Executive Summary

Has graduate enrollment marketing really changed because of the pandemic?

The answer to this question is actually “yes” and “no.” In one sense, the pandemic has forced schools to rely more on digital communications and advertising methods in order to reach prospective students and promote their programs (especially graduate schools that relied heavily on in-person events). And in this sense, the pandemic has been the catalyst for schools to adjust their enrollment marketing tactics in order to meet students where they are.

However, in another sense, the enrollment journey for the modern day student has not changed all that much (if at all!). Prospective students are still engaging with content, asking the same questions, and moving through the primary journey stages of awareness, consideration, and decision. They still have a lot of the same pain points, passions, goals, and information needs as they had before the pandemic, and they need all of those areas addressed before they can make a serious decision to enroll at any institution (especially at the graduate level). They may be going through the mental process faster, and in a more self-service manner, but the overall process is still the same.

In other words, most institutions still need a comprehensive enrollment marketing strategy — one that attracts prospects at the very top of the funnel, engages them through application completion, and all the way down to enrolled and showing up on the first day of classes. 

The biggest change since the pandemic is not on the side of the prospective student. The truth is that the pandemic uncovered the reality that most schools don’t have enough answers in digital format to the important questions prospective students are asking. Enrollment management teams and marketing communications departments alike have realized that there are huge gaps in their content pathways, and that they cannot overcome these challenges by simply buying more ads, more lists, or blasting out more emails.

If anything, enrollment marketing has changed because schools have changed what they are doing. And today, more schools are choosing to adopt better technology tools and fill the holes in their digital marketing foundation with many of the following tactics:

• Improved SEO to rank for more keywords
• Better performing emails
• Optimized landing pages
• Streamlined website experiences
• Implementing chatbots
• Offering virtual and/or semi-live events
• Running a wider variety of ads on a wider variety of platforms to more targeted audiences
• Publishing more educational content vs. sales-y brochures

And with this increase in activity since the start of the pandemic, it’s more important today to look at the data and be aware of the new benchmarks for enrollment marketing, especially at the graduate school level. That’s why we decided to do the research and put together this report — which we’ve been working on for the last 6+ months — in order to uncover the new standards for each tactic, and learn from the top-performing campaigns about what’s working, what’s not, and what this means for graduate schools marketing to prospective students in the post-pandemic reality we’re moving into. Enrollment marketing has changed, and this report provides the data-based benchmarks that your school can use to make smarter decisions for your enrollment marketing strategy.

What enrollment marketing tactics does this report cover?

The research conducted for this report was primarily focused on the following enrollment marketing tactics that were executed to prospective students from the very top of the funnel (first conversion) all the way down through application to enrollment.