I Know Where You're Coming From: Relatability as an Enrollment Management Tool

Please provide a one-paragraph overview of the session.‎ (200 words or less): This session will explore relatability as an important and useful tool for building relationships with your prospective students during recruitment and yield. Relatability can help build connections to a program or institution that last through the cycle to enrollment; the more that prospective students can relate to us, the more they like our program. In this session, we‘ll take a look at what relatability means, and how we can share our own experiences and backstory to make a connection. We'll share where and how it can show up in our communications, and be a part of our recruitment toolbox - across the application cycle. We’ll share some specific examples of how we’ve used relatability, and how we’ve tracked results and defined success.

Session Agenda/Outline (200 words or less): - Relatability vs. Personalization: What's the difference?
- Sharing your own journey to where you are: How much do you share, the challenges of authenticity, discretion, and the fear of oversharing
- Making Connections: places and spaces; identities; common interests; experiences: Examples of how to relate to your candidates
- Where can this happen?: Conversations and Comm Flow: Exploring when and where relatability can be used
- Thinking about the different stages of the cycle: Prospect/Inquiry; Applicant conversion; Yield: How can this work, giving concrete examples, at different stages of the cycle
- How to you track results and success?: Great question, and here are some ideas for understanding and gauging success
- Questions