BY Anthony Campisi | March 26th, 2024

How to Grow Enrollment in Your Specialized MBA Program

Specialized MBA programs remain a popular option for graduate school students, but growing enrollment can be difficult. It’s no secret that competition for prospects is fierce and finding the right recruits can be tricky, so higher education institutions need to implement the right strategies and best practices to grow enrollment in your specialized MBA program.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at some of them to help you boost your enrollment. With these strategies, your institution can leverage tried-and-true ways to help attract and retain the right graduate school prospects for years to come.

Take a digital-first approach to marketing

When it comes to marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.

Many higher education institutions still don’t utilize digital marketing and advertising to their full potential. Make sure that your institution fully embraces digital marketing, including various social media channels to attract and engage with prospects, personalized email communications, a frequently-updated blog, and paid search and social ads targeted specifically to your audience.

Emphasize all of your flexible learning options that are available

These days, specialized MBA prospects value flexibility and choice. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made online and hybrid learning the norm in many ways for students nowadays. Embrace this change by highlighting any flexible and remote learning options your program offers in your marketing content, as it can pay dividends over the long-term.

Create detailed personas

Data-driven, detailed personas can play a key role in your marketing efforts too.

As specialized MBA prospects differ from traditional graduate students in a number of ways, understanding their specific demographics, pain points, and goals is crucial. To that end, creating personas can help you craft the right marketing materials for your audience. This can be done by carefully analyzing your current student database and conducting surveys and focus groups to obtain the data you need before creating in-depth personas tailored to your specialized MBA audience for your marketing campaigns.

Stress the value of a specialized MBA

It’s also a good idea to emphasize the value of a specialized MBA from your institution.

Stress that a specialized MBA is worth a prospect’s time and money as an investment in their future. This can be done by leveraging data available on statistics like lifetime earnings, job prospects after graduation, career satisfaction, and the like in your marketing content.

Data-driven infographics and short-form videos work especially well in this regard since they convey large amounts of data in a visual and engaging way, though longer, more in-depth content like blog posts can also work. Whatever marketing channel you choose, be sure to demonstrate the value of your program to prospects clearly, concisely, and effectively for maximum impact.

Humanize your marketing with student testimonials and alumni success stories

Finally, humanizing your marketing with testimonials and success stories can help create better engagement and personalization with your prospects, boosting conversions.

This is a great way to tell a story and communicate the value of your specialized MBA programs in a unique way that helps connect prospects with their peers in your programs. Blog posts are a good marketing channel for these, but the most effective way is generally through video marketing. Videos can easily be distributed via social media, email newsletters, your website, and even paid ads, greatly amplifying their reach to your target audience.

Grow enrollment in your Specialized MBA today for success tomorrow

Specialized MBA programs face tough competition for students, but with these tested strategies, you can successfully grow enrollment. When implemented, they can help supercharge your marketing funnel and bring in a steady stream of prospects over the long run.

BY Anthony Campisi | March 19th, 2024

Customer Experience strategies for higher education institutions

Customer experience (CX) is a sometimes overlooked but crucial strategy for higher education institutions. In many ways, customer Experience strategies for higher education can mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to the recruitment and retention of graduate students.

To ensure the best customer experience possible for students, higher education institutions need to understand exactly who their audience is, embrace the latest technology, and focus on creating a personalized, seamless experience for its students (customers). Here’s a closer look at how to do just that.

Know your audience

First and foremost, it’s crucial to understand your core audience.

Look at the data for your prospects, new students, and the existing graduate student body very closely. What are their demographics? What are they currently studying or looking to study? Are they local or from across the country or even the world? By having a strong grasp of your audience, you can better hone your CX strategy specifically to them.

Create a seamless experience

Creating a seamless, intuitive, and simplified customer experience is also very important.

This is especially critical when it comes to technology. All too often, schools design their online services with themselves in mind, as opposed to their prospects and students. Instead, embrace digital transformation and a customer-centric approach by creating user-friendly, seamless customer portals where students can find all of the information they need in a single, unified location and conduct a website audit to ensure your site is intuitive, easy to navigate, and has all of the key information that students and prospects need clearly stated.

Leverage the latest technology

Technology can also go a long way towards improving your CX.

Embrace it as a way to boost your customer service and provide a more seamless, user-friendly experience for your students and prospects. This can be done by leveraging chatbots to resolve simple questions and issues quickly and successfully, customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track every conversation and keep important data in a single location, and various social media channels to convey critical information and boost engagement.

Focus on personalization

Personalization is also key.

Today’s graduate students are increasingly diverse. Rather than treating them as a whole, personalize your communications and interactions with them to better suit who they are, which can lead to improved metrics like conversions and retention. To accomplish this, use personalized emails, custom videos, and tailored social media communications.

Create a guided experience

Finally, focus on creating a tailored, curated experience for your students and prospects.

Navigating the graduate school process can be very stressful and intimidating for both prospects and students. However, by creating a guided, personalized experience, you can reduce this stress and improve your customer satisfaction. Embracing technology and tools like screen sharing, video chat, co-browsing, and tailored email communications can help create a guided experience that will improve your overall CX greatly.

Improve your customer experience strategies for higher education institutions

CX should be a top priority for any higher education institution looking to boost student recruitment and retention. By implementing these strategies and best practices, you can ensure you are delivering world-class customer service to your audience, increasing recruitment and boosting retention all at once.

Month: March 2024

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts