Opening your Daily Visitor Report (DVR) is a great way to kick off of your day because it takes the guess work out of prioritizing outreach. It lets you work smarter not harder. The DVR tells you which of your prospective students are making moves right now, allowing you to make the moves to … well, keep them moving!
As the enrollment cycle turns toward application and deposit, one thing that flips in my brain is to start paying more attention to a visitor’s Capture Affinity Index (CAI). This index is the overall lifetime score for how engaged a visitor is with the website since their first visit. The Capture Engagement Score (CES) tells you more about the student this week, and their engagement with the website.
When I see someone with a high CAI and a low CES, I know it’s time to help them decide. The combination of a high CAI and a low, or dropping, CES, indicates someone, who historically has taken an interest in your school, might be losing their gusto to take the next steps. Now is the time to put some urgency on those students! Take a look at their visit history. Scroll down and see what content they are clicking on and help their decision making. Get them to apply or deposit!
Additionally, while your DVR notifies you of prospective students who have been active most recently, there is a plethora of other prospective students, and their data, living within the Engage platform that is accessible to you and will assist in knowing where your “fence-sitters” may be leaning.
If you’ve been in trainings with me, you know that I investigate every aspect of behavioral data I can within the platform. My new favorite tactic is to lean on our dynamic content campaigns! Toasters and Popovers are great attention grabbers and information gatherers. They also tell you exactly what interested your site visitors.
Taking it a step further, if you have your own DVR in Engage, you can also use campaigns to filter out your specific prospective students that engaged with each piece of content. This works great for campaigns such as “intent to apply” or deposit, visits, deadlines, FAFSA pushes, etc. Follow the instructions below and try it for yourself!
Navigate to Campaigns > Dynamic Content, then look for a campaign of interest …
Next, click the three dots in the top-right corner of the campaign tile, and click “View Identifications” …
This will load a second page containing all visitors that have engaged with that campaign …
From there, next to the “Search” box, use the drop-down menu to find your counselor segment.
As you can see here, out of the hundreds of identified visitors who have seen the campaign, I was able to segment out those who are assigned to me. From there, check if they have taken the call to action. Example, for an “intent to apply,” look at all your students still in an app started status or below. They’ve indicated they want to apply, so help them get there!
In our new age of enrolling students, connection is key. Engage allows you to communicate with your prospective students based on what you see is of interest to them. You are safe to click and investigate all throughout Engage, as there is zero way you can break it. So start digging!
By Cat Hollands, Client Trainer, Capture Higher Ed