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Student Recruitment has been transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic as institutions shift their strategies to online platforms. Student recruitment webinars help institutions overcome some of the hurdles created by COVID19 in the education sector. This past year’s events have created significant challenges to university admission representatives all over the world. While most universities have successfully managed to transition their academic courses completely online, admission offices are still struggling to readjust their strategies to promote their institutions while attracting high-quality candidates. The future of student recruitment lies on the ability to transition and to adapt completely to the online environment. Being able to develop an appealing digital marketing strategy to reach international students has become a necessity for institutions worldwide.
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) analyzed reactions of potential business school candidates and only 29% of respondents were considering delaying their studies, while 46% were considering other alternatives. In the case of international students, in a survey done by QS earlier this year, 27% of prospective international students at the university level mentioned that their plans to study abroad have been impacted by the pandemic, while 37% said they planned to defer their studies to the Spring semester.
How can your institution navigate this difficult period and overcome the challenges created by COVID-19? What can you do internally to reach, communicate, and connect with potential students to offer your programs? Keep reading to learn more about Student Recruitment during COVID-19.
Shift your marketing budget to boost your online presence
Having a strong online presence is now more important than ever, and you must consider allocating more funds from your budget to these channels. Since most of the in-person marketing events such as study fairs, open houses and college tours have been cancelled and people continue to avoid gatherings, the best option for institutions is to transfer funds already budgeted to online activities that can be measured through time.
Even though students might not be not actively applying to academic courses, they are spending much more time online, which creates an excellent opportunity to connect with them. A strong and appealing branding campaign along with lead generation actions such as student recruitment webinars will help you grow your institutions’ student database during this period.
Connect with Students Online
During this period, you should nurture and grow your database of prospects. With a good social media conceptualization, strategy and execution, along with tools to communicate and connect with your followers, you will be able to promote your programs and your campus, where the students are.
An attractive communication plan in your social media and other digital channels will help you make the most of these resources to grow your student recruitment activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being active in social media, producing blogs and even participating in podcasts are the best ways to improve brand recognition and keep your university present in the minds of students looking to study abroad.
Email marketing also offers a great opportunity to reconnect with your database. You can use emails not only to promote your programs but also to offer specialized downloads, documents, articles that might interest the prospective students in your database. This will make your emails stand out and allow you to get information about the top candidates in the pool.
Create virtual events
Just as classes have transitioned to a virtual environment, this is the time to start hosting virtual open houses or student recruitment webinars. These webinars have been around for the past 10 years and are an excellent, safe and cost-efficient method of student recruitment during the COVID0-19 pandemic.
Student recruitment webinars offer universities a space to introduce their campus, their programs and their values through interactive live sessions that can be recorded and then sent to other prospects. During these events, you can connect with students from all over the world interested in studying abroad and answer their questions in real time. This is an excellent alternative to offline events and a perfect way to recruit students and generate quality leads.
Being creative and adding different digital channels to your student recruitment strategy will help your institution stay relevant and connect with future students. Produce appealing content, communicate with your database and start hosting student recruitment webinars to generate high quality leads to fill your upcoming terms.
Looking to recruit students online?
If you are interested in recruiting students virtually during these difficult times, we can help. At ISN we bring together universities and international students through interactive and accessible online sessions. Our experience in student recruitment and extensive student database allow us to offer our clients the opportunity to promote their institutions with tailored recruitment events
Want to hear more? Feel free to get in contact with us here or click here to learn more about our student recruitment webinars.
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Read MoreAbsolutely. For both multi-webinar and solo-webinar, there is a 24-hour turnaround time for you to receive the complete and comprehensive student registration information and the list of students who attended the webinar. The information includes the students' full name, email, home address, contact number, gender, age, intended level of study (undergrad/ post grad/ ESL), program they are interested in, and when they plan to enroll (Fall 2020/ Spring 2021).
For multi-webinar, there will be 5 presenters from 5 different institutions. Each presenter will have a 5 minute presentation (25 minutes in total for all presenters).The remaining time will be used for Q&A session.
For solo-webinar, your institution is the ONLY one presenting to prospective students. The first 30 minutes will be spent for your presentation and the remaining 30 minute is for Q&A session. You may choose the topic/s to be presented.
Multi-webinar will have 5 presenters from 5 different institutions. Each institution can have 1 presenter.
Solo-webinar can have a minimum of 1 presenter and a maximum of 4 presenters.
ISN recommends that all presenters have wired internet connection to ensure a stable connection. Please refer to Zoom’s system and bandwidth requirements HERE for more details.
For both multi-webinar and solo-webinar, ISN will provide a dedicated host and technical support throughout the webinar. The host will introduce the presenters, create polls during the webinar, and read the questions asked by students out loud for the presenters.
For both multi-webinar and solo-webinar, ISN markets webinars through different digital marketing channels such as email marketing, social media marketing, paid ads, SEO, etc.
For multi-webinar, we target students who are interested in the specific webinar topic and we market the 5 institutions equally. For solo-webinar, we will focus on marketing your institution alone to ensure that all attendees are interested in your institution.
ISN accepts payment through credit card. ISN will send a secure payment link and payment should be settled 24 hours upon submitting your registration.
For both multi-webinar and solo-webinar, the attendance is 10-15% of those registered, based from the past webinars.
No. The webinars are 100% free for students and parents who are interested in attending both multi-webinar and solo-webinar.
ISN will provide the student database 24 hours after the webinar session. Please use your institutions’ CRM to follow up and send a message to these students right away; a thank you email is a good start in following up with these leads.
This Terms of Service Agreement is a binding legal contract between your education institution (“you”, “purchaser”, “institution”, “client”, “exhibitors”) and International Student Network Inc. (“ISN,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) regarding ISN services such as student fairs, webinars, conferences, student databases, and digital marketing services.
ISN will submit complete and comprehensive information on the students who will attend as well as those who register for the student fairs/ webinars/ other ISN services. This student database/s is/are for use by the institution only and registration information should not be forwarded on to third parties. Similarly, the materials such as ISN brochures and recording of webinars are for use by the institution only and should not be forwarded on to third parties. If you believe that a third party has obtained details in an unauthorized manner, please promptly notify ISN.
ISN will send you a form to be filled out by the institution to finalize your registration. Once the form is submitted, ISN will send a secure payment link. Payment must be settled within 5 business days. You will be required to send us a copy of your presentation and any marketing materials that you want us to use to promote your institution. Please send a copy of your presentation/ marketing material to expo@isnexpo.com immediately after registration so we can immediately start marketing your institution and your programs. Please note that we can only start marketing your institution once the payment is made and after we receive a copy of your marketing materials.
Effective March 1 2020, due to COVID-19, ISN is not accepting checks. ISN only accepts credit card payments and ACH deposits. If your preferred payment method is a credit card, a secured payment link will be sent to you once the registration form is submitted. Payments should be made within 5 business days upon receiving the secured payment link/ invoice for ACH deposit
Registration for all ISN services, including expos, student recruitment webinars, student databases, and digital marketing services may be cancelled as stated below:
If the Exhibitor fails to make a required payment in a timely manner, as detailed under the ISN Terms & Condition, ISN has the right to terminate this agreement and Exhibitor’s participation in the expo without further notice and without obligation to refund any payments made.
If there is a cancellation due to unforeseeable events that are beyond either party’s control, including but not limited to: natural disasters, war, terrorist act, strikes, civil disorder, pandemic, or other comparable unforeseeable emergency, a FULL credit towards any future ISN related services will be given to the institution.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, ISN has created strict precautionary measures to adapt and meet the new health and safety concerns. By signing this terms and condition, you are acknowledging the risk of exposure to COVID-19 in public places such as event venues where people are present. By participating to ISN education expos, you assume all the risks and agree to the following:
Unless otherwise indicated, International Student Network Inc. will have the rights to use the information that the institution will be providing to market and promote the institution. The authorization provided to ISN by the university may include the use of: logo, programs, testimonials, photos and video that will be used in strategies targeting students and educators through different media outlets such as email marketing, digital marketing, and social media marketing.
International Student Network Inc. does not guarantee any enrollment or conversion rates after the student fairs, webinars, conferences, or when purchasing student databases. It is the sole responsibility of the marketing team of the institution to follow up with the student leads.
You will receive the complete and comprehensive student registration information. The information includes the students’ full name, email, home address, contact number, gender, age, intended level of study (undergrad/ post grad/ ESL), program they are interested in, when they plan to enroll, and their concerns about studying overseas. The students opted in to receive emails and marketing campaigns from our partner education institutions. We do not guarantee delivery rate for email data purchase because some ISP s may block good-deliverable email addresses or divert them to spam box.
The education institution may use all the information from the database to follow up with the student leads using their own CRM, email marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing. The database can also be used to reach students for their own webinars. ISN highly encourages the education institution to maximize the use of these databases by using various marketing strategies.
The institutions must use their email marketing tools in compliance with all applicable local, state, provincial, national and other laws, rules and regulations, including those relating to spam and email, and including without limitation, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, the Canadian CASL, and the EU GDPR and e-privacy directive.
For webinars, the virtual event facility also known as the webinar platform, includes a feature that allows audio, video and any documents and other materials exchanged or viewed during the session to be recorded. By joining a session, you automatically consent to such recordings. If you do not consent to the recording, please contact ISN to discuss your concerns in good time prior to the web-event date. Your webinar participation may require you to configure your software settings on your web-device upon first use or require you to download the software for your operating system. ISN will notify you what software to download:
GoToMeeting or Zoom depending on your target market/ region. Please note that you may require administrator privileges on your computer to be able to manually install software.
For events, ISN will be documenting the tour and student fairs. Exhibitors give permission to ISN and accept that photographs and videos will be taken during the fairs. ISN shall own the copyright of all images and videos and may use them for advertising and marketing purposes.
If the terms and conditions outlined in this agreement are acceptable, please indicate your acceptance by attaching your signature and please send it back to Janet B. at expo@isnexpo.com
We look forward to working with you and your institution!
On behalf of International Student Network Inc.
Name: Janet B.
Job Title: Marketing Coordinator
International Student Network Inc
Date: April 2, 2020