Transylvania University achieves 4.8% increase in yield with campaigns to prospective parents
With a small and close-knit campus nestled within the charming city of Lexington, KY, Transylvania University offers students a mix of high energy and personalized attention. It’s a distinction the institution’s enrollment team wants to ensure every prospective student — and their family — understands the value of.
“Parents are one of the biggest influencers in where their students are going to attend. We have to be able to recruit families just like we are recruiting students,” said Johnnie Johnson, Vice President of Admissions at Transy.
Transy knew building that strategy from scratch could prove a big lift, so in March 2021, they turned to CampusESP. “We partnered with CampusESP to gain the ability to talk to parents on an even more integral level,” said Johnson.
And it’s working — just one year in, the Transy team is already seeing significant results. Not only is the inquiry-to-applicant conversion rate for students with a parent using CampusESP an impressive 61%, but the team has seen their yield rate grow by 4.8%!
Slate integration with CampusESP makes it easy
Johnson and his team invested in Slate in 2017 to improve their student enrollment management function, and while they began utilizing the software to communicate in basic ways with parents — mostly one-off emails or CCing known parents on student blasts — they knew there was more they could do. They realized that personalized, parent-specific content would be their best bet to convey the value of Transy to families.
The team decided to scale their parent strategy in CampusESP, in order to provide more tailored content for families. CampusESP’s integration with Slate made it easy.
During Transy’s implementation, CampusESP set up an sFTP connection between Slate and CampusESP (if that sounds complicated, don’t worry — the set up took one meeting!). As prospective students move from stage to stage in Slate, the parent moves to the same stage in CampusESP. As such, the parent’s portal experience and newsletters dynamically change to information applicable to that stage.
One year in: increased enrollment and trust
Johnson and his team built out a comprehensive campaign for the 2021 enrollment cycle in CampusESP, combining information of interest for families with key communications around important deadlines. The resulting 24-email cadence was sent to more than 7,700 family members over the course of the school year.
The campaign had over 87,000 impressions and 1,600 clicks in CampusESP! But the obvious influence is more than just in the numbers. Johnson says feedback from prospective families has been highly positive, with parents knowing how to get the information they need and feeling better able to support their student through the enrollment process.
“Parents have told us they feel informed, they don’t feel left out of the process, and they understand what their kids need to do … and they appreciate that,” said Johnson. “We become a trusted institution, which is ultimately what we want. We want them to trust us to take care of their son or daughter. And CampusESP has helped us with that transparency.”
Parents are easier to engage than students
Transy saw their email open rates on communications to parents improve dramatically when utilizing CampusESP. At both the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel, rates were about 20% higher for parents than for students.
Engagement was highest for emails on topics often critical for families, like financial aid and class registration.
“Students definitely don’t open email as much. And we really want to make sure this important information is getting into the household,” said Johnson. “That’s one of the biggest reasons we partnered with CampusESP — to make sure the family was getting the information they needed.”
Students with engaged parents are more likely to apply
Based on Fall 2021 enrollment data, students with a parent using CampusESP had a 61% inquiry-to-applicant conversion rate, compared to 8% for all prospective Transy students.
Transy started with about 3,000 parent names in CampusESP. It makes sense that the conversion rate for parents would be higher. But the takeaway here is that the more parents you can engage with at the inquiry stage, the more likely you are to increase your number of applicants.
Students with engaged parents are more likely to enroll
Again looking at Transy’s Fall 2021 enrollment data, we found that students with a parent using CampusESP had 4.8% higher yield rates.
This aligns almost exactly with what we have found at other institutions. Across the board, students with a parent using CampusESP have yield rates 5% higher than average.
“That percentage may not seem like a lot, but it’s huge,” said Johnson. “When you’re trying to fill your class, getting parents involved helps you do that.”
Overall, Johnson and his team are excited by the enrollment improvements that better communicating with families through CampusESP has achieved — and the longer term potential as Transy continues parent engagement for enrolled students.
“When you give parents the right information at the right time, it helps them get engaged and helps them help their students,” said Johnson. “If I get more parents involved from the start, then they become partners with Transy from the enrollment process through their students' time with us on campus. And together we will support their student to succeed.”