Four ways to optimise your admissions process

While every university is different in its structure and programmes, all institutions are eager to find ways to increase the number and quality of applicants. As part of our series of weekly tips, here are four key ways your university can optimise its admissions process.

 Keep it simple and personal

As the higher education market becomes increasingly saturated with degree and certificate programmes, it’s more important than ever to keep your admissions process well-organised and as simple as possible. Make your process easy to understand and don’t put unnecessary barriers on your website or forms that could prevent an applicant from starting and completing their application.

Although your university may have a high number of inquiries and leads, make sure that each one receives communication that’s individualised to some degree. Examples include emailing  them content that’s relevant to their stage in the lifecycle; a one-to-one phone call; and a personalised response to their email queries.

Be a leader, not a follower

Lots of universities use generic calls-to-action on their websites, and as such, it’s easy for institutions to get lost among the masses. Common examples of over-used CTAs include ‘apply now’, ‘learn more’ and ‘contact us’.

When promoting your university, offer relevant and useful content that engages potential leads and asserts your institution’s status as a leader in its field. Promotional material could include articles written by your university’s professors or alumni; content promoting an event organised by your university; or updates about notable things your students or alumni have achieved.

Show off your alumni and their success

Showcasing alumni as ambassadors of your brand can offer an authentic voice to your recruitment process. After all, these people chose your university and received a unique experience and essential career advancement.

Utilising alumni as brand ambassadors is a wide-scale, low-cost approach with a potentially high return-on-investment. Encourage your alumni to participate in testimonials, engage with prospective applicants, write blog posts or record interviews.

Use the valuable data you’re collecting

Analytics platforms offer an abundant amount of information about your website, social media engagement, pay-per-click campaigns and other marketing efforts. It’s important that your marketing and recruitment teams clearly define conversion funnels, look at what keywords are bringing in conversions, and what third party websites leads are coming from. If your university does not have any analytical data, here is a simple Google Analytics tutorial to get you started.

How has your university made its application process more efficient or engaging? Let us know with a comment tweet us with the hashtag #askfullfabric.