It's 2040, Miko D. (his real name) tweaked his tuxedo for the very last time before he was welcomed to the stage to collect just another award: the best education marketing agency of 2039.

What catapulted him to such fame?

Miko and his agency did a remarkable job of working with universities to anticipate challenges using data analysis and pinpoint markets that couldn't be identified, by looking just at CRM data.

On stage, while he was addressing the audience, Miko had a flashback: He just finished his first virtual team meeting to develop a digital strategy for a new university client. His agency worked with some global business schools in the past. He had, therefore, good credentials.

The problem was not obvious at the beginning: enrollments were beyond predictions, and the applications were up, except for programs with a "troubling past," as one of the university directors mentioned.

The Envy of the Industry

Even the Admissions metrics would create some envy in the industry: application processing times have been consistently decreasing, the interview-to-enrollment rates were skyrocketing (thanks to the amazing alumni interviewers), and the admission-to-enrollment time was decreasing.

It looked like a popular university that was efficiently managed and in which candidates were keen to enroll.

Out of the BLUE

The VP of Marketing came to Miko asking for his support. The application pipeline looked fabulous, but he was shocked to see so many applicants who had literally come OUT OF THE BLUE. Those applicants started the application process without having any prior engagement with the university. They were in stealth mode, they were UNTRACEABLE, and then suddenly submitted their applications.

After analyzing the data of the candidates' funnel, it became clear that the top part of the funnel had started to dry up. The leads were decreasing across all programs as if somebody were redirecting them. Events attendance was slowing rapidly. Additionally, people are unsubscribing to communications at an alarming rate.

A good problem?

"Why care?" some might think. Why should I be alarmed if the bottom of the funnel looks amazing? This is an easy answer to a more complex problem.

Technology allows the creation of predictive models that can estimate an outcome with a high probability. Likewise, marketing budgets are built to influence the behavior of an audience that the institution wants to attract.

Without data and without an audience, how to predict behavior and to whom to market?

It still might go well for one year or another, but tapping in the dark and literally hoping that candidates with the right profile apply this looks like too much magic.

So far, the university had a good problem because candidates were applying but had no visibility on their pipeline. There seemed to be no way to engage with future candidates.

Meet Eduardo, a Stealth Applicant

Check out Eduardo and his story of why he decided to become untraceable. He did a lot of research for his Master's. He got so disappointed so many times by the lack of personalization and understanding of his goals that he decided to go DARK and start his undistracted research.

In this scenario, " How did you hear about us?" becomes highly relevant to mapping out the candidate's journey. This was also the angle Miko took when he was looking at the data and interviewing many of the stealth applicants.

Engaging with The Untraceables

Universities are complex ecosystems where the desire to share knowledge meets the fact-finding candidate who quickly wants to establish a fit with the university.

In his proposal, Miko had to be careful not to hurt sensitivities but still make his point:

Crisp & Sharp

The navigation for future students needs to be crystal clear, with key information displayed prominently. Certainly, universities want to highlight their USPs and share the experience, but on the sidelines of that program, duration, format, profile, and tuition should be easy to find.

Personalization

Build an infrastructure to learn how candidates navigate. Use those journeys to understand the information needs of the candidate. If candidates spend time on the Financial Aid web, they are certainly concerned about how to finance their studies:

1. Create a chatbot to offer help and enable further personalized engagement.
2. Trigger pop-ups to display student stories on how they financed their program.
3. Use this information to retarget on social media.

Faculty

Craft a content engagement plan with faculty that are already very active in publishing content on social media. Their audience, to some extent, will include potential candidates. Those initiatives could include:

1. Webinars with the faculty (avoid a commercial connection as the purpose is to identify those candidates).
2. Share additional content not authored by the faculty to establish thought leadership beyond this one person.

SEO Strategy & Web Optimization

Data is critical to identify stealth applicants earlier than they are thinking. The whole idea is to engage with them before they apply, and they will be happy to reveal their identity when they feel they received that personalized engagement they were not getting in the first place.

Both a SEO strategy and an optimized web allow to build those data points to build trust with the stealth applicant.

Over the years, Miko helped the university to rebuild the top of the funnel. The university got a further boost of applicants, improving their admissions metrics even further.