What do I mean by "rudimentary?" Maybe I should have stated that U.S. domestic student recruitment has become more and more sophisticated over the past few years. This trend will accelerate with increased competition among schools across larger territories, more entries into hybrid and online brands that lend themselves to larger territories, and broader marketing campaigns.
Of course, the world yield has played a signicant role for a long time. Sophisticated financial modeling, predictive data modeling, yield optimization and increased data-driven direct marketing have become standard fare for admission officers. The skill set of admission officers with strong interpersonal skills to work with students and parents won't disappear, but the requirement for additional complimentary and rather different skill sets has increased to manage and direct these data driven processes.
Companies selling advanced analytical and marketing tools include:
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Rapid Insights http://bit.ly/rapidinsights-education
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1on1 http://bit.ly/LAhfC7
We ourselves currently focus a great deal on anlytical tools such as Google Analytics for our digital services.
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Intead http://bit.ly/SvWRDh
We all market and believe in the power of data-driven sophisticated marketing. As digital marketing becomes an even larger part of attracting and recruiting students, the data-driven nature will continue to gain more prominence.
In the international recruiting realm, attracting and recruiting is much more "old" school. We rely on recruiting fairs, high-school visits, alumni networks, etc. Certainly websites and digital lead generation is a critical element of international recruiting as well, but we haven't seen predicitive modeling or financial model creations in international recruiting activities. Please let us know if you have.
Even digital marketing by schools is still much less sophisticated. Focusing on social media, SEO and search engine marketing is much less prevalent in the diverse and fragmented international student recruitment markets. Though I predict as we are entering the next competitive phase and digital and data-driven recruitment will increase, and perhaps become mainstream for that recruitment segment as well.
