How a Private Healthcare University Modernized Outreach Efforts and Achieved a 17% Increase in Engagement and Impacted $120M+ in Enrollments with Drips

Challenge: Combatting the Enrollment Cliff

Over recent years, there has been a generational shift with attitudes toward technology. Gen Z, individuals born between 1997 and 2012, generally don’t answer their phones or check email. This creates a challenge for organizations dependent on outbound calling campaigns.

The university was looking for a new way to reach prospective students. Manual outbound dialing is hard to scale and this alone was not enough to help them meet their goals. They had ambitious growth targets and recognized that in order to combat the enrollment cliff — a decline in the number of college-going students — they needed to modernize their outbound strategy.

Solution: Keep Higher Intent Prospective Students Stay Connected and Informed with CaaS

Many prospective students work full time or are busy raising families. It became clear to reach their goals they would need to make a shift from outbound dialing to an engagement model that would encourage prospective students to complete the application process. Outreach via SMS was identified as a top priority. However, the university did not have the infrastructure to manage the scripting and delivery of this type of campaign.

By leveraging Drips Conversations as a Service (CaaS) over SMS, the university ensured that higher intent prospective students stayed connected and informed until they were ready to talk at a time that worked for them. Drips managed the coordination of inbound calls paving the way for more conversions and successful enrollments.

Results: Better Conversations and Increased Engagement

Within six months, inbound calls scheduled with Drips resulted in better prepared conversations resulting in a 17% increase in engagement, 7,000 applications positively impacted by Drips, and 3,000 students enrolled attributed to Drips CaaS.