How to Increase Student Enrollment with Powerful Online Conversations

Struggling with how to increase student enrollment? Education recruitment is a competitive market with so many options available for students to choose from.

When a student is considering a course, they expect to get answers to their inquiries quickly. Education service providers who reply promptly are more likely to get students enrolled. Among a survey of institutions, engaging prospects in conversation via WhatsApp or live chat increased prospective student conversions by 350%.

After students have started a conversation, you can continue the relationship by sending them valuable information and offering personal assistance via chat. We’ll show you how to increase student enrollment with four methods to keep prospects engaged along their journey.

How to Increase Student Enrollment: 4 Tips

Getting prospects into conversations is the first step in a relationship that should ultimately lead to enrollment.

After the conversations get started, it’s crucial to keep them moving to guide students to conversion. Students often collect information from multiple schools or service providers before they’re ready to make a decision. Following up with a conversation at the right time is key to how to increase student enrollment.

How to Increase Student Enrollment: Manage Large Volumes of Inquiries with Automation

Tactics like click-to-chat ads and web chat widgets help you get leads in quickly, but the volume can be overwhelming for agents to respond to manually.  When students don’t receive a reply to their inquiries, they look elsewhere.

With automated replies, you can send basic course information instantly and answer common questions. These answers may be enough to tell students whether the course is right for them so they can make a decision or add it to their shortlist.

If students have more specific questions, automation can also be used to inform prospects about agents’ availability and send them to the most appropriate agent. With the basic questions answered, agents have more time to respond to those prospects who require personal attention.

How to Increase Student Enrollment: Give Students the Information They Need and Prompt a Decision with Targeted Broadcasts

Once prospects receive information on a course, they often need time to think about it and weigh their options. If you’ve connected with them over chat, you can send them targeted broadcasts so you’ll stay top of mind.

Segment students into groups based on course interests, stage in the application process, or location. For example, if you travel to education fairs, send broadcasts to students when you’re coming to a fair in their area.

Send deadline reminders and offer limited-time promotions to encourage students to complete their application. Remember to include a clear CTA for prospects to reply to the broadcast so you can continue chatting with them.

One of our customers, an education placement service, saw a 95% increase in lead conversions in eight months after using targeted WhatsApp broadcasts.

How to Increase Student Enrollment: Ensure Quality Conversations by Monitoring in Real-Time

For prospects who are serious about enrolling, conversations with recruitment agents or enrollment advisors are vital to a decision, so it’s important to monitor for quality and to ensure agents are following up in time.

With a conversation management platform like respond.io, managers have a full view of the conversations happening and the time it’s taking to respond. If a student asked about a trial class more than 24 hours ago, a manager may want to step in and remind the agent to reply.

Additionally, if the agent is struggling to answer certain questions, for example, on complex visa issues or handling special learning needs, managers can offer advice to agents in private comments or agents can request help.

How to Increase Student Enrollment: Keep Conversations Consistent across Channels

Prospects often message a business from more than one channel across the course of their customer journey. For example, a student sees a click-to-WhatsApp ad on Facebook and starts a conversation. They take some time considering options and then go back to your Facebook page. This time, they send a message through Facebook Messenger.

It’s important to recognize this as the same person to provide them a consistent experience. You’ll want to know what information they’ve received already and what they’re interested in. If they’ve had a conversation with a human agent before, they may want to speak with the same person.

The best way to do this is with an omnichannel inbox. That way, no matter what channel a message comes in on, it will go to a single place so the entire conversation can be seen in context. Any agent will be able to see it and continue, or it can be assigned to the same agent who handled it before.

Assigning students to same agent for the whole process will strengthen your relationship with them and may encourage them to make a decision. Prospective students appreciate personalized advice from an agent who understands their requirements.

Start Building Relationships with Prospective Students Now

Make your business stand out in the education recruitment process by continuous engagement with students. When prospects get the information they need, timely follow-ups and advisors who care, student enrollment will increase.

To engage with high volumes of messages instantly, follow up consistently and maintain high quality messaging, it’s best to use a conversation management platform like respond.io. Our customers have doubled student enrollment by using these tactics.

See the benefits for yourself by signing up for a free trial of respond.io or contact us for a customized demo today.

Further Reading

For more tips on how to boost your education business with conversational marketing and sales, check out these other articles.

• Chatbot for Education: Benefits, Challenges and Opportunities

• WhatsApp for Education: Enhanced Engagement for Maximum Results

• WhatsApp Appointment Booking: Make Bookings a Breeze