Scale the Cliff: 6 Pillars of Strategic Enrollment Marketing
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If you work in higher education, you’ve been reading the gloomy headlines for years. College Enrollment Numbers Continue Downward Trend. Gen Z Ditching College for Trades. Cost of College Degree Skyrockets, Perceived Value Plummets.
The prophesied enrollment cliff is here.
But the good news is that, for most majors, there is still a strong correlation between a college degree and career success. A degree is still a sound investment.
You just have to fight harder and smarter to make the case. That’s where Strategic Enrollment Marketing (SEM) can help. It’s a framework that helps institutions like yours attract, retain, and graduate students—even convert them into engaged alumni.
So, forget everything you know about the traditional downward marketing funnel and let’s talk about the six pillars of SEM that’ll help you scale the enrollment cliff.

1. Break down your silos
More than other industries and sectors, universities tend to be highly decentralized. Departments and colleges have their own websites. Advancement and marketing teams aren’t always on the same page. Forget about socializing brand guidelines.
But to succeed, universities must break down these silos. Colleges, departments, forgotten-about offices stashed away on a satellite campus—they all have to collaborate.
Create cross-departmental teams that meet regularly. Collaborate on decision-making. Talk about what’s working and what’s not so you can optimize and economize your efforts. Get everyone on the same page. This will all make it easier to get leadership buy-in, too.
2. Gather data that goes beyond demographics
Demographics are important. They play a key role in your ability to create lookalike segments. But demographics only scratch the surface. You need to understand behavior.
Psychographics can help you zero in on specific motivators. When you’re segmenting your communications, ask yourself questions such as: Are these specific prospects extroverted or introverted? Individualistic or family-focused? Are they motivated more by the pursuit of excellence or a fear of failure?
Online behavior can also shine a bright light on how to best reach your segments. How many hours of screen time do they spend per day? Are they on TikTok? Reddit? How often do they check their email? Do they trust influencers or institutions more?
You can answer a lot of the psychographic questions through in-person interviews, focus groups, or surveys. Insights into online behavior can come from marketing platforms themselves—which often share this information—or your Google Analytics 4 dashboard. When you have the data and have formed some working hypotheses, be sure to A/B test everything.
3. Target and personalize
Your prospective students aren’t a monolith. One size does not fit all. Think carefully about pairing your university’s unique values and strengths with different audience segments.
The straight-A, second-generation student from a middle-income household might care more about your school’s job placement metrics than the cost of attending. It might be the opposite for the community college transfer student. Don’t tout every benefit to everyone every time—that seems impersonal and is easily ignored.
To personalize efficiently, look at your data. This will help you develop automated communications. It’ll help pair content and messages with specific user journeys. When you hear “personalize,” think “customize.” Think of tailored financial aid packages, curated digital campus tours, and personalized degree pathway recommendations.
And don’t underestimate the value of a handwritten note.
4. Deliver the goods, with an emphasis on your website
Omnichannel marketing doesn’t mean every-channel-available marketing. Cast your net where your audiences are biting. Instagram and TikTok are huge for Gen Z and Alpha. Reddit is growing in popularity with both. Facebook and LinkedIn are more effective for adult learners. Emails still have the highest ROI of any channel. Make sure all of it is mobile-friendly.
Consider influencers, especially macro (100k-1m followers), micro (10-100k followers), and nano (10k followers or less) influencers.
Improve your website.
Most users won’t click more than twice, so make sure your academic pages are no more than two clicks away from your homepage. Make sure your website’s internal search feature is getting the job done and see how it’s being used. Organize and label your website’s pages based on what your audience expects, not your internal team.
Most importantly, make “Request for Info” the most prominent button on every page your prospects are likely to visit.
5. Throw ice on summer melt
In case you haven’t heard the term “summer melt,” it’s when 10-20% of committed prospective students fail to enroll for the fall semester after they graduate high school. It happens every year.
The percentages get worse with lower-income and minority students. A lot of it centers on financial anxiety—from registration fees all the way up to the cost of the whole degree. There are also gaps in resources, unaddressed social-emotional challenges, logistics setbacks, or simply missed communications.
You need a dedicated summer melt (or yield strategy) campaign to help get these students across the finish line (at least the first of many finish lines). Create and share documents like enrollment cheat-sheets that make it as simple as possible to complete the process. Highlight your university’s dedicated BIPOC, first-generation, and need-based resources.
The summer melt segment has to know you’ve got their back. They need to hear that you’ll help them every step of the way. And they need to hear it long before summer. Start early (as in, create a plan in January to deploy in February).
6. Retain ’em, train ’em, and graduate ’em
Your job isn’t done when a freshman shows up to their first class. You spent a lot of time and resources to get them there. Retention is a fraction of the cost, so don’t overlook ongoing communications with enrolled students.
Collaborate with your financial aid, housing, student affairs, and health departments on outreach campaigns. Ask students how they’re doing with retention surveys and make sure they aren’t struggling to thrive. When students eat well, exercise, socialize, use health care services, and seek out financial support, they are way more likely to graduate.
They’re also way more likely to become engaged alumni.
Alumni are your ultimate success stories, your social proof, and sometimes your loudest evangelists. Offer them continuing education and professional development opportunities. Remind them about their alumni perks—e.g., reduced-rate gym memberships, event discounts, etc.
Invite them to give back as mentors. Or, should they find wild financial success down the road, invite them to leave a lasting philanthropic legacy at their alma mater.
We know it’s a lot to digest …
But you don’t need to digest it alone. Reach out! We love geeking out on this stuff and helping higher ed professionals like you take your school’s enrollment to the next level.