From “CC’d” to personalized platform: Why 3 universities moved parent comms from their CRM into CampusESP
From scheduling campus visits to selecting which school is the best fit, parents are the #1 influencers in enrollment. While it’s easy to copy parents on student comms flows in your CRM, many enrollment teams have moved to CampusESP as their one-stop shop for parent engagement.
Chris Brundidge, Associate Director of Admissions and Communications at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, shared his perspective on why: “You could configure a custom parent portal in Slate, but my team doesn’t have the time and resources for that. And even if we did, we’d have to manage the upkeep – which takes even longer than the setup!”
Three universities that use both CampusESP and Slate – Lamar University, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and Nebraska Wesleyan University – shared how both systems are crucial but why CampusESP is their #1 choice for a personalized parent engagement experience.
Here are their top four reasons why.
1. CampusESP is quick to set up
Implementing a new CRM, or adding a new audience to an existing one, can take a year of commitment. It often requires the help of agencies and the focus of several staff members, too.
CampusESP aims to provide value as quickly as possible with a 3-week implementation and only 8 hours of your time. The difference is that CampusESP comes “out of the box”, with all of the content, configuration, and branding built for you by a dedicated Customer Success Manager who guides you through each step.
Nebraska Wesleyan University’s Director of Enrollment Operations, Drew Carr, explained how the CampusESP team helped him achieve a quick impact: “Our biggest deciding factors were that CampusESP comes pre-built, it’s proven to have success increasing yield, and it’s much less time-intensive to build and maintain than it would be in Slate. The CampusESP team handled the setup – we just reviewed and approved. It was so much easier than creating the content from scratch.”
2. CampusESP is easy to maintain
Getting a new system off the ground is just the beginning. To get the most out of a system, you have to invest in it.
CampusESP handles 91% of the content curation for you, keeping your parent communication fresh and continuous. With CampusESP, you get a dedicated Content Manager who adds college-specific information and general parent advice each week. All you have to do is approve or reject the content – meaning CampusESP only takes 1 hour a week to maintain.
Ashlyn Ellison, Marketing Coordinator at Lamar University, described the support she gets from CampusESP: “I love my CampusESP team. I know their faces, I know their names, and they often respond to my requests within a few hours. They’re so committed to our success.”
In addition to curated content, CampusESP offers a host of features to scale your parent communication. From day one, parents receive automated, personalized newsletters, adding up to an average 27 emails from CampusESP during the admission journey. Administrators can use a generative AI editor to write, edit, translate, or transform student-facing content into parent-facing content.
As Drew put it, “We either had to hire a new staff member or buy CampusESP. CampusESP is like a full-time staff member that costs less money and takes no vacation.”
3. Parent Promoter Score™ informs your enrollment strategy
CampusESP’s Parent Promoter Score™ helps institutions be more strategic with parent data. It’s a score between 0-100 that ranks parents based on engagement actions, including email opens, content clicks, portal logins, and more. Parent Promoter Score can feed into enrollment modeling, considering parents in the top quartile of engagement are 3x more likely to have a student enroll.
At University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Chris’ team exports Parent Promoter Score back into Slate to ensure admissions counselors focus on the students with engaged parents. Chris told us, “This data shows us which students are likely to enroll. It also helps us understand which families are ‘on the fence’ – and where my team can make an impact to grow our incoming class.”
We know your enrollment team works with Slate data on a daily basis. CampusESP helps enrich those student records with actionable parent data.
4. CampusESP is built for parents – and has proven results with them
As the #1 solution for parent engagement, CampusESP has powered over 450 colleges and more 10 million parent users. And we have the data to show for it.
Our annual case study featuring 6 institutions demonstrates that students with a parent using CampusESP have application rates 51% higher than average and yield rates 7% higher than average. Our annual survey of over 11,000 prospective parents summarizes parent expectations, from their desired communication frequency to their perceived value of higher education.
Beyond yield results and parent expertise, Ashlyn shared another win for the Lamar team, “By emailing parents in CampusESP as a follow-up to student comms through Slate, we saw a 19% increase in registration for all of our events last year.” With a one-stop-shop for parents in ALL stages of the student journey, that high level of parent engagement can be channeled forward to reduce summer melt, improve retention, and boost graduation rates.
Enrollment leaders understand the importance of parent communication. But engaging parents – really engaging parents – can make a meaningful difference on your enrollment numbers. Chris shared a final thought on why CampusESP is their choice for parent engagement, “There’s a difference between communicating with parents and creating an experience for parents. CampusESP offers you the latter – out of the box.”
Ready to create a parent experience that moves the needle on enrollment?