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Marketing and Retention Insights from Education Dynamics Report
These days it has become crucial to understand marketing and retention drivers in order to grok EdTech usage patterns
Glenda Morgan
February 01, 2024
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Education Dynamics recently released its Marketing and Enrollment Management Benchmarks 2024: Trends in Higher Education Marketing and Student Engagement report and it is well worth a read, as much for what is said about retention as for the (valuable) insights it provides about marketing in higher education.
Like the regulatory landscape, the area of marketing and its related field of retention have become inescapable topics for those who want to understand EdTech trends, including getting some insight into what the future might hold. Marketing in particular is somewhat of a new topic for us at On EdTech, and I’d like to share my thoughts as I read this report, partially to highlight its findings but also to help those in our audience who are also getting up to speed on this crucial area. Note that the scope of this report is for higher education in general, not just for online programs.
Where students look and what they look for
Where the report is strongest is in highlighting some of the nuances involved in trying to market programs and in the way they situate marketing within a broader set of changes affecting higher education generally (something we try to do at PH&A so it is no wonder I like the report).
One of the data points the authors highlight is where students start their searches for colleges and universities. I know I have seen this chart a lot, but it is worth reiterating in part because many institutions still don’t get the importance of websites as a starting point. I look at a lot of university online learning websites, and they are often hard to navigate and to identify the information needed (usually cost and program details). I had one university CIO confess to me that he had finally gone onto his institution’s online learning pages and realized that you couldn’t get detailed information without applying!
