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Notes from the field
Higher Ed Trends, Strategies, and Solutions
Content Strategy


What Behavioral Economics Can Teach Us About Financial Aid Packages
Loss aversion — the Nobel Prize-winning insight that losses hurt twice as much as equivalent gains feel good — is reshaping how families read your financial aid package. Here's why that matters, and what you can do about it.

Laura Rudolph
4 days ago4 min read


Scarcity, Urgency and Trust: How Deposit Deadline Emails Can Backfire
Every yield season, someone writes a 'Last Chance to Secure Your Spot' email. But urgency applied to an undecided student doesn't create a decision — it creates pressure.

Laura Rudolph
Apr 166 min read


HB 307: Kentucky Just Changed the Rules on Admissions. Is Your Team Ready?
Kentucky’s proactive admissions law is officially on the books — and it raises questions that go well beyond policy. Who’s already in your pipeline? How do you sort a new population you’ve never recruited before? And is your CRM actually ready? Here’s where to start.

Laura Rudolph
Apr 128 min read


What the Hotel Industry Knows About Yield That We Don't
Hotels solved the 'almost booked' problem years ago. Here's what enrollment teams can steal from hospitality to move students toward “yes”.

Laura Rudolph
Apr 35 min read


First-Gen Yield Campaign Drives 21.7% Deposit Growth at a Regional Public University
This regional public university had no real admitted student campaign. For a campus where many students would be first-generation college-goers, that silence carried real risk. The campaign Square One built drove 21.7% deposit growth year over year.

Laura Rudolph
Mar 272 min read


What is Visual Information Design and Why Does it Matter in Higher Ed?
We talk about “clarity” all the time in higher ed. But clarity isn’t bold text or better branding. It’s design. It’s structure. It’s how information meets someone else’s brain. Newspaper infographics have mastered this for decades. Here’s what enrollment marketers can learn about reducing friction, guiding attention, and helping students actually understand what to do next.

Laura Rudolph
Mar 255 min read


Speaking First-Gen, Part 3: The TRUST Framework
After nearly two decades in higher education, I realized the biggest barrier for first-generation students is not access, it is understanding. The words we use, the tone we take, and the way we ask shape whether a student feels college is for them. The TRUST Messaging Framework — Teach, Respond, Understand, Simplify, Talk, was born from thousands of real emails and conversations. It is a tool any campus communicator can use to build clarity, compassion, and connection across

Laura Rudolph
Dec 3, 20256 min read


Four Tagline Archetypes — And How to Make Them Work Harder
This time of year, someone is going to pull up last year's messaging and ask: are we still saying this? Before you answer, it's worth understanding the patterns that show up again and again in higher ed enrollment marketing — what makes them tempting, what they unintentionally signal, and how to make them work harder without starting over.

Laura Rudolph
May 31, 20257 min read
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