Notes from the field

Trader Joe’s has built remarkable customer loyalty by doing something many colleges struggle to do: being exceptionally clear about who it is, who it serves and what kind of experience it wants to create. Here are five lessons higher education enrollment marketing teams can borrow, from ruthless curation and emotional differentiation to surprise-and-delight moments and genuinely human interactions.

We say we build for students. But when do we actually build with them? A clothing brand's surprisingly brilliant strategy might be the most useful framework enrollment and marketing leaders haven't tried yet.

Higher education has its own language, but for first-generation families, that language can sound like a locked door. From jargon and acronyms to deficit-based labels, colleges often communicate in ways that confuse the very students they hope to include. This piece unpacks how words quietly shape belonging — and how marketers and enrollment leaders can rewrite them to open more doors.

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.

After a year of secret shopping as a student and parent, I uncovered what most colleges get wrong about text messaging. Generic, one-off blasts don’t build trust—thoughtful, timely, personalized texts do. In this episode, we explore what works, what doesn’t, and how to make SMS a real relationship builder.

Higher education websites are often dense and impersonal. What if these websites could work more like Amazon?