EMAS Pro Case Study:
Northern Kentucky University

Shared by: Director of Admissions

"Northern Kentucky University (NKU) purchased EMAS Recruitment Pro from Education Systems in September 2003. We'd worked for years with an inefficient, homegrown recruitment database and a student information system which did not allow targeted, personalized communications. We were able to build a data bridge between our SCT+ student information system and EMAS Pro, which brings updated applicant, decision, confirmed and enrolled student information into EMAS Pro daily. Education Systems staff provided on-site and remote assistance in building this data exchange between our information systems, enabling NKU to bring EMAS Pro live on our campus on January 2004, only four months after purchasing the product.

Making Our Business More Efficient

"With the power of EMAS Recruitment Pro, the business of recruiting students to Northern Kentucky University has become more efficient. With the contact history screen in EMAS, we are able to note every incoming and outgoing telephone call, e-mail message, mailing, and web inquiry which occurs between the student and our University. This functionality allows our staff members to easily view the content of previous mailings, emails, and phone conversations that have occurred with a specific student. So the next staff member can provide a consistent message and move the student through the enrollment funnel easily.

"Our business of communicating missing credentials to applicants, both through tracking letters and telecounseling phone calls to students, has been automated with EMAS - again allowing NKU to turn applicants into accepted students more quickly. Everyone from our front desk staff and application processors to our admission counselors and directors are able to view missing credentials for each student. And they also have receipt date of required credentials, so all are communicating one message to the student.

"Our process for sending mail to students who request specific brochures via phone or online has also been automated. And the process of printing personalized letters and matching them to the appropriate brochures can now be accomplished with student workers and secretarial staff. For the first time, our staff is able to trust our recruitment database to match the information in our student information system, to minimize duplicate records, and to provide the complete picture of where a student is within the enrollment process.

Empowering Our Front-End Users

"EMAS Recruitment Pro has also enabled our entry-level Admissions staff to run queries, reports, and communication plans quickly and with little training. Our 10 Admissions Counselors/Assistant Directors and 2 Associate Directors are able to search for students by any combination of criteria in EMAS - such as African-American students with high ACT/SAT scores, students who visited campus for a fall open house, students from a particular high school who have incomplete applications, or non-traditional transfer students who are interested in Nursing. These unlimited query capabilities can be used to run reports, as well as send mailings using the Select Target Group function in EMAS.

"Before EMAS, we had very limited search and report capabilities and depended primarily on our Information Technology Department to print our lead lists, labels, etc. Now, we're able to print an unlimited number of reports in over 90 provided formats, based on any combination of fields/factors in EMAS - and each report takes less than five minutes to execute. Admissions has become an asset to other campus departments like Student Life, Housing, Orientation, First Year Programs, Academics, and African-American Student Affairs - all who want to utilize EMAS' quick report creation and mailing process.

"Our counselors are also able to utilize EMAS' Communication Plan functionality to set-up planned mailings, e-mails, and telecounseling calls to groups of students. We use three factors - their stage in the admissions cycle (e.g., inquiry), their market segment (e.g., freshman), and their entry term (e.g, Fall 2005). EMAS allows you to plan out these communications to complement our strategic plan -- and set-up subsequent communications to go to students a specified number of days from the time they meet these three factors. The communication plan allows us to set-up communications during our down time, so that they're automated to print throughout the year.

Customizing Our EMAS

"We've also been able to customize EMAS to meet specific needs in our Admissions Office. We adapted User Defined Screen 4 in less than one day to take event reservations (dates), number of guests, and event type for all of our daily tours, major open houses, group visits, and specialty events. We are able to run personalized confirmation letters, agendas, nametags, parent nametags, and thank you letters for all campus events. We are also able to monitor the size of our recruitment events and remove them from EMAS once they have reached capacity.

"Similarly, there are user-defined fields throughout the EMAS screens, which we've been able to customize to track orientation guests, scholarships awarded, residency, total transferred hours, etc. Every drop-down list in EMAS is completely controlled by each University; we were able to use matching values with our student information system to make training easy.

Our Telecounseling Success

"One of our greatest successes utilizing EMAS has come in the area of Telecounseling. Twelve current NKU students call prospective college students two nights per week during the school year and parts of the summer. We use this as a relationship-building tool with frequent, ongoing contacts at critical points in the decision-making process. EMAS Telecounseling Pro has enabled us to make 22,000 calls per year while achieving the following benefits:

1. Decreased mailing costs by qualifying uninterested prospects and inquiries
2. Increased number of students who visit campus and decreased no-show rates for visits
3. Building personal relationships between current and prospective students
4. Surveying student interest in visitation programs and taking reservations
5. Qualifying prospective students by interest level and encouraging application submission
6. Notifying applicants about missing credentials
7. Notifying scholarship recipients of their award and encouraging acceptance
8. Personalizing mailings to students based on their interests indicated during the call

"We have also utilized Telecounseling Pro for targeted calling efforts from our Admissions counselors, regarding yield events and follow-ups with inquiries who have not submitted an application.

Results

"Our EMAS story continues to be a successful one. The value-added for Northern Kentucky University includes the ability to target students personally and strategically. From this, we have been able to increase our African-American applications by more than 10% this year, as well as institute admissions standards and recruit a more qualified class of students.

"We are able to track our competitor colleges and solidify our image as a University with a personal approach to recruiting students. We have saved recruiting dollars by qualifying prospects with personalized mass e-mails to groups of 40,000+ students. With the ease of setting up and printing communications, we have more than doubled the number of specialty mailings leaving our office in the past year.

"We are able to easily report year-to-year comparisons by market segment, conversion rate of applicants to enrollees by several factors, and sources from which we are obtaining our most qualified and interested students. We continue to see a return on investment and a value added each year, as we become more robust users of EMAS Recruitment Pro. We see our future with EMAS as an opportunity for us to grade and qualify prospects in EMAS. We plan to create a matrix of enrollment targets - allowing NKU to target mailings and communication plans to students who are both interested in NKU and who we want to attract."

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