Rondeau's Roundtable

To tell or not to tell.  That is the question for any student applying to college with a less-than-stellar disciplinary record.  Students, parents and guidance counselors worry about the effect disclosing negative information might have on the admissions process.  If the student is a good kid who made one mistake, is it really necessary to strongly admonish him to reveal everything?

According to eminent social psychologist, researcher and author Elliot Aronson, PhD, failing to be honest can affect the student in ways that go far beyond admittance to college.   Dr. Aronson’s award-winning research has proved many aspects of the theory of cognitive dissonance.  That theory effectively explains much of the psychology behind marital discord, racial prejudice and public corruption.  In Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Dr. Aronson and coauthor Carol Tavris, PhD explain:

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.”  Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don’t rest easy until they find a way to reduce it.

Completing a college application is an undertaking fraught with cognitive dissonance if you’re a student with a past.  What will you do?  You know it’s wrong to lie, and worse if you certify you’ve told the truth. But if you tell the truth, you risk rejection by an institution you’d like to attend.  Either course is uncomfortable. In the widely used textbook, Social Psychology, Dr. Aronson and his coauthors frame the dilemma in terms of cheating on a college exam:

Supposed that after a difficult struggle you decide to cheat.  How do you reduce the dissonance?...It is likely that you would try to justify the action... You would adopt a more lenient attitude involving cheating, convincing yourself that it’s a victimless crime, that everybody does it and so it’s really not so bad.

In contrast, a student who decides not to cheat will reduce dissonance by convincing himself that cheating is unquestionably wrong; otherwise he would not risk an important grade to avoid it. His truthful actions actually make him a more truthful person.

Students who lie to get into college have started down a slippery slope, setting themselves up to lie and cheat in other situations as well.  This can become a way of life.  In matters of ethics, it truly is “In for a penny, in for a pound.”  Many corrupt public figures started out honest, but then “lost their moral compass.”  Anyone in a position to influence students should help them avoid that pitfall.

The Allied Group is an award-winning marketing communications company and full-service fulfillment provider.  Our Yield Programs have been proven to increase enrollment.

In Part One we discussed how cultivating a spirit of liking or respect for a challenging faculty member or colleague can pay dividends in increasing their willingness to cooperate.  We saw how a strategy that once served Ben Franklin well can warm relations with coworkers today.  Research reveals some further communication strategies that can help you turn difficult associates into allies.

At times, colleagues who are at odds try to catch each other doing something wrong, hoping to find usable leverage.  Often, a more effective strategy is to try to catch a contentious coworker doing something right and immediately commend him or her for it.  This will not only reinforce desirable behavior but will allow you to label them as a helpful ally.  Why would you want to attach such a label to a person who may have withheld their cooperation in the past?  Eminent psychologist Elliot Aronson, PhD and his coauthor answer:

One of social psychology’s best documented phenomena is the self-fulfilling
prophecy – the tendency for a definition of a situation to evoke behavior that makes the definition come true.  Dozens of experiments have shown that students who are randomly labeled “smarter” tend to act smarter…and women who are labeled “beautiful” behave as if they are beautiful.

In one experiment outlined by persuasion expert Robert Cialdini, PhD and his coauthors, researchers interviewed a large number of registered voters and told half of them that their responses showed they were “above average citizens likely to vote and participate in political events.”  The others were told that they were average in this area.  Those labeled as good citizens proved 15% more likely to vote in the election held one week later.  In another study, New Haven residents who were told they were generous later contributed significantly more than others to a worthy cause.

A word of caution:  Using the labeling technique insincerely could easily backfire. Praising someone for a desirable trait he or she hasn’t displayed could be readily seen as an overt attempt to manipulate.

But even the most unhelpful associate will usually assist someone.  Be alert for occasions when they do and commend them for their accommodating actions.  Let them know that this shows the kind of helpful person they are.  This was a favorite negotiating tactic of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.  As Dr. Cialdini put it:

Before international negotiations began, Sadat would assure his bargaining opponents that they and the citizens of their country were widely known for their cooperativeness and fairness...  According to master-negotiator Henry Kissinger (1982), Sadat was successful because he got others to act in his interests by giving them a reputation to uphold.

In summary, to turn a challenging colleague into an ally, here are some strategies to use:
 

1. Warm up your own feelings by thinking about your associate’s good qualities. 
2. Use Ben Franklin’s tactic to gain a friend: ask them for a favor and, when they grant it, let them know how much they helped you.
3. Catch them doing a helpful act and commend them for it, giving them a good reputation to live up to.

You will find that many people will respond favorably.  And you may just gain the comrade-in-arms you need.


Yield Programs using one-to-one communication have proved extremely effective in enrolling accepted students.  If you'd like to read a case study, click here.
 

Cooperation between admissions officers and faculty members can be crucial to a college’s strategic marketing efforts. This is particularly true when transfer credits need to be approved, when accepted students or their parents have detailed questions about academics and when yield events are taking place on campus. But developing collaborative relationships with faculty members may not be the easiest of tasks. Some colleagues may be stubborn and difficult. How can you develop a beneficial alliance with a colleague who doesn’t want to cooperate?

Set the Stage for a Mutually Supportive Relationship

Before trying to persuade a difficult person it’s important to prepare your mind. Persuasion expert and bestselling author Robert Cialdini, PhD makes this recommendation: ‘First, think of qualities and traits of this person that you can like and admire. Reflecting on these will cause you to like that person (at least a little bit). Studies show that people can instinctively sense when others like them, and when they don’t. We tend to like those who like us,’ so if your colleague senses that you appreciate him or her, they will be inclined to like you in return. Cialdini concludes, ‘We are much more easily persuaded by those we like.’

Next, Get your “Foot in the Door”

Now that you’ve set the stage you’re ready to take the next step in getting your colleague on your side. In order to get cooperation, people will often argue with those who block their efforts or make obvious attempts to “butter them up.” This can backfire and leave you in a worse position.

If the one you’re trying to influence is stubborn or resistant, you may need to take another step first. The Foot-in-the-Door technique can effectively warm up relations – and a spirit of collaboration with faculty members or other colleagues. Benjamin Franklin discovered this when America was still a British colony. His experience was analyzed by Dr. Elliot Aronson, a social psychologist voted to the list of The 100 Most Influential Psychologists of the Twentieth Century and coauthor Carol Tavris, PhD. They wrote: “While serving in the Pennsylvania legislature, Franklin was disturbed by the opposition and animosity of a fellow legislator. So he set out to win him over. He didn’t do it, he wrote, “by paying any servile respect to him” – that is, by doing the other man a favor – but by inducing his target to do a favor for him – loaning him a rare book from his library” In Franklin’s own words:

He sent it immediately and I returned it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.
 

Franklin’s experience illustrates, as Dr. Aronson observes, that the favor a difficult colleague has done you conflicts with any negative feelings about you he or she may have in mind. Minds don’t rest until such conflicts are resolved. Controlled experiments have replicated Franklin’s experience – that those who do a favor for another usually justify their actions by feeling that the recipient deserved their generosity. That can warms things up considerably.

Use Ben Franklin’s strategy to jumpstart a spirit of partnership

So, to get a stubborn faculty member or colleague to stop blocking your efforts and start cooperating with you, why not use a communication strategy endorsed by luminaries like Ben Franklin and Elliot Aronson? Start by asking him or her to accommodate you in some small way. Make it a request that would be hard to refuse. Then, once they’ve done what you asked, be sure to warmly thank them for helping you out. This is one of the marketing communication strategies used by airlines when they say, “We know that you have a lot of airlines to choose from, so we want to thank you for choosing us.” Like Franklin’s fellow legislator, we all tend to think that if we’ve chosen to do something, it must be a good idea. So, getting a truculent associate to assist you in some way will often warm him or her up to helping you in the future. It can at least get the ball rolling in the right direction.

What further creative steps can you take to forge partnerships with previously unhelpful faculty members and coworkers? You’ll find the answer in “Getting Cooperation from Faculty and Colleagues - Part Two.”

Admissions officials for both traditional and nontraditional programs have often heard that the fit between institution and student is most important factor in admissions. Getting good information out to prospective students has been seen as a primary tool for recruiting them. But in this difficult economy, institutions that would achieve success must do much more than just inform prospective students of the programs available to them.

College and university marketing departments often do an excellent job of disseminating information about their academic and extracurricular offerings. Marketing communication strategies follow a predictable pattern: Advertising by mass media, personalized direct mail or email often drives prospective students to the college’s website where they can get detailed information on the program of their choice. This can help traditional and nontraditional students who know they want to go to college find out the information they need to make an informed decision.
 

Unfortunately, what it rarely does is persuade anyone to actually enroll. Researchers Herbert Hyman and Paul Sheatsley of the American Association for Public Opinion Research discovered years ago that information campaigns often fail to effectively impart ideas, much less inspire action. In fact, according to Stanford Graduate of Business Professor Chip Heath and his coauthor, information designed to persuade the intellect can actually deter prospects from taking action. 

Detailed factual information can actually inhibit action

The authors described a controlled study. College students were paid five $1 bills for completing a task. Inside the envelope containing the money was a donation request from the Save the Children foundation. The study was designed to measure what kind of message would best move college students to action – in this case by donating some of the money they had just been paid. One letter outlined convincing facts and figures that showed the critical need to prevent malnutrition among African children. The other message was designed to appeal to the emotions. It described the serious problems facing one African child, Rokia, with a request to help her and others like her. 

The results were quite revealing. Those who read the statistics contributed an average of $1.14. Those who read the heart-rending problems faced by a single child donated more than twice as much, averaging $2.38. Interestingly, when other students were given both sets of information – the statistics and Rokia’s story - were they inspired to give more? On the contrary, they gave less – just $1.43 on average! Adding facts and figures to a personal story designed to evoke emotion actually lessened its effectiveness, cutting the response rate nearly in half.

This lesson was put to a rather cynical use by the tobacco industry, which used the “anti-vilification” clause in the 46-state tobacco lawsuit settlement to pull a highly effective emotion-based nonsmoking ad (The Truth Campaign) in favor of an ad with the tag line, “Think, Don’t Smoke.” A survey published in The American Journal of Public Health found that teenagers who saw The Truth Campaign ads were 66% less likely to smoke. However, those who saw the “Think, Don’t Smoke” ads were 36% more likely to smoke. The appeal to the rational thinking side of teenagers’ brains produced an effect that was the opposite of what the anti-smoking marketers intended. 

Now, determining whether or not to enroll at college can be less life-altering than a decision on smoking. It is far more consequential for the decision-maker than the choice of whether or not to donate to a worthwhile charity. But from the marketing communications perspective, these examples show that just providing good information to a target audience can clearly backfire. The manner in which colleges provide information to prospects can make a big difference in whether or not they are moved to inquire, apply or enroll. 

Why does information dissemination seem to work?

The information campaign approach taken by many colleges does accomplish one thing. It helps the institution “pick some low-hanging fruit” by attracting those who have already decided to further their education and have that institution on their short-list. But for every prospect committed to going to that college there are several others who would consider it, or are considering it, with a much smaller degree of certainty. They may be good future prospects – but undergraduate, graduate and continuing education admissions professionals need to cultivate their interest, often through one to one communication.  There are some important psychological principles to keep in mind in doing this, and some institutions have benefited from creative, low-cost ways to employ them. Stay tuned.

The University of Phoenix’s parent company expects adult enrollments to drop as much as 40% this year, Bloomberg Businessweek reported this week in ”Apollo, Educations Shares Slide on Bleak Enrollment Outlook.” This expected drop, due to proposed new government regulations tying federal financial aid dollars to outcomes, will present new opportunities and dangers to private and public colleges alike.

New Opportunities

While the marketing communication strategies of many for-profits are no doubt above-board, the predatory practices of other institutions are now under the watchful eye of Congress and the national media.  For instance, earlier this year a Time Magazine article asked, “For-Profit Colleges – Educators or Predators?”  Adverse publicity may cause prospective students to look more closely at nonprofit public and private institutions. This could increase enrollments in both graduate and continuing education programs.

Dangers to Nonprofits

Nonprofit colleges and universities cannot afford to sit back and wait for an influx of students into their institutions. It may not happen. As unemployment continues to hover around 10%, students realize that even with their chosen degree there’s no guarantee they’ll get the job they seek. As a result, a number of institutions no longer have the number of inquiries and applications they saw just a year or two ago.

Facing declining revenues, many nonprofits will likely work harder to enroll the students who are still out there. Their marketing communication strategies will be better focused and their campaigns more appealing. Even in a traditional education center like New England, marketing expenditures by aggressive for-profits will undoubtedly increase. How can traditional private and public institutions effectively compete for a shrinking pool of prospective students?

Competing for a Shrinking Pool of Students

One way nonprofits can compete successfully is to carefully target their marketing communications to the factors that motivate their students.   After all, every student who returns to college does so for one main reason – his or her own reason. Of course, no college or marketing communications company can understand an individual student’s motivation ahead of time. But clearly there are a few common themes, including:

·         Career Advancement

·         Career Change

·         Job Security

Research by social psychologists has found that a key to capturing an audience’s attention is personal relevance.   In one study, adults were much more likely to pay careful attention to a message only if it personally affected them.  An interesting message without personal relevance got little response. But coming to know what is personally relevant to individual prospects isn’t easy.   

Direct Marketing to the Rescue

Personal direct marketing campaigns, if conceived and designed well, can help you learn who is interested in furthering their education and what will motivate them. This medium allows for the kind of segmentation that’s impossible with mass media. College marketing officers can use a one to one communication approach, tailoring the message each demographic group will receive to appeal to the probable needs of that group.  They can send a series of tailored communications to each group, each appealing to a different motivation. If they drive prospects to a response website with personalized URL (pURL) technology, they will know which message generated their response. And even if this campaign doesn’t produce an application they will know each prospect's motivation,  information they need for further, even more effective communications.

A Strategy with Increased Effectiveness

Research and some twenty years of experience shows that there is one additional strategy that can significantly increase response rates with prospective students. What is it? Stay tuned.

The present economic climate has put a number of graduate and continuing education programs in a difficult situation. The tight economy has caused both public and private institutions to put equally tight leashes on marketing expenditures. But while available budgets are shrinking, the need of marketing for higher education is growing. The pool of students who can afford to return to college to pursue a new degree or sharpen their skills is shrinking. More now than ever programs for nontraditional students need effective lead generation methods to find real prospects. How can Vice Presidents, Deans and Directors provide their programs with the outreach they need and still avoid wasting precious marketing funds?

Does your marketing actually help your competitors more?

Of the available marketing communication strategies, the one most often used is to promote the college through advertising, using radio, newspapers and the Internet. But these efforts may actually end up helping competing institutions as much or more than they help your own. The research habits of many prospective students virtually guarantee it.

Prospective students are often very busy and they face a wide array of choices. There are many online institutions competing for their attention. A number of these have sophisticated marketing programs and admissions counselors who are ready to pounce on telephone or online inquiries day or night. In addition there are often several well established colleges and universities within driving distance of the prospect’s home or work location. Realistically, at how many institutions with the desired program will the average adult prospect look – two or three? Four?  Which college is sure to receive his or her inquiry? The last one they visited that fit their criteria.

An example close to home

Think about the last time you bought a car. If you visited more than one dealership and found the car you wanted at a good price, did you go back to the first dealership you visited to negotiate and buy it from them? Most people don’t – that’s why some dealers advertise “Shop us last.” Certainly, a good education can mean a lot more to one’s future than a car, but the point is clear. Often it’s not the best organization with the best offer, but rather a good organization with acceptable offer in the best position that wins the client.

So even if your well-designed ad prompted the prospect to begin his or her college search and even if your institution is a perfect fit, you still may not get his inquiry or application. Your prospects’ busy schedules and decision-making strategies put the last college they checked out, not the first, in the driver’s seat. Your good advertising has actually delivered students to a competing institution. How can you avoid this situation?

Put your institution in the best position

One way is to give prospects a compelling reason to inquire even if they’re at the beginning of their college search. One of the first universities to do this was Franklin University, an adult-only institution in Ohio. Several years ago, a link on Franklin’s website offered visitors a customized eBrochure to the program of their choice. After providing his or her contact information, a PDF brochure for the desired program would arrive in the prospect’s email inbox. The adult learner had what they wanted – a convenient brochure with all the pertinent information and the university had what they desired – the prospect’s contact information and consent to further communication. Franklin’s marketing staff reported that this program increased their adult inquiries by 35%; an industry Best Practices report showed that it also helped them get an astounding 48% conversion rate from that inquiry to application.

At present, similar (but vastly improved) programs are capturing prospective traditional undergraduate students at schools like Quinnipiac University, Sacred Heart University, and Monroe College. Soon both the University of Rhode Island and Rivier College will be using it as well. These undergraduate programs trade the instant gratification of a customized eBrochure that pops up within sixty seconds and the personalized direct mail that follows for the prospect’s contact information and interests. Prospective students appear to feel it’s a fair trade – at last check, up to 47% of visitors to Quinnipiac’s Stealth eBrochure website applied to the university. Could graduate and continuing education programs in New England achieve similar results?

In Part One we discussed how several institutions including the University of Hartford and Southern New Hampshire University achieved substantial increases in their yield rates with One to One communication by sending accepted students a customized yield publication. These publications showed students the aspects of the institution that were most important to them.

New Results from a 2010 Study

Research conducted by Southern New Hampshire University this spring showed that sending a customized yield publication with the right creative design is one of the marketing communication strategies that continue to work even in this difficult economic climate. SNHU, which had previously sent a personalized yield piece to each accepted student now divided their accepted students into two groups: an experimental group that would continue to receive this customized direct mail and a control group that would get everything the university normally sent except that piece. Here are the results:

• Total Accepted Students – 3,443
• Experimental Group receiving the customized yield piece – 3105
  • Deposits from Test Group – 898
  • Yield Rate – 28.9%
• Control Group (no customized piece) – 338
  • Deposits from Control Group – 93
  • Yield Rate – 27.5%

That yield rate difference of 1.4% means that the customized yield piece added 44 to 48 students, depending on how you look at the numbers. That many students would generate more than $1,000,000 in first year tuition alone and more than $2,000,000 over two years at many institutions. Clearly, One to One communication, if done using sound psychological and design principles, works in admissions yield even in tough economic times.

An inexpensive way to increase yield using the web

One university found another way to increase their yield rate using the Internet. This strategy involved neither an expensive yield website nor Facebook. Instead this university made use of a tactic that had previously helped Proctor & Gamble achieve their most successful new product launch in corporation history. 

The admissions office conducted a marketing test in which accepted students were encouraged to enter a contest by visiting a website. At the well designed but uncomplicated site, students were asked two simple but psychologically-loaded questions. The university’s results were similar to Proctor & Gamble’s. In that recession-plagued year, the institution suffered through an overall yield rate below 20%. But students who visited the website yielded at a rate of 44.75%.

Unlike the SNHU test, this experiment was not scientifically controlled, so that it’s possible that only the most committed accepted students visited the site. But previous controlled experiments clearly demonstrated that the principle behind this campaign was psychologically sound; after Proctor & Gamble’s marketing campaign employed the same strategy for Crest toothpaste, its sales rose 4.5% while rival Colgate’s sales remained flat.

Enrolling accepted students in difficult economic times will always be a challenge. But yield marketing strategies that effectively blend psychology, technology and top-notch creative design will continue to prove their worth. If you’d like to learn more about the yield programs considered here, or to discuss your own yield program, please email me at lrondeau@thealliedgrp.com

Although the economists have declared that the Great Recession is over, both admissions officials and higher education marketing firms are aware of the continuing need to strengthen their efforts to yield accepted students. Demographic shifts have reduced the population of students who can afford to foot the bill for their education.   Incoming freshman classes will increasingly be made up of those who can least afford tuition. It will become all the more important for institutions to enroll a higher percentage of those who can afford to pay. Besides “full payers,” colleges have other demographic groups they have targeted, like high-achieving students of color and other well qualified prospective freshmen with lower incomes. Institutional requirements demand a strong yield rate.

Marketing Communication Strategies that Improve Yield

Institutions can often improve their yield rates by using a combination of psychology, technology and good marketing communication campaign design. One to one communication in the form of customized, personalized pieces sent by direct mail has proven to be particularly effective in increasing yield rates. It helps colleges avoid wasting the good marketing efforts they’ve executed higher in the admissions recruitment funnel. During the admissions cycle, many institutions have done an excellent job in giving prospective freshmen the information they need to make wise college choices. This is a good strategy for both yield and retention. 

Research has consistently proven that decisions based on careful consideration of the facts are considerably stronger and longer-lasting than decisions made emotionally, like attending a particular college to maintain family tradition or because high school friends will enroll there. As eminent social psychologist Dr. Elliot Aronson summed up the research, “people who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments are more likely to maintain this attitude over time, more likely to behave consistently with this attitude and more resistant to counter-persuasion than people who base their attitude on peripheral cues.”

Prospects who have taken the time to consider the facts, perhaps even visiting the college have found things that they liked – otherwise they would probably not have applied. Reminding these students of what attracted them to the institution in the first place has had a highly positive effect on yield rates. Two institutions – the University of Hartford and Southern New Hampshire University experienced double-digit deposit rate increases after sending accepted students One to One personalized yield publications that directly spoke to what was most important to them in their college choice. If you’d like to read the case study, When Yield is a Problem it’s Time to Get Personal, please email me at lrondeau@thealliedgrp.com and I’ll send you a copy.

Another strategy caused one university to see a dramatic increase in the yield rate of students taking part in a yield marketing test. The institution employed a tactic that had previously helped Proctor & Gamble enjoy their most successful new product launch in history. You can read about it in “Gaining an Edge in College Admissions Yield – Part Two.” Stay tuned.

Admissions officers and higher education marketing firms know that it’s very hard to encourage a student to inquire or apply if he/she won’t even read your Search letter or email. Student Search is one of the most critical aspects of higher education marketing.   As the recession pushes down admissions yield rates, having a sufficient number of inquiries and applications becomes even more important. 

Searching Overburdened Students

Marketing to prospective college students is becoming ever more challenging. As Strauss and Howe’s research revealed, the Millennial generation is one of the most stressed-out generations in history. Students feel understandable pressure to get good grades and take part in a myriad of extracurricular activities. When the Search season begins, most prospective college students will be buried under an avalanche of Search letters. Many will look very similar. And the student’s electronic inbox will resemble their mailbox; it will be totally clogged with admissions Search email messages. Which messages will they read and what will encourage them to respond?

This will be no problem for institutions with a great brand. A Search letter from Harvard, Princeton or Yale will certainly by opened – it may be framed. But there are many high quality but less famous institutions that could be a perfect fit for individual students. Due to time pressures, many of their letters and emails will go unopened by both students and parents. What’s an admissions marketing staff to do?

Research to the Rescue

Research can come to the rescue. Both marketers and psychologists have conducted controlled scientific studies to uncover what makes busy people, particularly teenagers respond. Social psychology research is particularly helpful here – most of its research subjects are college students. Whether your college’s admissions department sends emails, or letter/post card mailings, what are some factors that research shows can help get your admissions marketing communication noticed?

Aside from strong branding, perhaps the most important is personal relevance. A key study cited by eminent social psychologist and author Elliot Aronson, PhD found that college students carefully evaluated information only if they found it personally relevant (Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman). It will often take a lot of careful evaluation for a student to decide to enroll at your institution. Sending a personally relevant Search piece is a good start. 

Making Search Personally Relevant to Students

Prospective college students who have recently taken the SAT or ACT have provided fresh information on their academic interests. There's no need for data appending. Featuring their intended major has gotten good results in the past. According to a Hewlett-Packard report, Albertson College increased its Search response rate from 2.2% to 18.7% a few years ago by highlighting students’ intended major and varsity sports interest (where applicable).

Clearly, having fresh, accurate data can help you make your Search letters, postcards and emails personally relevant to students, which will get them read. But students change their minds, and unless your database is up to date the major you feature may no longer be pertinent. Featuring it would make your Search efforts yesterday’s news. 

What if your Data isn’t Fresh?

Would a mass marketing approach be better and safer to use? That approach could mean that your letters, postcard mailings and emails will look like what everyone else is sending. How will the students to whom you’re marketing determine whether or not to open and read your communication? The research cited by Dr. Aronson showed that when the communication wasn’t personally relevant to students, they used decision shortcuts or heuristics to judge its value. What decision shortcuts do prospects use? You can read about a number of them in the white paper, The Psychology of Search. To get a copy, email me at lrondeau@thealliedgrp.com. 

The Internet is one of the most powerful persuasion tools ever devised.  It is especially valuable in higher education marketing.  This tool excels in both informing and marketing to college students.  Millennial prospects live on the web and often make stealth investigations of colleges that pique their interest. To engage them, institutions may employ websites that allow students to get a customized electronic brochure or to personalize their online experience and see exactly what they want to see.  That strategy is a sound one.  The Journal of College Admission (Summer, 2010) pointed out, “Millennial students often do not express interest in information that is not directly related to what matters to them, nor are they willing to give a second chance at a first impression (Howe and Strauss 2007)”.

 Showing Millennials What Interests Them the Most

Showing students the things that matter most to them will certainly hold their interest.  It can also increase an institution’s attractiveness if the college presents those subjects of interest in a way that stimulates students’ imaginations.  Author Alvin Burns writes in The Journal of Advertising, “Several consumer researchers have shown that imagery-eliciting strategies can significantly affect attitudes…That is, imagery-eliciting stimuli resulted in more positive attitudes than stimuli not attempting to elicit imagery.” In one such study in the early days of cable television, persuasion expert Robert Cialdini, PhD and his colleagues found that homeowners who were asked to envision themselves enjoying the benefits of cable TV were more than twice as likely to subscribe as those who were just told about those benefits.  This same phenomenon is also seen in higher education marketing. Recent experience at a number of campuses has shown that students who can picture themselves on your campus are considerably more likely to enroll at your institution.

Well designed customized Stealth Programs, as well as websites and eBrochure programs used to convert inquiries can help your prospects visualize what life would be like at your institution.  Colleges have used them to transform stealth website visitors into qualified inquiries.  They have a proven track record for increasing applications and enrollment.  But is their ability to stimulate prospective students’ imaginations their only pulling power?  Look for the answer in "The Psychology Behind Interactive Websites in Higher Education Marketing-Part Two."