The Future of Financial Aid Offers
Month: September 2025
|September 16, 2025At the start of the fall 2025 recruitment cycle, the enrollment management world was still recovering from the FAFSA fallout of 2024.
Although the form seems to have operated smoothly this past cycle, with submissions returning to pre-pandemic levels, and is promised to return to its October 1 launch date, financial aid offices are still entering the fall 2026 cycle with trepidation. Why?
- Conversations about college affordability are more prominent than ever.
- Families (and, let’s be honest, schools as well) are wondering what changes might be coming to loan access and Pell requirements.
- Students and parents are actively discussing their financial aid offers on public forums like Reddit, asking what is normal and is it worth it, and looking for guidance on how to interpret confusing offer letters.
While all of that is out of our control, there is something we can control — how we communicate financial aid offers. Packages are currently sent in a few ways: a printed mailer, links to online portals, or a combination of the two. As families require more detailed information and clarity, more schools need to take their aid communication a step beyond by digitizing their print offer piece.
Sending financial aid offers to the inbox in addition to the mailbox is:
1. Faster
Imagine pressing send on an email campaign the day all packages have been tested, reviewed, merged, and approved. No more waiting to get the first call to the financial aid office to know they’ve started arriving in mailboxes. Sending digitally gets aid offers to students weeks faster than mailing.
2. Informative
Sending digitally gives you analytics that mail never could. At any given moment, you can know exactly who has downloaded their aid package and who has yet to take this important step.
3. Actionable
Tailor your admissions and financial aid representatives’ time by using segmentation. Based on where you are in the cycle, your goals related to the financial aid offer probably shift. Early on, you might consider personal outreach to those who have yet to download their aid package, in hopes of making sure they know what is available. As the deadline nears, it may be better to focus on those who have already downloaded their package, or those who have accessed it multiple times, as they are likely still considering enrolling at your school.
4. Accessible
As those same staff are reaching out, they have complete access to the same material the student received. Conversations are significantly easier when your staff can reference certain information, pages, etc., when discussing details of an offer. No more referencing tables in SIS systems and hoping to translate them correctly.
Some schools have even chosen to send only digital offers, which can save thousands of dollars in print and postage costs. However, in a world where high school families are inundated with digital outreach, they are showing an increased affinity for mailed information. In fact, Spark451 hosts an annual college-bound survey for high school seniors and parents who just recently concluded their search process, and the results are clear: they want tangible materials now. While there may have been a moment where mail seemed antiquated, printed financial aid offers are likely here to stay.
You’re already creating an aid package for every student — why not get it to them faster while simultaneously enabling your admissions team to have better, more informative, and actionable conversations with students? Why not send it digitally first?
If you’re interested in learning about Spark451’s personalized aid offers that leverage variable data, please reach out to us! Financial aid has always been a lynchpin of yield season, and while it may feel like yield just ended, it’s never too early to start planning for the next one — especially if you hope to have something new and ready to make a splash in the market. Spark451 is here to support you in making sure your team is set up for success!
Your September Secret Weapon? AI.
September is a pivotal month for college admissions professionals, with recruitment season kicking off and critical fall event planning underway. To say things are busy would be an understatement! So, how are you and your team going to juggle it all? With AI, that’s how.
Fall Travel
Give your counselors and road warriors a leg up (and help increase engagement) while on the road with these new tools:
Slate | AI Dashboard
This easy-to-implement tool integrates with person record dashboards to provide quick, digestible updates that counselors can reference while on the go:
- Activity Summaries
“How many emails has a student opened? When was the last time they logged in to the portal? Is their application complete?” All of these questions and more can be answered with the AI Dashboard. - Engagement Scores
Let AI analyze each student’s level of engagement and provide an overall score and summary. Counselors can review these scores in seconds and go into meetings feeling even better prepared. - Recommended Follow-ups
Not only can AI tell you how engaged students are, but it can also provide your team with recommendations on how best to follow up, whether that’s scheduling meetings with key players (coaches or faculty) or sticking with one outreach method over another.
Whatever you or staff want to know about prospective students, AI Dashboard can be built in a way to get you answers.
Element451 | Bolt Discovery & Agents
These two tools are serious game-changers, helping students and your team make the most of their time and (packed) schedules.
- Embed Bolt Discovery on your website and get your counselors ready to tell the world how easily students, families, counselors, and alumni can find what they’re looking for. No more endless scrolling or page searches … simply type in what you’re looking for and Bolt Discovery will hand deliver it (ok, not literally, but you understand).
- Use a Bolt Chatbot Agent on your landing pages and forms to provide students with a low-pressure, safe environment to ask the questions they might otherwise feel too embarrassed to ask. Once set up, be sure to have counselors promote it as a resource for asking additional questions following high school visits or college fairs. It’s an easy way to invite students to interact with your institution, and they’ll love that your team put together AI resources specific to your school and their academic journey.
Pro Tip: Get the most out of your AI bots by keeping your knowledge sources fresh. Remember, if they don’t have access to the latest information, neither will your students!
Campus Visits
Get ready for visitors by including AI in your preparation for open houses, tours, and events!
Slate | AI Portal Components
Use Slate AI to help create new components wherever you see a WYSIWYG editor, including entire custom portals! With a little bit of time and focus, you could create an entirely new campus tour signup page or open house portal. Push the limits and see what types of engaging and colorful ideas AI can create for you.
Element451 | AI Agents
Leave the reminders and follow-ups to AI Agents that can autonomously reach out to students to promote events. Agents can be configured to reach out via any method you choose and with a tone that aligns with your audience. Want them to reach out via email first, and then text later? Can do!
Behind-the-Scenes Work
As the engine behind your recruitment strategy and the key to your bots’ accuracy and usability, it’s critical you keep your CRM humming smoothly.
- Update Reports, Queries, and Segments: Track outreach effectiveness, recruitment metrics, and applicant trends.
- Review Staff Assignments and Automations: Align your strategy with real-time data that keep all stakeholders across your institution happy.
- Clean Up Duplicate Records: Stay organized and avoid confusion. Check out our recent blog post about how to do it!
Final Thoughts
Implementing AI might feel a bit daunting or, dare we say, scary at first (we all watched Terminator and I, Robot, right?), but we’re confident that these tools will help make your and your team’s lives easier. Not only that, but they can help increase engagement and strengthen connections between prospective students and your institution — something we can all get behind.
Need a hand getting started? Just reach out — we’re always available to talk through your needs and help set you up for success!
