Family engagement is becoming a core part of most institutions' enrollment strategies. With 88% of families expecting weekly communication from the schools their student is considering and the quality of the school’s communication with families being deemed the second most important experience in how a parent considers a prospective school, thoughtfully engaging parents and families doesn’t just build community — it builds your next class.

Greg Van Dyke, Admissions Director of Dordt University knows this well. He’s helped build the small Christian university in Iowa’s population from 1,200 to 1,500 students over the past 10 years, with their Fall 2023 first-year class the largest in school history. He’s also partnered with others on campus to spearhead the advancement of their family engagement strategy. 

For these reasons (and more!) we’re thrilled to call Dordt a partner and to bestow upon them the Q3 ESP MVP Award!

“We believe in engaging the student and their parents as a whole family, as they will be making their decision together,” said Van Dyke. “We embrace it as an office. And CampusESP has been life changing for us.”

“You’re asking a parent for their two most prized possessions — their child and their money.”

Van Dyke has been a key driver of Dordt’s family engagement approach, and he’s seen firsthand the change not only in the expectations and behavior of parents, but how the university embraces parents as a key population.

“I’ve seen a real change in the last 5-7 years around families,” he said. “In the past there has been a lot of negative connotation around parents — like helicopter, snowplow — but I felt like we needed a mindset shift and to move toward turning parents into partners.”

Van Dyke says even just a few years ago a campus tour for 50 students would mean welcoming a group of about 80 people; most students were traveling to campus on their own. But these days, that same tour for 50 students creates a crowd of about 150 as the students often arrive with two parents — and sometimes even grandparents — in tow.  

“‘I love it!’ admits Van Dyke. “It makes for a really great experience. It truly is a family recruitment process – whether we like it or not the parent is going to be involved in the process – you may as well embrace that.”

“You are asking for a parent’s two most important possessions: their child and their money. They are going to be involved. And it’s easier to work with families than against them.”

Do more with less (and with the help of CampusESP)

As Van Dyke started trying to do more to engage prospective families, he quickly hit one of the most common hurdles in higher ed — bandwidth.

“It was pretty daunting to me. How could I communicate with families on a regular basis and keep the information flowing?” said Van Dyke. “We started by doing it the old way — we’d export the email addresses we had from our database into an Excel spreadsheet and then import them into MyEmma and send things out that way. It was just super clunky and extremely time consuming, and since we didn’t really have the time or personnel to handle it, it would often get pushed to the side.”

In a slightly frustrated search to find a way to keep the project on track, Van Dyke implemented CampusESP for Student Enrollment. Thanks to automated newsletters and the CampusESP team helping Dordt build out 90% of their content, his team was able to ensure communications were rolling on a regular schedule. 

“CampusESP was a really seamless platform that we could communicate out of,” said Van Dyke. 

Building in an integration with Dordt’s CRM so that those newsletters were also personalized based on the funnel stage the student was in further improved Van Dyke’s strategy — and outcomes.

“I have horror stories from buying new software and integrations. CampusESP was a totally different experience. From implementing the portal to moving through our first year, our Customer Success Manager was awesome and was always reaching out to provide suggestions,” said Van Dyke. “It gives me nightmares talking about integrations, but he was like, ‘No, Greg, it’s easy!’ and within 2 weeks we were able to set everything up and send out personalized communications.”

The result? The team was able to send 82,000 newsletters to Fall 2023 prospective families throughout their enrollment journey without having to build a single one of them. The newsletters saw open rates of 61% and click through rates of 12% — once their students hit enrolled status, those open rates rose to 78%!

Enhance outreach by taking it offline

The emails and newsletters Dordt sends prospective families through CampusESP are just a part of what the team tries to do to connect with parents.

“For us, family communication is a multi-threaded approach. [In addition to regular emails], I think direct mail is not dead. A postcard can get your message out there right away — people see it, it sits on the counter, and parents will look at it. And a portal like we have with CampusESP is also really nice.”

Van Dyke and his team also lean into face-to-face connection with students and families as much as possible. One of their favorites: Q&A sessions around the country at local pizza joints where families can casually connect, get questions answered, and grab dinner together.

Prospective Dordt students with a parent using CampusESP have yield rates 13% higher than average

Van Dyke has clearly seen the wins from family engagement, both qualitative and quantitative.

“Parents used to sometimes arrive at freshman drop-off frustrated with us and say they didn’t have the information they needed. And I knew it was somewhere, but they hadn’t seen it,” said Van Dyke. “These days they arrive and they go ‘Thank you for all the information you sent us, we feel so well prepared!’ And all the communications go out in my name, So it helps make an instant connection to someone on campus. We have a staff member who is a Parent Relations Specialist who writes and schedules all the communication, and she is the real hero here!”

In addition to families feeling informed, ready, and welcome, the admissions team is seeing that their outreach is helping families help their students through the funnel. For the first-year class of Fall 2023, Dordt’s average yield rate for students was 32%. But for students with family members in CampusESP, the yield rate was 45% — a 13% increase. (Sound crazy? On average CampusESP customers see an increase of 9%!)

“Communication is very important to us as an institution to build value and trust with families as they go through the admissions process,” said Van Dyke. “CampusESP has really helped us do more and see the impact.”

We love the results, and we for sure love that the Dordt team are true believers in the power of family engagement.

Ready to see how we can help you do more and welcome more students?