This post is authored by guest blogger Gil Rogers, Higher Education and Student Success Evangelist.

Over the years, we can easily identify transformative technology that impacts college admissions, marketing and engagement. For example, it wasn’t long ago that institutions were clamoring about how to integrate social media into their toolkits for engaging prospective students.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic thrust recruitment teams into a situation where they were forced to leverage technology like live and on-demand video and live chat in place of in-person experiences. 

In both of these examples, there were early adopters that seemed to be far ahead of the curve while the rest of the market took a “wait and see” approach until their hand was forced.

AI is different from any tech revolution before it. The buzz around ChatGPT is felt far and wide, transcending industries and roles beyond anything we’ve seen before. Institutions will not have the chance to sit back and watch how these resources unfold.

The winners will be those who are the most proactive in learning and understanding how this technology can help their team save time and create more impactful content for engaging their audience.

Using AI to Enhance Student Engagement and Outreach

The allure of new technology is always how it may (or may not) help you save time. The real struggle with college admissions professionals is the time spent crafting creative messages only to struggle with low read rates and engagement.

Of course with any new technology there is a learning curve and in today’s environment it may be difficult for enrollment managers to be able to dedicate the time to truly understand these tools while fighting through their normal day-to-day.

Element451 took the lead on developing a library of useful resources for leveraging AI, including:

• Tools for engineering useful prompts to support developing content with a better tone, personalization and more impactful subject lines
• A guide to how predictive analytics work and and can be used to support data-informed decision making
• Useful podcasts for learning about ChatGPT and AI on-demand

Once you’ve had the opportunity to learn more, integrating these tools into your toolkit becomes much, much easier!

How Using AI Supports Your Team’s Mental Health

Enrollment teams have been through a lot over the past few years. They’ve dealt with a global pandemic turning their world upside down. The Great Resignation stripped down teams to the core. Budgets continue to be reduced. 

The cliche, “We have to do more with less” rings more true than ever.

On top of it all, students expect personalized responses at all hours of the day. It’s impossible for admissions counselors to keep up with the demand on their time alone. 

Embeddable chatbots are not new. There are many providers that tout tools with “24/7 support” through an embeddable widget on your website. BoltBot by Element451 is different.

Not only does it deliver on the promise of extending your team, but it has the smartest brain as it’s powered by OpenAI (the developer of ChatGPT). This means it can understand complex questions and context better, providing more impactful responses to your audience.

A tool like BoltBot will not only save your team time. It will also save their sanity by reducing the redundancy and burden of answering student questions at all hours of the day and night. 

3 Ways AI Supports Your Student’s Success

Of course, all of these new technological enhancements mean nothing if they cannot be translated into student success. Otherwise they are just shiny toys. The good news is that there are already tangible benefits to incorporating AI into your work. Additionally, AI is being used by leading providers to improve their services and platforms. 

Here are three ways students benefit when AI is incorporated into your technology and work:

1. More dynamic decisions - Predictive analytics have traditionally been reliant on regression analysis based on static historical data. AI-powered machine learning can help provide deeper insights into student behavior which can help your team better support them in real-time.
2. Robots don’t sleep - As mentioned earlier, tools like BoltBot are online 24/7/365 and don’t take coffee breaks. The availability of a conversational tool that interacts with your students just like a human, informed by the smartest brain, will help keep your students engaged and informed.
3. Greater feelings of belonging - When your messaging is sharpened to be empathetic, supportive, and personalized based on that student’s interactions with you it will lead to a greater sense of belonging by the students you serve. This will lead to greater retention, persistence and long-term engagement.

Unlock Success with AI Now

Adopting AI technology will enhance personalized student engagement, boost your team’s productivity, and ultimately improve student success. And chatbots, like BoltBot, will have a significant increase in the effectiveness of your institution’s outreach efforts.

Additionally, predictive analytics powered by AI offer deeper insights into student behavior, which can be used to better support them in real-time. By incorporating AI technology into your work, you and your team will foster a greater sense of belonging and improve student engagement, enrollment, and retention.

As AI continues to evolve, it is crucial for higher education enrollment professionals to stay informed and be proactive in incorporating this technology into their work.

Join the Element451 team on April 05 for ChatGPT Ask Me Anything: AI-Driven Marketing for Student Yield. Whether you're an enrollment manager, a marketing pro, or just an AI enthusiast looking to satisfy your intellectual hunger, this session is for you. Bring your burning questions and get ready to be wowed by the power of AI-driven marketing.