Despite 2022 being the first post-pandemic intake, it was far from a return to the familiar. While the home undergraduate market resembled pre-Covid years, the cost-of-living crisis took its toll on the home postgraduate market, which experienced some decline. At the other end of the spectrum, we saw unprecedented demand from international applicants that stretched university admissions teams to their limits.
Throughout the year, future students needed more support than ever before through every stage of the student journey. This makes knowing how to engage with prospective students successfully all the more important.
We’ve pulled together some insights from across our UK university partner network to reflect on student behaviours across 2022 and, crucially, how that should inform engagement approaches in 2023.
Long live email!
Further investment in our email marketing platform has enabled us to continue to identify trends in email engagement for our partners, and it’s thrown up some interesting trends for 2022. Far from being a declining communications channel as some marketing myths would suggest, we saw email open rates increase in 2022, with better email design, dynamic content and more targeted subject lines.
However, we are seeing engagement behaviours changing. Students are taking longer to open emails than in previous cycles, meaning that universities need to carefully consider send times, particularly where deadlines or important dates are concerned.
There are also some noteworthy domicile differences. Students from the US were the quickest to open emails but the least engaged, so content needs to be ultra-tailored to the US market to command their attention. On the flip side, Nigerian students were the slowest to open emails (meaning information about deadlines needs to go them even earlier than other cohorts!), but were the most engaged.
When it comes to timing, emails were most likely to be opened on a Tuesday, and least likely to be opened on a Monday or over the weekend. And it’s clear that attention span is even lower than many might think, with a whopping 62% of emails read for under two seconds. To capture attention in such a short window of time, it’s essential that content is visually engaging and has a very clear call to action.
Universities also need to bear in mind how an email will look on the student device. We’ve noticed that ‘dark mode’ is increasingly becoming the preferred format of choice for future students, with half of emails opened on mobiles being viewed this way. This needs to be considered in email design, ensuring that text, logos and imagery will still be prominent.
Live chat
We managed over 100,000 live chats for our partners across 2022, and the key takeaway is that live chat channels must be mobile friendly. Over half of live chat activity in 2022 (52%) originated from a mobile device, with the remainder made up almost entirely from desktop originations (47%).
Students very rarely use devices like tablets to engage with universities, so when it comes to live chat channels, investing in compatibility with mobile and desktop is where efforts should be focused.
Recruitment pipelines
Knowing exactly when students who went on to enrol initially enquired or applied with a university can help to inform communications strategies and priorities – ultimately leading to better conversion in future.
For 2023, universities need to consider that recruitment pipelines have extended for home students, so content must be engaging for longer periods of time. In 2022, for example, while the majority of home undergraduate students enquired or applied in the ‘normal’ November to January window, 40% of those who went on to enrol enquired before 2021, and 20% in 2020 or earlier.
For international students, the recruitment pipeline varies by market. Let’s have a closer look at the top two biggest demand markets as examples: Nigeria and India. For Nigeria, the highest volume of enrolments for 2022 came from those students who enquired or applied in January and February, while late applicants in the summer months didn’t convert in cycle. This means that, right now, universities should be committing resources to engaging – and engaging well – with the high volume of Nigerian enquiries and applications they’re undoubtedly seeing.
The peak for India ws slightly later in the year, with the highest volume of enrolled students for 2022 first enquiring or applying between April and June. In fact, the pipeline for India is on the whole more compact than for other markets, with only one quarter of enrolments enquiring more than 12 months before the intake.
Continued growth for international undergraduate
We all know that international enrolments in 2022 were dominated by postgraduate, but notably, undergraduate also grew year-on-year. This growth in numbers shows that institutions’ efforts to diversify are generating results, so for 2023, a sustained commitment to engaging with this market will hopefully see this upward trajectory continue.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how our insights can help to shape your engagement strategies for 2023 and beyond, please get in touch.
