The fall months offer your team the most optimal time to consider your enrollment marketing plan. For many of you, especially if you have rolling admissions throughout the year, the summer months are filled with last-minute inquiries, visits, and applications. But for most, by October, the dust has settled on who will be in your seats for this year’s academic year. Now what?
LOOK BACK
Take some time to evaluate your numbers, your processes, your tactics, and your wins and losses. Examine where your strengths were but also where you fell short.
- Analyze enrollment data, trends, and gaps
- Are there any new emerging patterns?
- Why did we fall short of our enrollment target for that grade?
- What is the most likely factor in our great numbers in those grades?
- How did we spend our budget last year? Best return on investment?
- Was our messaging clear? Did our personas hear us talking to them or was it a mass message?
- What feedback can we attain from new families who got accepted and are now enrolled?
- Can we ascertain anything from families who chose to go elsewhere?
These are just some of the hard things to look at with your team.
Now, let’s look forward.
LOOKING AHEAD
Having done the hard work above, now it is time to anticipate next year. There doesn’t seem like enrollment coordinators have much time to rest because it is time to start thinking about next August. If you have rolling admissions, you know the work never stops. Sometimes you have a few families even join after Christmas. But even if your enrollment to future families doesn’t open up until spring. now is the time to look ahead.
- Where are our largest enrollment gaps for this upcoming school year?
- Are their enrollment patterns in other grades that concern you?
- Do we know who our ideal family is?
- While a mass marketing message is important, how do we target our communication?
- What programs do we need to highlight better for these personas to take note of?
- What stories do we need to curate that will resonate with these personas?
- What written stories can we tell better?
- Are there good audio interviews or podcasts we can record to tell a better story?
- What is our video strategy for telling our school’s story?
TIME FOR A COMEBACK!
If your enrollment numbers were a challenge this year, it’s time to look forward to this spring and bounce back! You can stage an enrollment comeback if you have the right system, strategy, and tactical approach!
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