Personalizing Recruitment Drives Enrollment Growth
Challenge
An HBCU in the heart of Georgia, Fort Valley State University (FVSU) develops students into leaders with their motto “Empower the Possible.” Similarly, when its admissions team faced challenges identifying students most likely to enroll at the university, the executive director knew it was time to empower the team to embrace its technology and enrollment partnership to achieve what he knew was possible: creating a communication flow that would engage the right students to surpass the university’s enrollment goals.
Solution
FVSU teamed up with Encoura to leverage the industry’s leading inquiry-to-enroll predictive model, Smart+®, to identify students most likely to enroll at its university. With this information, the admissions team created a personalized communication plan–including handwritten letters to prospective students with the highest predictive scores, set travel plans to visit strategic new markets, and created new events to connect with these students. Additionally, FVSU and Encoura began reaching out to students earlier in their high school careers to engage these students with email and on social media before its competitors.
Strategic Enrollment Consulting
Funnel & Market Analysis
Encoura Combined Data Set
Smart+ Predictive Model
Declared Student Connection™
Affinity Connection™
eMatch®
Enrollment Lens®
Class Planner®
Results
FVSU’s new strategy and personalized outreach resulted in improved performance across their funnel. With personal stories from students who would come up to their college fair booths excited about having received a handwritten birthday card to engagement and applications from new markets where they had high Smart+ scoring students, FVSU knows that it has a winning strategy. Its efforts led the university to an increase in social media followers, yield, and enrollment–as well as a current position of already being ahead in applications by 9% from where it was last year. The FVSU admission team looks forward to continuing to partner with Encoura, including beginning to leverage Insights Cloud™ to continue to grow as a competitor to its peers in out-of-state markets.
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Encoura is ready to connect with you to get started on your best strategy. Learn more about how higher education leaders are better understanding their market to take their institutions to the next level.