Starbucks and Enrollment Increases

The way students look at the world has changed. What they are looking for has changed. How the act and interact with their environment has changed. Colleges and schools have.....not changed. And they wonder why enrolling and retainingh students is getting tougher. Duh!

I have been preaching that we need to get away from old worn out admission and retention approaches. They are not helping. The market mind hs shifted and we have not kept up... and create an atmosphere that is more informal; one in which a potential student can relax yet still feel as if it can be a formal, getting business done arrangement. As I studied high school and college students to see where they seem to be comfortable yet able to do school related work. I needed to find a model that would convey to students that this is a place in which I can see myself and also create an affective bond to from my own experience. A place that feels like what I know and with which I can identify.

The answer- Starbucks or a coffee shop.

If you observe the target market for schools, these locations are where the potential enrollees go and spend large amounts of time talking with friends, reading, doing homework, tutoring or getting tutored, IM’ing, WIFI-ing and generally hanging around. It is surprising how much work, often collaborative work, is done in a Starbucks-like atmosphere.

So it became obvious that this should be the structure. Get out of the cubicles. Dump the formal desk that evokes negative affective responses. Set up a Starbucks-like zone area. Small intimate round tables (or small squares/rectangles) where potential students can sit with an admissions rep or even better, two and just talk. Create a Starbuckian-like atmosphere with colors that relax, photographs that will set a calming atmosphere and even music playing quietly in the background. Keep in mind that today’s students have grown up enveloped in music so much that it is de rigueur in all they do – even watching TV. It will not intrude. It will enhance.

Get a multi-purpose coffee machine than can make lattes, and other frou frou drinks they are used to having. They are available in numerous formats from school owned to vended and a range of costs. And use a premium grade of coffee. Potential students have grown up on Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Pete’s and other quality brands, Sorry Maxwell House and Folgers. Also, for non-coffee or tea drinkers, get a small fridge so you can offer soft drinks. Oh yes, a cookie or some nosh will certainly be a value-added.

To those who are saying, he’s nuts, maybe I am. But to create an affective connection and increase the A-ROI, we need to connect not to our values and world but to theirs. Starbuck-like places are where they connect so bring that to them. And reap the increased enrollments as Herzing is.

By the way, also think about setting up student lounges in a similar way if retention is of any concern. These can be set up as profit centers too. Want to learn more on how to increase enrollment and revenue through changing the correlative function of your physical set-up, just call me 413.219.6939 or email me. Be glad to tell you how.

Web Sites, Signs, Objective Correlatives Hurt Enrollment

Let’s take one of the first correlatives students see – the web site. Most school websites are, well since it is the holiday season I’ll say they are not as good as they can be in working as objective correlatives for students. Why? Because they were created by people who believe in words and in linear realities. Not metaphoric leaps based on correlating objects and images.

We create webs as if they were documents, packed with words and minimal graphics or pictures. We even include entire catalogues on web sites as if anyone would want to read them online. Students hate catalogues and their page after page of, you guessed it, words we believe are important. They don’t nor do they believe catalogues are helpful or speak to them. That’s why catalogue personalization programs such as Leadwise are being adapted by schools. They speak to each student’s personal world and provide graphics and photos students can identify with.

Just look at where students go to on the web-YouTube, Facebook, Shoutwire - and you’ll see few words and almost all visuals. Moreover, the pages are packed with small boxes and thumbnails of choices to click on and download. We may have some trouble with this visual overload. They do not. Nor do they have trouble with the crawls at the bottom of screens during TV shows that can drive us nuts. Not them.

And the web is one of the first contacts with a school. Thus it is a very strong objective correlative. It has the power of the law of primacy – that which is first encountered is first and most powerfully to come to mind. And what most college websites do is create a picture of a school as very “old school.” Not good.

Another powerful, primary objective correlative that is almost universally overlooked is the signage, a fancy way of saying signs. When a potential student first comes to a school or campus, the first material object they see are the signs used to direct them, to inform and to welcome them. If the signs are unattractive, too small or not quickly and easily informative, they generate a negative metaphor for the school’s concern for people.

When we do a college service audit, we find that schools usually don’t even have adequate or enough signs to guide people to locations. It is sort of like a test to see if you can find your way around to qualify for going there. After all, we who live at the school now got lost at first because there were no signs for us and we found our way around. If we could do it, new students can too. Dumb belief.

The lack of signs, uninformative signs, outdated signs and so on, create a very powerful correlative to how much the school cares about helping and assisting. So much so that we have found poor signage such a very dominant force in forming early metaphors that we would rank poor signs as a major negative factor leading to lost enrollment. We have found that if students can’t find their way around with signs, they often just trace their way back to their car and leave. Remember that as posted earlier, as much as 12% of enrollment is lost when students make actual contact with a school.

These are just a few examples of the objective correlative in customer service leading to loses in enrollment and retention. It is a topic we will come back to in later postings.