Amazon may have raised the bar for consumer engagement, but higher education has an opportunity to create something even more meaningful.
Have you ever had the unsettling feeling that Amazon knows exactly what you need before you do? You mention needing a new coffee maker and suddenly your screen is filled with coffee makers. You buy a pair of running shoes and spend the next three weeks being served recommendations for athletic apparel. You browse a product once and it somehow follows you across the internet like an overly enthusiastic salesperson who refuses to take the hint.
Whether we love it or find it mildly creepy, most consumers have become accustomed to highly personalized experiences. And yes, you can probably blame Amazon for that.
Amazon Changed Expectations; Students Changed Too
The challenge for higher education is that prospective students are consumers, too. They may not think about colleges in the same way they think about Amazon, Netflix, Spotify or TikTok, but those brands have fundamentally shaped their expectations. Students increasingly expect organizations to know who they are, understand what they care about and provide experiences that feel relevant to their needs.
Recently, my 16-year-old daughter gave me access to her email account. As she prepares to enter her junior year of high school, colleges have already started finding their way into her inbox. Many colleges. As both an enrollment leader and a parent, I have found the experience fascinating.
Some institutions clearly know very little about her beyond a purchased name and email address. To be fair, that is exactly where many of these relationships begin. She has not requested information. She has not visited campus. She has not raised her hand to express interest. At this stage, colleges are working with very limited information. Still, some messages feel more relevant than others.
Some sound as though they were sent to every high school student in America. Others make a more intentional effort to connect their message to a student’s interests, aspirations or stage in the college search process. What has struck me most is that I am less interested in what institutions know about her today and far more interested in how they will learn about her over time.
Will they ask thoughtful questions? Will they create opportunities for her to share what matters to her? Will they adapt their communication based on her interests and behaviors? Will they demonstrate that they are paying attention? As I watch this process unfold, I find myself holding my own institution to the same standard.
For years, higher education has invested heavily in recruitment. We have become increasingly sophisticated in our communication plans, digital marketing campaigns, customer relationship management systems, predictive analytics and marketing automation strategies. However, many institutions still rely on broad messaging designed to appeal to everyone rather than relevant messaging designed to connect with someone. The result is not personalization. It is noise.
Personalization Starts With Curiosity, Not Technology
One of the biggest misconceptions about personalized recruitment is that it begins with technology, but it begins with curiosity. Technology helps us scale personalization, but curiosity helps us create it.
The rise of artificial intelligence will only accelerate these expectations. Institutions now have access to tools that can help identify student interests, analyze engagement patterns, personalize communication and deliver information at scale in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Those capabilities are exciting, but they also create an important challenge. If we are not careful, we can mistake personalization for automation.
Students do not want to feel like an algorithm is managing them. They want to feel that an institution understands them. AI can help us recognize patterns, but it cannot help us care. The institutions that will thrive in the AI era are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones that use technology to create more meaningful human connections rather than replace them.
At Concordia University Texas, we encourage admissions counselors to move beyond transactional conversations. We certainly want to know a student’s GPA, intended major and enrollment timeline, but we also want to understand what motivates them, what concerns them, what they hope to accomplish and what questions keep them awake at night. Those details matter because students are not enrollment categories. They are individuals.
Building a Student Story Over Time
The challenge, of course, is that institutions cannot collect every piece of information during an inquiry form submission, nor should they try. Enrollment leaders understand the tension. We want better data, but we also want students to complete the form. Every additional field introduces friction. Every additional question creates another opportunity for a student to abandon the process altogether. The answer is not longer forms but incremental personalization.
Some information can and should be collected through forms, surveys, and digital engagement. Some information should emerge organically through conversations with admissions counselors, interactions with faculty, campus visits, event participation, student ambassadors and ongoing communication throughout the enrollment journey. The goal is not to build a comprehensive student profile on day one but to develop a deeper understanding of the student over time.
Making Personalization a Campus-Wide Commitment
This need for deeper understanding requires institutions to think differently about personalization. Rather than viewing it as a marketing tactic or a CRM function, we should view it as a campus-wide commitment to learning more about the students we serve.
What would happen if personalization became everyone’s responsibility? What if admissions counselors, faculty members, coaches, advisors, student affairs professionals and campus tour guides all played a role in helping institutions better understand student goals, interests, concerns and aspirations? What if every interaction generated insights that could improve the student experience?
The institutions seeing the strongest results today are not simply sending more messages. They are sending more relevant messages. They are creating opportunities for students to share information, demonstrate interests and engage in ways that make future interactions more meaningful.
Research from Salesforce found that 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. Higher education may not be retail, but students do not leave those expectations behind when they begin searching for colleges and universities. Institutions are increasingly competing not only against one another but against the best customer experiences students encounter in every other aspect of their lives.
The good news is that institutions do not need Amazon’s technology budget to create more personalized experiences. Some of the most impactful forms of personalization cost very little: a faculty member reaching out to a prospective student interested in their academic program, an admissions counselor remembering details from a previous conversation, a campus visit tailored to a student’s interests rather than a standard tour delivered to every visitor, or a follow-up email that addresses a student’s specific concerns instead of sending the next message in an automated sequence.
The Future Belongs to Institutions That Help Students Feel Known
The goal is not perfection. The goal is relevance.
Students want to feel understood. They want to know that institutions see them as individuals rather than prospects moving through a funnel. Personalized recruitment is not ultimately about technology, automation or sophisticated segmentation strategies. It is about demonstrating genuine interest in a student’s goals, aspirations and experiences.
The future of recruitment is not simply sending more messages. Most students are already overwhelmed with messages. The future of recruitment is creating experiences that help students feel known.
In many ways, Amazon raised the bar for every industry. Higher education does not need to become Amazon, but we do need to recognize that today’s students expect institutions to understand them as individuals. The colleges and universities that learn how to combine technology, curiosity and authentic human connection will have a significant advantage in the years ahead.
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