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Solving the Personalization Problem
Numerous seminars, think pieces, and articles have made “personalization” one of the buzziest buzzwords in higher ed’s post-pandemic era, and the ensuing progress in recent cycles has been swift and undeniable. While teams across the spectrum have embraced audience segmentation and tailored communications, according to students, most colleges still don’t hold the right playbook for garnering…
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Higher Ed Email Subject Lines That Actually Get Opened
Most colleges we meet with lately are complaining about the same thing: a tired playbook that quite literally results in them sending the exact same emails as their biggest competitors. And listen, I’m all for playbooks. If something works, do it. But if you and all of your competitors are sending the same emails, with the same subject…
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The Anti-Melt Campaigns Working Right Now (And the Numbers to Prove It)
A look inside four anti-melt campaigns Capture partners are running this summer — and what the live performance data tells us about reaching deposited students between May and August. Summer melt isn’t a mystery anymore. We know roughly when it happens (late May through mid-August), we know who’s at risk (deposited students who go quiet),…
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Direct Admissions Doubled Your Applications. Now What?
Direct admissions is (and has been) exploding for a few years now. I remember when I was leading GTM for direct admissions at Niche, the monthly search volume for the term was zero. Yes, literally zero. Fast forward four years, there’s about 32,000 monthly searches for “direct admissions” and other related terms. The number of institutions signing on for the largest non-state direct admissions initiatives…
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3 Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing for Graduate Recruitment
Most of my friends at some point or another have told me they’re thinking of going back to school. And I, too, have had that thought, whether for this career or some crazy shift. What if I honed my craft even more? Or what if I changed this trajectory entirely? Can I go to grad school for something…
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Post-May 1 Campaign Ideas for Four-Year Institutions Still Chasing Their Goals
Every May, a quiet conversation happens at four-year institutions across the country. The deposit numbers come in, the team does the math, and someone closes a door to say what the dashboards already showed: we’re not there yet. If that’s you right now, you have a lot of company. Many institutions are reporting healthy application growth alongside softening deposits,…
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Keeping Your Class Engaged: A Playbook for Preventing Summer MELT
You’ve spent months getting them to deposit. Don’t let that be the last time they hear from you. The stretch between your deposit deadline and August is one of the most underestimated windows in enrollment. Your deposited students are excited but they’re also still forming opinions, fielding offers from waitlists, and quietly wondering if they…
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Graduate Recruitment Strategies Built for Success
Graduate enrollment teams are operating in a fundamentally different environment than they were five years ago. Competition is up. Prospect attention is fragmented. And the traditional playbook, wait for an inquiry, then nurture, is leaving significant enrollment opportunity on the table. Here’s the core challenge: most prospective graduate students have already done substantial research, compared programs, and formed strong preferences before they ever submit an inquiry…
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International Enrollment Strategy That Actually Works
Most institutions build their international enrollment strategy around the inquiry. A prospective student from India, Brazil, or South Korea fills out a form, and the recruitment engine finally starts moving. By then, the decision is already half made. International students spend months, sometimes well over a year, quietly researching institutions before they ever identify themselves. They’re comparing programs, reading faculty bios, checking graduate…
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The Netflix Effect in Higher Ed: Why Students Expect Personalization Earlier than Ever in Recruitment
The person I am is very different than the person Netflix thinks I am. And I think that’s worth noting. Netflix doesn’t care that I’m a thirty-something mom who loves yoga and baking. To Netflix, I’m just someone who watches Rom-Coms and crime documentaries. It doesn’t know me. It knows my behavior. And it uses…