Every campus says it has a close-knit community and world-class faculty, and prospective students have learned to scroll past all of it. In this episode, Jarrett Smith, Scott Rhodes, and Jeff Kallay each share one practical move to make before the next recruitment cycle. Jarrett challenges teams to replace adjectives in marketing copy with concrete evidence, Scott sends enrollment leaders out to learn what students are actually doing on campus, and Jeff asks teams to rework campus visit communications for yield.
Key Takeaways
- Swap Adjectives for Evidence: “Personalized education” becomes an advisor every student meets before registering. “Great location” becomes a 12-minute train ride to downtown internships. Specifics also give AI tools something real to repeat about your institution.
- Ask Better Questions to Get Better Copy: Prompting faculty to describe what students will be able to do with their hands or minds by graduation produces concrete detail that vague summary phrases hide.
- Uncover What Students Actually Do: Time with faculty, student affairs, and students over the summer surfaces small campus traditions and authentic language that rarely make it into leadership meetings or marketing copy.
- Give Visit Communications a Yield Tone: More families are waiting on application and financial aid decisions before they visit, and for some students orientation is their first time on campus. Visit emails and web pages should reflect that.
Episode Highlights
- [00:28] The rule of three: Why Jeff framed the episode around three simple, doable tips for the next recruitment cycle.
- [01:28] The adjective challenge: Why “world-class faculty” and “vibrant community” wash over students, and what to say instead.
- [03:55] Concrete swaps you can use tomorrow: Real examples, from first-year seminars capped at 18 to a campus with no classroom larger than 30 seats.
- [05:47] Can AI help?: Using AI as a brand mirror while stakeholders and students supply the authentic details.
- [07:22] Favorite places on campus: Why students name a random library couch or an Adirondack chair, not the state-of-the-art facility.
- [08:10] The right question: A faculty prompt that turns “analyze” into skills students can actually name.
- [09:36] The VPEM listening tour: Why enrollment VPs should leave back-to-back meetings and find where students are having fun.
- [13:11] Visits built for yield: How to update visit messaging for families who wait on applications and aid.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- The Campus Visit Is Still the Moment of Truth: StudentBridge conversation with Jeff Kallay on rethinking the campus visit.
Transcript
Jarrett Smith (00:04):
Well, hey everybody, welcome to the Enrollment Brief Podcast. As always, I’m Jared Smith, joined by my Echo Delta colleagues, Jeff Kallay and Scott Rhodes. Good afternoon, guys. Welcome. So Jeff, you’ve been on a roll, man. You’ve had the last couple of topics. So once again, you’re pulling through with our topic for our podcast. What are we talking about today?
Jeff Kallay (00:28):
Well, part of that is because I haven’t been traveling, so I’ve had a lot of time to ponder it. And then other times I am traveling and I don’t have time to process all that I’m experiencing on campuses. So hey, we’re going to do this in the rule of three. As I always say when I’m on campus, Coca-Cola taught us that when we experience something, we can only remember three things. We distill things down to three. Three is really powerful and so much symbolism and religion. So I think we should talk. Three things to do to put fun in the funnel or to get your new cycle ready for this upcoming recruitment cycle and funnel. How’s that sound?
Jarrett Smith (01:14):
That sounds great. Yeah, I’m excited for this.
Jeff Kallay (01:16):
I’m going to talk about the campus visit. What are you going to talk about, Scott?
Scott Rhodes (01:19):
Strategy.
Jeff Kallay (01:21):
What are you going to talk about there? I’m going
Jarrett Smith (01:22):
To talk about marketing copy.
Jeff Kallay (01:25):
I think that’s good. Who’s up first?
Jarrett Smith (01:28):
I’ll go. I’ll go. I probably have the fluffiest one here, so we’ll go with that. All right. So here we go. My challenge for the upcoming fall, this is something I really worked hard to think of something that is practical, doable for just about any campus. And in theory, you could turn around and start implementing this tomorrow. So my challenge for schools is to go through their marketing copy and to begin replacing adjectives with concrete evidence. And part of my inspiration here is from Jamie Hunt, Confessions of a High Ed CMO podcast. Lately on LinkedIn, she’s
Jeff Kallay (02:08):
Been – Great shout out. Great podcast. It was an honor to be a guest. She’s awesome.
Jarrett Smith (02:13):
Yeah, Jamie’s awesome. And she’s got this thing going on on LinkedIn lately where she’s taking higher ed buzzwords like cutting edge facilities and just encouraging folks of like, “Hey, can we just remove this from our vocabulary?” And of course we all see this. So we all know the higher ed tropes, right? We all tend to talk about our institutions in the same way. We talk about our close-knit community, our vibrant community. Everybody’s bold, super bold, personalized and supportive and cutting edge. And also everybody’s got world-class faculty. That one always gets me when I’m on campus. I’m like, “Hey, I’m waiting for the campus that’s like, actually our faculty are just kind of so-so. They’re just average.” Nobody says that. Everybody’s world-class.
(03:01):
So I think after a while, we all know intuitively that this kind of language just washes over students and the sea of sameness that we all talk about. I also think the vagueness gives us permission to kind of fudge a little bit because when you push on world-class faculty, for instance, or a vibrant community, it’s like, “Well, what does that actually mean?” And then sometimes when we’re visiting with clients and we ask them questions like that, “Give me examples.” And you push on that, “Tell me how you’re innovative.” Sometimes it evaporates before your eyes. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got a dozen examples off the top of my head.” And that’s glorious when that happens, but sometimes there’s not as much there there. So my challenge is replace the phrases. So I’ve got some examples. Would you guys like some examples of alternatives?
(03:55):
So this really isn’t that hard once you get the hang of it, it’s kind of fun. So you can replace personalized education by saying something like, “Before registering, every incoming student meets individually with an academic advisor that they’ll keep for the entire first year.” So concrete, relatable, easy to understand, not vague. Of course, if you say it, you got to back it up. It’s got to be true. I came across an interesting one. I was talking with a client, small liberal arts college. They have small class sizes and somebody in one of the meetings popped up and said, “We don’t have a classroom that can hold more than 30 people.” And I thought, wow, that’s just a really nice concrete illustration of the fact that you have small classes without saying small classes. Or you could say first year seminars are capped at 18 students or something like that.
(04:53):
For, let’s see, career focused, every major includes an internship, clinical experience, research project or client assignment. Instead of saying great location, you could say students can reach downtown internships by train in 12 minutes. So whatever it is that you think is the reason to believe, say that, lead with that. That’s my advice. And I do think not only is this more persuasive to prospects, but I also think that in a world where increasingly AI is sort of representing your brand to the outside world, people go look into AI tools. Well, the AI can’t really serve up something you or somebody else hasn’t already said about you. So I think seeding these things and putting out there the real concrete details that are really telling and persuasive, it works on multiple levels. So that’s mine.
Jeff Kallay (05:47):
So this is a question for both you and Scott with this because I love this. Can AI help you accomplish this?
Jarrett Smith (05:55):
Actually accomplish the thing operationally?
Jeff Kallay (05:58):
Yeah.
Jarrett Smith (06:00):
Oh man, I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade.
Jeff Kallay (06:01):
Or is AI just going to create more? I read an article, I don’t know, Adweek, whatever stuff I read about AI likes big words. So that might not be… But I guess my question is, can AI help you decipher or find those words and then humans make them authentic, as you were saying, to that place here?
Jarrett Smith (06:28):
Yeah, I don’t know. I
Jeff Kallay (06:29):
Guess this is workflow that I’m bringing.
Jarrett Smith (06:33):
I think we’ve had this idea of sometimes AI can act as a bit of a brand mirror and it can surface things that other people are saying about you and bring it to your attention. So I could see maybe it uncovers something there, but I really think that when I get in the room with stakeholders and we’re having real conversations about campus, when the stuff exists generally, people are saying it, it’s just not making its way into the copy. They’re trying to summarize in a couple of words instead of saying the thing itself. And so a lot of times all it takes is somebody saying, “Give me an example. Tell me what that means actually, or talking to students.” And they’re usually, in my experience, lurking back there. They’re just not making their way into the copy.
Jeff Kallay (07:22):
Well, in support of this, having asked tens of thousands of college students, “Where’s your favorite place or space on this campus?” It is never the state of the art this and the brand new technology this. It is a random couch on the fifth floor library where they nap or it is an Adirondack chair at the quad that they drag along to meet up with their friends. And I think it’s the same reason why you choose this school. It’s never the hyperbole that you’re talking about. They have
Jarrett Smith (07:52):
Such a
Jeff Kallay (07:53):
Bold cancer.
Jarrett Smith (07:53):
They’re so vibrant.
Jeff Kallay (07:55):
Yeah. I mean, always the world-class faculty. Even at schools that have those world-class faculty, students have never said that. So to me, I think it’s tying into what is authentic and real and not hyperbole.
Jarrett Smith (08:10):
Jeff, I love it. I love something you kind of hit on there. And this is the thing, sometimes it’s just asking the right question. So a good example of that is when we’re trying to get more useful content for program pages, we will prompt faculty with questions like, “Tell me something that students will be able to do with their hands or minds by the end of this program and list those things out.” And just that concrete detail of hands and minds. And then they’re like, “Oh, they will be able to analyze complex scientific findings and translate them for a public audience.” And you’re like, “Oh, hell yeah. That’s a skill right there. We can talk about that.” And it’s a lot more concrete and telling. So yeah, just finding the right question to kind of just shift people’s thinking a little bit.
Jeff Kallay (09:05):
We all spend so much time on college websites and in marketing and publishing and it all reads the way you are. So I hope people take your recommendation was I’m saying, because that will put fun in the funnel because my eyes just glaze over and I’m bored reading it all.
Jarrett Smith (09:26):
Yep. Well, thanks.
Jeff Kallay (09:29):
Scott Rhodes. Our strategist.
Scott Rhodes (09:32):
Strategy.
Jeff Kallay (09:33):
You feeling strategery, Scott?
Scott Rhodes (09:36):
I think I would actually pull one of my old tricks out of the bag and where
Jeff Kallay (09:42):
I – We got vice president. We got vice president enrollment management cap on.
Scott Rhodes (09:46):
And I would always, during the summer, spend some time with the faculty learning about their new programs, what’s going on in the classroom. But I would expand that. I think not only when you’re going out and talking to faculty and deans about their new programs, I think you need to be talking to student affairs as well and talking to students. Too often as VPs, we find ourselves in meetings back to back and we find ourselves not having time to do this. But as a VP, go out, sit down with everybody, all the key stakeholders and find out how students currently are having fun because I think you’re going to find a lot of things that are happening in different places in small little pockets that you’re not talking about. Now I’m not talking about, hey, you’re having bingo night and it’s popular and everybody knows about it.
(10:39):
I’m talking about finding those things, those little nuggets out there where people are spending time having a great time with smaller groups. And once you have all this information, bring it back and spend some time talking to SGA. How can we incorporate some of these ideas? We have this group over in the dorm, Brown Hall, they’ve been having this weekly card night and they’ve been playing spades or whatever they’re playing and they’re having a great time. Can we do a Texas Hold’em tournament for prizes? Make traditions out of some of these things that are already happening on your campus, but unless you get out and spend some time absorbing these things, which is very difficult as a VP because I’ve sat in those meetings constantly, you look at your calendar, it’s back to back, but take some time this summer because it is very valuable to you as far as getting what you need and that information and then building a strategy around it and how you can incorporate it and working with your key stakeholders to do it.
Jeff Kallay (11:52):
And telling those stories. I’ve heard you say and others who became deans, directors, vice presidents that they got into this business because of students. And then when they get into leadership, they’re just in their office. And what I’m hearing you say is go out to your colleagues across campus that are watching and engaging with students in academic spaces, in residential spaces, in the rec center, right in those fun spaces, all these spaces and places, they’ve been watching students over the past year, how they’ve engaged with them and what they’re doing. And I think that helps a VP get a pulse to distill down to his team. And then I think it also helps support Jarrett’s idea is I think you’ll come up with authentic language in all of this. For sure. Know your product. Hey, number three. Thanks Scott. Was that it? That’s
Scott Rhodes (12:59):
It.
Jeff Kallay (13:00):
I like how Scott Jarrett is. He keeps championing student life and affairs and making a partnership where I am very much – It’s all
Jarrett Smith (13:10):
Connected, man. It’s all
Jeff Kallay (13:11):
Connected. Not a fan of those people at the moment. So we have grumpy old Jeff and then we have Scott throwing a piece stick to these folks. Hey, mine is kind of with Jared on this, in that I just did a webinar with our fine friends at Student Bridge really talking about this shift of the campus visit being more yield. So my tip, number three for putting fun in the funnel is I don’t need you to go audit your campus visit, which I do. I need you to do similar to what Jarrett said is I need you to take a look at your campus visit communication flow when we’re sending and look at what you’re saying in it as well as the campus visit pages of your website. And I think that you need to think about shifting some of that language from a pre-application or recruitment to more of a come visit us for yield, acknowledge that families are sometimes waiting to application and financial aid.
(14:18):
Or as I was just on a Zoom with our client at K State with their person in charge of orientation and she said a big number of their students’ orientation is their first time. So I would like everyone to kind of audit their campus visit communication to acknowledge this and to meet to this trend of how students and families are behaving so we update the visit with a yield tone. And that’s my tip for putting fun in the funnel. That is a popular sticker of ours too at NACAC.
Jarrett Smith (14:56):
Yes. Yeah. It plays well at AMA also. Yeah.
Scott Rhodes (15:01):
Even a t-shirt. Our t-shirt is popular too. Every time I wear that, everybody comments on it.
Jeff Kallay (15:07):
Well, we need more fun. Well, general, I feel that those were three not too overwhelming, important and can be done enrollment tips here on this episode of the enrollment brief.
Jarrett Smith (15:22):
All
Jeff Kallay (15:22):
Right. Someone else is going to have the next topic.
Jarrett Smith (15:26):
I know. We got to step up. All right. I’m working. Working on it. All right. Well, gentlemen, good talking with you as always. We’ll catch you next time.
