Last year, we managed over 475 webinars on behalf of our university partners which attracted roughly 40,000 prospective students. Among Home students, offer to enrolment conversion rate was 104% higher when they engaged with a targeted webinar.
The webinar topics that had the best offer conversion rates were sessions that acted as course tasters.
At this point in the cycle, we also see high attendance and conversion from webinars that address the very practical questions/concerns students have about starting University life. Accommodation focused events and Q&A chat sessions hit the mark. Q&A sessions do especially well when they follow a government announcement (e.g. changing lockdown plans).
One-to-one Clearing offer follow-up
Things move fast during Clearing and students need support to ensure they follow the necessary steps to accept their offers. We help our partners make the most of Clearing by managing one-to-one follow-ups with students over email, phone and instant messaging channels to answer any questions they have about accepting their offer, chase any missing documentation and remind students of next steps.
Students have engaged particularly well via instant messaging in previous Clearing periods. More recently, we’ve found SMS to be especially impactful as a method of reminding students to respond to their offers before the Decline-by-Default deadline. We’re therefore expecting SMS to continue to prove a powerful engagement tool this Clearing period.
Meet your Home enrolment goals this September
If you’re interested in carrying out targeted Home offer conversion campaigns this summer like those outlined above but aren’t sure you have the capacity or resources to pull them off effectively, we can help.
We deliver highly personalised, omni-channel engagement journeys at scale to maximise Home offer holder conversion. To learn more about our approach or discuss how we can help you increase your Home enrolments for September, get in touch!
