Kickstart your next class: Enrollment planning for '24-25 starts NOW
We know last year was a little rough for admissions teams … and that’s putting it lightly. But now you’re ready to shift gears, turn the tide, and start to think about recruiting your 2025 class.
Thankfully we have plenty of ideas and insights to share as you get started. I sat down with Sarah Lindberg, Director of First-Year Admission at the University of Mary Washington, and Bridget Nohara, Admissions Communication Manager at Franciscan University of Steubenville, to chart a course for strong family engagement content and practices for the next cycle.
Why families (You must be new here…)? Strategically engaging parents and families during the application process has a powerful impact on enrollment goals. From the mini poll we ran during the webinar, we learned that about 80% of attendees were looking to see higher yield based on their family communications. The close runners up were more applicants and less summer melt.
Pretty convenient, since we see students with a family member in CampusESP have yield rates about 9% higher than average!
But a strategic family engagement plan takes a little bit of prep work and planning. How can you get there?
We’ve got you covered.
#1: Build connections with personalized communications - families expect it
“I initially thought personalization meant mail merge, putting the name in multiple times, like making it personal. And really it's knowing who you're talking to,” said Nohara.
In a great example, Nohara utilized an alumni connection to connect with her target audience.
“We did this panel with these two parents who are both alumni of Franciscan and have current students. Within our network, they're well known podcasters. So it was a really cool event and it drew a lot of attention because people recognize them from outside of Franciscan. Families could ask their questions to people who get the Franciscan culture, but who also have the ache of sending their kids far away from home.”
Don’t have podcasters in your network? Don’t worry — the key is simply finding individuals who will resonate with your families. “This approach could be applied to really any institution. You can find those parents. They don't have to be notable alumni. They could just be parents who are good on screen and willing to answer a few questions.”
#2: Make financial aid & scholarship information available in all of the places
We do lots of research that looks at what families want information on, and across the board, financial aid and how to pay for college comes out on top.
So if you think you’ve posted enough about FAFSA and financial aid… you haven’t. Especially these days with the new FAFSA.
“We had to make sure we were promoting the financial aid updates in every platform and way possible,” shared Lindberg.
“We took the approach of not only emails, but also advertisements, posts, and announcements in CampusESP to keep parents up to date with that information. In addition to having it on our website and in emails to students and communicating with school counselors, we wanted to make sure parents were aware of that as well.”
Don’t assume your audience is tech-savvy and knows how and where to find information, either.
Nohara compiled information into scholarships into one comprehensive resource — despite it all being fairly accessible across other sites — to ensure engagement. “For both parents and students, the ability to Google there. But the resistance of them to ask simple questions into a search continues. Highlighting what parents and students are looking for in a branded format elevates the institutional voice and says, ‘we’re here to provide the resource.’”
#3: As enrollment challenges persist, lean into parents as influential decision makers
There’s an old mentality that parents should not be a part of the college admissions process. But letting them in and breaking down those barriers has yielded amazing results for both Mary Washington and Franciscan. The key is understanding where families support students and welcoming them in those spaces to play that advisor role.
One key place — campus visits: “Having visitors come to your campus is one of the most influential things,” said Nohara. “We found from a survey of our freshman students that 80% of them who came to Franciscan had gone on a campus visit.”
And who can say no to free opportunities? Linberg shares free application codes and nudges to apply within their platform early and often to reach parents — and give them an incentive to talk to their student about the process.
The feedback loop between student to parent supporter is not as linear as it used to be. The times of a five o'clock nightly dinners where everyone's around the table talking back and forth freely is more of a thing of the past. Institutions need to communicate with parents openly about where that student is in the process as the student may not always be sharing where things are.
Have they been admitted? What is the next thing for them to submit? Sharing the step-by-step process and where you are on that journey with parents, family members, and supporters really helps nudge the student forward in the process, and also builds a level of trust and buy in with the institution.
#4: The quality and quantity of parent communications has an impact on yield
Communicating with families isn’t just a nice-to-have — it has a direct impact. The quality of the communications they receive from an institution is the second most important factor in deciding where they’d like their student to attend.
But just like you — parents are busy! Make absorbing all this new information easier by breaking it down into bite-size pieces of information , like basic checklists and short to-do lists. Not only are you informing them, you’re actionizing them. Nohara summarized it best: “you need to inform and affirm.”
Nohara went further: “The frequency of communication keeps the door open so that they know how to reach out to us. I find that the more I reach out to parents, the more comfortable they are reaching back out to me.”
Lindbery said she takes a similar approach. “Those shorter messages, those shorter announcements, those shorter posts actually gain more traction. Every post doesn't need to be multiple pages, right? Break it down into those simple, bite-sized pieces. Like this post, it could be about all financial aid, but no, actually we just want to talk about merit scholarships. We just want to talk about the interview. We just want to talk about outside scholarships. That helps them feel like they're not drinking from a fire hose.”
And in CampusESP, we just made it easier for you to do that. One of my favorite new AI features is “make this more concise” prompt for a post or announcement, taking less time to help you keep it short, sweet, and to the point.
#5: Harness the power of campus partners to boost your narratives
Take a bird’s eye view to engage parents from an institutional lens — and save yourself some effort. Every department can feel siloed, but all have critical information they need families to get.
Student health services needs a vaccination form by a certain date. Financial aid is grateful you shared that outside scholarships guide. Housing sent you a packing list to post.
Now you’re not just building relationships with families, - you’re building them with your institutional colleagues.
Lindberg had success establishing regular bi-weekly cross-departmental meetings with Res Life, Students Office, Academic Services, the Registrar’s Office, transfer and new student programs, and more. This even pushed Mary Washington to expand to CampusESP for Family Communication to communicate with families through the full student lifecycle and take parents from application through graduation.
When all of your campus’ different teams are working together for the same goal and finding the ways to get the information out there, everyone is better off. Including your families.