Recruitment and enrollment can feel like a never-ending battle, and this holds some truth. Your school will never stop recruiting and enrolling students, so reaching these goals will always require effort. As students advance to the next grade level, enrollments fluctuate. So even when you have hit your goals the previous year, you feel like you must work just as hard or harder to reach your goals the following year. But we will let you in on a secret; You don’t have to work harder. You have to learn to work smarter. We’ve compiled a list of the four top tips to work smarter, not harder to achieve your enrollment goals, increase engagement, and boost awareness at your school!
#1: Automate Your Practices
Don’t be afraid to leverage automation to your advantage. Automation is one of the most powerful tools your school can use to work smarter. Rather than having someone manually take the time to send out email or text campaigns, post on social platforms, or track student leads, these tedious and time-consuming tasks are taken care of for you. It requires a little more time and planning on the front end, but ultimately makes your marketing efforts more efficient and seamless. You can automate steps throughout your entire recruitment process to simplify and streamline enrollment. The more you can effectively take care of through automation, the more time and energy you have to invest elsewhere. Additionally, automated tasks are easier to track and monitor, a point we will dive into later.
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#2: Define Your Processes
If you are investing precious time and money into recruitment efforts but feel like you have not seen any results, take a look at your follow-up and enrollment processes. This is likely the place where student leads are slipping through the cracks. An unclear enrollment process or untimely and scattered follow-ups can be the kiss of death. Parents will quickly lose interest if they experience difficulties with the enrollment process or don’t hear from your school promptly. After one week without contact, conversion rates begin to decline significantly. To work smarter, put a solidified plan in place for these enrollment and follow-up processes. Having clear processes is pivotal in the success of your enrollment efforts and allows school leaders and staff to work far more efficiently. Delegate tasks, follow the best practices, track your efforts, and have a systemic approach to ensure as seamless a process as possible. While follow-up is still hard work, a smart approach makes all the difference.
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#3: Invest in Your Staff
Teachers hold more power than one may think when it comes to reaching your enrollment goals. Teachers at your school are the ones who interact with students day in and day out and ultimately guide their learning experience. Even if you have remarkable results with recruitment and enrollment, actually retaining students becomes a major issue if investing in school staff is not the priority. It’s important not to forget the crucial role that teachers play in obtaining and retaining students. Finding additional time during busy days to connect with each teacher can be difficult, especially on top of all the existing efforts to build up the staff. While this should still be a priority, work smarter by incorporating simple solutions to improve communication, power-sharing, and collaboration among staff. Remember, teachers are on the front lines with students. Therefore, they must also be included in the recruitment efforts and align with the school’s overall enrollment goals.
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#4: Monitor and Adapt
To work smarter not harder, you must track and measure your recruitment and enrollment efforts. Furthermore, you need to be constantly learning and altering your practices based on the results. People commonly define insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results. If your efforts to boost enrollments, engagement, or awareness are not working, then change what you are doing! Educators often teach students that improvement is a continual process, and it is important to learn from mistakes. School leaders must also take this same advice. Monitoring your results and constantly asking “what can learn from this?” or “how can we improve this?” is pivotal in achieving quality results in your recruitment efforts. In addition to adapting to changes in your marketing efforts, make sure you are also responsive to changes happening in your school, community, and even the world. Especially amidst and after distance learning, being able to quickly adapt to changes is what ultimately leads to the greatest success.
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There could be several reasons why recruitment and enrollment feel so exhausting. Maybe you are a new school, have difficulty receiving and tracking leads, or have student retention issues. Maybe you lack brand awareness, your staff is overwhelmed, or you have low conversion rates. Whatever the case may be, they all point to the fact that something needs to change to hit your enrollment goals. Take these as signs to work smarter, not harder. Helping your school work smarter is exactly what Schola is here to do. Schola provides schools with the tools to source, engage, and enroll students and revolutionize schools’ recruitment and enrollment processes. The practices to work smarter like automation, follow-up, communication, and monitoring are all made possible with Schola. We are in the business of student success. By working smarter, school leaders and educators have more time, energy, and resources to invest in the students and help them succeed!