Reengaging Your Grad Prospects – BONUS RULE!

During taping of a companion video for the white paper, 5 Rules of Reengagement: How to Energize Your Graduate Prospects, Capture Director of Graduate and Online Initiatives Jack Klett added a bonus rule to his 5 Rules.

“Whenever we’re recruiting students, we like to have those students visit campus,” Klett says. “We will typically push them over to some type of registration form, be it for an information session, or a graduate open house, some type of special event. On that form, add a field: ‘Are you bringing a friend? Yes or No.’

“If ‘yes’ is selected, make sure you’re capturing the name of that friend as well as the email address of that friend.”

How could that information be helpful?

“The thing about graduate students, they don’t really need to bring a friend along to make them feel comfortable,” Klett says. “Sometimes you’ll see that in undergrad. But for grad students, the only reason they’re going to bring someone along is if they feel like that person might be interested in this particular program.

“It’s a great way to add value and to increase that top-of-funnel work that is so necessary to yielding your graduate cohort.”

The Five Rules of Reengagement

Prospective graduate students tend to have a long “inquiry incubation” period prior to progressing through the funnel. Unlike the traditional undergraduate population, graduate prospects are not constrained by an established recruitment timeline. Any number of things professionally and personally can cause them to tap the breaks.

When this happens, that once hot prospect in your recruitment pool suddenly becomes a cold prospect.

How do you put some energy back into your idle, cold pool? Capture recently released the white paper, 5 Rules of Reengagement: How to Energize Your Graduate Prospects, to offer some unique strategies for sparking that stagnant funnel. They include:

  1. “Warm Up Your Cold Inquiries” with a monthly email containing a digest of relevant information to the cold prospect.
  2. “Reengage Your Non-Responders” by focusing on the drivers of graduate study.
  3. “Consider Your Young Alumni Graduate Prospects” by treating them like the valued individuals they are.
  4. “Reengage Stalled Applicants and Prior-Cycle Admits” by reminding them of their status from the prior cycle, welcoming them to engage the new admission cycle, re-extending their admission (if possible), and telling the academic program story once more.
  5. “Reengage Recommenders” by asking them to share your program’s story with other potential graduate students they may know.

Download Capture’s 5 Rules of Reengagement: How to Energize Your Graduate Prospects.

By Kevin Hyde, Senior Content Writer, Capture Higher Ed