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FORT VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY
4 minute read

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.


Funnel Optimization

Strategic Enrollment Consulting

Funnel & Market Analysis

Advanced Student Search

Encoura Combined Data Set

Smart+ Predictive Model

Declared Student Connection™ 

Affinity Connection™

eMatch®

Technology

Enrollment Lens®

Class Planner®

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With Encoura's Smart+, we could pinpoint where our students are coming from, the ones most likely to enroll, and the populations we need to focus on most. We also saw a massive jump in applications and admitted students from states we strategically focused on–well over 15%.
Executive Director of Recruitment & Admissions
Executive Director of Recruitment & Admissions logo

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.


Website engagement 5 times higher than previous campaigns
Surpassed enrollment goal by 18%
Website engagement 5 times higher than previous campaigns
5% increase in yield
Website engagement 5 times higher than previous campaigns
9% increase in year-to-date applications
Website engagement 5 times higher than previous campaigns
15% increase in applications from new markets
Website engagement 5 times higher than previous campaigns
4x increase in social media followers

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