Coker University is a private liberal arts university with approximately 1,200 students located in Hartsville, South Carolina. Founded in 1908, Coker grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees. It is ranked among the “Best Colleges” in the South by U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review, and has been ranked by the Washington Monthly as one of the top colleges in South Carolina for value.
The recruiting team was led by Adam Connolly, Vice President for Enrollment Management. After coming to Coker, Connolly evaluated multiple factors to determine his recruiting strategy. He looked at Coker’s market potential, the school’s recruiting pipeline, and austere departmental resources.
In his previous position, Connolly served at a school that relied on large-scale Student Search. He had seen how big budgets created big pools of soft inquiries, and that a large percentage of overly soft inquiries did not translate into yield. At Coker, Connolly wanted a better plan to generate inquiries and increase return on investment (ROI).
Instead of a large-scale Student Search, Connolly decided to invest in a microSEARCH™ campaign from enrollmentFUEL. He chose this type of campaign because it offered flexibility for both senior and junior Search, allowing him to deploy resources when he felt they were needed. Connolly also wanted to test a hypothesis about the timing of a senior Student Search campaign, and microSEARCH made that possible.
enrollmentFUEL studied Coker’s value proposition and decided to highlight the school’s small class size with a round table classroom where professors and students participate in a collaborative learning setting.
The strategic team directed the efforts of both the creative designers and HTML developers shaping an experience that effectively integrated social media display ads, IP targeting ads, emails, nurturing emails—that were drip sequenced—when triggered by engagement. Lastly, high-performance direct mail ignited the campaign that had a strong digital, premarketing investment. All channels pushed suspects to a PURL landing page which included a tracking pixel, capturing and measuring activity by students who later returned to the Coker website. Activity Reporting by enrollmentFUEL aided the efforts of the Coker admissions team. The results were new levels in secured deposits which led to a 2018 record enrollment not seen in over 100 years.
With the help of microSEARCH, Coker successfully met their numbers for freshmen recruitment and grew overall enrollment. Connolly said ” enrollmentFUEL’s microSEARCH enabled us to run the type of campaign we needed at the right time. The campaign’s impactful, high energy programs captured Coker’s voice and highlighted the value proposition of the school. They produced quality leads and high yield. microSEARCH should be part of every college’s arsenal of Student Search options. Coker can always expect a significant percentage of its enrollment to originate from the microSEARCH campaigns.”
