What is a yield-on-acceptance strategy? A yield strategy is the combination of touch points schools use to best matriculate more full-pay families out of the admission funnel. It’s an intentional approach. When trying to recruit families, schools should pay careful attention to the families’ needs or reasons for seeking a new school. Using this customer-centric approach will enable you to better connect with families and offer them the right educational solutions.
Here are 11 tips to strengthen your yield plan:
- A Plan?– If it is a written document, think through your process of yielding full-pay families. Sit with a team of people and start brainstorming, then develop it. The items below will help.
- Understand the target population. Among the full-pay families, there are different lifestyles and biases. When you understand the needs of the urban full-pay family versus the rural full-pay family, you can tweak their experiences when you are able.
- Allies to execute the plan. You will need a myriad of people to help you. They comprise group A of selected employees—administrators, faculty, and staff. Group B includes your disciples, people who have experienced your program–alumni, current and former parents, and current and former students. Group C refers to referring parties—secondary placement professionals, educational consultants, daycare providers, clubs, and organizations that might influence families. You employ different strategies to get each of these groups to help you in the yield process. Set appropriate expectations and responsibilities for each segment.
- What recruiting tools are you offering to your team of helpers? You need to know your brand message so that everyone else among your allies understands it, too. Arm them with the key brand message and the differentiators that match their needs. As a leader of marketing or recruiting, are you clear on what these are?
- First Contact–the first official contact or touchpoint with the school, outside of the one-directional engagement with your website, can be. It can be a phone call to your school to receive an inquiry packet, a visit to an open house, or an off-campus event. Are these touchpoints staying on message?
- Execute quality experiences with a purpose. Ask yourself, “What value should parents and students get from each event?” Write it down. Let’s say you add a
student panel as part of your event. What will the panel convey to your visitors about your educational solution related to their particular needs? Your student panel, for example, might need to answer these questions in the minds of the customer: “Do the students seem engaged in their education? Do they appear to be students with whom I would want my child to share time and experiences? Will my child be able to find friends among these students? Use this customer-centric purpose for each touchpoint. - Individual Contacts: You should be aware of the various types of school employees that you can introduce to the students or parents. Are these people ready to partner with you: coaches, learning specialists, grade-level teachers, Model United Nations advisors, arts faculty, subject teachers, etc.? Later, the conversations with these folks can make or break your yield. Are these people articulating your brand besides the conversations about their area of expertise?
- Student and Parent Ambassadors: Adding your disciples into the mix will help you along the way and may tip the scales with the right conversations. They can also tear down what you have created. So, know their stories and biases, and then let them work for you.
- Revisit Days–This event may be key in your process and needs special attention. What information, during your process, have you collected about what current parents are thinking? What is it about your program that is a key selling point, but families may still need to be reminded of its differentiation?
- Objections: Knowing the objections to coming to your school is an essential part of the yield process. Objections can come in different shapes or forms. Examples are: your school is in the opposite direction from the parent’s workplace; you don’t offer marine biology; you are a single-sex program and the parents don’t want their boy and girl in two different schools; or you don’t have an after-school program that stays open past 5:00 p.m. You need to acknowledge the objection, even if you can’t solve it. Then, you want to focus them on the huge value that they will get from your educational program that is worth moving the objection out of the equation.
- Statistical Analysis: Review the data on who takes part in which activities or experiences. This could give you some useful information on what is working and what is not. Are these events the ones that are attracting full-pay families? Please always track your full-pay applications; there are very few schools in which full-pay families aren’t making up most of the enrolled group.
These ideas should help you develop a more focused yield program. If you have questions, please let me know in the comment section.
