This is the time of year when parents high-five each other – or pull out the tissues, as the case may be – as they see their kids off to school. New Orleans is again flooded with new degree hopefuls at our fantastic anchor schools, Loyola University and Tulane University. The smell of sorority rush hangs in the air.

I myself have a young lady packing up for her freshman year. As a mother and a marketer, I can tell you that the last couple of years of our lives have been interesting as we sought and finally found that perfect match of Sarah and her future alma mater. We finally discarded a moving box full of direct mail – that went mostly unopened – from a host of schools. If our household has $500 worth of mail in a box… now multiply that by the sea of high school graduates being wooed and you’ll start to understand the gap between how Gen Z wants their communication and how they actually receive it.

Michael Stoner’s presentation at this year’s ACT Enrollment Planner Conference indicated an enormous perceptual gap between what marketers and admissions officers believe influence student decisions and what really does.

• 70 – 80% of admissions officers believe that their personal conversations and contact with students mattered a lot during different phases of recruitment. But only 45% of teens said they valued this contact
• Instead, their “gut feel” for the school and the experience they had during the in-person college tour were the biggest influencers
• While parents might be making their school short list from the U.S. News & World Report rankings, only 16% of students use it at the start of the process, although many say it can help make the decision about where they finally enroll

More important is the increasing role of social media in teen decision-making. After all, this is likely the first brand decision of this magnitude they will make, and certainly one that will influence the course of their lives. Social media has a powerful influence over that all important “gut feel” for a school. Social media is for this generation equivalent to powerful word-of-mouth marketing. And while one-third of admissions officers believe that Facebook influences students, two-thirds of students say they use Facebook to actively research schools. Some 70% say that social media influences their decision about where to enroll. And yet it’s the use of email, direct mail, college fairs and collateral that dominates most university marketing plans. The reality is that search marketing and social media – combined with a sound mobile strategy – are the key to understanding Gen Z and how to gain an unfair advantage with them, while your competitors still seem as old and out of touch as the ivy growing on their buildings.