Higher Ed Pulse

On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, Zach sits down with Erin Stine, an Account Executive at CampusESP, an edtech company that focuses on parent and family communication and engagement to help universities impact enrollment, student success, retention, and annual giving.  In March of 2009, Erin became an admissions counselor at The Parson’s School of Design, which is a part of The New...

On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, Zach sits down with Gerald Stanley, CEO of Inroads Analytics to discuss how predictive analytics helps higher ed marketers and admissions professionals make smarter decisions on how to spend their time, energy, and money.  Most enrollment marketers are at least somewhat familiar with predictive analytics as it relates to deciding which names to buy...

One of the biggest challenges for higher ed marketers is to personalize their communications at scale. No, not just use or personalization tokens, but actually communicate to prospects where, when, and how they wish to be engaged. On this episode of Chat’s What (S)he Said, Zach and Nicole break down several frameworks for communications segmentation and discuss when and where to use email, texting...

On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, we feature the first episode in Enrollify’s mini series on “My Career in Higher Education.” Janice Cheng-McConnell is the Assistant Director of Graduate Enrollment Communications at Syracuse University.  Janice started working in higher ed as a fry cook in the dining hall of her alma mater, Binghamton University. Since then, she has worked at state...

Higher ed marketers, like all marketers, are in the market for attention. And yet interestingly enough, there is often a huge chasm between where schools spend their media budgets and where current high school students spend their time.  On the pilot episode of Signals, Matt Diteljan, Co-Founder and CEO of Glacier, and our own Zach Busekrus from Enrollify, sit down for an educational conversation...

On this episode of Signals, Zach and Matt are joined by TikTok influencer, Paige Pinder, to discuss how to build, manage, and grow your school’s TikTok account. Paige shares detailed insight into what does and doesn’t work on the platform, who should be (and shouldn’t be) creating content on your TikTok account, and how to increase your chances of going viral.  Stream a fun dialogue filled with ca...

It can be difficult to measure the value of advertising — especially when it comes to brand awareness building campaigns. Gen Z has a 30-40% higher ad recall than millennials, but are also quicker to recognize and skip ads than older generations. On this episode of Signals, Zach and Matt break down helpful frameworks for how to create digital ads that capture and keep the attention of high school...

On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, we feature a recent conversation between Eric Stoller and Cliff Holekamp that was originally published on the In Your Element podcast — a sister show to The Enrollify Podcast.  This fast-paced dialogue drops listeners into a compelling conversation about higher education. In Your Element asks innovative leaders about the challenges, wins, and future...

Historically, colleges and universities across the country have thought about graduate student recruitment as second in importance to the traditional undergraduate student population. As such, graduate enrollment management teams tend to be under-resourced when it comes to time, money, and talent. But tides could be shifting as fewer students are going to college and as schools across the country...

Stream a dynamic conversation between Mickey and Zach on how enrollment managers can rethink their approach to virtual student recruitment in tandem with a more traditional approach. The duo unpacks how to create content that builds trust throughout a student’s journey from prospect to deposit and how to optimize communications that align with how students find, navigate, and digest information. A...

On the pilot episode of Chat’s What (S)he Said, Nicole and Zach take a deep dive into the should do’s and please don’ts of how to have productive recruitment conversations with Gen Z. Zach shares a couple of stories of how his siblings (Gen Z-ers) navigate, consume, and share information, and Nicole offers several frameworks for how admissions counselors and higher ed marketers can think about att...

On this week’s episode of Fanatical Fridays, Zach and Mickey pontificate about what the future of prospect engagement and the admissions team will look like at colleges and universities across the country.  The duo discusses the power of two way engagement and what it means for how enrollment teams operate both strategically and functionally. Learn more about this episode and about our sponsors in...

There are a lot of opinions out there about what the future of higher education should look like, but what do students actually think? After speaking with undergraduate students from across New England about what the future might have in store for collegiate education, Zach sat down with Julia Wheeler, a graduate student at Roger Williams University, to brainstorm what the future of graduate educa...

Virtual recruitment events are here to stay — even as traditional, in-person events return to most college campuses. On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, Zach sits down with Paige Steffy, a Customer Success Manager at Unibuddy, to discuss what the future holds for digital events. They discuss ideas for how to approach event marketing in unique and differentiated ways, how to structure...

Zach and Mickey discuss how admissions and marketing professionals should intentionally approach professional development opportunities. How should you decide what sessions to attend at your association’s event? What balance should you strike between tactical and inspirational content? Unlock Mickey’s hacks on how to make the most out of every conference and virtual event in this week’s episode of...

Marcus Hanscom is an incredible thinker with progressive insights about the future of graduate education and graduate student recruitment. On Enrollify’s recent Podcast Roadshow around New England, Zach sat down with Marcus to discuss the future of graduate enrollment management.  Marcus talked a lot about incentive alignment.  Graduate education needs to be more agile, advanced degrees that meet...

The student journey to enrollment is increasingly multidimensional. To meet students’ high expectations for virtual engagement, institutions will need to assess their various engagement tactics and work to bring them all under one hood. On this week’s episode, Zach sits down with Mallory Willsea, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Operations at PlatformQ Education, to discuss the strategies...

During one of the most tumultuous seasons in the life of higher education, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) cut their campus tuition in half — and claimed that students could still get the same high-quality education and campus experience, at a radically more affordable price.  On this week’s episode, we talk with Tim Whittum, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management at SNHU, abou...

Zach and Mickey debrief after The Enrollify Podcast Roadshow and riff on ideas about how the freshman year should be reimagined. Should students be required to enter college as “undecided”?  Should the core curriculum include content on “how to manage a budget”, “understanding your personality test”, “possible career pathways for people like you”, etc?   Students might have an idea of what they wa...

Experiential learning has become such a buzzword in higher ed.  I don’t know a single school that doesn’t tout their “experiential approach” to learning.  And yet, so many students graduate underprepared for the workforce.  In this episode, Dr. Neil Niman, a faculty member at University of New Hampshire’s College of Business and Economics joins Zach for a progressive conversation on the future of...

How do you evaluate your on-page SEO game? How do you optimize your website pages to increase their rankings for one or more targeted keywords? Learn a simple framework for how to dissect top ranking pages to boost your page on SERPs.   Also — The Enrollify Podcast is heading out on the road! Next week we will be interviewing students, VPs, and CMOs on the topic of “The Future of Higher Ed: What S...

On this week’s episode of Fanatical Fridays, Mickey outlines a framework he uses to help enrollment managers evaluate the strategies and tactics that worked best to recruit this year’s class (and the ones that that didn’t work at all), in order to craft a more sustainable recruitment plan for the next recruitment cycle. Learn more about this episode and about our sponsors in our show notes . - - -...

Over the last 18 months, Zach has been fortunate enough to interview more than 100 leaders in enrollment marketing on The Enrollify Podcast. From VPs of Enrollment Management to Directors of Marketing, from college presidents to famous SEOs, and from CEOs of EdTech companies to brand experts at education marketing agencies. And each bit of insight, inspiration, and education garnered from the gues...

Join Zach and Mickey for a conversation around the do’s, don’ts, and really don’ts of hiring in and around higher ed right now.   Mickey fleshes out a favorite framework he uses to help schools hire for the right roles from Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. Zach riffs on why organizations need to do a better job of paving other pathways to financial and influential success outside of the...

Welcome to our 100th Enrollify Podcast episode (cue the confetti)! This is an extra special milestone for Enrollify, the place where enrollment marketers go to upskill, reskill, and discover new ideas, products, and services. In this episode, we put host Zach Busekrus in the hot seat and ask him all sorts of fascinating questions, from the top people who influence him to his favorite breakfast opt...