As of this year, a new study estimated that US households with internet access consume more than 43 hours of video content per week! That’s equal to 25% of our week! Another recent stat shows that 90% of households have at least one connected TV device. According to Nielsen’s January 2026 TV viewing report, streaming leads at 47%, surpassing both cable and broadcast as the primary way audiences consume television content.

Source: Nielson

And while you might think that many people pay for the ad-free versions of their favorite streaming services, the ad-supported numbers will probably surprise you. According to a Q4 2025 report by Nielsen, almost 75% of streaming subscribers use the ad-supported versions of these apps!

Source: Nielson

The old way of buying TV ads would be to choose a network and a placement, and buy a prime-time TV slot during the shows you guestimated your audience was watching on any given evening. The differentiator with CTV is that we’re able to target our specific niche audience first — and follow them wherever they stream. We follow the target audience rather than making a decision on what we assume they will watch. For example, a prospect and their family might be watching a show on Peacock, then streaming a movie on Hulu, and maybe catching a late-night talk show on CBS. We’ll serve your video ads to that audience as they move networks throughout their evening and weekend binge journey.

And you may be surprised with how specific and granular the targeting can be. Here’s a sampling of who we can intersect with using our third-party targeting tools:

• Parents of College-Bound Teens: Individuals who are parents of college-bound kids. Sourced from self-reported surveys, public records, online activity, and purchase transactions.
• People Researching Northeast Colleges on the Web: Northeast college researchers are those who are most likely searching colleges within that geographic region based on search intent data.
• Households With a 529 College Savings Plan: This audience contains people who have a 529 college savings plan to pay for higher education for their children or grandchildren.
• People Who Recently Visited Colleges and Universities: Individuals who have recently visited college and university locations. Our behavioral location data is sourced from proprietary SDK and app partnerships that track billions of real-time visitation data points to business locations.
• Households With Child Near High School Graduation: Indicates there is a child near high school graduation in the household, aged 16.5–18 years.
• Adult Career Changers (New Job): Individuals who are currently career changers (new job) based on surveys, online/purchase activity, and social media data.
• Video Gamers — Watched E-Sports Online/TV: Watched e-sports online or on TV in the last year; live streaming, e-sports viewers, tournament watching, gaming channels, video content.

As CTV becomes the channel where audiences are spending more downtime, including it in your paid media mix only elevates every other component of your marketing efforts. In fact, studies have found that CTV can have a “halo effect” for paid search and paid social, as well as boost your email marketing performance metrics! Paramount recently reported a 22.3% conversion rate lift in paid social when paired with CTV for 90 days, and similarly an 8.5% lift in conversion rates on paid social when a user had been exposed to a CTV ad. Additionally, 51% of users who are classified as “heavy CTV streamers” search that brand online after seeing a CTV ad. As a marketing strategy cherry-on-top, a recent MNTN study found that B2C email conversion rates rose by 19% after CTV ad exposure. CTV might be the best team player being left untapped on your marketing team!

Source: Paramount

As AI continues to expand, we’re seeing a drastic increase in the number of individuals turning to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT for interactive, conversational answers (“tell me about Spark University”) instead of traditional keyword searches (“Spark University, about, admissions”). In fact, ChatGPT recently surpassed 1 billion active monthly users, underscoring a shift that offers higher education institutions a unique chance to connect with prospects during meaningful, real-time exchanges.

Our recent Graduate School Intenders Survey shows that 55% of graduate students used ChatGPT to research graduate schools — a clear sign that this channel reaches key prospects.

To put this into perspective, one of our graduate school partners saw an impressive 40% admit-to-deposit ratio from prospects who found them through ChatGPT searches, meaning nearly half of admitted students who used ChatGPT to learn about the institution, enrolled — a massively valuable audience.

Advertising with ChatGPT uses smart targeting based on:

• Contextual prompts and what users ask
• Signals from your landing pages
• Location targeting

The ads themselves appear directly below ChatGPT answers, with a short headline, description, and image. It’s the perfect way to catch attention with a relevant ad without disrupting the conversational flow.

As for reporting, we will be able to see the number of impressions and clicks, plus a breakdown of engagement by device. As ChatGPT ads start evolving, we’re hopeful that even more in-depth reporting may become available.

Being an early adopter of ChatGPT ads means your institution can stay ahead of the curve and position itself as a leader in this emerging space.

Institutions that integrate ChatGPT ads early are not only gaining valuable insights but also building relevance throughout the entire decision-making journey. This strategic advantage complements your existing campaigns, ensuring your brand is present and influential in new ways where people are actively searching.

While it may be tempting to cast a wide net, don’t do so at the expense of your backyard. We recommend leaning into primary markets and letting data guide your list purchases (especially when you’re looking to expand). Use modeling to help build a list focused on the students you know will not only apply, but also show up next August.

✅ Prioritize the students most likely to engage
✅ Avoid wasting resources on low-interest prospects
✅ Set your team up for better conversion rates later in the funnel

Today’s students are much more reticent about sharing personal information, so when they do, they expect more than a generic “Hi, {{Preferred}}!” outreach. They’re looking for content that reflects their interests, matches their stage in the journey, and helps them see whether your school is a good fit. In short, they want to know you’ve been paying attention.

✅ Segment your messages by academics, geography, or student interests
✅ Plan out multiple touchpoints across print, email, and digital
✅ Build in moments that create connection through personalization

It’s no secret that students consume information across a range of platforms (often simultaneously), so to stay top of mind, your campaign needs to meet them where they are and offer a consistent, compelling experience across channels.

We’ve found that a combination of print, email, and digital works best, promoting stronger engagement and better outcomes. The key? Consistency! Your creative, messaging, and calls to action should all feel cohesive no matter where students encounter them.

✅ Ensure creative and messaging are aligned across the board
✅ Use digital ads and social media to reinforce emails and direct mail
✅ Keep track of all cross-channel performance

What they are: Multiple entries in your CRM for a single student — often under slight variations of their name, email address, or submission source.

Why they’re a problem: Duplicates inflate report counts, fragment communication history, and confuse staff who aren’t sure which record is “the right one.” Worse, they often trigger incorrect or redundant messaging sent to students.

Picture it: An applicant is accepted, but still receives an application deadline reminder because they exist in your database both as Jon and Jonathan, each with a different email address. The student is confused, the counselor apologizes, and trust erodes.

How to fix it:

• Implement consistent matching and deduplication criteria (email, date of birth, external IDs).
• Schedule routine duplicate audits (put them on your calendar), not just onetime cleanups.
• Train staff and partners on proper data submission standards before data ever hits your CRM.
• Empower one team or owner to resolve duplicates consistently, instead of relying on guesswork.

What they are: Imports are when you add a new group of records to your CRM, and Source is the tag on those records that tell you where it originated from — whether it be from a purchased list, student search response, campus visit, college fair, etc.

Why they’re a problem: At implementation, imports and source tracking are often pristine. Over time, however, they have a tendency to erode. New vendors appear. Lead gen processes change. New staff come in. The rules you initially set up for how imports and sources should be processed are forgotten, replaced with quick fixes to “just make it work.” Eventually, consistency disappears. Add to this the universal unease that surrounds imports (many enrollment professionals avoid touching them because one mistake can feel catastrophic), and bad habits persist far longer than they should.

How to fix it:

• Standardize naming conventions and source attribution codes.
• Review vendor files regularly to ensure formats haven’t drifted.
• Test changes in a test environment before production.

Clean source data doesn’t just help reporting — it fuels smarter recruitment and better ROI decisions.

What it is: Missing terms, student types, or email addresses that often come from incomplete forms, broken imports, or optional fields that should never have been optional.

Why it’s a problem: One missing value can exclude a student from an entire communication plan or recruitment campaign. (And, as every enrollment professional knows, the student who doesn’t receive a message is somehow always connected to the president.)

How to fix it:

• Make critical fields required at the point of entry (email address, DOB, etc.).
• Audit form completion and source files regularly.
• Run weekly or monthly queries to surface incomplete records.
• Build automated alerts for missing high‑impact data points.

Preventing missing data is far easier than retroactively repairing it — and far less stressful.

What it is: A tough truth. Some CRMs struggle not because of the software itself, but because of inconsistent implementations. Institutions that cycle through multiple consultants or approach setup piecemeal often end up with processes no one fully understands.

Why it’s a problem: Staff are forced to relearn workflows, documentation is outdated, and confidence drops as each configuration change introduces unexpected behavior.

How to fix it:

• Establish a clear CRM governance model and decision‑making process.
• Maintain up‑to‑date documentation for all major workflows.
• Invest in staff training — not just initial onboarding.
• Plan enhancements intentionally, not reactively.

A CRM should evolve with your institution.

What it is: Reports that take hours to build, are understood by only one person, or return different numbers compared to other reports.

Why it’s a problem: When leadership can’t trust metrics, decisions stall. When staff can’t self‑serve data, bottlenecks form. And when reporting logic isn’t transparent, skepticism spreads.

How to fix it:

• Standardize definitions (apps, admits, deposits, inquiries).
• Centralize core institutional reports and protect them from ad‑hoc changes.
• Gradually train teams on how data is generated — not just how to export it.

Good reporting doesn’t just answer questions, it builds institutional confidence.

Right now, Gen Z makes up virtually your entire prospective student pool. As we know, this generation is highly attuned to authentic interactions, treats technology as an extension of itself, and is rapidly incorporating AI tools into daily life. According to Hanover Research, 65% of Gen Z used an AI chatbot as a replacement for a Google search in the past month alone. These students are active, discerning consumers who can tell the difference between a message crafted for them and one that simply drops in their name.

Right behind this group? Gen Alpha, the oldest members of which are just about to wrap up their freshman year of high school. While they won’t show up in your inquiry pool in significant numbers until about the 2027-2028 recruitment cycle, research tells us that their demand for personalization is on a whole different level from their predecessors. According to Horizon Media, Gen Alpha is the first algorithmically native generation, shaped by algorithmic content from infancy. They are extremely brand aware. They are extremely marketing savvy. And they are extremely good at filtering out anything that doesn’t speak directly to their interests.

Gen Alpha is the first algorithmically native generation, shaped by algorithmic content from infancy.

The takeaway here is not “panic about Gen Alpha.” It’s this: The habits, systems, and communication strategies you build to serve Gen Z well are exactly what will prepare you for the changes to come with Gen Alpha. And those habits start by taking a deep dive into the types of campaigns you’re running and getting your drip vs. date-based campaigns balanced.

Let’s be fair. Drip and workflow campaigns have a legitimate role in your communications strategy and, as stated above, should play a role throughout the lifecycle. A welcome sequence for new leads? Great. An application incentive flow to boost completion rates? Smart. Event registration confirmation and reminders? Absolutely.

Notice the pattern? These are all:

• Short
• Goal-oriented
• Built with clear end points

Just enough messages to accomplish the objective — and not one more.

The trouble starts when campaigns stop being tactical tools and start becoming the entire strategy. When every stage of the funnel has its own multi-message/text sequence — and those sequences just keep running and running and running — that’s when things can go sideways.

Here’s why:

1. They’re Almost Impossible to Coordinate
When you have long-running campaigns, it becomes nearly impossible for teams to track what messages are going to which students and when. Sure, they can click into individual records and see what just dropped, but what about the next message? And how does it all tie together? Not having easy access to that information is a critical miss. Why? Because lack of coordination leads to inbox overload.

A student can wake up on a Tuesday morning to find:

• A nurture message from Admissions
• An invite from a coach to visit the team
• A college fair reminder from their counselor

And no one at your school has any idea that the others even exist…

Even worse? When drip campaigns include messages or texts from individual counselors. Imagine being that student and getting two emails or two messages from the same person in one day — on completely unrelated topics — with no acknowledgement of the earlier message.

You know what that makes students want to do? Unsubscribe.

Honestly, how many Temu emails did you receive before finally hitting the button?

Exactly. Don’t be like Temu.

Every spam complaint hurts your deliverability. Every unsubscribe shrinks your pool. In a time when every prospective student matters, we don’t need to give them reasons to disengage.

2. They Kill Your Ability to Respond to the Moment — And the Moment Is Everything
A 12-month workflow is, by definition, written for a version of the world that no longer exists by the time it finishes running.

And the world moves fast.

When your team has a genuine opportunity to connect with prospects (teams making the playoffs, a major speaker announced, a campus moment going viral), a drip-heavy strategy leaves you no room to act on it. You can’t pause the sequence. You can’t slip in something timely. You’re left hoping the next scheduled message still makes sense in the time and on the day it’s delivered.

That’s not a strategy. That’s autopilot.

3. They Increase Your Tone-Deaf Risk
This is the one that’s kept me up at night.

Imagine a workflow with a message about campus safety that drops on the anniversary of a school shooting, or the same day another tragedy takes place.

It may sound extreme, but the reality is sobering: According to Hanover, U.S. schools experienced 233 shooting incidents in 2025 alone — incidents that directly affect the schools your prospects attend.

Gen Z’s worldview has been profoundly shaped by these events, making it absolutely critical to maintain control over the timing of potentially sensitive communications.

4. They Get Stale — Quietly
Every message sitting in a long drip sequence is a message that likely hasn’t been reviewed in a while.

Outdated photos. Incorrect deadlines. Links to pages that no longer exist. Copy that made sense two years ago but misses the mark today.

The longer the campaign, the higher the risk that something outdated or inaccurate is already queued up, just waiting to arrive in a student’s inbox.

Here’s the honest pitch: Date-based campaigns put a human back in the loop.

Someone on your team makes a deliberate decision — this message, to this audience, on this date, for this reason. That intentionality alone elevates the quality of the communication.

And the benefits add up quickly.

You Stay Agile
When something happens — in the world, on campus, in your community — you can respond.

You can show up in a student’s inbox like a school that’s paying attention, not like one that just fired off a message regardless of context.

Your team made the playoffs? Send something.

Your campus was just named the most beautiful in the region? Send something.

Date-based campaigns make that possible.

And don’t underestimate the power of pairing your email with a well-timed text. SMS and MMS create a sense of immediacy in a way email can’t always match. A GIF that captures the energy of the moment, sent at the right time to the right segment, is exactly the kind of communication Gen Z notices — and remembers.

Surprises? Zero.
You always know exactly who’s getting what and when.

No more “wait, is that workflow still running?” moments. You can see the full picture of what’s going out on any given day and make smart, informed decisions about it — including when not to send.

You Can Finally Coordinate!
This one may be underrated, but having a shared content calendar changes everything.

With all of your different offices — athletics, housing, student life, admissions — able to see what’s planned, they can make smarter decisions about when, and if, they should add to the mix.

This isn’t just about avoiding overlap, either. It’s about presenting a cohesive, thoughtful experience to prospective students and families.

I’m so glad you asked! Start right here with these three concrete steps to whip your communications strategy into shape.

Step 1: Conduct an Audit
Before you do anything, take stock of what’s already running. Pull up your CRM, dive into your reports, and answer these questions:

• How many active drip or workflow campaigns do you currently have?
• What’s the goal of each one?
• How many messages does each campaign contain?
  Pro Tip: If you’re seeing double digits, pause and take a breath. If you’re seeing triple digits in a single campaign (hey, it happens!), stop reading and call us.
• What are your conversion rates? (You are tracking conversions, right? Not just opens and clicks?)

This audit is often where reality starts to set in. Teams uncover forgotten campaigns, campaigns built for a goal that’s no longer relevant, and messaging that hasn’t exactly aged well.

It can feel overwhelming. It can be overwhelming. But we’re here, without judgement, to help clean things up. All you have to do is reach out.

Step 2: Build a Content Calendar
Once you know what you have, start mapping what you want and need.

The good news here is that there’s a natural rhythm to enrollment communications that you can use as your scaffolding. There are inquiry spikes, application deadlines, decision periods, financial aid releases, yield season, summer melt — each of which calls for a different kind of conversation with a different audience.

A content calendar helps you:

• See the full arc
• Plan intentionally
• Create space for timely, unplanned moments

And that last one matters. Flexibility doesn’t happen by accident… it needs to be built into the foundation.

Step 3: Find Your Sweet Spot
Drip and workflow campaigns aren’t going anywhere — and they shouldn’t.

But every sequence you run should answer two questions:

1. What is the goal?
2. What is the minimum number of messages needed to achieve it?

If you can’t answer question one, retire the campaign.
If the second answer is creeping past eight, take another look or give us a call to lend a hand.

Here are a few examples of drip campaigns that work:

Initial Nurture Flow: Short and focused. Cover the top three to five topics that every inquiry needs to know about your school and nothing else. Resist the urge to cram everything in. Instead, focus on piqueing their interest and getting the click. Everything they need should be on your website.

Event Flows: Invitations, registration confirmation, a reminder or two, and a post-event follow-up. Clean, functional, done.

Behavior Flows: Further demonstrate you’re paying attention by using behavior-triggered communications. Has a student visited your application page a few times but hasn’t started their app? Send them a targeted sequence designed to get them across the finish line.

This isn’t just about improving today’s strategy. It’s about being ready for a generation that will demand even more.

According to research from Horizon Media, Encoura, and Salesforce, Gen Alpha is coming in with some seriously high expectations. They see education as a service to be experienced on their terms — personalized down to the most minute detail (remember, they’ve been experiencing algorithmic content their entire lives), cross-platform, and responsive.

The institutions that will be ready for this group aren’t going to be the ones scrambling to rethink their strategy in 2027. They’ll be the ones using 2026 to streamline their campaigns and build out flexible, date-based, responsive strategies now.

First off, let’s define a couple terms. Similar to SEO, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are both web search strategies; however, they specifically target AI queries. DigiDay has more details on the two, but here’s a quick rundown on how they differ:

• AEO: Focuses on snippets of information that target voice tools such as Alexa and Siri that give fast, direct answers.
• GEO: Focuses on trusted, conversational content preferred by generative AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini, which return highly detailed and cited summaries in response to prompts and search queries.

Prior to AI, the goal was to be ranked high by search engines, namely Google. But now it’s being ranked high by search engines and about having content that AI can turn to when responding to prompts and web searches. That’s where AEO and GEO come into play: creating content that’s both trustworthy and human, with key details in plain sight, easy for AI to find and cite.

Let’s see how these new tools work by putting them to the test in before-and-after examples. We’ll start with content you might find on a typical college visit webpage.

Here’s another example using content from an admissions page about how to apply.

Clear sentences. Bulleted lists. Step-by-step instructions. As you see, it’s far from rocket science. Just like us humans, AI doesn’t want to labor through complex prose. Keep it simple and friendly, ensuring the most important details (who, what, where, when, why) aren’t lost in a sea of words. But it doesn’t end there. From ensuring your content is up to date to including trusted sources where appropriate, there are other ways to keep the bots coming back for more — and we can help with all that.

About 50% of people are using chatbots (a percentage that’s likely much higher among younger users) as their preferred search tool, reading detailed summaries and clicking on the content that AI trusts most. To make sure your content ends up in that prime real estate at the top of search returns, AEO and GEO should be a priority in your content strategy. In fact, one study saw a 62% increase in web traffic after AI optimization. And these numbers are only going up from here on out.