What Higher Ed Can Learn from Betabrand: Building Feedback Loops That Work

We say we build for students. Rarely do we build with them.

I own a pair of dress pant yoga pants.

If you've never heard of them, let me explain.

They look like dress pants.

They feel like yoga pants.

They have belt loops, no zipper, and they are the most comfortable thing I have ever worn to a professional event.

For years, working in enrollment and later as a consultant — always moving, always presenting, always needing to look put-together while being on my feet for hours — they were a near-daily staple.

And here's the thing about those pants: Betabrand didn't guess that someone like me needed them.

They asked.

The Betabrand Model

Betabrand is a San Francisco-based clothing company built on a premise that sounds almost too simple to be real: don't design in a vacuum. Before they commit to production, they post sketches. They share concepts. They ask their community to vote on colors, features, and styles — and they build what wins.

Their entire travel clothing line — a collection specifically designed to look professional while surviving a cross-country flight — exists because customers said: I need this. I need to look polished at a conference, but I also need to survive six hours in a middle seat without arriving in a wrinkled mess.

Betabrand listens. They built it. Then those customers become loyal advocates.

They call themselves always in beta. Always testing. Always improving. It is not a marketing slogan. It is an operating philosophy.

And it is exactly what most enrollment and marketing offices are not doing.

The Gap Between Building For and Building With

Here is a question worth sitting with: When was the last time your institution asked students what they actually needed from a communication...before you sent it?

Not a post-send survey. Not an annual satisfaction report. Before.

When did you share a draft email with a group of current students and ask whether it made sense to them? When did you let a group of prospective students vote on what information they most wanted on your financial aid page before you redesigned it? When did you pay attention to what students were saying about you on Reddit or Discord or TikTok, not to monitor it, but to learn from it?

The answer, for most institutions, is rarely or never.

And this matters more than it used to, because the students we are trying to reach have grown up in an era where brands that listen win and brands that broadcast lose.

IBM research found that Gen Z's top expectations for brands include transparency, authenticity, and opportunities for engagement and co-creation. Not just communication. Co-creation.

Higher education has been slow to internalize what consumer brands figured out years ago: the most loyal audience is one that helped build the thing they're loyal to.

Feedback Loops: What Students Are Already Telling You

Here is the part that should give enrollment leaders pause: students are already giving you feedback. Constantly. You're just not always in the room where it's happening!

They are posting on Reddit threads about your financial aid office. They are sharing screenshots of your emails on Discord with comments about what didn't make sense. They are making TikToks about their campus visit experience (sometimes glowing, sometimes not). They are telling each other, in spaces you are not monitoring, exactly what they wish you had said differently, explained more clearly, or done better.

The feedback loop exists. The question is whether you have built a way to receive it.

This doesn't require a sophisticated platform or a large budget. It requires intention and a genuine willingness to hear things you may not want to hear.

A few practical starting points:

• Pulse surveys that actually ask the right questions. Not "How satisfied are you with your experience?" but "What was the most confusing part of the application process?" or "What information were you looking for on our website that you couldn't find?" The more specific the question, the more useful the answer.

  
  

• Student communication review panels. Before your next major communication goes out, whether it's the financial aid notification, the admitted student email or the yield event invitation, share a draft with a small group of students who represent the audience you're writing for. Ask them what landed and what didn't. Their answers will almost always surprise you.

  
  

• Listening to where students are already talking. This does not mean creating a Reddit account and pretending to be a student. It means reading what students are genuinely saying about the college search experience, about your institution, about the moments that mattered and the moments that fell flat. That intelligence is available, free, and almost universally ignored.

The Survey Toolkit Every Enrollment Office Should Use

Building a feedback loop requires having a few instruments you use regularly, not once a year in a comprehensive survey that takes 45 minutes and gets a 12% response rate. But short, frequent, focused check-ins that become part of the rhythm of how you operate.

Here are the surveys worth running on a consistent cadence:

• Post-visit survey (within 24 hours). What was the one thing that exceeded your expectations? What was the one thing that didn't? Two questions. Keep it short. The data will compound over time into something genuinely useful.

  
  

• Financial aid package comprehension check. After packages go out, ask a sample of students: What questions do you have after reviewing your package? What was unclear? The answers will directly inform how you design next year's package — and what your counselors need to be prepared to explain.

  
  

• Mid-inquiry temperature check. At the 60-day mark after an initial inquiry, before a student has applied, ask them: What is holding you back from applying? Not pushing toward application — genuinely asking. The answers tell you where your funnel is leaking and why.

  
  

• Post-deposit belonging check-in. After a student deposits, ask: What made you choose us? What are you most excited about? What are you most nervous about? The third question is the one that matters most — it tells you exactly what your summer communication needs to address before August.

None of these are complicated. All of them will give you more useful insight than your annual report.

The Betabrand Lesson for Enrollment

Betabrand does not have the most technically sophisticated products in their category. What they have is a community that feels genuinely heard, and that community rewards them with loyalty, advocacy, and word-of-mouth that no marketing budget can replicate.

In enrollment, the equivalent of that loyalty is a student who tells their younger sibling to apply. A family that sends their second child without hesitation. A deposited student who arrives in August already excited rather than uncertain.

That does not come from a well-crafted email campaign.

It comes from building something that students had a hand in shaping — even if that hand was just a survey response that led a team to redesign a financial aid page, or a focus group that helped simplify a confusing next-steps checklist, or a Reddit thread that surfaced a concern no one in the admissions office had thought to ask about.

Always in beta. Always testing. Always improving.

It's not just a good business model for a clothing company.

It's a communication philosophy that enrollment and marketing offices are overdue to adopt.

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At Square One Consulting, I help enrollment and marketing teams build communication strategies that actually reflect what students and families need — not just what institutions assume they want. If you're ready to close the gap between your message and your audience, let's talk.