Looking back to November 2020, when paid media networks paused political ads, our clients kept running ads because it was both a pivotal point in senior search season and a prime time for graduate search to take off.

In one noteworthy example, a partner school who is our biggest daily spender in paid media, and mainly does targeted ads, saw a 13% increase in impressions and 12% increase in clicks during election week, compared to the week prior. However, the school’s cost per lead also increased significantly week over week, and there were fewer conversions.

Meanwhile, one of our biggest college brands—a nationally recognized university in Virginia—ran an apply campaign that week targeting a large list of prospects (read: a limited and defined audience, but still a very large group). They saw lower clicks, lower conversions, and a higher cost per click, compared to the previous week.

“This exciting addition of Feedback’s unique brand of social listening and real human analysis is a perfect match for Spark451’s hyper-personalized approach to persona modeling, lead generation, and brand awareness campaigns,” says Pete Colbert, Senior Business Development Strategist at Spark451. “While we’ve always taken a data-driven approach to marketing for higher education, the additional insights we’ll receive from Feedback will expand our perspective and further enrich our strategic planning, allowing us to develop even more effective campaigns for our college and university partners.”

“While surveys and focus groups showcase how your many audiences (from the prospective student to the friend of the college) speak when prompted, our digital ethnographic approach using actual behaviorists to analyze how discreet audiences discuss, ask, respond, interact, and simply behave in all corners of the internet helps build a more complete picture,” adds Feedback Principal Dean Browell, PhD. “We’re excited to bring more of our solutions to higher education by formally expanding our great relationship with Spark451.”

Dare I say that higher education is infamously glacial? Well, it’s true. Our institutions each have a wide breadth of processes, procedures, programs, and regulations that tend to make us about as agile as a large oil tanker at sea.

However, when push came to shove this year, your institution’s faculty and staff made herculean efforts and demonstrated the ability to be nimble in an environment that required such speed and institutional agility. You have so much to be proud of.

First, you and your colleagues salvaged the Spring 2020 semester by rapidly and safely closing campuses across the country and disseminating critical information to students, families, and the community. During that period, I spoke with presidents at a few schools who were proud of the fact that they could make swift decisions that directly benefited their students’ health.

Second, your team still enrolled a new student class for the fall. You shifted very important on-campus events, like admitted student days, to virtual environments. You also worked to ensure applicants and their families had their questions answered and could find a place they would call home for the next four years.

Third, your colleagues figured out ways to work together and safely kick off the fall semester by introducing concepts such as hybrid environments, quarantine spaces, mask policies, and more.

These are lessons that you will carry with you for your professional life. Plus, now we’ve learned that higher ed can be just as nimble of an environment as as a tech startup…OK, maybe that’s a stretch, but you definitely moved from an oil tanker to a schooner. Congratulations!

For this silver lining, I reflect on a discussion I had earlier this year with a vice president at a major public institution/system in the northeast. She relayed to me the story that just a few years ago, as they were upgrading the connectivity throughout campus, the administration wanted to install webcams in classrooms for future use. At that time, the faculty union filed a grievance stating that doing so would undermine their ability to protect the privacy of their intellectual property, the academic coursework. They won that grievance.

Yet, just a few years later, your institutions were literally placed in a do-or-die academic situation and everyone involved rose nicely to the challenge. Before this year, some faculty had never actually used a Zoom, Teams, or Meets environment, but they dug in and found a way. And in an incredibly short time, they gave new credibility to the online delivery of academic coursework.

I like to keep things real and recognize that, in some cases, it was less than ideal—maybe even impossible. Some classes require labs or other in-person experiences, like clinicals and student-teaching, that are invaluable to achieving a successful program. Yet, still, for the vast majority of undergraduate programs, 2020 is a true milestone year for the online delivery of academic content.

(As a side note, for those of you who are in geographic areas where snowfall can happen, I think we just witnessed the end of snow days as we know them for all students from middle school through college. Academic evolution is happening right in front of our eyes.)

If there is one message that came out of 2020 and the COVID pandemic, it is that the public truly values the student experience your campus provides and that many students want to be on your campuses–even if that means attending classes virtually. And the majority of your campuses delivered on that experience with safety and support in force.

In the late spring, we surveyed the parents of freshman students and asked them how they felt about their students returning to school in the fall. Here’s what they had to say:

You may think this applies exclusively to undergraduate students and programs, but an even more recent survey of domestic graduate intenders also demonstrated a continued preference for in-person learning:

As professionals in college admissions, we have had the great opportunity to develop our own skills, connect with friends, and network with new colleagues through a wealth of professional conferences. They range from regional groups to national conferences and cover every aspect of our professional lives. Honestly, as a person who attended my first conference in 1991, it became easy to take these conferences for granted, and I sometimes considered attending them a borderline chore as opposed to a phenomenal opportunity.

Yet 2020 (and possibly 2021) took those precious opportunities away from us. Sure, we have all made an effort to make the best of the situation by participating or presenting in virtual conferences. However, much like students who prefer being on campus, we realize that the in-person experience of being with an incredibly talented group of people for a few days to learn from each other is truly irreplaceable.

My hope for 2021 is that we get to a place where we feel it’s safe to meet, interact, and enjoy each other’s company in person.

You’ve heard about them. You’ve likely done your own research on them (and if not, there are countless resources available if you need to get up to speed). In fact, our 2020 Graduate School Intenders Survey found that:

• Email and text messages are their preferred direct channels of communication
• Most of these students spend more than three hours a day on social media
• Google is the most used resource in their search for graduate programs

As our survey confirmed, Gen Z is a “just-Google-it” generation who will never know the pain of scouring a library full of encyclopedias to find an answer, waiting on a dial-up connection, or the primitive experience of an “AOL keyword search.”

To reach this audience where they are, it’s crucial to run digital media campaigns that use Google Search Ads (formerly AdWords) paired with an engaging landing page. Google Ads allow you to deliver content that directly relates to what these students are searching for. For example, an ad for your Master of Business Administration program can be there when a prospective student searches Google for the “best MBA program.” Similarly, you can deliver an ad for your Master’s of Education program to those searching for answers to questions like “How do I become a teacher?”

Appearing at the top of their search with a succinct, engaging value proposition can earn you clicks and new leads from those eager to learn more about your program. Plus, our team of digital marketing experts can help you get the most out of each Google Ads campaign by continuously optimizing your ads and their paired landing pages.

Once you pull these students into your funnel, you’ll need to deliver a steady stream of relevant messaging in order to keep them engaged, and ultimately, drive them to apply and enroll. Spark451 has been perfecting outreach methods to Gen Z for years with great success. We’ve built key strategies that meet this generation where they are — online and mobile. Our secret recipe for success isn’t all that secretive:

• Hyper-personalized, segmented, and captivating e-communications
• Robust, personalized text messaging
• An extensive digital media strategy implemented across targeted social platforms

Each of these “ingredients” is, of course, created with mobile-friendly design and accessibility in mind.

In this digital age, consumers are under constant pressure to buy something new or inquire about a new product or service. But, have you ever wondered why companies with deadline-driven campaigns, such as Amazon’s Prime Days, are so successful?

Marketing campaigns that emphasize deadlines compel consumers to take immediate action because they tap into our innate fear of missing out. This sense of urgency can be easily replicated in the higher education landscape.

Take, for example, a recent Spark451 partner case study: A small, private, liberal arts college in suburban Pennsylvania came to us looking for a strong winter push for Fall 2020 applications. We quickly launched our Supplemental Senior Search Program, which features a personalized letter and tip-in card, delivered in a branded envelope, as well as an accompanying e-communications nurture stream. Because all of the messaging prominently promoted an application deadline that was set for just a few weeks after we launched (and we tied in some special incentives), students immediately took action. In just a few short weeks, the effort provided a 27% lift in applications.

At this point, your team has likely just finished launching your initial Senior Search campaign, and you’re starting to see your efforts roll in, so you’re probably wondering why you should even consider a Supplemental Senior Search. The short answer: Because now is the time to make sure all your bases are covered to ensure a successful year.

Supplemental Senior Search is a proven tactic for eliciting additional applications from those in your search pool who are actively engaging with your institution, or who have a high likelihood to apply.

At Spark451, we have conducted many successful Supplemental Senior Search campaigns— both for longstanding partnering institutions as well as new-to-us schools that have needed a late-stage push to increase their incoming classes. In fact, we’ve observed that students who receive these Supplemental Senior Search packages are twice as likely to submit an application than those who don’t receive the mailings.

To help our partner raise awareness of the program among qualified undergraduate students, and drive them to apply, Spark451 developed a combination of digital communications, including:

• A robust series of search emails
• Facebook and Instagram ad creative for a digital lead-generation campaign
• A dedicated inquiry-capture landing page
• A downloadable fact sheet (which the school ultimately used as a printed handout as well!)
• An informational marketing video
• A compelling series of prospect nurture emails

While adhering to the school’s larger brand, these materials built upon and expanded an existing marketing framework and helped refine key messages about the program’s unique benefits. In select instances, the materials were delivered by third parties as needed. For example, the emails were built and deployed from the school’s existing CRM, and the digital media ads were launched by the institution’s existing digital advertising partner agency. Regardless of how the materials were delivered, Spark451 ensured that the messaging and look was unified and suited for the niche audience.

Ultimately, the program’s administrators reported the following results for the 2020 cohort:

• A 64% year-over-year increase in started applications
• A 76% year-over-year increase in submitted applications

While we were all still working remotely during the COVID-19 shutdowns, Sparklers from every discipline and department got together for virtual brainstorming sessions, during which all participants were encouraged to share their ideas. The only rule—that there were no rules!

After we generated a lengthy list of ideas for potential products, technological tools, and infrastructural improvements, participants voted to select four ideas to pursue further. Once the finalists were selected, the individuals who had proposed the ideas were each allowed to recruit two other employees to help them flesh out their ideas and prepare presentations to “sell” their ideas to the entire company. (Think “Shark Tank,” or as some of us came to call it, “Spark Tank!”)

Following the presentations this summer, the entire company was asked to rate each idea according to the following metrics:

• Spark451 integration (how it aligned with our culture and mission)
• Higher-education integration (how well does it solve a problem in our industry?)
• Attainability
• Stability
• Usability
• Marketability

Curious as to how hot TikTok actually is right now? With more than 63.3 million installs in August 2020 alone, TikTok was the most downloaded social media app (excluding games) that month, according to data from Sensor Tower.

You might be wondering if your prospective student audience is giving TikTok enough attention to justify spending ad dollars on a new channel, and the answer is a resounding yes! Not only does Hootsuite show that 69% of the app’s monthly active users are between the ages of 13–24, but our own recent mini-research experiment showed that teens spend several hours per week on the platform.

Interested in TikTok advertising? Here are a few things you need to know:

1. TikTok is ideal for Gen Z: As mentioned above, the majority of TikTok users are under the age of 24, which makes the platform ideal for reaching prospective undergraduates, transfer students, or recent graduates who may be considering graduate school.
2. TikTok is well-suited for branding efforts: TikTok is an upper-funnel method of advertising that can help you build brand awareness with your target audience.
3. TikTok users are engaged: According to TikTok, the average user spends over 71 minutes a day on the app and opens it more than 14 times a day.
4. Targeting is key: TikTok offers robust targeting opportunities, allowing us to reach users by demographic, interests, geographic location, and more. Additionally, we can leverage first– and third-party data, in addition to retargeting and lookalike audiences, to ensure you can deliver your content to users with whom it’s most likely to resonate.
5. TikTok requires its own unique creative: Your ad creative on TikTok needs to be mobile-friendly video and appear to be native to the platform. Animation, music, and authenticity are key. Plus, TikTok ads need to be refreshed regularly to avoid ad fatigue within the quick-moving platform.