On the ways that we communicate with prospects.

It happens every year.  August hits, and I start thinking about the next recruitment cycle and the changes that I will make.  First on my list is preparing for the fall travel season, but I’m also considering how I’ll make sure of different means of communication when working with my prospects:

• Print. This is obviously a given for most offices, and most of what we do is automated.  I’ve begun to really question this way of delivering content.  It’s so expensive, and we have no way of evaluating its effectiveness.
• Phone. There’s no doubt that this has been the status quo for some time in terms of connecting with prospects, but do we actually find the student where he or she wants to be found?  How do we weigh the value of this personal connection against the frustration we may cause in some students at being contacted by phone?
• Email. This is a go-to for me when I need to make quick contact with a student, but there’s a quite a bit out there that suggests that high school students may not be using email as much as they think we are. In fact, I was just thinking earlier this week how rare it is for me to open up my Gmail account and compose an email. If I do, it’s to connect with family or those who aren’t on Facebook or Twitter.
• Chat. For a while I made my AOL screen name available to prospects.  I rarely received any message in that medium. Since then we’ve installed Google Chatback on our staff pages to increase our accesibility for prospective students.
• Video. One goal I have for the year is to make use of my iSight camera for video chat with prospects. Is this realistic?

As I consider all of these mediums I recognize that it’s a thoughtful mix that will bring a prospect to application and eventually enrollment. Our challenge: that mix is probably changing every month, perhaps every week. Yearly shifts and trends are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

What will your strategy be?