The most common topics of conversation throughout #NAFSA2022:
- So much is in flux right now globally and central to it all: China is not what it used to be. When will China come back?
- The proliferation of tech tools for student recruitment is overwhelming. They all promise great things and we’ve seen these promises before. Which ones should I evaluate? Will they actually work? How do I know?
- Boosting yield on applications is a struggle, especially with my team’s limitations on time, experience, and skills. We are understaffed to make this stuff work.
- I need to find ways to make JEDI efforts more impactful in my recruiting programs and on my campus.
These issues are being discussed in forums far beyond the NAFSA conference. How we tackle these topics will affect immediate and long-term recruitment priorities for all of us doing this work.
Intead’s NAFSA presentations addressed much of this. A BIG thank you to our amazing collaborators and colleagues from Benedict College, San Diego State University, Clark University, Northeastern University, CIEE, ICEF, and GNET.
Whether or not you were able to attend our live sessions, we’re making our presentations available to you. We think you’ll find them valuable resources as you move into the 2023-24 recruitment cycle. And where the slides don’t give you all the context you need, reach out with your questions.
In the meantime, read on to download our decks.
Below is the link to download our 3 slide decks + context for our poster session. Here's how the Intead team and knowledge base can help your enrollment management plans in a time of significant market turmoil:
- Developing Strategic Advantage for Enrollment (Poster session)
Big picture from this NAFSA poster session: there are many methods to pursue enrollment stability and growth. Our NAFSA poster session offered a 4-square graphic comparing the relative advantages of 10 different strategies. Flexibility is a key factor to weigh as you choose where to invest. Also critical to your success: how you choose to partner (you will need partners to create an effective global presence and network).
- Addressing market volatility (Slide deck)
Are you seeking more applications? Or are you more focused on higher conversion rates from the applications you already receive? Do you need to diversify your source markets or want to grow in the regions where you’ve already seen success? The Intead team is agnostic to the many tech tools and platforms on the market and advises our clients on what we see as valuable to each institution’s needs.
Market volatility has pushed many institutions to innovate fast, and we are not talking about putting classes on Zoom. Dr. Roslyn Artis (Benedict College), John LaBrie (Clark University), and Jen Mrowka (CIEE) all shared the innovations that their institutions took on, very quickly, to maintain an international presence and meet their students’ needs. In this NAFSA presentation, When Innovation Meets Immediate Need and Feeds Long-Term Vision, Patricia Tozzi and the panel connected the dots between:
- How crisis demands action
- Who makes the decisions about the actions worth taking, and
- Which partners are going to underpin institutional success.
- Innovative approaches to yield (Slide deck)
In our NAFSA presentation with Northeastern University: Finding and Managing Brand Ambassadors, we talked about how to adapt the rising use of influencer marketing to academia. We’ve seen increasing use of influencer marketing across industries. It works REALLY well for beauty products, destinations, life hack products, alcohol, and a few other products and services. What it does not work well for is education – not in the form that it currently takes. That’s why the Intead team partnered with Kirsten Feddersen from Northeastern to reconceptualize influencer marketing to make it more authentic and more effective for academic institutions.
- Developing and Managing the Agent Pipeline (Slide deck)
In our NAFSA presentation (A New Forward-Looking Approach to Recruiting Agent Management) we discussed effective use and management of commission-based education agents for student recruitment. This continues to be an important recruitment pipeline despite the havoc the pandemic caused for so many recruiting agencies over the past 2 years. ICEF' Ian Cann and GNET's Angel Ahmed reviewed what happened to the recruiting agencies around the world using ICEF’s Agent Barometer data and on-the-ground intel. Eddie West from San Diego State University, a 20-year veteran of student recruiting methodologies, brought down the house with specific management techniques that require time, thought, and skill. Your team will benefit from these slides, no question.
Want to dig deeper into Intead’s insights? Consider purchasing access to our Intead Plus Library. Intead Plus gives you access to exclusive tools for international recruitment teams. Our student recruitment planning tools are easy to use and help you frame and focus conversations with your team.
Tools like “3 Essential Budget Questions: A Framework for Planning” and “Country Comparison Cheat Sheet,” as well as worksheets on:
- Persona Development
- Digital Media Planning
- Content Dissemination
- Content Development
- Audience Segmentation
- Agent & Fair Evaluation
- Media Planning, and more.
For the more serious types, a full subscription to Intead Plus (beyond just library access), gets you a custom review of your institution’s Google Analytics with recruiting recommendations from our data geeked team.
Want even more? Reach out and we’ll help you think through your next recruitment initiative. From the market research that informs strategy to campaign execution with messaging, digital ads, conversion landing pages, lead tracking and nurturing, and analytics reports to support continuous improvement – this team does all that, with a smile.
