The recruitment of new students is one of the most important aspects of operating a university. After all, without students there is no university. What are your current recruitment strategies?
Chances are that you have some form of contact database of potential students, whether it's in a spreadsheet or CRM (contact relationship manager). From there, you probably send out mass messages to your leads informing them of course options, open houses, and application deadlines.
All of these are beneficial strategies that give potential students the essential information that they need. But, what if you could take it one step further?
The audience that is now entering post-secondary education has grown up surrounded by ever-evolving technology. As a result, they expect more from outreach, such as educational recruitment. Where you provide the essential information, they expect personalized communication that is tailored to their interests and educational goals.
Luckily, there are tools available to help you offer that personalized that many upcoming students crave.
First, it's important to note that you're not expected to know everything right off the bat. There are ways of gathering information through web tracking technology, email engagement, and most importantly, forms and landing pages.
Landing pages are a huge asset for recruitment departments for several reasons:
- They allow you to provide specific information to students
- They provide a "one stop shop" for students looking for something specific
- They are easy to share via email, SMS, and social media
- They can host a signup form or survey so you can gather more information
So, let's say that you want to learn more about your potential students while providing them with personalized information. You could send an email to all your leads with a link to a landing page. On this page, you could have outlines of all the degrees your school offers. Then, in a form, you can ask students to select the course they are most interested in so they can receive more detailed information.
If you use this campaign, you can automate the process by creating a responsive landing page.
By using a landing page, you accomplish two things:
- Learn more information about potential students to use in future outreach strategies
- Provide potential students with personalized information
Partnering landing pages with communication automation, as demonstrated in the example linked above, makes your outreach efforts even more powerful. Automation means you no longer need to manually gather and enter information. Instead, the automation platform does this for you and it automates the sending of the personalized email, too.
If you're ready to see how landing pages and communication automation can help your recruitment efforts, sign up for a free, 14-day trial of SimplyCast 360.
