Strategic Initiative Results

GPE MARKETING INITIATIVES

GPE INITIATIVES

Three primary initiatives have been implemented to enhance the marketing and recruitment practices of Siena’s post-traditional markets.  These changes are designed to improve Siena’s competitiveness and effectiveness in an every growing and highly competitive online and adult market.  The initiatives are:

• Integrated digital marketing
• Call Center qualification and verification of marketing prospects
• Enrollment Marketing Platform (EMP) to build personalized recruitment communication through multi-channel options 

These initiatives are designed to increase Siena’s market recognition, brand development and draw inquires into the recruitment database for the post-traditional enrollment segments for Graduate and Professional Enrollment.

This effort is focused heavily in the digital marketing area with multiple program outreach through social media and search engine optimization.  Secondary efforts through other multi-media outlets are supplementing the digital efforts. 

The general initiatives are designed to qualify and validate inquires attracted to Siena’s post-traditional markets within 24 hours of their initial interest.  The constantly growing level of competitiveness within this market requires timely contact, unattainable with Siena staff. 

Once qualified the inquiries are passed into the EMP database for personalized communication and to Siena’s GPE professional staff for recruitment.  The qualification of marketing prospects allow a limited professional staff to focus on the prospective students who are truly interested in Siena’s graduate and professional programs.

The strategic planning initiatives are designed to increase and improved the digital marketing footprint of Siena Heights University across its market but specifically focused to support the recruitment of the post-traditional students within the SHU Global umbrella. These efforts coincide with a set of strategic initiatives that include a major shift of responsibilities internally while engaging a set of marketing partners externally.

The Graduate College (EAB) initiative was launched slight earlier in early July 2020 with all new collateral in market by early August and direct mail outreach completed by mid-August. The College for Professional Studies undergraduate effort (EDDY) was not fully implemented until November 2021. The Partnership initative was started in 2020 but enhanced with the new investment.

All three initiatives are tracked on a regular basis and are designed to replace a portion of the enrollment loses from the University’s historical sources that have dissipated over the last ten years and supplement other activities.

The marketing initiatives implemented in FY22 with an initial University investment of over a million dollars of donated capital, is intended to revise the student acquisition model for SHU Global and designed to build a new enrollment source to replace a declining community college demographic. The first full year of results is FY23. Each new class will spin off at least two fiscal years of tuition revenue from each year’s entering fiscal year cohort.

The slides indicating new inquiries are focused directly on a comparison of new inquiries developed from the time the two new digital marketing initiatives were launched. The CPS (EDDY) initiative launched in late July with new digital media collateral in market. The full initiative was complete and fully operational by the end of October.

Collateral and prospect buys are continually adjusted based on market performance and institutional focus.

The traditional source of students for the undergraduate segment of SHU Global has been the Michigan community colleges. This source for students has been gradually declining for the last 15 years but fully bottomed out during the Covid pandemic. Efforts are underway to reengage and recover this important source of online degree completion students for the undergraduate SHU Global enrollment segment.

The Partnership Initiative is designed to build active partners from education, health care, corporate entities, and governmental organizations to build mutual benefit for both. 

Siena gains access to employee populations for its various academic programs to help meet its enrollment goals while the partners are able to offer an additional educational benefit for their employees at a discounted rate. 

Additional benefits include cross branding, employment opportunities and mutual public engagement.  This initiative is a coordinate effort between GPE and GPS.   

This CAS initiative is designed to increase the volume of students from states other than Michigan.  This has a dual purpose; these students will live on campus adding to housing revenue and this segment generally have strong family incomes.  A series of actions have been underway to support this initiative that include:

• multi-media marketing in the Ohio
• increasing multi-media advertising
• increasing visitation and outreach to out of state high schools
• target Catholic high schools out of state
• more aggressive direct mail campaigns in our targeted non Michigan states

This initiative is designed to focus CAS recruitment efforts on the academic co-curricular and majors with the greatest potential to improve the enrollment of the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS).  Admission professionals are partnered with faculty contacts to coordinate efforts to optimize matriculation outcomes for the upcoming fall term.

This initiative is designed to promote the healthiest balance of student-athletes within the College of Arts & Sciences while supporting the enrollment goals of the University.  This initiative strives to optimize the partnership between the University’s coaches and  admissions professional to achieve the best outcomes to meet the program and University needs. 

CAS Territory success remains highly dependent on passion programs at the University from curricular activities, co-curricular programs and high interest academic majors.  Successfully recruiting those parts of the University product lead to greater opportunities to achieve overall new enrollment success in quantity, quality, and net revenue.  Territories are separated by student type and geographic area.  Within the graph:
F = Freshman,
T = Transfer, and
​I = International.