How 4 institutions are increasing student yield with parent engagement
From scheduling campus visits, encouraging students to apply, and selecting which institution is the best fit for their students, parents play an important role in the enrollment process. Yet many schools are still sending mailers "to the parents of" ... which aren't personalized and provide no enrollment data.
Modern institutions need an updated approach to engaging families during the enrollment process. We designed CampusESP for student enrollment to scale and automate communications, providing parents with the information they need to keep their students moving through the enrollment process. But exactly how much were these newsletters and portals moving the needle? We dug into the data.
Our analysis: it’s working. Looking at the data, we can see that:
Prospective parents using CampusESP have an average open rate of 34% and a click rate of 10%.
Students with a parent using CampusESP have yield rates 5% higher than average.
Parents in the top quartile of engagement have students 3x more likely to enroll.
For even more details, we looked at four client universities of varying sizes and types. Check out our biggest takeaways from studying the results of these higher education institutions.
Prospective parents are easier to influence
You’re regularly reaching out to students, but are they opening that email? Reading it?
CampusESP automatically and continually connects schools with parents - a population eager for information. Newsletters, drip campaigns, and as-needed announcements provide parents with the information they need easily. On average, parents in CampusESP receive 24 emails during their student’s college selection process. And they open them. Open rates across institutions were well above industry averages, as well as student open rates for similar communications.
Students with engaged parents are more likely to enroll
No one is better at providing that helpful push than parents and family members. With CampusESP, parents receive reminders about deadlines and events to ensure their students take the next steps. The result is a more robust pipeline, with students who are more likely to apply and more likely to enroll.
With those extra nudges, students with families in CampusESP keep on track and yield at higher rates.
Parent engagement is an indicator of student likelihood to enroll
CampusESP helps enrollment teams better identify their most likely candidates with the Parent Promoter Score™, an index that looks at open rates, content consumed, portal visits, and more. It shows that high engagement is directly tied to pipeline movement.
Our data showed that the higher a family's Parent Promoter Score, the more likely the student is to enroll at an institution. In fact, if a parent goes a step further and completes their profile in CampusESP, their student is up to 11x more likely to enroll.
Parents have a strong influence on their students and want to be involved. With a scaled parent engagement strategy, enrollment teams can deliver the experience parents want and the institutional goals their schools need.