Top Trends in Family Engagement for 2025
New year … new trends. Every January the team at CampusESP does a deep dive into data — from the higher ed industry, from our research and surveys, and from our platform now serving more than 420 institutions and an insane 15 million family members — and tries to make sense of it all.
What’s happening in higher ed today? What do families say they want, or are missing? How do they engage with the institutions their students are considering or enrolled in? And how do we all respond?
When the dust settled, we were left with 5 major trends that are shaping family engagement in 2025.
I’ve laid them all out here so you can get the syllabus on how to strategize this year. Or if you missed our live reveal, skip down to the webinar recording below!
1. Parents want to hear from colleges more than ever.
An oldie but a goodie, it’s a theme we’ve elevated for three years now. But with sound reason — it remains at the core of planning your family engagement strategy.
Portal Visitors
CampusESP Portal Data from 15,492,441 users (2024)
Since COVID, parents have expected regular communication from institutions. While we’ve seen things cool slightly in the “new normal,” their new normal is still quite high: 81% of prospective families and 70% of current families want to hear from you weekly or more.
Another piece of the data to keep in mind is when parents want this outreach. While there are strong reasons to connect and educate families throughout the year, parents are most active, and in turn open to your communications, in the Fall. From August to October, we see a spike in opens on emails, clicks on content, and activity in our portals. From new first-year families tackling move-in and the big transition to returning families checking in on seasonal events like Family Weekend to brand new prospective parents starting the application process, there’s a captive audience looking for your help and ready to take action.
2. AI is helping colleges scale and improve parent communications.
There’s no escaping AI in modern tech, and for good reason — it’s an amazingly helpful time saver! Think of it as the coordinator you never got budget approval for …
And the data shows that higher ed pros are on board with leaning on these tools to do more, faster. According to a study by Ellucian, 93% of higher ed staff expect to expand their AI use for work over the next two years.
But why wait 2 years when CampusESP can get you started now? In July we launched our AI Content Tools to help you create, polish, or translate content with ease. And the responce has been overwhelmingly postive, with our AI content tools being used 4,600+ times by more than 300 colleges and universities since launch!
3. Student demographics are changing. Families play an even bigger role in student success.
National Student Clearinghouse research showed increases in first-year enrollment for Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Multiracial students around 6%, but only a small 1% increase for White students. Additionally, reports from the Common App show the number of first-generation applicants rose by 19%. This outpaced the 2% growth seen among continuing-generation applicants.
The short story: different families need different information, and colleges and universities will need to adjust their strategies to address the changing demographics they serve.
One area ripe for opportunity here is text messaging — a communication channel requested by Black and Hispanic families up to 77% more often than other populations. With only 18% of institutions using text messaging to connect with their enrolled families, it’s a clear and simple way for schools to bridge the gap and better meet their families where they are.
Ability to Find Information Independently
RNL & CampusESP study of 20,487 current parents from 46 institutions (2024)
In addition to considering your channels, institutions should also review the frequency and clarity of the content they share in order to best serve their key audiences. For example, we saw in our 2024 Family Engagement Report survey of 22k+ families that compared to continuing-generation families, first-generation families are about 21% more likely to struggle finding information about costs, tuition, and account services. If you have a large first-gen population, you may need to expand your content or cadence to provide the necessary support.
4. Parent data is increasingly used to make strategic decisions.
According to Eduventures, 97% of parents are involved in their student’s college search. It’s no surprise then that engagement data for family members can be invaluable for enrollment teams as they recruit, respond, and plan for their next incoming class.
More and more institutions are considering parents a true member of decision-making team and strategically engaging them throughout the process. We love it. But what we’re seeing now is more of these teams harnessing the family engagement data that approach provides to even further refine their approach and inform enrollment forecasting.
More than 130 CampusESP customers are exporting their family engagement data to this end. And more than 40 have direct integrations with their CRMs to import family data onto student records and provide deeper analysis — a number that’s already double what we saw a year ago. (What are they doing with all this data? Check out 5 examples from CampusESP partners!)
5. Parent fundraising is more important than ever
Recent data from EAB shares that 91% of presidents cite cultivating new donor bases as top priority, but 58% of fundraisers said they’re asked to do too much. With families wanting to be more involved in their student’s institution, parents can be the audience advancement is after.
That’s because families truly want to be more involved … they are simply looking for the channel. At our partners utilizing CampusESP to grow giving, 34% of families openly expressed interest in donating to the institution.
But even more exciting is that when educated on philanthropy at their student’s institutions, even more families actually engage and donate. At the 40 institutions currently using CampusESP for Parent Giving, 81,101 families have actually donated to the school.
As a result, these teams are seeing impressive growth in their donor bases — at two of our partners, Winthrop University and the University of Oregon, they saw a 50% jump in parent donors in their first year on average! (Learn more about UO’s success here!)
