Rethinking Communication Flows in Rolling Admissions Marketing & Communications Track

1. #TargetXSummit
Rethinking Communication Flows in
Rolling Admissions
Amanda Courtney, TargetX &
Paula Nuckles, Monmouth College

2. #TargetXSummit
Rethinking Communication Flows in
Rolling Admissions
Amanda Courtney, TargetX &
Paula Nuckles, Monmouth College

3. Amanda Courtney
Freshman and Transfer Admissions
Counselor: 2008-2012
Operations Data: 2012
Assistant Director of Admissions
Operations and Super Excited CRM
Admin: 2012-2015
Even More Excited TargetX
Support & Training Specialist:
2015 - Present

4. Paula Nuckles
Monmouth College
Assistant Director of Financial Aid:
1998-2005
Admission Technology Manager:
2005-2009
Associate Director of Admission:
2009 - present

5. Rethinking when and
how our students
enter the funnel can
impact how we
communicate with
them and how
successful that
communication is.

6. #TargetXSummit
Traditional vs. Rolling Admissions
● Application Open & Submission
deadlines
● Set Decision Release dates
● Waiting period after Completed
Application
● Communications based on
specific dates
● Wider Open and Submission
deadlines
● Decisions released they are
made
● Less waiting and stress for
students
● Communications based on
Student Stage and time of
recruitment year
Traditional Admissions Rolling Admissions

7. Normal Communications
● How long do students go between Comm Flow segments when they don’t
hear from you?
● How many students don’t receive all of your communications?
● Are your communication reports built on date fields that change based on new
data in the CRM?

8. Standard Communication Plan

9. Standard Communication Flow

10. #TargetXSummit
What if we could plan differently?
What if you could make sure students received everything you planned
at each part of the funnel?
What if you didn’t have to make massive changes to all of your reports
each year?

11. What if...
● A formula field could determine what a Student’s classification was, and you
could build Comm Flows off the Student Classification rather than a year?
○ Senior, Junior, Sophomore…
● You could know how much time you have to recruit a student into a class
based on when they entered the funnel and what their Start Term & Year is?
○ Enter the funnel - May 1st of enrollment year = number of days to recruit the student.
● You could use those number of days to calculate how much time has passed
How could this change how you communicate to students?

12. Rewriting Communication Flow
Calculations

13. Where do students
fit into the funnel?

14. Months to Graduation
This is based on an average expected graduation on June 1st

15. High School Classification
Based on the Number of months to
Graduation, this determines where the
student is in their High School journey.
This can be modified based on your
population by adjusting the grouping of
months and the label assigned.

16. Time to Recruit
If the Term is “Fall”,
then the date for
comparison is 5/1/of
the Anticipated Start
Year. Otherwise, the
date for comparison is
12/1/ of the year before
the anticipate start
year. This Date minus
the Created Date on
the Contact produces
the number of days to
recruit the student.

17. Static Date
Values

18. Application Stage Date
This captures the stage date to
be used to begin Application
based Communication. This
can also be done with a Source
to Master field to the Contact.

19. How does this
impact your
Communications?

20. Recruitment can now be built on what percentage of time has passed to recruit
that student rather than how many days have passed.
These calculations will produce a Date Value that reports or Queries can then be built off of. These
reports or Queries will look for “Date field = TODAY.”
To determine the % of time to be used in the calculations, you will need to think about your ideal
situation. If your Ideal is that a student enters the funnel on August 1st and has through May 1st to be
recruited, there are 275 days to recruit this student. If you are wanting communication to go out at 12
days into this recruitment (in the ideal situation), divide the number of days for the communication
into the number of days to recruit.
12/275 = 0.043636363636363 * 100 = 4.36% of time passed
This is the number you will use in formulas.

22. This is your percentage of
time passed. This would
equal 18.2%
This is a formula field to
calculate the Time to Recruit
once a student becomes an
Applicant. Instead of using
the Created Date on the
Contact in the formula, you
would use the Created Date
Or Submit Date of the
Application for comparison.

23. If the Student Stage is “Applicant”, then the calculation is (the Applicant Time to
recruit * 4%) + the Application Stage Date.
This calculates the number of days out to send the communication and adds it to the
date recognizing the Application in the funnel.

26. Monmouth College’s Approach

27. #TargetXSummit
Reason for Change
● Using SIS reports to determine populations for email communication flow
● Just implementing TargetX and had tried multiple approaches
● Needed to clean things up and make sure populations were being captured
accurately
● Using dynamic date fields (Stage Date) vs. static date fields

28. What changes were implemented?
● Set it and forget it
● Used the formula fields to calculate percentage of time passed
● Changed over to static date fields in addition to Email Broadcast Member
Data

29. How Monmouth is applying this now?
● Transition (different leadership, different approaches)
● Preparing and reviewing current communication and how we can again utilize
the percentage of time passed concept.

30. Is this sustainable?
● Yes
● Yes!
● YES!
Because this is built on formula fields, as long as the correct data is brought in to the Org, the
calculations will continue.
By building reports or queries for Campaigns based on the High School Classification of “Senior”,
“Junior”, etc, it eliminates the need to make changes each year to accommodate a new recruitment
cycle. The formula fields will update the student to the new classification when they roll into the date
defined in the “Months to Graduation” field. Which will automatically roll them into the Comm Flow for
the new classification.

31. How can you rethink the approach to
communications on your campus and
what kind of impact can that have?

32. Thank You!
Amanda Courtney
courtney@targetx.com
Paula Nuckles
pnuckles@monmouthcollege.edu