When Kittie Pain became the Director of Graduate Admissions for Kutztown University in 2020, she could see some interesting challenges on the horizon. “We were launching a new MBA, and basically had to fill a cohort for an entirely new program.” To help make this happen, she turned to a little-known tech company with an interesting new business proposition.

"My program director was so excited to see all these names and phone numbers that we'd captured and could follow up on...Using Halda was a great intersection of timing and purpose" -Kittie Pain, Kutztown Director of Graduate Admissions

“We didn’t have efficient ways to capture our website visitors. RFI forms aren’t on a lot of our program pages, so when we run campaigns, capturing leads can feel a little like pulling teeth.” That’s where Halda came in.

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“Halda offered a great way to circumvent that situation, and it showed immediate results.” Pain explains.

Halda’s forms gave Kutztown the ability to engage students with personalized content tailored to their interests. This led to a surge of interaction with the program, along with  immediate lead capture.

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“I started a trial in June 2021 and we had great results. We had at least one solid prospect a day–and the only page we put it on was the MBA page.”

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Soon, other people around the University were taking notice. “My program director was so excited to see all these names and phone numbers that we’d captured and could follow up on. With an open house coming up, using Halda was a great intersection of timing and purpose–I was blown away.”

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It wasn’t long before Kutztown started offering the same engagement experiences for undergraduate recruitment. Pain continues, “Our undergraduate admissions office jumped into it with a month-long free trial, and they had amazing results in their pipeline for transfer. So we were both really happy, and convinced our administration to sign on.”

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That marked the beginning of a long-term partnership between Halda and Kutztown University, as Pain and her team found new ways to optimize Halda’s personalized website interaction. 

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Fine-Tuning a Personalized Engagement Strategy

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Now that Pain had successfully launched Halda’s engagement tools to meet her immediate goals, she used her deep understanding of the enrollment cycle to deploy personalization for strategic, long-term growth. “Now there are days when I get inquiries from Halda so fast and furiously that it’s astonishing.”

She explains, “Our unique use is that we started off with just the Application Fee Waiver form. Then we place it on different program pages based on when that audience is likely to apply and engage with the program.”

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Her understanding of the student journey allows her to find the most strategic ways to personalize each student’s website experience. “For instance, we have a Student Affairs master’s program that’s geared toward students just out of undergrad, so I position the personalized forms right around Thanksgiving, then take it down after Holiday Break because I know that’s when they’ll be home talking to parents about their next move.”

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This goes a long way in showing her university how she adapts her marketing approach to meet their needs.  “When I tell faculty and Program Directors about what Halda does, they are so thankful that I am giving them something targeted for their audience.”

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When it comes to overall enrollments, Halda leads made up 17% of her incoming class this Fall, but Halda’s engagement is particularly effective for how it maintains a healthy funnel. “We have a population that could make a decision in 6 weeks or 18 months, so this really helps me build that pipeline. I’ve never had this robust an inquiry pool to keep messaging to. And since the inquiries keep coming from Halda, we keep refilling it.”  

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Some of Kutztown’s engagement forms–like the International Fee Waiver and the Transfer Scholarship Calculator–have historically converted from 8%-12%. Even the Personalized Plan engagement form, which has inspired the most interactions since it’s lived on the website since Feb 2022, converts visitors into inquiries at over 6%. The end result is a combined inquiry total of 1250+ motivated, interested leads that already have a good sense of the value Kutztown offers.

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Moving Forward With Halda

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Pain is pleased with the results of Halda’s tools, and she is careful to track Halda’s impact so she can champion the results to other decision-makers within Kutztown. However, these results aren’t necessarily the main reason she is so willing to recommend Halda. “I enjoy working with Halda as a whole,” she explains. “From the minute I met Halda, they were fun and relatable, and disarming. I talk about their product and them as a whole because I feel really good about the entire experience.”

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To find out how Halda personalization might provide you with a similar experience, try out our tools live right now. And if you want to have a conversation with us, we'd be happy to get you on the schedule.