Canada’s largest event for Post-Secondary marketing, recruitment, student success and enrolment management.

Why did a prospective student to apply to your institution? That is one of many questions that recruiters and higher-ed professionals ask themselves nowadays. With a plethora of possible strategies, it is increasingly challenging to implement the "right" one. Afterwards, how do you assess the results? In this informative presentation you will learn from McGill University using our real-world examples of graduate student recruitment, marketing, and outreach.

From Sept 30 -- The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation until Oct 6, 2021, the University of Alberta hosted, for the first time in school history, Free Application Days for First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) applicants. This unprecedented and important initiative, which brought together strategic enrollment and marketing stakeholders from across the Registrar's Office, resulte in year-over-year increase of 35% in direct-entry Indigenous applicants. However, the story of how an equity-seeking idea materializes into a Reconili-"Action" is a dramatic one. Via moderated interview of the Co-Chairs of the Working Group on Indigenous Free Application Day (WGIFAD), presenters will tell the vital story of the heroes and villians of Free App Days, the challenges, the perils, and ultimately the victory. This will be a vital story to hear for any strategic enrollment and marketing specialist at any major Canadian institution who desires to advance reconiliation and respond thoughtfully to any of the "94 Calls to Action" of the Truth and Reconciliation Comission.

With over 38,000 CPA members and 6,000 candidates and students, the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) is the second largest professional organization in BC. CPABC’s primary mandate is to protect the public and to do so, we need to ensure the profession can meet the current and future demand for CPAs by continuing to recruit and enroll CPA students. Our Student Recruitment & Employer Relations team delivered 99 info sessions and events to post-secondary students in April 2020 to March 2021 and our efforts are supported and augmented by robust low-cost digital marketing efforts from our External Communications team. Using a digital-focused marketing strategy, the two teams work collaboratively to engage and recruit post-secondary students to the CPA program by working with post-secondary institutions, their career centres, faculty, and student clubs and associations to support our future talent pool with their school to work transition. In this presentation, we will share how our in-house communications and student recruitment teams collaborate to deliver a cost-effective, multi-platform digital marketing strategy that engages post-secondary students. The presentation will showcase how CPABC has leveraged their student recruitment events, social media platforms (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn), and communications tools and resources (e.g. e-newsletters, editorials, podcasts) to provide resources for post-secondary students and recruit them into the CPA profession.

They say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Edified’s 2021 UK Enquiry Experience Tracker certainly proved that to be the case. In 2021 Edified ran a mystery shopping exercise to test how 54 UK universities respond to student enquiries from domestic and international students. The research included 6 personas enquiring through multiple channels at each university.The results are fascinating and this presentation will share the data/insights and provide some practical recommendations on what universities can do to improve management of student enquiries. Practitioners will also share their experiences on the challenges and solutions when working inside complex organizations and finally, how these insights relate to the Canadian market.

We are proposing a balance of presentation with an interactive Q&A.; We will be taking a case study approach in conjunction with one of our customers Fanshawe College in Canada who will be a co-presenter and available for Q&A.; We will add additional case study insights where appropriate to bring our presentation to life.

The core learning points from our presentation will be:

• The benefits of a digital ambassador programme in student recruitment
• How to set up a digital ambassador programme and engage students
• How to integrate with your existing marketing to increase conversion
• Why using student ambassadors can be a powerful recruitment tool
• We will go through the steps of setting up an ambassador program and provide tips for success (even if it's not online yet)
• How a digital ambassador program can be especially good for international recruitment and those seeking to increase the international breadth of their intake
• We will demonstrate how a digital ambassador program can complement and amplify existing digital marketing