Thinking Out Loud

Why Response Rates Don’t Matter

Response rates produced by Student Search campaigns are, in many ways, meaningless. What? Keep reading before you decide that I’ve totally lost it. Here’s where I’m coming from: It is better to receive a response rate your admissions staff can handle than to get a response rate that overwhelms your team’s time and resources. You...
on July 1, 2013

Making a Last[ing] Impression

Not all big ideas are actually all that big, at least in the terms of how most people define big – expensive (big money), grand (big project), or revolutionary (big change). Some of the best, big ideas are notions that are much smaller or simpler in scale but do the work that makes a lasting...
Karyn Adams
on June 18, 2013

Ideastormers Unite!

  Ideastormers! That was the rallying cry for our event last week, the 2nd Annual Ideastorm Summit. The session, held on the campus of Elon University in North Carolina (thanks again for hosting, Elon), brought together 14 different institutions and 25 enrollment leaders for a full day of rich idea exchange, discussion, trend reviews, and...
Karyn Adams
on June 14, 2013

A Lesson in Using What You’ve Got

This summer (like the last several summers), H·A ThirtyOne presented at ACT’s Enrollment Planners Conference in Chicago. Our session, title “The Best 31 Enrollment Marketing Ideas of the Year,” was extremely well attended and saw us sharing great ideas with an overflowing audience, and collecting new ideas, too. In fact, it was the idea sharing...
Karyn Adams
on February 27, 2013

An Idea for Parent Communications

Our blogs typically cover strategies and ideas for helping our higher ed clients reach and recruit students for their schools. Many of our client schools look to us for advice in reaching their parent constituents, and wisely so. Parents and families will have the largest influence on the college decision process. Developing effective communications for...
Karyn Adams
on November 20, 2012

Fresh from Concourse B (and the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference)

This blog comes to you fresh from Concourse B at Chicago’s Midway airport after having spent the last three days at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference.  It was a great conference, and if you didn’t get to attend, I can recommend it as one of the best for enrollment planning. However, I suspect many enrollment...
on July 15, 2012

Attention! Milestone up ahead!

Every time I hit a milestone, I like to take a moment and appreciate it. Sometimes I can see the milestone coming and have a chance to mentally prepare, like that big birthday I had this year. Other times, the milestone happens without my even knowing it, and I can only celebrate upon reflection. I...
Karyn Adams
on June 6, 2012

It’s May 2nd. Now what? 7 Tips for a Better Enrollment Year

May 1st is the day many enrollment officers dread. In fact, many of the attendees at the recent SACAC/PCACAC conference were unable to talk or see beyond that date. But the date has come and gone, and now enrollment professionals across the country are looking at a number on their report and wondering…what next? Whether...
on May 2, 2012

Parent Communications – a few observations, a compromise, and a suggestion

Many enrollment leaders want to communicate more with parents. And that’s good. Parents are critical to the decision process for school selection and shouldn’t be forgotten. But what enrollment leaders may not realize is that they already are communicating with parents…it’s just not as intentionally as it could be. I recently sat with a VP...
on April 18, 2012

Thinking Exponentially

Last fall, during one of my client visits, I pulled onto campus and easily found the Admissions Visitor parking spots. For two reasons, I’m always careful to pay attention to how many spots a school has dedicated for visitors. First, I can offer an assessment of whether the placement and allotment of spaces is adequate....
Karyn Adams
on April 13, 2012

Don’t Be a Touch-Me-Not

I’m often made fun of when I refer to communications as “touches.” “We’ll touch them once with a letter mailer, and follow it with a an email touch, and then….” If it’s the first time I’ve used this language in front of a client, I can often see a querulous look from my audience. Why...
on March 29, 2012

Be There!

Sometime this year we will complete our 600th marketing campaign for college admissions teams. An interesting observation that I’ve made over time goes back to a speech that I once heard from David Beamer, father of 9/11 hero Todd “Let’s Roll” Beamer, whom I had the good fortune of meeting in 2004. Mr. Beamer talked...
on March 26, 2012
H·A ThirtyOne
Grown organically, one client at a time, simply by being ourselves and being good at what we do. We specialize in enrollment and admissions solutions with real results. Every time.
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