What does it actually take to communicate effectively with today’s prospective students across borders, time zones, and an ever-expanding range of digital channels?
That was the central question explored in our recent virtual masterclass,Mastering Global Student Communication Strategies led by Megan Prettyman, Vice President of Partner Success at Keystone Enrollment Services, who has spent her career working in and alongside higher education institutions to improve how they recruit, engage, and enroll students globally.
The masterclass drew attendees from institutions across the world and covered the full arc of student communication, from first inquiry through to arrival on campus. What emerged was a clear, practical framework built not on doing more, but on communicating more intentionally.
Below are some of the most actionable strategies shared in the session.
Before building your student communications plan, you need to understand the process students actually experience, not the one universities assume they do.
Process mapping reveals where students get stuck, lose confidence, or disengage. It also exposes a common institutional blind spot: communicating around internal pressures rather than student needs.
“The written process and the lived process for students are not always the same thing. Also, students aren't stressed about your targets. They're stressed about uploading their documents to the application portal.”
Megan Prettyman, Vice President of Partner Success at Keystone Enrollment Services
When mapping the student journey, start simple. Post-it notes on a wall are enough to begin identifying real friction points and building your strategy around them.
Students experience the same admissions process very differently depending on their funnel stage, study level, country of origin, program, and engagement behavior. A student communication strategy only works when it speaks to those differences.
By segmenting your student cohort into smaller populations, you will be able to provide more tailored, personalized content.
For example, undergraduate students want to hear about campus life and housing, while postgraduate students want to know more about research opportunities and assistantships.
Getting student segmentation right means every student receives messaging relevant to their journey, and mass communications that feel personal, even at scale.
Reciprocal engagement, or genuine two-way communication with the student, is one of the strongest predictors of enrollment. UniQuest data across all its partner universities shows that students who engage in back-and-forth interactions convert from offer to enrollment at triple the rate of those who don’t.
“What we want is to see students responding to communications. It sounds so basic, but it reiterates the foundational things that matter most in getting students to move forward.”
Megan Prettyman, Vice President of Partner Success at Keystone Enrollment Services
Every student communication should have a clear purpose: What do you want the student to do next? Click a link, confirm a detail, register for an event, or reply with a question. Random touchpoints don’t generate meaningful interaction. Strategic ones do.
85% of higher education students expect a same-day response. But speed alone isn’t the answer. According to the 2025 Enquiry Experience Tracker Report (a global research project that mystery-shops universities on how they handle student inquiries) students are 7 times more likely to progress with institutions that give warm, tailored replies over quick, generic ones.
A canned student communication sent instantly can do more harm than good, signalling disinterest and disorganization at exactly the moment a student is deciding whether to invest further. Content still matters as much as how quickly you say it.
As highlighted during the masterclass, what students need from you changes as they move through the funnel, and your student communication strategy should shift accordingly.
At the pre-applicant stage, the goal is to drive university applications. At the application stage, it’s helping students complete their submission. During the waiting period, many institutions go quiet, and that's a costly mistake. Students who receive decisions within 10 days are 40% more likely to accept their offer.
“You still have a purpose in communicating with them and keeping them on the hook: keeping them updated on the processing timeline, sending them campus videos while they’re waiting.”
Megan Prettyman, Vice President of Partner Success at Keystone Enrollment Services
Once students receive an offer, walk them through every micro-step: visa applications, deposits, orientation, housing. Students who receive two post-admission phone calls are 9% more likely to enroll than those who receive one.
Students contacted across multiple channels convert at double the rate of those who only receive emails. But the goal of your student communication strategy isn’t to be everywhere, it’s to execute it well on the channels you choose. It is better to do the basics really well than to offer every channel very poorly.
A strong core stack includes one-to-many email nurture, one-to-one email, phone calls, WhatsApp, and live chat. Phone calls, in particular, remain underused and consistently valued by higher ed institutions:
“Every day we hear students say, ‘I can’t believe you called me. No other institution has called me.’”
Megan Prettyman, Vice President of Partner Success at Keystone Enrollment Services
Use one-to-many at the top of the funnel to reach the widest audience, then shift to one-to-one as the primary yield tool closer to enrolment. And during uncertain times, keep communicating with students proactively, as silence creates speculation.
Mastering student communication isn’t about volume. As Prettyman summarized in the masterclass: “It’s about delivering the right message to the right student at the right time.”
Start with the foundation, mapping the journey, and getting to know your audiences, and everything else follows.
Watch the complete Masterclass on demand here.