What should we send and when? (aka building a comm flow).
1️⃣ How can we determine what content we should be creating to meet the needs of our prospective students and their families? 2️⃣ How do you start email campaigns to prospective students from the ground up? 3️⃣ We are centralizing our enrollment comms. We are trying to take the approach of "what should we do" versus "what have we always done.” How many messages should be in a drip campaign for recruitment?
Most teams solve this backwards. They start with the content they want to send, not the content students actually need. Start with the student and everything gets clearer.
Here is my tried-and-true approach.
Step 1: Map the stages in their journey.
Identify the stages from the moment they first consider university to the day they arrive on campus. A typical journey includes these stages:
Exploration 💭 Figuring out if university is right for them and how it works; identifying what they want to study and what matters most (budget, distance, community, size).
Awareness 🔎 Searching for schools that fit their criteria.
Consideration 🤔 Narrowing options and building a shortlist of where to apply; deciding which schools will be regular vs. early decision, if any.
Application 📝 Preparing applications and materials; applying for financial aid; waiting.
Evaluation ⚖️ Choosing where to commit and making a deposit.
Matriculation ✅ Completing enrollment steps; showing up for orientation or day one.
Step 2: Identify the questions and barriers at each stage.
For every stage, identify: What do they need to know to move forward? What could stop them?
For example, if they’re in awareness searching for schools that fit, this might be on their mind:
Question: Does the school have my major?
Question: Can I play basketball there?
Barrier: They offer no merit scholarships.
Barrier: Too far from home.
If you leave these things unaddressed, they might drop you.
You will need real audience insights for this. Go to your front line teams — they know a lot of these questions and barriers. Reddit and College Confidential are full of clues. And if you want something more formal, I know just the perfect agency.
Step 3: Create content for the questions and barriers.
Create webpages, videos, posts, guides, webinars — whatever format you like — to answer their questions and address their barriers.
Students move through the funnel in varied ways, so your content needs to live where they can find it when they go look.
Then, you can use email to get it in front of them when you think they’ll need it.
Step 4: Use email to put content in front of them when they need it.
Create a content calendar based on when the majority of your students hit each stage. Most domestic students tend to move with the academic calendar, so use it and don’t overthink it.
In the U.S., high school students enter exploration and awareness at the start of junior year or sooner, move into consideration by late junior year, and hit application when senior year begins. In Canada, this starts later and is condensed.
To keep things tight and relevant:
Stick to one theme per email. Group related questions or barriers, but don’t mix unrelated ones.
Send at least one email a month, no more than one a week. Shorter, more frequent sends usually outperform long, infrequent ones.
Follow email best practices. There’s a cool email book and a cool email course for that. 😘
Cool it with your CTAs. No one is going to visit after your first email and I promise you no one will ever APPLY NOW. Take your time before asking for the next step. Focus on giving them the content they need and clearing the barriers in their way.
TL;DR for anyone building content flows.
Put yourself in their shoes. 👟 Then make the path easy to walk.
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