Pools are for Applicants. Oceans are for Prospects.

Every year, there are at least 5 million students from the US and around the world thinking of enrolling for the first time in a US college or university. As an enrollment professional, if the first thing you do to start building your next class in this ocean of prospects is to limit your school to a prospect pool that is only a tiny fraction of this total, you’re making your life immeasurably more difficult. 

Pools are great when we’re talking about applicants, but they’re totally self-defeating when we’re talking about prospects. You need to be thinking ocean, not pool.

Consider this… every 100,000 prospects you buy represents just 2% of the total ocean available to you. Does it make sense to kick off your annual enrollment process by shutting your school off from 98% of the available market? Even if you’ve historically been very focused on the 100 miles around your campus, doesn’t it make sense to open your prospect flow to the rest of the world? Isn’t that addition the enrollment boost you’ve been looking for?

Let’s be honest. This legacy prospecting method is driven by cost constraint. Prospect buys are expensive, but only because they’re stunningly inefficient.  What’s your typical email, text, or ad click through rate? According to a recent study by MailChimp, the average email CTR is 2.9%. Keep pounding on your list (because they love that) and maybe your cumulative CTR is 10%. So your actual pool quickly becomes just 10,000 in an ocean of 5,000,000. 

But enough bad news. Here’s the great news!  A networked approach to prospecting, supported by modern matching technology, flips this entire process in your favor. You can easily start (and stay) prospecting in the ocean all year long to generate a much larger, more diverse, and yet better pre-qualified applicant pool.

Imagine being able to compare your school’s unique academic and social success factors to virtually the entire global market of prospects, 24/7/365. Other markets outside Higher Ed have been using this networked approach and matching technology for years. How do you think Amazon, Netflix, and Instagram consistently serve you up things that interest you?

It’s called outcome-based matching, and it uses the cumulative observations and preferences of experienced users to screen and attract new users.  

For Higher Ed, this is simple. The largest part of your (and every) school is the alumni. They’re the experienced users who have achieved the success in and out of your classrooms sought by every incoming student. So why not use their cumulative experience to attract new students actively seeking, and most likely to thrive in, your exact culture? 

Not only does this improve enrollment, but because you're modeling graduation success and alumni engagement, you’re far more likely to achieve those institutional goals as well. And as you improve retention, you concurrently reduce the quantity of new students you need every year.

This approach has arrived in Higher Education and it’s time to lead your school to the prospect ocean! To learn how, visit www.troove.me.