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Imagine being a high school student right now.
Students are juggling so many expectations, from teachers, parents and guardians, friends, society...not to mention information overload.
The college search process is filled with those expectations, plus endless information to sort through.
How do students make sense of it all? How can you communicate clearly to students so they understand why your college would be a good fit for them?
In this blog post, we explore how Scoir can help you communicate with students clearly and effectively, all while protecting their Personally Identifying Information (PII).
During the college search process, students (and their parents) can spend hundreds of hours researching college options based on intended major, sports, proximity to home, campus setting, and more.
Why?
Every college has information in different places. It can be a challenge to find whether or not a college meets the needs and interests of a given student. A student may need to dig through a dozen web pages only to find out that a college doesn’t offer the major they want. This is part of the reason why students are often more likely to consider colleges that family and friends attended instead of branching out to explore colleges outside of their network.
At the same time, students often receive a ton of emails, flyers, calls, and more from colleges that are trying to recruit them.
At Scoir we take a different approach to recruitment marketing. Unlike traditional student recruitment strategies that capture student data and turn around and sell that data to colleges, we keep PII private and instead surface relevant content based on student interests.
Plus, we connect colleges to students who have already expressed interest in your institution, a win-win!
We set out to solve these challenges for both students and colleges. Premium Presence takes colleges' existing content about majors, student life, and more and pulls it into their College Profile on Scoir. When students search for colleges on Scoir based on their desired criteria, Scoir makes it easier for students to find the content they are most interested in.
For example, if a student is interested in studying Computer Science at a college that has a student a cappella group as well as hiking near campus, Scoir will dynamically personalize every partner college profile the student views with content related to Computer Science, a cappella, and hiking first, if offered by the college.
Students can find their fit faster, and Premium Presence colleges ensure they’re being evaluated on the programs they offer, not how easy (or difficult) their website is to navigate.
Scalable personalization is a key differentiator for Scoir and central to our student-centered approach. In a recent podcast episode, we sat down with Scoir’s Chief Experience Officer, Matt Pitone, to discuss how personalization is table stakes for today’s students and the role it plays in the college search process. Leveraging content is a way to authentically engage students without advertising and ensures the right information is in front of the right student at the right time to create a more informed college search experience.
Scoir helps colleges work smarter, not harder, which is critical in this time of resource constraints. With Premium Presence, we take colleges' existing content they’ve already invested time and energy into creating and amplify the value by dynamically surfacing it to relevant students through #Posts. Based on our research, students on Scoir are 94% more likely to engage with content when it’s personalized to their interests. That means that more students will see, and engage, with the content and have a more positive experience because they are not digging for the information they want.
With Outreach Messaging, colleges can reach students who are following them on Scoir. You can message students and guardians outside of the noise of their email inboxes! Send or schedule messages by interests, academic focus, high school, and more to engage with families earlier in the recruiting process.
Followers who receive an outreach message are 3x more likely to apply!
You can also reach those whose preferences and interests match your institution, helping you better convert suspects into prospects (with a much smaller price tag than name buys).
With just 1 message, a state university in the south reached nearly 107K students, gained 128 followers, and saw almost 400 profile views!
For more information on Outreach Messaging in Scoir, check out Operationalizing Your Prospective Student Communications.
For message topic ideas, explore Content Topics to Consider for Each Enrollment Funnel Stage.
On Slate?
Explore our expanded messaging integration to see how you can streamline your workflow, unlock stealth student insights, track first source attribution data, and nurture stealth students where they are actively doing their college search.
It’s easy for colleges to start using Scoir. Our Customer Success team pre-populates the majority of the overview and academic interest content when a new college joins Scoir, so students can start engaging with the content right away. After initial setup, it’s easy to add or update content.
In our Content Playbook, we explore the types of content students engage with most on Scoir and variations in content interests by a few variables, including class year and more.
Plus, the in-app Insights Dashboard also provides daily insights into content opportunities, by providing top interests and academic focuses of both interested and reached student audiences.
The goal is to refresh your College Profile regularly to ensure students have access to the most accurate, and relevant, content to learn about colleges to make informed decisions.
All of these features make up Scoir's Advanced Solutions for colleges.
Abby deSilva is the Inbound Marketing Strategist at Scoir. She loves content ideation, writing, marketing strategy, HubSpot, and helping marketing and sales collaborate to deliver top-notch results.
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