For years, tracking response rates was the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of college Search campaigns. No longer. As traditional response rates for many colleges and universities show decline, new marketplace dynamics are exposing the need for colleges to open up to the idea that, though Search remains a supremely effective way to reach prospective students, many long-held conventions of Search programs are rapidly losing their currency. What is needed – and, in fact, what is emerging – in this era of technology driven consumerism is an outcomes-based approach that allows for a more accurate and comprehensive evaluation of Search return on investment. In this white paper, we will address the evolution of student Search and discuss why a new generation of Search marketing tools must also be complemented by new strategies and more comprehensive performance measures.

After a review of this document, you will better understand:• Technology’s influence on Search marketing

• Why traditional response rates have become inadequate for measuring Search performance

• Benefits of an outcomes-based approach to Search

References

Gillis, E. (2010). The ninth annual study of current industry practices for undergraduate freshman inquiry generation. Mager, John. (2009). Warning: your most common admissions funnel metrics may be meaningless!. Retrieved from https://www.noellevitz.com/Papers+and+Research/Inside+Enrollment+Management/past+issues/February+2009.htm Multi-channel trivia challenge. (2010). Kansas City, MO: Engagement Systems. Noel-Levitz. (2010). In pursuit of the secret shopper: effective new strategies for finding and engaging prospective students.

Declining College Search Response Rates:

From 2006 to 2010, the average

higher education response rate

has declined by 2.8% (Gillis).

That may not seem like much,

but if you consider a school that

is executing a 100,000-piece

direct mail search campaign,

2.8% equals 2,800 prospective

students that are not initially

making it into their inquiry

pool.

A Signal We Should Expand Our Thinking About Search Campaigns

15500 W. 113th Street, Suite 200 ■ Lenexa, KS 662191.877.265.3527

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

4

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

• Man the trenches. Put in the time it takes to compare Search mailing lists’ performance to overall inquiry pools, to campus visits, to applications and to enrollments. There is no avoiding the fact that students today follow their own instincts and whims, not always a college’s directions, to interact with colleges. The response paths they choose and the sequences of their actions are highly personal. In increasing numbers, students are surfacing as. Such irregular patterns challenge colleges to look deeper to determine how students became interested and engaged in their schools – an accounting process that requires planning and nitty-gritty work. The good news is it can yield valuable insight into how well Search activity is touching and influencing prospects.

• Extend the Search evaluation period. Search efforts cannot be fully assessed in the short term, though short-term results should be monitored closely and benchmarked against previous efforts. Limited-time reviews, however, cannot provide a full and complete representation of the influence that Search makes to the student recruitment and enrollment process. Savvy schools will continue to evaluate Search campaign performance up to and beyond one year of initial campaign deployment, to account for “indirect” inquiries and “influenced” applicants.

Will colleges find it uncomfortable and frustrating to transition to new ways of assessing, executing and measuring Search activity? Possibly. There will be the predictable anxieties and, perhaps, the challenges of reallocating budgets and deploying manpower differently. But partnering with an experienced vendor can help ease the conversion. What is important is that institutions not make rash decisions based on the incomplete information that traditional Search response rates now provide. Rather, they should approach the transition anticipating the benefits that can come from executing and measuring Search in ways that are fundamentally more sound and more smart.

What is in it for You? The potential benefits of replacing traditional response rate evaluations with comprehensive, outcomes-focused measures include:• More accurate assessment of Search performance and

enhanced ability to calculate Search ROI • Stronger prospective-student relationship building

opportunities• More-informed decision-making

Student conversion rates – not search response rates—represent the real final scoreColleges, like corporations and sports teams, often establish targets they believe will serve as indicators of their prospect of achieving overarching goals. Corporations calculate that reaching a predetermined number of potential customers is a strong predictor of sales success. Sports teams forecast that defeating certain key opponents will position them as championship contenders. For college enrollment professionals, one important early indicator has traditionally been the rates at which prospective students respond to Search communication.

In each case, what matters most is whether the organizations have success achieving their overarching objectives, such as sales, championships and student enrollment goals.

Continually declining response rates are underscoring this fundamental message.

Modern communication technology is empowering students to shop for colleges on their own terms. They are less inclined to respond to Search communication in a predictable, linear fashion, and their seemingly random interactions make them more difficult for colleges to track. The result of this being that: traditional response rates are providing increasingly incomplete pictures of Search performance.

Rather than becoming alarmed, colleges should consider this a sign it’s time to begin taking a broader view of Search. The new landscape demands that colleges take a more comprehensive approach to Search and develop strategy that adds value to the customer relationship and maximizes conversions and revenue. By focusing on outcomes, colleges will gain not only a more accurate and comprehensive evaluation of Search ROI, but also powerful insight on how to anticipate the behaviors of the elusive prospective students they are working so hard to reach.

• Declining College Search Response Rate

• Technology Has Changed Everything

• Navigating the New Landscape

• Are We Winning?

Contents

Service. Innovation. Experience.Are We Winning?

2

Technological advances have dramatically altered the landscape of college marketing. They have created a myriad of new avenues for colleges and prospective students to connect and engage, while providing students with (boundless) access to information and insight that will shape their decisions. For better or worse, communication is speedier, increasingly fragmented and characterized more than ever by students’ personal preferences and lifestyles.

Gone is the predictable, linear, student Search dynamic of old, featuring college-controlled, broad-based marketing messages; relatively few communication channels; rigid timelines; and a by-the-numbers Search process that students, by and large, feel obliged to respond to.

Arguably, the new digital world gives students a leg up in the Search process. Armed with sophisticated smartphones, they enjoy 24-hour, high-speed Internet access to all of the information and data that powerful search engines can deliver, and all of the insight and inside scoop that social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter can serve up. “It’s our world,” they seem to exult. With great confidence, students are creatively maximizing the available technology to shop for college on their own terms.

Smartly, college enrollment professionals have joined the high-tech party. Student Search methods now incorporate multiple mediums: email, call campaigns, social media and, still, the traditional search letter.

Importantly, and unfortunately, what has not kept pace is the inclination of colleges to develop modern Search strategies and tactics, as well as updated systems for measuring Search effectiveness. In these areas, many institutions continue to over-rely on traditional methodologies and ideas, including, notably, confidence that the response rates of student inquiries generated from Search outreach will produce the tell-all snapshots of old.

These days, it’s not enough for colleges to infuse their marketing programs with technology’s latest offerings. They must also understand how to effectively use their new tools – much as a company that is wise enough to invest in the latest computer technology would be even wiser to invest in training that helps employees take full advantage

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.comwww.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

3

Navigating the New LandscapeDeclining response rates are not, in and of themselves, cause for alarm. They certainly are not a signal for colleges to frantically abandon their commitment to Search or severely restrict traditional Search methods in favor of unproven alternatives.

However, shrinking response rates may be considered both a yellow-light of caution and opportunity. In light of the new landscape, informed colleges will evaluate whether they are consistently planning and executing their Search program in a manner that’s consistent with an evolving environment, and if they will in turn adopt comprehensive methods for measuring Search.

Here are several ways colleges can begin embracing Search more expansively:

• Master the things you CAN control. The most productive Search programs employ analytics to focus outreach on students and families that are most likely to enroll at their institutions and utilize communication technology most effectively. Successful programs maximize the use of all available media – including mail, email, text and telephone – to meaningfully interact with prospective students. Research shows that the more contact channels colleges, use and the more times prospective students are touched through multiple channels, the stronger the results. Thoughtfully coordinated and executed, these interactions provide rich opportunities for colleges to collect data, to learn about prospects’ communication preferences, and to build relationships.

• Monitor the “online” effect. Because students today are much more inclined to respond to Search communication by continuing their research online – rather than by submitting reply cards, for example – colleges should plan to closely monitor Search’s impact on web traffic. Search deployments typically generate increased activity during active campaign timeframes. Likewise, branded mail, email and other marketing pieces tend to drive students to the school’s website, resulting in lifts in brand-related search engine traffic. This measurable activity presents unique opportunities for colleges to better understand the effects of their Search efforts and to connect with students who are not just shopping generally, but demonstrating interest in their brand.

those who “secretly” shop online or otherwise fly under the radar of their institutions interest of choice until they actually submit an admissions application. The latest Noel Levitz survey reported that public colleges cited 34.5% of their applicants as new to their system at the time the prospective students submitted their applications. At private colleges, this rate was 25%.

The stealth group also includes students whose names were purchased by the school for direct mail Search, but who choose to declare their interest by “indirect” means, such as college fairs, campus visits or online web requests. These prospective students receive multiple messages from multiple electronic and paper sources, but choose to respond further down the pipeline of the student-consumer buying pattern.

In short, greater numbers of students are routinely responding to Search communication in ways that are more difficult for colleges to immediately track back to the original Search contact.

Colleges are responding variously to the new complexities. Some are beginning to question the effectiveness of Search programs (though, considering the limitations of traditional response rates, one wonders how assessments are being determined). Other colleges, while not completely comfortable eliminating traditional Search campaigns, are flailing about for solutions, willing to take a crack at patch-on recruitment techniques, until the target enrollment numbers materialize. Often they do so without thoroughly evaluating the issues of their Search programs and without understanding where many of their enrolled students actually came from. One can hardly imagine a major corporation failing to account for 20% or more of its revenue generation.

Fortunately, considerable technology and expertise are available to colleges who wisely choose to not only use the most up-to-date Search delivery methods, but to complement those methods with equally modern Search strategies and performance measurements.

of the new technology. In today’s environment, response rates are, by themselves, simply too narrowly focused and one-dimensional to capture the helter-skelter ways that prospective students shop for a college and respond to Search communication.

Declining Response Rates: How Meaningful?Search remains a major resource for colleges in forming their first-year classes. A recent survey revealed that 92.5% of private colleges use Search (Noel Levitz, 2009). Another study reported that of the 18% of respondents who said they were dissatisfied with Search, 90.5% said their response rates were too low, and they cited low response rates as a cause for dissatisfaction. The survey also reported that response rates have declined from marks of 12% to 9% (Gillis 2010).

Behind the shrinking rates and growing restlessness is a story of colleges having greater difficulty tracking student response behaviors. Empowered by new technology and ability plot their own courses of action, today’s students can be rather dismissive of responding via the traditional admissions funnel. They are, for example, much less inclined to submit reply cards or identify themselves online.

A recent iProspect study revealed that 67% of students’ online actions are driven by offline messages. Students are, at times, receiving Search materials then responding by visiting the school’s website for more information or emailing the institution directly. Other students might open an email, but not click through to the school’s PURL or landing page.

Tracking Prospects that Fly Below the Radar Colleges are also reporting that in ever-increasing numbers, prospective students are turning up as “stealth applicants”–

Technology Has Changed Everything

“ . . . what has not kept pace is the inclination of colleges to develop

modern Search strategies and tactics, as well as updated systems for

measuring Search effectiveness.”

2

Technological advances have dramatically altered the landscape of college marketing. They have created a myriad of new avenues for colleges and prospective students to connect and engage, while providing students with (boundless) access to information and insight that will shape their decisions. For better or worse, communication is speedier, increasingly fragmented and characterized more than ever by students’ personal preferences and lifestyles.

Gone is the predictable, linear, student Search dynamic of old, featuring college-controlled, broad-based marketing messages; relatively few communication channels; rigid timelines; and a by-the-numbers Search process that students, by and large, feel obliged to respond to.

Arguably, the new digital world gives students a leg up in the Search process. Armed with sophisticated smartphones, they enjoy 24-hour, high-speed Internet access to all of the information and data that powerful search engines can deliver, and all of the insight and inside scoop that social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter can serve up. “It’s our world,” they seem to exult. With great confidence, students are creatively maximizing the available technology to shop for college on their own terms.

Smartly, college enrollment professionals have joined the high-tech party. Student Search methods now incorporate multiple mediums: email, call campaigns, social media and, still, the traditional search letter.

Importantly, and unfortunately, what has not kept pace is the inclination of colleges to develop modern Search strategies and tactics, as well as updated systems for measuring Search effectiveness. In these areas, many institutions continue to over-rely on traditional methodologies and ideas, including, notably, confidence that the response rates of student inquiries generated from Search outreach will produce the tell-all snapshots of old.

These days, it’s not enough for colleges to infuse their marketing programs with technology’s latest offerings. They must also understand how to effectively use their new tools – much as a company that is wise enough to invest in the latest computer technology would be even wiser to invest in training that helps employees take full advantage

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.comwww.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

3

Navigating the New LandscapeDeclining response rates are not, in and of themselves, cause for alarm. They certainly are not a signal for colleges to frantically abandon their commitment to Search or severely restrict traditional Search methods in favor of unproven alternatives.

However, shrinking response rates may be considered both a yellow-light of caution and opportunity. In light of the new landscape, informed colleges will evaluate whether they are consistently planning and executing their Search program in a manner that’s consistent with an evolving environment, and if they will in turn adopt comprehensive methods for measuring Search.

Here are several ways colleges can begin embracing Search more expansively:

• Master the things you CAN control. The most productive Search programs employ analytics to focus outreach on students and families that are most likely to enroll at their institutions and utilize communication technology most effectively. Successful programs maximize the use of all available media – including mail, email, text and telephone – to meaningfully interact with prospective students. Research shows that the more contact channels colleges use and the more times prospective students are touched through multiple channels, the stronger the results. Thoughtfully coordinated and executed, these interactions provide rich opportunities for colleges to collect data, to learn about prospects’ communication preferences, and to build relationships.

• Monitor the “online” effect. Because students today are much more inclined to respond to Search communication by continuing their research online – rather than by submitting reply cards, for example – colleges should plan to closely monitor Search’s impact on web traffic. Search deployments typically generate increased activity during active campaign timeframes. Likewise, branded mail, email and other marketing pieces tend to drive students to the school’s website, resulting in lifts in brand-related search engine traffic. This measurable activity presents unique opportunities for colleges to better understand the effects of their Search efforts and to connect with students who are not just shopping generally, but demonstrating interest in their brand.

those who “secretly” shop online or otherwise fly under the radar of their institutions interest of choice until they actually submit an admissions application. The latest Noel Levitz survey reported that public colleges cited 34.5% of their applicants as new to their system at the time the prospective students submitted their applications. At private colleges, this rate was 25%.

The stealth group also includes students whose names were purchased by the school for direct mail Search, but who choose to declare their interest by “indirect” means, such as college fairs, campus visits or online web requests. These prospective students receive multiple messages from multiple electronic and paper sources, but choose to respond further down the pipeline of the student-consumer buying pattern.

In short, greater numbers of students are routinely responding to Search communication in ways that are more difficult for colleges to immediately track back to the original Search contact.

Colleges are responding variously to the new complexities. Some are beginning to question the effectiveness of Search programs (though, considering the limitations of traditional response rates, one wonders how assessments are being determined). Other colleges, while not completely comfortable eliminating traditional Search campaigns, are flailing about for solutions, willing to take a crack at patch-on recruitment techniques, until the target enrollment numbers materialize. Often they do so without thoroughly evaluating the issues of their Search programs and without understanding where many of their enrolled students actually came from. One can hardly imagine a major corporation failing to account for 20% or more of its revenue generation.

Fortunately, considerable technology and expertise are available to colleges who wisely choose to not only use the most up-to-date Search delivery methods, but to complement those methods with equally modern Search strategies and performance measurements.

of the new technology. In today’s environment, response rates are, by themselves, simply too narrowly focused and one-dimensional to capture the helter-skelter ways that prospective students shop for a college and respond to Search communication.

Declining Response Rates: How Meaningful?Search remains a major resource for colleges in forming their first-year classes. A recent survey revealed that 92.5% of private colleges use Search (Noel Levitz, 2009). Another study reported that of the 18% of respondents who said they were dissatisfied with Search, 90.5% said their response rates were too low, and they cited low response rates as a cause for dissatisfaction. The survey also reported that response rates have declined from marks of 12% to 9% (Gillis 2010).

Behind the shrinking rates and growing restlessness is a story of colleges having greater difficulty tracking student response behaviors. Empowered by new technology and ability plot their own courses of action, today’s students can be rather dismissive of responding via the traditional admissions funnel. They are, for example, much less inclined to submit reply cards or identify themselves online.

A recent iProspect study revealed that 67% of students’ online actions are driven by offline messages. Students are, at times, receiving Search materials then responding by visiting the school’s website for more information or emailing the institution directly. Other students might open an email, but not click through to the school’s PURL or landing page.

Tracking Prospects that Fly Below the Radar Colleges are also reporting that in ever-increasing numbers, prospective students are turning up as “stealth applicants”–

Technology Has Changed Everything

“ . . . what has not kept pace is the inclination of colleges to develop

modern Search strategies and tactics, as well as updated systems for

measuring Search effectiveness.”

For years, tracking response rates was the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of college Search campaigns. No longer. As traditional response rates for many colleges and universities show decline, new marketplace dynamics are exposing the need for colleges to open up to the idea that, though Search remains a supremely effective way to reach prospective students, many long-held conventions of Search programs are rapidly losing their currency. What is needed – and, in fact, what is emerging – in this era of technology driven consumerism is an outcomes-based approach that allows for a more accurate and comprehensive evaluation of Search return on investment. In this white paper, we will address the evolution of student Search and discuss why a new generation of Search marketing tools must also be complemented by new strategies and more comprehensive performance measures.

After a review of this document, you will better understand:• Technology’s influence on Search marketing

• Why traditional response rates have become inadequate for measuring Search performance

• Benefits of an outcomes-based approach to Search

References

Gillis, E. (2010). The ninth annual study of current industry practices for undergraduate freshman inquiry generation. Mager, John. (2009). Warning: your most common admissions funnel metrics may be meaningless!. Retrieved from https://www.noellevitz.com/Papers+and+Research/Inside+Enrollment+Management/past+issues/February+2009.htm Multi-channel trivia challenge. (2010). Kansas City, MO: Engagement Systems. Noel-Levitz. (2010). In pursuit of the secret shopper: effective new strategies for finding and engaging prospective students.

Declining College Search Response Rates:

From 2006 to 2010, the average

higher education response rate

has declined by 2.8% (Gillis).

That may not seem like much,

but if you consider a school that

is executing a 100,000-piece

direct mail search campaign,

2.8% equals 2,800 prospective

students that are not initially

making it into their inquiry

pool.

A Signal We Should Expand Our Thinking About Search Campaigns

15500 W. 113th Street, Suite 200 ■ Lenexa, KS 662191.877.265.3527

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

4

www.PlattFormHigherEducation.com

• Man the trenches. Put in the time it takes to compare Search mailing lists’ performance to overall inquiry pools, to campus visits, to applications and to enrollments. There is no avoiding the fact that students today follow their own instincts and whims, not always a college’s directions, to interact with colleges. The response paths they choose and the sequences of their actions are highly personal. In increasing numbers, students are surfacing as. Such irregular patterns challenge colleges to look deeper to determine how students became interested and engaged in their schools – an accounting process that requires planning and nitty-gritty work. The good news is it can yield valuable insight into how well Search activity is touching and influencing prospects.

• Extend the Search evaluation period. Search efforts cannot be fully assessed in the short term, though short-term results should be monitored closely and benchmarked against previous efforts. Limited-time reviews, however, cannot provide a full and complete representation of the influence that Search makes to the student recruitment and enrollment process. Savvy schools will continue to evaluate Search campaign performance up to and beyond one year of initial campaign deployment, to account for “indirect” inquiries and “influenced” applicants.

Will colleges find it uncomfortable and frustrating to transition to new ways of assessing, executing and measuring Search activity? Possibly. There will be the predictable anxieties and, perhaps, the challenges of reallocating budgets and deploying manpower differently. But partnering with an experienced vendor can help ease the conversion. What is important is that institutions not make rash decisions based on the incomplete information that traditional Search response rates now provide. Rather, they should approach the transition anticipating the benefits that can come from executing and measuring Search in ways that are fundamentally more sound and more smart.

What is in it for You? The potential benefits of replacing traditional response rate evaluations with comprehensive, outcomes-focused measures include:• More accurate assessment of Search performance and

enhanced ability to calculate Search ROI • Stronger prospective-student relationship building

opportunities• More-informed decision-making

Student conversion rates – not search response rates—represent the real final scoreColleges, like corporations and sports teams, often establish targets they believe will serve as indicators of their prospect of achieving overarching goals. Corporations calculate that reaching a predetermined number of potential customers is a strong predictor of sales success. Sports teams forecast that defeating certain key opponents will position them as championship contenders. For college enrollment professionals, one important early indicator has traditionally been the rates at which prospective students respond to Search communication.

In each case, what matters most is whether the organizations have success achieving their overarching objectives, such as sales, championships and student enrollment goals.

Continually declining response rates are underscoring this fundamental message.

Modern communication technology is empowering students to shop for colleges on their own terms. They are less inclined to respond to Search communication in a predictable, linear fashion, and their seemingly random interactions make them more difficult for colleges to track. The result of this being that: traditional response rates are providing increasingly incomplete pictures of Search performance.

Rather than becoming alarmed, colleges should consider this a sign it’s time to begin taking a broader view of Search. The new landscape demands that colleges take a more comprehensive approach to Search and develop strategy that adds value to the customer relationship and maximizes conversions and revenue. By focusing on outcomes, colleges will gain not only a more accurate and comprehensive evaluation of Search ROI, but also powerful insight on how to anticipate the behaviors of the elusive prospective students they are working so hard to reach.

• Declining College Search Response Rate

• Technology Has Changed Everything

• Navigating the New Landscape

• Are We Winning?

Contents

Service. Innovation. Experience.Are We Winning?