Recruiting Intelligence

Digital marketing is a main channel for reaching students and is especially critical for reaching international students. In a perfect world you could attract these prospective students directly to your website without paying for third-party lead generation services. However, in reality, college-seekers often start with generic web searches (e.g. program of interest, location) and not with searches for specific schools.

If you are reading this, chances are you have a vested interest in higher education. You believe strongly in the importance of education for all people, all ages, all backgrounds and ethnicities. Lately the media and many authors have focused on the demise of higher education, the unnecessary time and money spent in receiving an education, and the overall downfall of higher education. While we believe that higher education administrators will find ways to improve the current state of higher education in the US, we also believe in the fundamental importance of higher education. We're going to take on that negativity with something positive-- we want to show why education matters.

Every month the 2nd and 4th Thursdays will be devoted to highlighting our library of podcasts. We believe stongly that information can be conveyed in a number of ways. We hope that you will continue to read our blog and also take advantage of the opportunity to listen to our podcasts at your desk, the gym or during your commute. Through 20-30 minute podcasts we hope to introduce our readers/listeners to a variety of compelling topics related to international higher education. We hope you enjoy our podcasts and, as always, we welcome your feedback.

In our recent post 4 Tips to Get the Most Out of Facebook Internationally, we discussed several ways to take advantage of Facebook’s built-in targeting and global features. While Facebook itself can be an effective marketing tool, the additional features presented by Facebook apps can take your institution’s Facebook page to the next level. Read on for three more tips (and game-changing apps) for your international Facebook efforts.

According to this great infographic, 82% of American universities use Facebook to communicate with prospective students.

Do you remember the movie "When Harry met Sally?" with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal when Harry states that a man and a woman cannot be friends. Well, the relationship between admissions, marketing and IT within universities -- and in many other organizations -- feels like that.

As you interact with international students, your job is to present your academic programs the best way you can and identify the right students who will be a good academic, personal and financial fit for your institution. 

Universities rarely go out of business or let's say out of existence. Maybe we should carefully add "so far" since we know that financial pressures are increasing dramatically. Competition is intensifying. Public funding has decreased and as we all know tuition has increased to a level where it is difficult to raise net tuition. Students and their parents are more reluctant or unable to take on the financial burden. I am a strong believer that education is one of the best investments young people can ever make. Financial pressures, among other reasons, have pushed many colleges to recruit more international students. Full paying students are rare in the United States, so adding a cohort of more or less full paying international students can make a difference.  As a result, we see many universities entering the international markets. And by the way, we don't mind since we enjoy working with colleges and it is helping us grow our business as well.

Well we've done it again. It provided such a fascinating glimpse into how institutions engage with prospective students that we decided to run the experiment all over again. If you are an avid reader of our blog (thanks, Mom!) then you know that last May we published the results of our mystery shopper experiment, phase one. We could hardly believe that nearly 25% of institutions we contacted to request information for a prospective Chinese undergraduate student never replied. For the full report, read our blog 25% Don't Reply to Prospective International Student Inquiries. Since we ran that experiment in the spring, April to be exact, we decided we would try it again in the fall. And so we bring to you, dear readers, the results of the mystery shopper experiment, phase two.

In my last post, I discussed my experience at Bahcesehir University and gave some of my impressions about what drives students to study abroad.  Working at BAU didn’t just give me a chance to observe students, though.  It also allowed me to look at overseas university systems close up.  I was able to see how their programming and administrative organization compare with older American schools, and how they differ.  Below are four things that I saw overseas schools doing right, to keep themselves relevant and sustainable in a global education community.