Like many colleges and universities, Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) needed to grow enrollment. MSOE had worked with Liaison for over five years. Though the School had seen solid results from Liaison’s marketing platform, campaign management services and integrated modules for customer relationship management (CRM), application management and event coordination, Dean of Admissions Seandra Mitchell said she knew the school was only scratching the surface of what Liaison could do.

When 2016’s enrollment was lower than the previous year’s, Mitchell recognized an opportunity to revamp the School’s approach to recruitment marketing. “We started working aggressively with Liaison’s team of creative professionals in January 2017 to identify where we could amplify our outreach efforts,” she said. “We knew there was potential for us to get more value out of our investment in list buys if we used EMP to its full capacity.”

MSOE partnered with Liaison to develop a holistic campaign strategy with multiple touchpoints across each stage of their funnel. Search campaigns, event promotions and drive-to-apply campaigns leveraged data on each student to deliver personalized communication across channels. Focusing on students’ special interests, such as athletics or clubs, was instrumental in connecting with them.

“Internally we worked with athletics and student life to identify high-level buckets based on whether a student says they’re interested in club sports, playing a musical instrument or things like that. Then, we worked with the Liaison team to plan ways to promote MSOE to students based on their interests,” Mitchell explained

Partnering with Liaison allowed MSOE’s admissions team to gain greater insight into the messages each student received, and EMP’s robust analytics made it clear which messages were resonating. Mitchell said that in the past, an admissions officer may have been reaching out to a student with no response, while a coach was meeting with that student and knew he or she planned to attend MSOE. “Since EMP has helped us centralize our communication on a single platform, we can make sure we’re not duplicating efforts or missing anyone,” Mitchell said.

In addition, EMP allows Mitchell and her team to operate more efficiently. “It’s nice to know as soon as our list buys are put into the system, I can start communicating with these prospects through different channels,” she said. “We can immediately start getting seniors information on MSOE and our upcoming events or sending freshmen and sophomores information about our summer programs. That’s been a contributing factor in growing this year’s applications — some of these students have been in our system longer so they’ve been hearing about us longer.” When MSOE introduced a computer science major in 2018, the ability to target students interested in the program was crucial in filling seats. “We exceeded our goal for the major by 104%,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell attributes much of her school’s enrollment growth to Liaison’s campaign management services, which have facilitated increased targeting and multichannel communication through a robust marketing platform. “The multichannel communication is definitely a factor in our success — if you have enrollment goals that you’re not meeting, it’s without a doubt worth trying this approach!” she said.