It’s time for digital-first admissions

Do you know how much effort it takes to fill out your application? To coordinate with the counseling office to get transcripts sent? For those that still have application fees, you know stealth applicants do not accidentally pay those without knowing one thing about your school. 

What if I told you that your stealth applicants were never stealth. You just weren’t paying attention and tracking when they were engaging with your institution digitally.

Future students are looking for information on their own. 

What is your “always on” strategy? How are you telling your story at 2am? What opportunities are you providing for them to engage with minimal effort? Are you monitoring that reporting of digital hand raising and making strategic decisions for future planning and outreach based on it?

The time is long past for admissions offices to acknowledge and embrace the reality that students who apply were thinking about and researching your school long before they started writing that essay.

As discussed in this recent article by Eduventures, some stealth applicants rely on word of mouth to then go seek you out. What do you have waiting for them when they do? What do you have planned for them to engage with again later as they continue to learn more about their best-fit institution?

Other stealth applicants rely on their high school counselors to get information about colleges and deadlines for things like applications and scholarships. If your virtual engagement strategy does not include a dedicated section for counselors to easily access and be updated on your enrollment topics and dedicated marketing efforts to direct them there, you’re missing out.

What’s Your Streaming Strategy?

For more than a decade the conversation has evolved from “What is your website strategy?” to “What is your social media strategy?” to “What is your digital marketing strategy?”. It is well documented that over 80% of internet traffic is video- it’s what people want. So, what is your streaming strategy?

As more and more streaming platforms are built, the evidence is pouring in on how the mix of content is performing and becoming the new normal. 

If you haven’t yet started laying out a full virtual engagement and streaming strategy, now is the time to start having those forward-thinking leadership discussions. Hundreds of institutions have built their curated video streaming platform for continuous and targeted audience engagement on Conduit. Just like you would not have wanted to be the last college without a website, you do not want to be the last one without a branded, curated, and strategically designed virtual engagement plan.