2023 is another UG cycle that’s very hard to read. Here’s how we are helping universities to plan a path through the uncertainty...

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Dan Beynon, Head of Education, SMRS

Like last year, this undergraduate application cycle is proving hard to predict with confidence. Since the pandemic, some of the established metrics that universities (whether high, medium or low tariff) have used to predict performance have proved fallible and meant that it’s much harder for senior leaders to predict exactly where their enrolment numbers will land. Many of those people applying to university in 2023, 2024 and 2025, rightly or wrongly, will focus on a place at a Russell Group institution. They’ve seen this happen more easily for their peers recently, and so have their teachers, advisers and parents. But there just aren’t enough of those places.

In this competitive application landscape institutions across the UK have become much better at working with all the data that the higher education sector has to offer. They are now using that data to develop long-term university strategies in relation to potential market opportunities and the portfolio of courses that they need to offer. Universities understand that, in most cases, the 18-year-old cohort is crucial to success in the undergraduate market. Marketing teams know where those 18-year-olds are living and they know the subjects that are popular with them. And if an institution doesn’t offer those popular courses currently then they can change that and grow their portfolio. But there’s a twin challenge here. Firstly just because there are a lot of 18-year-olds who want to study subjects that an institution offers, they won’t necessarily choose that university. And secondly, right across UK Higher Education too many university portfolios are already much bigger than they should be or need to be (but that’s another story)

I’m lucky to work with and speak to so many of our great universities from different UK regions and mission groups and through those conversations, I learn about (and help develop) their long-term strategies to grow market share. Creating a long-term institutional vision is crucial but it is becoming apparent that these data-informed growth strategies are, in some cases, not unique to an institution. One university’s broad vision for the future can come under real pressure in the short term when it’s also the same long-term vision of key competitors, especially if those competitors include higher tariff institutions.

Successful student recruitment needs an institution’s long-term vision and target for growth to be combined with a year-on-year roadmap giving more specific information on how to get there. It’s important to develop a 2 to 3-year granular targeting strategy that can be used for campaign activation and which responds to environmental changes (macro and micro), brand power, competitor behaviours and an institution’s recent performance. We’ve spent the last 5 years delivering this type of propensity modelling work for many UK universities.

The data analysis we undertake uses an institution’s own cohort data to give a more accurate picture of exactly which groups of potential students are right for that university. We can then establish exactly how hard an institution will have to work to recruit those specific groups. The propensity segments we create are unique to that university and based on the likelihood that an individual will convert. They also provide the key common characteristics that will help to engage each group. University marketing teams can then prioritise what level of budget to spend on targeting specific audience segments, so when demographic growth and propensity to convert at their institution combine, they can prioritise a particular target segment above others.

It’s then also possible to lead score applications received based on their specific propensity to enrol thus making predicting likely outcomes much easier and more accurate. And all this data can then be used not only to fuel digital ad planning and campaigns both now and into the cookieless future, but also to inform applicant engagement via the university’s CRM system. When we have delivered this work we see improved campaign performance across every metric.

Right now there is a lot of pressure on university leaders and their marketing teams. It’s so important to be able to understand the reasons behind student recruitment successes but also to be able to explain, in detail, why market opportunities haven’t turned out as hoped and then to be able to adjust short-term plans. The work we are doing on propensity modelling allows institutions to do just that. Please get in touch if you’d like to hear more.  dan.beynon@smrs.co.uk