Student recruitment & retention

A review of the way in which you manage your marketing and admissions activity looking at all the key stages, milestones and processes of the customer journey.

This includes how data is managed throughout and an organisational review of structures and staffing.

You receive advice and suggestions of immediate benefit to your student recruitment activity as well as strategic recommendations for the long-term health of admissions and student recruitment.

An internal audit of the way in which you manage relations with your feeder schools to ensure that you are spending your resources wisely and strengthening relationships to best aid recruitment.

The review covers segmentation, outreach activities and your existing communication with your feeder schools. If you wish, we can extend it to include in-depth telephone interviews with feeder school Heads.

You receive numerous practical suggestions for immediate improvement as well as more strategic recommendations for the long term.

A study of customer demographics can be vital for marketing planning and decision making.

Our analysts are specialists in this field and have access to the UK’s key demographic and population datasets.

We use the datasets to:

• Interrogate your pupil roll to create detailed insight of your customers and catchment area, including distance and drive times to school
• Define the profiles of your school’s current families and your share of these types of families in your catchment area
• Identify specific locations that might offer growth opportunities for your pupil roll
• Analyse the potential impact of population change in your area over the next ten years

Our report details this and includes an overview of your pupil market share compared with key competitors, as well as pupil number trends over the last five years in those schools. We also offer an interactive online platform which can be licenced for use by you over an extended period.

An investigation into the factors affecting retention from one part of the school to the next, such as Nursery to Reception, Prep to Senior or Year 11 to Sixth Form. We explore the pros and cons for parents and students remaining at the school. We ascertain what might influence their decision to leave or stay.

We consider whether you have the right communications material and events in place to positively influence their choice.

As well as gaining valuable insights into what is driving parent and student retention issues, you also receive recommendations on how to address the issues through improved marketing and communication.

Standardised surveys to enable robust benchmarking and rapid feedback. The results of the research are delivered online and are available within a few days of surveys closing, meaning you can respond quickly to any issues raised.

• Choosing, joining & leaving – suite of surveys to help marketing and admissions staff understand the process and reasons for joining and the perspectives of leavers

In partnership with you we assess how your school is performing in the market. We consider how effectively you recruit and retain students, compared with your competitors, plus any factors that are impacting on your reputation. We identify objectives and design a pragmatic marketing strategy to achieve them.

Some schools ask us to guide them through the sequential elements of strategic marketing planning, others simply want to know what issues they need to address – often through research. You tell us what you need and we deliver a bespoke service, on a project basis or over a longer period.