Enrollment Funnels: What They Are & Tips to Optimize Them

Written by

Ed Driver

Last updated:

Created on:

October 22, 2024

Enrollment Funnels: What They Are & Tips to Optimize Them

Higher education institutions across the US are increasingly concerned about meeting enrollment goals.

A recent survey of 239 institutions, for example, found that a large majority (71%) of respondents expressed moderate to extreme concern about achieving their enrollment targets.

At the heart of this issue lies the enrollment funnel—the strategic process you have in place to guide potential students from initial awareness to attendance.

In this Willo guide, we investigate enrollment funnels, a few of the issues that might be sabotaging yours, and practical tips to optimize your funnel.

What Is an Enrollment Funnel?

An enrollment funnel is a series of stages that a potential student goes through to become an enrolled student at your institution.

Each stage in the process is defined by a mindset and a set of actions that the prospective student takes to achieve some goal. And as a result, you can optimize each stage to make it easier for potential students to move through the funnel and ultimately enroll at your institution.

Stages of an enrollment funnel

Understanding the stages of an enrollment funnel is key to optimizing it.

Here’s a breakdown of the stages:

Awareness: This is the top of the funnel, where potential students first learn about your institution. Marketing efforts such as social media campaigns, advertisements, and content marketing help attract attention and generate interest.
Interest: At this stage, prospective students seek more information about your institution. They might visit your website, attend webinars, or download informational brochures. Engaging content and responsive communication are essential to maintain their interest.
Consideration: Here, students evaluate your institution more closely. They might compare programs, attend virtual tours, and interact with admissions counselors. Providing detailed information and answering their questions promptly can help move them to the next stage.
Intent: In this phase, students are seriously considering applying. They might start their application, seek financial aid information, or ask for more specific details about courses and campus life. Clear guidance and support during this stage are critical.
Action: The final stage is where students complete their application and enroll. Simplifying the application process and offering support throughout can ensure a smooth transition from prospect to enrolled student.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Enrollment Funnel

1. Simplify the application process

Brookings Institute recently analyzed a dataset of 1.2 million college-track highschoolers and found that one-fourth (or 300,000) never completed their applications. These “non-submitters” were just as academically qualified as their peers… so what prevented them from applying?

The current hypothesis is that small frictions within the application process build to the point of abandonment. And as evidence of this fact, over 50% of students rank college applications as the most stressful academic event of their lives.

Simplifying the application process can help to address these issues and boost enrollment. Start by identifying friction points within your application process, and brainstorm solutions that reduce or eliminate them.

Here are four possible strategies:

Async video interviews

Time commitments and travel are major friction points for prospective students—and live in-person interviews involve both. While live virtual interviews address the issue of travel, they don’t solve the problem fully.

That’s why we recommend adopting async video interviews. With an async video interview tool like Willo, you can translate your live admission interviews into async interviews, complete with:

Time limits
Redo attempts
Different kinds of questions (file uploads, video responses, audio responses, etc.)

Then, you simply share the secure link with students and allow them to complete it at a time that’s convenient for them. And as an added bonus, this also helps your admissions team win back hours in their days, since scheduling is no longer an issue.

Tiered admissions process

Similar to how screening works in the corporate world, ask for basic information initially and use it to screen candidates for full application. For example, if your program has a GPA threshold, you could create a short application form asking for grades only, reaching out to everyone who passes that initial stage with an invitation to apply. This initial win helps encourage students to complete the entire application.

No-essay applications

Students who do not complete their college essays are 50% less likely to apply than those that do. Again, async video interviews are a more student-friendly alternative—use the same prompts as you would for an essay, but give applicants the chance to record a video response.

Direct admissions

Rather than forcing students to apply, automatically admit students based on GPA and have them "claim their place" by completing a short form. This has been shown to boost enrollment by 176% overall, mostly concentrated in groups like:

Underrepresented minorities (+177%)
First-generation college students (+150%)
Low income students (+168%)

2. Leverage data and analytics

Data is important if you want to avoid guesswork and costly mistakes when optimizing your enrollment funnel. Solid collection and analysis procedures allow you to develop hypotheses, test them, and make decisions based on the results.

We recommend starting by breaking your funnel down into stages (between key events) and tracking both the rate and time metrics at each stage:

Inquiry to Application:

Rate: The percentage of inquiries that turn into applications.
Time: The average time it takes for a student to move from inquiry to submitting an application.

Application to Acceptance:

Rate: The percentage of applications that lead to acceptance offers.
Time: The average time it takes to process an application and deliver an acceptance decision.

Acceptance to Enrollment (Yield):

Rate: The percentage of accepted students who choose to enroll.
Time: The average time between when a student is accepted and when they commit by submitting a deposit.

Deposit to Orientation:

Rate: The percentage of students who submit a deposit and then attend orientation.
Time: The average time between deposit and orientation.

This gives you tons of data to use to identify bottlenecks in your funnel. If a rate metric starts to decrease, something has changed—and you need to determine whether it’s an issue. The same goes for any time-based metrics.

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3. Enhance your content marketing strategy

High-quality, informative content can be a powerful awareness tool that can also help you in later stages of your funnel. Create content that addresses the common questions and concerns of potential students… or just gets them excited about your institution.

This video from Columbia University’s engineering department is a great example.

It’s simple, low-effort, and likely cheap to produce. However, its impact on enrollment has the potential to be huge. Studies on video marketing in education are scarce, but in the business world, 87% of marketers say video increased leads for their organizations.

When you’re planning content, take a strategic approach. Map all content to the funnel stage it corresponds to:

Top of funnel (TOFU) content: Light, introductory content that targets a general audience and aims to attract prospective students. Think—dorm tours, day in the life videos, and campus photos.
Middle of funnel (MOFU) content: More in-depth content that targets a specific audience and aims to educate them about a particular topic or program (like the video above).
Bottom of funnel (BOFU) content: Highly targeted, sales-focused content that aims to transform interested leads into enrolled students. Think—program-specific webinars, campus tours, and admissions information sessions.

Aim for a fairly even spread and use analytics (like pageviews, time on page, attribution, etc.) to refine your strategy over time.

4. Utilize social proof

Recent research suggests that younger people, particularly Gen Z, are much less likely to trust institutions than older people. This growing trend has important implications for marketing strategies, especially when targeting younger audiences.

While Business Insider has (somewhat pessimistically) labeled Gen Z the "most distrustful generation," this characterization points to a broader shift in how younger people perceive and interact with institutions. This distrust presents a unique challenge for marketers and institutions trying to connect with this demographic.

Information that comes from you (an institution) means less to younger people than it used to. That means you need to adapt by including more voices in the discussion—students, alumni, faculty, parents, etc.

Source: Statista

The best medium for this is video—Gen Z’s favorite platforms are YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Create videos featuring current students, alumni, and faculty talking about their experiences. Then, share these videos on different platforms and include them in your virtual events.

Another idea is to create a video library on specific topics. Use a tool like Willo to create short “interviews” on specific topics, like “how is the food on campus?” Then send the link and host responses in a library on your site.

This gives prospective students a wide range of authentic perspectives on demand.

5. Provide virtual engagement opportunities

With the increasing importance of digital interactions, offering virtual engagement opportunities can greatly enhance your enrollment funnel. This is a great way to get students involved, without asking them to travel to campus.

Universities are coming up with all kinds of creative virtual engagement opportunities, such as:

Virtual campus tours (either live or pre-recorded)
Virtual information sessions or webinars
Online Q&A sessions with current students or admissions counselors
Virtual open houses or admitted student events
Online groups for admitted students

There are also some pretty out-of-the-box ideas like digital twin campuses and dorms.

New Mexico State University recently built 3D scale replicas of their dorms. Students that are interested can put on a VR headset or download a VR app and “walk” around the dorm room they’d be staying in if they applied.

Ideas like this are great for keeping prospective students engaged and excited.

Streamlining Student Enrollment with Willo

Optimizing your enrollment funnel is crucial for attracting and retaining students, and Willo is a powerful tool that can help.

Willo simplifies the application process by allowing students to submit video introductions or interviews, making the process more engaging and less daunting. This personal touch helps institutions make better decisions and provides a smoother experience for prospective students.

Want to experience the benefits of a streamlined enrollment process with Willo? Start your free trial today.

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