Notes from the field

In enrollment email, the subject line is not a hook. It is a promise. And students — especially Gen Z — are increasingly good at knowing when that promise isn't going to be kept.

If something worked last year, it is tempting to reset it and run it again. But students change. Generations shift. And a comm flow that performed well in 2022 may be doing something very different in 2027. Here is how to find out before you build.

The first time I sat in a room to build a communication flow, someone asked: "What do we want students to know?" I raised my hand and said: "shouldn't we be asking what they want to know?" Nobody had an answer. Because nobody had asked.

May 1 has come and gone. For a lot of enrollment teams, the class still isn't settled. Students are taking longer to commit than ever before — and the communication strategies that worked during yield season are not the ones that will move them now.

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.

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.

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.

Everyone talks about A/B testing, but most enrollment teams save it for the highest-stakes moments. That’s backwards. Incomplete applicants are the perfect place to test voice, content, and conversion strategy. Here’s how to turn this overlooked segment into your most actionable enrollment lab.

Parents aren’t just influencers in the college search—they’re co-decision makers. Here’s how to build a parent communication plan that works

Financial aid emails should bring clarity, not confusion. Here’s where one missed the mark—and how colleges can do better.

Could sending an email with the wrong name—on purpose—grab attention and reinforce personalization? A creative risk with potential rewards.

A holiday gift guide email to parents turned into a powerful way to predict yield. Here’s how it worked—and how colleges can do the same.