Adapting to the relentless change happening across the higher education enrollment landscape, colleges and universities nationwide are reevaluating their recruitment marketing support. With understaffed enrollment teams spread thin and the importance of growing and differentiating brand awareness in a dense digital jungle never higher, partnering with the right vendor at the right time can be a game-changer.
Take the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In 2022, this largest comprehensive, fully accredited university in Kansas City had aggressive enrollment goals … yet similar staffing challenges and branding concerns were getting in the way. And its recruitment marketing vendor wasn’t getting it done, failing to develop an in-depth understanding of the university’s market and goals.
University leadership knew it was time to seek the most innovative solutions to address the university’s specific recruitment needs.
“Enrollment leaders have decisions to make,” said Elora Thomas, UMKC Director of Admissions. “Are they going to innovate, or are they going to keep doing the same things assuming they’ll continue to work because they used to work? We were willing to question and change because we wanted to find what works, make sure our team wasn’t overtaxed, and avoid overspending just to get the same marketing as our competitors.”
True Innovation in Behavioral Intelligence
UMKC partnered with Capture Higher Ed to incorporate ENGAGE, Capture’s recruitment marketing automation platform, into its recruitment efforts.
“When we evaluated vendors, I asked pointed questions about how they were really doing something different — because we can’t differentiate ourselves with marketing and content that’s just reformatted and rebranded,” Thomas said. “Most vendors are doing the same things, but with Capture, we saw true innovation in behavioral intelligence.”
With ENGAGE, UMKC streamlined its recruitment marketing by capturing new inquiries on its website and, using behavioral intelligence, seamlessly triggered communication in the form of Behavioral Email and Dynamic Content without additional manual effort. This freed up the university’s understaffed team of counselors — through ENGAGE’s Engagement and Affinity Scoring and Daily Visitor Reports — to prioritize outreach to the prospective students showing the most interest.
ENGAGE also helped UMKC staff maximize its Slate CRM, integrating the two platforms to gain the most value from both tools while leveraging their unique strengths.
“Slate is amazing,” Thomas said, “but it’s not the marketing agent I need at the forefront. With Capture and Slate together, I can see how I actually got a student’s attention and how they’re engaging with us and bring that information into Slate. I can see which inquiries came from Capture, and Capture was our leading application source.”
“When we evaluated vendors, I asked pointed questions about how they were really doing something different — because we can’t differentiate ourselves with marketing and content that’s just reformatted and rebranded. Most vendors are doing the same things, but with Capture, we saw true innovation in behavioral intelligence.” – Elora Thomas, UMKC Director of Admissions
A Record Year
By streamlining marketing, identifying the most engaged prospective students, and enabling innovation across all marketing channels, UMKC’s partnership with Capture set the university on a path to unprecedented success.
- Inquiries were up more than 50 percent year-over-year
- Applicants were up more than 14 percent
- Deposits were up more than 13 percent
- And enrollments increased by more than 10 percent
This was a record year for the university — and UMKC is growing its partnership with Capture to incorporate more recruitment marketing services. To get the full story on UMKC’s first year with Capture, download our case study here.
