Higher Education Case Study

University Client Achieves Highest Enrollment in 20 Years

A private, North Carolina liberal arts university, working with a respected higher education recruitment partner, was suffering from too many “soft” applications and a lagging yield. In early 2009 New Reach Media was selected as the new strategic partner for enrollment communications to employ a strategy of personalized emails and postcards to drive students to personal microsites (New Reach Media’s PRO-Search and PRO-Yield products) containing targeted information, as well as a “VIP” application and other pre-populated sign-up forms.

Unique student microsite visits and activities were tracked in real time and reported to the admissions staff on a daily basis. The recruitment process was fueled by consistent email and occasional postcard campaigns delivering personalized scholarship and campus visit information to interested students, with easy sign-up forms on their personal microsites.

The result was that at the end of July, 2009, 25% fewer applications had been submitted compared to the same time in 2008. However, campus visits were up by 11 %, and in a year of economic downturn and uncertainty, total net deposits exceeded 2008 by 29%. The deposit to application ratio increased from 13% to 22%, a 69% increase over the former year, and the highest in the school’s recent history.

In the end, final 2009 new student enrollment rose 27% over last year’s, and total enrollment reached a new height for the last 20 years. And, all of this was accomplished at about half the cost of 2008’s search campaign with their former partner.

New Reach Media has effective, economical communication solutions that can help your organization. Please call or email us today to learn more.