1. Mapping the Student Lifecycle From
Inquiry Through Graduation
• David Rose, Vice President of Enrollment, Indiana Wesleyan University
• Lyle Kraft, Vice President of Enrollment Partnerships, PlattForm
• Mary Shepard, Vice President of Partnerships, Seelio
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2. Today’s Objectives
1) Understand how the student journey has evolved
2) Ensure that you understand how to align with
your prospective students
3) Discuss effective marketing strategies from
interest to inquiry
4) Understand how to create and maintain
engagement from inquiry to alumni

3. Today’s Prospective Students

4. Ever-Changing Behavior

5. Aligning Your Institution

6. Aligning Your Institution
Understanding prospective students’journey is a good
start.
To really gain traction, you need to dive deeper into
students’ considerations, beliefs, obstacles and the
options available to them.

7. Planning and Development
• Build audience profiles
• Define your competitive landscape
• Evaluate degree and program demand
• Find and articulate your differentiators
• Analyze your channel opportunities
• Develop your strategic media plan

8. Effective Messaging Alignment
Excellence
Individual Attention
Scholarships
Employment Pledge
Career Services
Success
Skills
Affordability
Outcomes
Access
What
YOU
have to
offer
What
prospective
students are
looking for
How do you build target audience insight into your
creative in meaningful ways?

9. The Student’s Journey
Spoken or unspoken, these
are the questions
prospective students are
asking.
Is your institution prepared
to respond with an
integrated media and
messaging strategy?

10. Recognizing the Stages
The previous questions
have a purpose, and
these are the phases in
which we as marketers
can add value to their
decision-making
process.

11. Top-of-the-Funnel
90% of education-
seekers start their
search without a
particular school in
mind.

12. Top-of-the-Funnel Considerations
• Do I know my demo well enough to invest in
top-of-funnel marketing?
• Does my digital marketing strategy effectively
target my potential students from the top of the
funnel all the way down?
• How am I generating interest, and do my
conversion efforts match up?
• How will I measure success?
• Do I have a good bottom-of-funnel capture
system in place?

13. Top-of-the-Funnel
Having solid positioning in the top of the funnel
makes the whole process easier – increased
branded searches, more website traffic and
improved traffic-to-inquiry conversion rates,
among others.
You have the opportunity to pick and choose
whom you communicate with, and you should
leverage every channel you can in getting your
message out.

14. Top-of-the-Funnel
If you think in terms of
the funnel and its
sections, you see a
barrier to traditional
direct response
advertising:
You can’t go from
awareness to inquiry–
not without research
or trust.

15. Middle-of-the-Funnel
84% of smartphone
and tablet owners use
their devices as second
screens while watching
TV at the same time.

16. Middle-of-the-Funnel Considerations
• Can prospective students engage with my
institution?
o Will they like what they see?
• Am I waiting for them to take the next step?
o Am I giving them reason to?
• Are they getting consistent experiences?

17. Middle-of-the-Funnel
Thinking back to the funnel
as a whole, the challenge is
to achieve trust.
In other words, students
have verified that what you
have to say about your
institution is true.
With trust, you can focus on
converting inquiries at the
highest rate possible

18. Bottom-of-the-Funnel
80% of education
search query paths end
without a conversion to
inquiry.

19. Bottom-of-the-Funnel Considerations
• Can they find what they are looking for?
• Does my messaging match my strategy?
• Do they know how to inquire?
• Have I communicated a reason to inquire?
• What happens after they inquire?

20. Continuing the Students’ Journey
We know that bringing a student to campus isn’t
the last step. From there, we need to focus on:
– Engagement
– Retention
– Graduation
– Placement
A tool that make an impact across the student
lifecycle: portfolios.

21. Using Portfolios to Impact Engagement & Retention
CREATE LEARNING
TOUCH POINTS
• Build in time for students
to think critically about
their learning across all
contexts
HELP STUDENTS
MAKE CONNECTIONS
• Enable students to
connect their learning to
skills that employers are
looking for

22. Example Activity from UM SSW
This module is designed to help students:
1. Identify key values and beliefs.
2. Develop a philosophy that captures their
professional approach.

23. A Student’s Result: Professional Philosophy Statement

24. Getting to Graduation & Placement with Portfolios
INTEGRATING CAREER
PREPARATION
• Build career preparation into
every student experience—
from day one to
graduation
SHOWCASING AND
STORY TELLING
• Provide model for students
to showcase work so they
can enter interviews with
confidence

25. Preparing Students for Success
skill building &
identification
presentation
of self
career alignment
& development
Empower students to begin reflecting and
synthesizing early. Seelio’s model:

26. Capturing and showcasing learning
Leadership
Experiences
Work
Experiences
Research
Papers
Musical
Performances
Athletic
Leadership
Volunteer
Activities
Presentations
& Speeches
Service
Experiences

27. Example from Colorado Technical University
Assignment prompts help students identify how they want to
present themselves and tell their story

28. Example from Colorado Technical University

29. Feedback from students using Seelio
“Jobs in my field aren't really easy
to find, but with Seelio I have a
one up on other candidates.”
“I like that it lets me not be a
piece of paper, it shows who I
am.”
“I'm very satisfied. Seelio is a
great resource to use. I
recommend it to all students!”
[Seelio helps] “others see what I
accomplished and viewing others
success. It's a great
experience.” Also mentioned that
“Seelio has helped me with job
searching and showing off my
success.”
“…It's a great place to
showcase everything.”
“As a student with a lot of video
work, it's extremely helpful that I
can display all my videos in
one place that's completely
customized to me; not just a
YouTube page.”

30. Questions?

31. To Learn More
About Indiana Wesleyan University:
• David Rose, david.rose@indwes.edu, indwes.edu
About PlattForm:
• Lyle Kraft, lyle.kraft@plattform.com, plattform.com
About Seelio:
• Mary Shepard, mary@seelio.com, seelio.com/educators