Encoura

Use Student Mindsets to Personalize Marketing


Chapter 1

What Are Mindsets: A Brief Overview

If you could use a proven, data-backed, easy-to-implement strategy for boosting your student engagement starting today, would you?

Each year, we collect feedback from the largest panel of college-bound juniors and seniors about the institutions they are considering and their perceptions about the quality of these institutions’ critical enrollment drivers and brand attributes.

Through this research, we’ve identified six distinct Student Mindsets that deepen your understanding of Generation Z’s motivations and expected outcomes for their college experience. These six distinct Student Mindsets can be categorized into three journeys—career, experience, and academic.

By using Student Mindsets, your institution can assess your entire enrollment process through the lens of a student and identify actionable ways to personalize your recruiting practices and communications.

This action plan is intended to help your institution understand what the Student Mindsets are, how to recognize students of each Mindset, and how to best communicate and support them throughout the funnel. We've also provided a checklist to set your team up for future success.

If you’d like added support, Encoura’s team of experts is ready to help you integrate the Mindsets into your existing workflows. Reach out to us for a discovery call to learn more about our enrollment services consulting, plus additional strategies to help your team execute the Mindsets.

Read on to learn more about each mindset and how you can put them into action!

Career-Related Mindsets

Experiential Interest:

  • Wants to be hands-on in college—learns by doing.
  • Internships and employment should mingle with coursework.

Career Pragmatist:

  • ROI driven—the most affordability-minded of the Mindsets.
  • Focused on landing a job upon graduation.

Experience-Related Mindsets

Social Focus:

  • Thrives in extroverted campus activities and is focused on making lifelong friends.
  • Wants to form connections by participating in internships, clubs, and study abroad.

Exploration and Meaning:

  • Liberal arts minded and globally oriented—wants to do good for the world.
  • Interested in study abroad opportunities.

Academic-Related Mindsets

Career Through Academics:

  • Level-headed—wants integrated academic, career, and social interaction.
  • Feels like college will enable success for a long and healthy career.

Grad School Bound:

  • These are rare students who view their undergraduate education as a stepping stone.
  • Focused on strong academics and connections to faculty–research driven.


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Continue Reading: Marketing Personalization with Edventures Mindsets

Complete the short form below and we'll email you a link to this full action plan, which includes helpful tips and tools throughout (and a checklist to get your team started)!

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Chapter 2

Marketing & Recruiting with Mindsets: Getting Started

Applying Student Mindsets will make your communication more personal, relevant, and effective. Best of all, activating Mindsets is remarkably straightforward if you’re armed with some basics.

Beyond Demographics & Behavior: Psychographic Segmentation

Mindsets allow you to add psychographic segmentation to your communication toolbox. You likely already segment your communication by demographics/geographics and behavior:

  • Demographic/Geographic segmentation allows you to message based on who the student is and where they live.
  • First Generation vs. Multi-Generational
  • Test or GPA Score Range
  • In-State vs. Out-of-State
  • Behavioral segmentation allows you to message based on how a student has interacted with you.
  • Students who have inquired vs. blind prospects
  • Students who have applied vs. students who have not
  • Students who have visited campus vs. students who have not

With Mindsets, you can complete your understanding of a student by connecting to their motivations—you can segment and message based on psychographic segmentation—or more simply put: how students think about college.

  • As an example, for students who think the purpose of college is:
  • to get a good job, show how you support career development.
  • to make friends, show your campus social environment.
  • to go to graduate school, show how you help students continue their educations.

Mindsets allow you to connect beyond demographics to the enrollment decision factors that matter most to each student. Don't miss out on adding this important area of segmentation to your communication strategy.

It’s All About the Benefits

You likely intuitively know how to apply Student Mindsets to your messaging already.

Imagine a student asks, “How do you help students get a good job after graduation?” Or, “How do students make friends on campus?”

You’ve probably answered those exact questions many times. The power of mindset segmentation is that you can answer those highly motivating questions before a student asks them.

The formula is simple: connect to motivations by taking a FEATURE you offer and POSITIONING its BENEFITS for the right student SEGMENT.

Example 1: Cars

Let’s start with an example outside of higher education. Imagine your job is to create an ad for the new Subaru Forester. The SUV is known for rugged off-road performance; it’s also one of the safest vehicles in its class.

There’s some overlap between those two ideas—performance and safety, but you need to speak with relevance to buyers with two very different motivations:

  • One segment of people is motivated to buy based on a car’s ability to feed their sense of adventure. 
  • Another segment of people is motivated to buy based on a car’s ability to keep their family safe.

What do you do?

Instead of trying to reach both segments in one advertisement, Subaru created two ads for the same car with its benefits positioned differently.

Subaru = Adventure


Career

Motivation: Prepare for a good job

Career Pregmatist; Experiential Interest

SOCIAL & MEANING

Motivation:Make friends; connect to community

Social Focus; Exploration & Meaning

ACADEMIC

Motivation:Connect classroom instruction to career or grad school

Career through Academics; Grad School Bound

Knowing a student’s motivations allows you to apply the formula: take the FEATURE and POSITION its BENEFITS for the right SEGMENT.

Career

You should join an academic club because it will help you build skills in-demand with employers.

SOCIAL & MEANING

You should join an academic club because it will help you make friends and connect to your community.

ACADEMIC

You should join an academic club because it will help you connect what you’re learning in the classroom to the real world.

In applying the Mindsets, you don’t need to make overly complex messaging plans. Start with what you already know how to do—answer student questions with relevance. 

Read on to see how you can apply this simple formula to specific tactics within your marketing and recruiting plans.

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Continue Reading: Marketing Personalization with Edventures Mindsets

Complete the short form below and we'll email you a link to this full action plan, which includes helpful tips and tools throughout (and a checklist to get your team started)!

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Chapter 3

Import Mindsets Data Into Your CRM

When you look at a specific student record in your CRM right now, does it tell your counselors what their motivating factors are when they decide on a college?

Does it tell your marketing staff what types of emails or digital marketing to send them?

With Eduventures Student Mindsets, student records in your CRM ensure EACH PERSON on your campus is working together to deliver the right messaging at the right moments in students’ college decision-making processes.

Get Student Mindsets Data in Your CRM

Great news! If you’re an Encoura partner, your data already includes your students’ Mindsets. 

Simply map this free data from your students’ profiles to import to your chosen field in your CRM.

Having our Eduventures Students Mindsets delivered in the ACT and Encoura combined dataset is the gift that keeps giving. This data gives you the ability tailor your communications to specifically target the needs and wants of students as they are making their college decisions. We continue to see increased engagement and better response rates with our partner institutions using the Mindsets.

Bridget Kurkowski, Vice President, Enrollment Services

Kurkowski

Feel free to reach out to us anytime if you’d like assistance setting up your integration or check out our Help Center.

Are you wondering if Student Mindsets are for you if you’re not currently using Encoura data? They are! We’re happy to get you this essential data point.

We can help you append Student Mindsets to your current student database using our eMatch program so that you don’t miss out on getting ahead of competing institutions that are using generic messages rather than strategic segmentation.

Prepare Your Entire Team for Recruitment Season

Importing Student Mindsets into your CRM enables your admissions and marketing teams–and any others on your campus who can access your data–to do their best work by giving them the most valuable information on your prospective students.

Let’s get your entire campus prepared to hit your enrollment goals this year. 

Read on to learn how to apply the Mindsets to your existing communications workflow.

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Chapter 4

Applying the Mindsets to Email

In Chapter 3, we highlighted how to Import Mindsets Data Into Your CRM. This chapter will focus on how to apply the Mindsets to your email marketing. But please note, for this to be effective, your institution will need to use the Mindsets data you imported in your CRM to segment emails.

Getting Started: Planning for Your Audiences

While each of the six Mindsets has a unique perspective and desired outcomes for their undergraduate education, you can start by segmenting your messaging using the three CATEGORIES below, allowing you to send the same messages to the two Mindsets in each category.

This approach might work well for your team when first starting segmentation—especially if you’re wanting to begin applying Mindsets to your communications mid-enrollment cycle.

  • Career: Experiential Interests and Career Pragmatists
  • Experience: Social Focus and Exploration & Meaning
  • Academic: Career Through Academics and Grad School Bound

If your team already has existing segmentation in place, or a team to help build out communications for all six Mindsets, go for it! 

Execution: Breaking Down an Email Sequence for Each Mindset

Once you’ve planned for your audiences and have a better understanding of how you’ll reach high schoolers throughout their path to college, it’s time to execute just how you’ll speak to each of the six Mindsets in one email sequence. 

For this example, we’ll choose one email topic and apply it to each Mindset category: career, experience, and academic.

  • Email Topic: Getting Involved on Campus
  • Goal: Campus Visits
  • Audience: Juniors

A lot of your email communications can have the same pieces and parts, but with a focus on what aspects of your campus or event would most appeal to each Mindset category.

Photography is another consideration in your emails; campus involvement looks different for the Mindsets, so consider alternating photography that will resonate best.

What We Know About Our Audiences

Career:

This group learns by doing and wants internships and employment that mingle with their coursework, so getting involved with things like professors and research on campus will appeal to them.

Messaging May Look Like: “On your campus visit, you’ll see how you’ll get hands-on experience as a student with internship opportunities that allow you to apply what you’re learning in the classroom.”

Experience:

This group is looking for extroverted campus activities and wants to get connected with internships, clubs, and study abroad.

Messaging May Look Like: “On your campus visit, we’ll discuss clubs, study abroad opportunities, internships, and more ways to connect in-person with other students and faculty.”

Academic:

This group feels that college will enable success for a long and healthy career and looks for integrated academic, career, and social interaction.

Messaging May Look Like: “On your campus visit, you’ll see how students are getting involved on campus, including research opportunities, to support their future careers.”

In this Social-focused email, a partner institution focused this campaign on specific desired outcomes for this Mindset—making connections and getting involved on and off campus.

In this Career Pragmatist-focused email, a partner institution focused on the specific desired outcomes for this Mindset—ROI, career preparation, and landing a job upon graduation.

There are many other ways you can utilize the Mindsets in your email communications. In Applying Mindsets to Print, we will discuss how stories of current students are especially effective in your marketing mix. Include these stories on the web, and segment them out based on each of the Mindsets. You can also include these stories in emails, segmented by Mindset.

Analysis: Track How Your Segmentation is Working and Adjust

Just like you track your current ongoing email communications, you’ll want to see how your email communications are appealing to each of the Mindsets. 

Analyze clicks, form fills, etc., taking note of which emails are resonating most with specific Mindsets (and which could use improvements). Make changes accordingly to increase engagement and continue to monitor for effectiveness.

Continue to adjust each cycle as you see which Mindsets your prospective students tend to fall into to better appeal to these students’ undergraduate outcomes and desires.

Read on to learn how institutions are applying the Mindsets to personalize their digital marketing campaigns.

Enrollment Marketing Services

Looking for a partner to help manage your inquiry, application generation, yield, and melt campaigns? We can help with that too!

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Chapter 5

Applying the Mindsets to Digital Marketing

Now that you’ve read how to Apply the Mindsets to Email, your team can use a similar approach in your digital marketing campaigns.

Getting Started: Pick Your Digital Platforms and Tactics

Platforms

Knowing the platforms you will use to reach students and their parents/guardians will help your team pick the right tactics and select the right creative. While overall Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are top platforms for Gen Z students, understanding which platforms are most prevalent to your specific audience(s) will ensure your ads are seen.

Tactics

In addition to determining which platforms are best to reach your prospects, you will also want to decide what marketing tactic will most effectively get your message seen on each unique platform.

For example, if your goal is to get your brand in front of the entire family, you may opt for a tactic like residential targeting. If your goal is to jump-start campus visits, a student-driven Snapchat video highlighting your campus might be the best option.

Example Execution

Consider an omni-channel custom audience approach with segmentation of your students by Mindset personna. This strategy can run in tandem with your email segmentations, and has increased engagement by as much as 25% for several of our partners.

Develop Your Messaging: Ad Copy and Visuals

You have seconds to grab a student’s attention with your ad, which means the COPY and VISUALS you use matter. While each of the six Mindsets has its own unique approaches, your institution may want to start with the three categories we laid out in Apply Mindsets to Email.

If participating in Eduventures Research, your team will discover which Mindsets rank highest at your institution and can plan your ads accordingly.

Sample Copy and Visual Paths

Career: Experiential Interests and Career Pragmatists

  • Copy: Focus on career-focused outcomes and affordability.
  • Visuals: Focus on showing career-based activities.

Expierience: Social Focus and Exploration & Meaning

  • Copy: Highlight social environments and opportunities for impact.
  • Visuals: Highlight students engaging with each other and the campus.

Academic: Career Through Academics and Grad School Bound

  • Copy: Feature outcomes and connections to majors.
  • Visuals: Feature students involved in research and with faculty.


Career Through Academics

Career Pragmatist

Focus on Desired Ad Outcomes: Call-to-Action (CTA) Considerations

Where you’re sending students from your ads matters just as much as what they say and show. For your ads to be most effective, you need to plan the path a student will take once they click on the ad.

If your goal is applications, sending every student who clicks on your ad to your general applications page may not yield the most applications. Instead, LANDING PAGES that highlight the benefits of your campus to each Mindset with a clear application CTA provides much more personalization to students.

Landing pages created for the Mindsets can be used in your other communications—like emails, direct mail, and more. Duplicating landing pages and making slight changes that cater to each Mindset category lessens the time investment and allows your team to showcase specific experiences that speak directly to students’ desired undergraduate outcomes.

Reach Students on Top Platforms

Let's partner to get your Mindsets-focused ads in front of the right audience(s).

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Chapter 6

Applying the Mindsets to Digital Marketing

When it comes to applying the Student Mindsets to your existing recruitment print strategy, planning is key.

If your team is already featuring current students throughout your print publications, this planning is easier. Your team will just need to adapt your existing selection and interview approach.

Because you know persona-based marketing is an effective outreach tool, selecting and interviewing CURRENT STUDENTS based on their Student Mindset will help you attract more prospective students. Showcase how these current students are exploring social, academic, and career paths on your campus.

This impactful strategy will better engage prospective students as they see themselves following in the footsteps of your students.

Three Tips To Better Engage High Schools Students Using Mindsets in Your Print Communications

1. Getting Started: Student Nominations + Selection

Engage current students early in their academic year to ensure you can get all the elements you need to feature them while recruiting your next class.

When it comes to finding students for each of the six Student Mindsets, reach out to your colleagues to gather student names and information:

  • Events and enrollment teams can nominate student ambassadors and tour guides who are front facing to prospective students.
  • College recruiters and professors can nominate students involved in their major and those who are working on special projects and research.
  • Admissions representatives know many current students as they helped in getting them to campus; ask for their nominations and work closely with them to fill needs to make well-rounded publications.

It’s important that faculty and staff who recommend students to you understand the Student Mindsets. To make your job easier, send along the Mindsets Summary Sheet to help them understand what makes each Mindset unique.

Along with the Mindsets Summary Sheet, your team may find it helpful to develop a submission form that allows them to fill out each student’s year, major, and other demographic information.

2. Interview Planning: Develop Questions for Each Student Mindset

Because each of the Student Mindsets has unique college drivers, your interview questions should be specific to the different Mindsets. For example, the questions you’re asking a current student who has been chosen for their Social Focus Mindset would be different from those you ask to a Career Through Academics student.

Social Focus Questions

Center around how that current student has navigated their social environment on campus as we know that the best way to recruit a prospective Social Focus student is to engage them in activities that connect them to others.

  • How have they created connections on campus?
Career Through Academics Questions

Center around how the current student has gotten involved in their respective school and major, plus how those experiences connect. This is particularly appealing to prospective students who fall under Career Through Academics as it demonstrates an integrated college experience.

  • How has their major opened opportunities they can apply to their future career?

3. Execution: Make the Most of Student Stories Across Print + More

The way your team tackles an admissions guide is different than a postcard, so consider how you can apply your student interviews across many pieces of prospective student content.

To best maximize your investment in these stories, you should also add the full stories to your institution’s website and promote across different mediums. Here are just a few ways this cross-promotion would work:

  • For your print pieces, run quotes from the full stories, but link to your website to encourage further engagement (like a video clip from the interview).
  • For your postcards, use a quote or part of the interview that best represents that Student Mindset and include a QR code to your website.
  • Print materials for events that encourage prospective students to visit your website to hear from current students.
  • Not all institutions have the team and/or resources to undertake these major content changes in one academic cycle.

This career focused page, featured an a University of Nebraska admissions guide, promotes student stories about making connections to their future career.

This social focused page, in the same print guide as the previous, features students making connections on campus.

If your institution would like to further discuss how to best incorporate the Student Mindsets into your prospective student communications, let’s chat.

Read on to learn how to apply the Mindsets to your student conversations and campus visits.

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Chapter 7

Applying the Mindsets to Campus Visits & Conversations

While a picture is worth a thousand words, a campus visit or conversation with an admissions counselor can be worth an application.

  • Infusing Eduventures Student Mindsets into your in-person interactions with students and their families can be the vital experience prospective students need to SOLIDIFY THEIR DECISION TO APPLY to your institution.

Eduventures Mindsets have helped us better reach the right students. They allow us to learn what we need to be saying to each student. It is so valuable to be able to have a focused and timely conversation with students based on their specific mindsets.

VP for Enrollment, Randolph-Macon College

Kurkowski

Conversations That Matter

You’ve learned that Mindsets allow you to skip the guesswork and small talk often required to figure out what students need to know about a college to add it to their application list.

But how do you drive the conversation from there?

Set yourself up for a smooth and effective meeting by taking these steps for your next conversation with a student:

  • Bring collateral that directly speaks to that student’s Mindset.
  • Invite another student or staff member from campus to join your conversation. Choose someone who can back up what you are sharing about how your institution serves students of their specific Mindset.
  • Discuss opportunities and resources that your campus offers to help achieve that student’s college dreams.
  • Share unique competitive advantages related to that student’s Mindset that your institution offers over other colleges they may be considering.
  • Affirm that the student will be a great fit at your institution because of their Mindset.

Mindfully Planning Campus Visits and Events

In addition to incorporating the same Mindset principles above for individual conversations to tours and events, these visits provide a strong opportunity for you to assure students that their college goals can be achieved at your campus.

SHOW–RATHER THAN TELL– students and their families that your institution is the right place for them to reach their goals by incorporating these tips into your campus visit/events strategy:

  • Consider creating specific visit days to highlight a single Mindset at a time. Tours and event activities would be focused on campus aspects that cater to that Mindset. Alternatively, you can group students into Mindset tracks (Career, Academic, Experience) to incorporate personalized event experiences.
  • Showcase the multiple benefits of your student organizations and how they cater to different Mindsets.
  • Give prospective students the opportunity to hear from current students of similar Mindsets who are fulfilling their goals on your campus.
  • Provide interactive activities (sitting in on a class, community service, student event) for prospective students to participate in the experiences you are promising.

Whether you’re interacting one-on-one or in a large group setting, take advantage of the time you have in person with students and their families to help them start living out their Mindset dream at your institution to assure them they belong.

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Chapter 8

Mindsets for Marketing: A Recruiting Checklist

You’ve made it through the learning and now it’s time to GET STARTED! Here’s a quick checklist to help your team start implementing Mindsets at your institution today.

  • Identify your Mindsets champions. Who at your institution (Marketing, Admissions, Leadership, etc.) is ready to help you start applying Mindsets to your recruiting efforts today?

  • Import your prospective students’ Mindsets into your CRM.

    • Remember, each Encoura student record already includes their Student Mindset!


  • Educate other student-facing departments on Mindsets so that they can also engage your prospective students on what they care about most.

  • Determine the top one or two Mindsets that your institution best attracts and/or serves to strengthen your marketing and communications to these students.

  • Identify your institution’s strengths in each of the Mindset categories below to drive highlights that you can be leading with in your marketing. To do this, talk to current students and review your Prospective & Admitted Student Research results.

    • Academic
    • Career Preparation
    • Experience
  • Select which core communications in each segment – print marketing, emails, digital marketing, website – you’d like to start incorporating Mindset-focused marketing.

    • Consider choosing one print piece (postcard? brochure?), one email campaign, one digital ad, and/or one web page to begin.
    • For consulting on this from experienced professionals who have successfully implemented Mindset-focused marketing, reach out to your Regional Director.
  • Talk to your admissions counselors/recruiters about how their conversations with students over the phone, in person, and at events should be led with Mindsets in mind.

    • Have the staff member look at that student’s Mindset in your CRM before the conversation and have any materials on hand to best engage the student.
  • Analyze how your initial roll out of Mindset-focused marketing is performing.

    • Are you seeing higher engagement with your emails, digital ads, website pages, etc.?
    • If engagement is higher, do you need to follow up with other departments to ensure that students are continuing to be supported–with their specific Mindset needs–after they take action on your marketing? Are these students moving through the funnel?

As always, we would love to partner with you to set up a winning strategy to engage your next class using Mindsets.

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Get Started with Mindsets

Data from Encoura includes Student Mindset information at no additional charge, and our consulting team works with institutions like yours apply Mindsets across your communications. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you improve marketing results across your funnel.

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