Following Up
What are some best practices for follow-up with prospective students? How has your follow-up impacted your results?
Leslie, Thank you for posting. What do you think the reason is for a higher response rate when following up during the day?
Elizabeth Wheeler
Calling the students and sending emails will be a good way to see results. If we call them , we are showing interest for their education.
if we do a lot of follow ups during the day, the chances to get the student back will be higher
Follow up for students may include phone calls, mail outs, text messages, and/or emails. Depending on the student's situation and status, that process may be over a few days or few months. We have had great success with students through follow up, even assisting with some starting and completing a GED program or HiSET testing. Some come to us and don't know where to start, we can refer them to those resources and follow up to encourage them through the process. They remember and appreciate good customer service and those who are willing to help them reach a goal. We see these follow with referrals. They want to share how you were helpful in the their process to enroll and start in school.
I don't pressure them at all ,and because they don't filed pressure they enroll .
Mirtha, Agreed! Follow up is most of the job!
Dr. Jean Norris
monitoring my calls every day is very important and following up prospect students.I use feed back to find out about whats working for them and what's not.
This will also help you to make improvements.
Theodore, Interesting! Have you seen a difference with responses from the various time frames of follow-up?
Dr. Jean Norris
I like pipelining our student-prospects for follow-ups. I will do a 48 hour follow-up, then 1 week, 2 week, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month and then year over year. I have a great deal of success with regards to onboarding student-prospects and lead generation using this method. I am not shy in asking about "do you know anyone that would benefit from a program like ours?" in almost each of our conversations. Using this approach, it gives them time to think about people or perhaps even didn't think of at the first encounter.
Monique, Setting an agenda with the student is a great idea!
Dr. Jean Norris
I like to set the expectation that we will be in contact at least once a week to check in and provide updates on the process. I also like to give them a date and time to call me to check in. follow up emails and texts work well too.
Kim, Follow-up is key. The most important thing to remember about follow up is if you say you are going to call/email/etc. then do it!
Dr. Jean Norris
Some best practice for follow-up with prospective students are contact them the day after the interview they and asking them how their interesting after the interview, giving them more information which not cover during the interview and it may be benefit for them to choose the right college and major. Still contact with prospective students every 2 weeks
Nikeline, Touching base with your students is very important. Do you always have a reason for calling? Do you think it's important to always have a reason to call?
Dr. Jean Norris
I touch base with my prospective students once a week, to see if they have any more questions, or discuss with them some of the challenges we discussed in our initial meeting,
Ana, Follow-up is such a critical part of relationship building and maintaining, so great job. What is the students reaction when you call?
Dr. Jean Norris
I give them a call the following day to make sure if the student has more questions and clarify any concerns.
This sounds like a great plan, Heather! What kinds of results to see from your plan?
Dr. Jean Norris
What I typically do after an information session is send out an email to all attendees thanking them for attending and to offer my assistance whenever needed. Then about a week later, I follow up by phone call to see if they had any additional questions and to get their thoughts on the college.
