Webinar Rewind: How to Maximize Yield in a Shrinking Market

For many enrollment teams, “yield season” still conjures images of March and April—admit packets, financial aid offers, and a flurry of lastminute outreach.

That view no longer suffices. In the new on-demand webinar, Maximizing Yield in a Shrinking Market: Engaging Students From Admit to Arrival, Liaison Vice President Todd Abbott and AVP of Enrollment Marketing Jared Christensen joined Council of Independent Colleges Senior Advisor J. Carey Thompson to explain how advanced analytics can transform yield from a short-term scramble into a sustained, strategic, and highly personalized effort.

If you work in admissions, enrollment management, or marketing, this session is definitely worth your time, particularly if limited staff capacity, transactional messaging, and lack of actionable data are familiar pain points.

A central theme of the conversation is the shift from broad, cohort-level tactics to student-level recommendations powered by predictive and prescriptive analytics.

• Predictive analytics helps you understand how likely a student is to enroll based on historical patterns and current behavior.
• Prescriptive analytics goes a step further by suggesting what to do next for that specific student.

Thompson describes how, early in his career, much of his team’s yield work felt like guesswork. “Half our efforts were wasted,” he says. “We just didn’t know which half.”

Today, tools like Liaison’s Othot AI-powered analytics platform can:

• Segment large pools based on likelihood to enroll.
• Identify which students are most influenced by financial aid, campus visits, or academic fit.
• Recommend specific actions that move the needle: for example, a visit invite vs. a faculty call, or an aid adjustment vs. a peer connection.

Instead of treating all admitted students the same, your team can prioritize time and budget where they’re most likely to have impact and avoid spreading staff thin on low-yield activities.

Thompson makes a point that resonates throughout the webinar:

“Yield begins with brand.”

What used to be framed as a March–April priority is now a year-long relational process that starts at brand awareness and the first inquiry. During the session, speakers emphasize that:

• Students are continually forming impressions of your institution, from your website and social content to your early email touches.
• By the time admission decisions go out, many students have already decided which schools feel like a fit.
• Trying to “fix” weak engagement with a late spring yield push is often too little, too late.

Advanced analytics becomes powerful here. As you engage students over time, your models learn not just who is likely to enroll, but also why and which combination of messages, channels, and touch points will be most effective next.

All three speakers are clear: First-name merge fields aren’t personalization.

Modern CRMs and marketing platforms, combined with strong data practices, allow institutions to:

• Swap entire content blocks in emails based on major, distance from campus, or interests.
• Adjust images and stories to reflect a student’s context (e.g., “Come to our state” vs. “Stay in our state”).
• Tailor messaging by behavior: website pages visited, event attendance, survey responses, and engagement with prior emails.

Thompson describes personalization as weaving a “tapestry” of messaging that makes sense to the student on their end. In higher education, that requires:

• Good data (clean, complete, and thoughtfully collected).
• A modern CRM and someone who knows how to truly leverage it.
• Collaboration across admissions, marketing/communications, and IT.

Christensen adds a caution for institutions from the parent side: Poorly executed personalization can actually undermine trust. If design and content clearly look generic with a name dropped in, an applicant sees right through it. Analytics and segmentation help ensure that when you personalize, you do it well and in ways that feel relevant, not gimmicky.

Another critical dimension of yield that the webinar explores is the role of parents and families. Data from Niche shows that while only a minority of students name parents as the “most” influential person, two-thirds say their parents or guardians are a major influence in the final decision.

Key insights from the webinar:

• Parent communication should start early, not just after admission or at deposit time.
• Your data strategy should include collecting parent contact info at inquiry, not waiting for the application.
• Tone and content matter: Parent emails should look and sound different than student emails.
• Social media can be a powerful channel for parents, even if it’s not always the same platforms students use.

Thompson explains how matching parents with the right campus voices—trustees, alumni, or other parents—often proved far more effective than having those stakeholders reach out directly to 17-year-olds. Analytics can help identify which parents need reassurance around cost, which need clarity on outcomes, and which are focused on issues such as campus safety, distance from home, or support services.

One of the most compelling aspects of the conversation is how data and analytics, when used well, actually make the process more human, not less.

Some examples discussed:

• Using prescriptive analytics to identify which 25–50 admits would benefit most from a highly tailored visit invitation—and then designing that event experience specifically around their interests.
• Combining model outputs with counselor notes so staff can enter each conversation with a clearer sense of what matters most to that student (e.g., research opportunities vs. affordability vs. campus culture).
• Reducing “spray and pray” outreach, which burns out staff and irritates students, in favor of purposeful contact that feels like it respects students’ time and choices.

Thompson frames this as a professional evolution: The field is moving from generalist recruiting to far more data-informed, specialized work, supported by strong tools and professional development. AI and advanced analytics are accelerating that shift.

Reading about these ideas is useful; hearing practitioners walk through real scenarios and talk candidly about what’s worked—and what hasn’t—is better.

In the on-demand version, you’ll:

• See how predictive and prescriptive analytics can surface individualized recommendations for the admitted students in your pipeline.
• Learn how to integrate those recommendations into your CRM and counselor workflows, so staff aren’t guessing what to do next.
• Explore higher ed enrollment marketing strategies that align messaging, timing, and channels with the specific needs and motivations of each student and their family.
• Hear practical advice on building the data foundation, team capacity, and campus buy-in you need to make this level of personalization sustainable.

If you’re looking to move beyond onesizefitsall yield campaigns, reduce wasted effort, and give your team concrete, data-driven next steps for each student, watch Maximizing Yield in a Shrinking Market: Engaging Students From Admit to Arrival.