SEMM Conference 2024

The annual Brainstorm Report survey collected opinions and insights from 24,700 current university and college students in 2024.

This massive research study includes students across all disciplines, years of study, and levels of study.

For 2024, the study dives deeper than ever into students’ attitudes towards their post-secondary institution; their use of (and thoughts about) AI; and, their plans for after they graduate.

This presentation will provide a first look at what we’ve learned in 2024 about evolving student views about their education choices, student experience, and intentions for the future.

Whether your focus is recruitment and enrolment, marketing and communications, or ensuring student success, you’ll find invaluable current insights in this feature presentation.

Student Services or Student Success? What’s the difference? It’s amazing to see how one word changes the approach an institution might take supporting current students. It’s key that students are provided new spaces to flourish, updated programming to manage their academic needs, and more personalized support services to help with their mental health. It’s even more important that institutions do everything they can to ensure they come back, graduate, and achieve their desired level of success as an alumnus.

A student that graduates after having a positive experience at your institution could potentially become a brand ambassador, and give back in many ways. If they have a great experience in their first year, they’re bound to come back the next year. However, they’ll only do this if they’re successful and were supported in both their academic and personal journey. In this session, Sean will discuss retention best-practices, introduce a ‘Customer Success’ mindset, and outline effective approaches that could drive effective retention and elevate student success.

Learning Outcomes

• Refined view of Student Success
• Retention framework that could drive big or small changes
• Insight from other sectors that effectively use Customer Success

Many Institutions have done the research, developed student personas, and use them in their marketing and communications. The work is done, and the team can now move on to something else. The issue is, that you’ve only just started. That’s because developing and effectively using personas, ‘buyer profiles’ and/or archetypes is a never-ending process that every institution needs to invest in yearly.

Human behaviour evolves and changes over time. Therefore, so should your personas. Especially since they aren’t just for future students. Current students, Alumni, staff, community partners, etc. all play a part in the future growth of the institution. In this session, Sean will discuss a value-based approach to understanding and engaging with a mix of ‘audiences’. We will also discuss how each group impacts the institution and how other departments should be optimizing defined personas/profiles to deliver on their objectives.

Learning Outcomes

• A refined view of how to better understand key audiences
• New approaches to best define who they are
• Ways to keep personas fresh year-after-year

In today’s dynamic educational landscape, Strategic Enrolment Management and Marketing (SEMM) is more critical than ever. Achieving SEMM success requires a collaborative approach, engaging leaders to front-line staff across various departments to work towards a unified vision. This roundtable is designed for institutional leaders seeking to build a cohesive and committed team dedicated to enhancing enrollment strategies and outcomes.

This session is an opportunity to exchange ideas, ask questions, and gain valuable insights from peers who have successfully navigated the complexities of obtaining SEMM buy-in. Whether you’re just beginning your SEMM journey or looking to enhance your current strategies, this roundtable will provide the tools and inspiration needed to drive institutional success.

Discussion Topics:

• Building a Compelling Case: Learn how to articulate the importance of SEMM in ways that resonate with diverse stakeholders, from faculty to administrative staff.
• Collaborative Leadership: Explore methods for fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility for enrollment goals.
• Overcoming Resistance: Identify common barriers to SEMM buy-in and practical solutions to address and overcome them.

SEMM is complex; LinkedIn is not.

LinkedIn advertising is your one stop shop to build your institution’s brand, reach the applicants you need, fill your programs, and measure the results of your investment.

With 90% of higher ed graduates, 120k schools, and 64m students and recent grads on LinkedIn, we’ve got insights to share – especially on Gen Z, our fastest-growing group!

Among many other insights, our proprietary research reveals that 72% of Gen Z’ers shortlist 3 or fewer institutions early on, and 93% stick to their shortlist when choosing.

Join us for this leading-edge session to learn how the best schools across North America are leveraging LinkedIn to get in front of Gen Z, find high-quality applicants, and fill the seats you need to fill.

Learning Outcomes

• SEMM is complex but LinkedIn offers a 1-stop shop for SEMM, from brand building, to creating new program support, and acquiring high-quality students for existing programs
• How Gen Z uses LinkedIn differently than previous generations, and why you should care
• In-depth examples of how leading-edge institutions are leveraging LinkedIn advertising to achieve a variety of goals

• Do you find enough opportunities to hear from peers with similar challenges?
• Could you benefit from voicing your issues and finding common ground with others?
• Is it possible that others have already solved the problems you’re dealing with?

The SEMM community in Canada is still in its infancy – or perhaps its adolescence. We are a long way from having the shared resources, knowledge, networks, and strategies that have been developed in other countries. But sharing is absolutely critical to avoiding missed opportunities and making calculated strategic decisions.

In this special plenary session, participants will join groups of like-minded professionals to share their challenges, gain fresh perspectives, and learn from one another. Participants will discuss “what keeps them up at night” and share ideas of overcoming hurdles.

We’ll also work collectively on generating ideas, and possibly even starting initiatives, to create new resources, activities, and opportunities for sharing in the future.

Join us for this opportunity to get energized by the collective knowledge in the room, grow your support network, and come away with new ideas to take home.

In this session, attendees will be encouraged to expose, name, and reflect upon the complex problems facing the post-secondary sector in Canada through a particular focus on recruitment, admissions, enrolment management, and student success.

Higher education is experiencing an unprecedented paradigm shift. The systems are broken, and the systems are working exactly the way they are designed. And yet, something different is possible: the new paradigm of higher education is emerging, and how we shape what form it takes is up to us. The session takes a systems-level approach with the following high-level thought prompt: “How do we re-wire post-secondary education for human flourishing?”

In this moment of disorientation and disruption, we need practical tools and theoretical frameworks to metabolize the discomfort of seismic change. To borrow educational philosopher Parker Palmer’s strategy, we need to “name, claim, and aim” this moment to counter despair, disengagement, apathy, and stagnation.

This session will provide the opportunity to engage in a “mini” Hope Summit – part of a pan-Canadian project that gathers luminaries from across higher education to engage in re-wiring institutions around human and ecological flourishing. Dr. Jessica Riddell, founder of Hope Circuits Institute and Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, has been convening hope summits across Canada over the past six months since the publication of Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Organizations for Human Flourishing (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2024).

This session offers attendees the language to go from moment to mindset to social change movement, equipping them with the robust hope necessary to re-wire their institutions and create a new paradigm of post-secondary education centered on human and ecological flourishing in its various forms.

Learning Outcomes

• Develop a shared vocabulary to engage in systems change illuminated by the guiding values of equity, empathy, justice, creative democracy, and civic intelligence.
• Equip attendees with the tools and resources necessary to take back to their contexts – departments, divisions, campuses, academic adjacent organizations, associations – to re-wire systems in real time this week, this month, and this year.
• Participants will have developed emerging “blueprints” (e.g., design principles, to-do lists, actionable plans, commitments to action) that they can use to create meaningful change in their own institutional and community contexts.
• A focus on blueprints for strategic planning/visioning for their unit and institutional recovery and renewal through a SEMM lens.

Effectively targeting and communicating with the right students are key challenges in recruitment marketing that can be lessened by effectively using artificial intelligence.

This presentation will include one or more education partners and uncover how AI is being used to target and recruit students.

SchoolFinder Group will share some of the powerful (and FREE!) AI tools they have developed for both clients and non-clients. The tools will help schools assess their current marketing initiatives and both current and future program mix using insights from their community of over 1.2 million students.

This session will explore the following key areas:

• How AI is being used in postsecondary institutions
• Leveraging AI to uncover insights from your enrolled student data
• Competitive program trends that will help you shape your recruitment efforts
• AI-generated program student personas
• Utilizing generative AI for student communication and inquiries

This roundtable session will bring together industry leaders to identify key internal tensions and challenges that impact strategic enrolment management and marketing (SEMM) success.

Participants will engage in a collaborative discussion exploring current strategies and best practices they’ve experienced for navigating and mitigating these challenges.

Delegates will leave the session with new ideas, an improved network, and the ability to foster a more cohesive and effective SEMM approach within their own school.