When you think about your international student recruitment efforts, where are you suffering? In what stage of the admissions funnel are you losing the greatest number of students?
For most institutions, the biggest drop happens between the prospect and applicant stages. Schools make name purchases, dump them into their communication flow, and hope for the best. But what kind of information are you sending your international prospects? What links and calls-to-action are you encouraging them to click through and follow to increase international applications?
More often than not, colleges and universities send links to their most popular sites: how to apply, financial aid, important dates and deadlines. While international students need to know this information, their parents and family need to know this information, too. This is where many institutions lose a huge conversion opportunity in their international recruitment efforts: by not translating the pages into the native languages of the students.
Offering an international student landing page that's translated into the language of your top four or five target countries gives you the opportunity to share information that students can then share with their parents.
Check out how one of our partner institutions, the University of New Haven in Connecticut, offers translations for students and families from Indonesia, Latin America, Thailand, and Vietnam.
We also created an interactive campus map for UNH that international students (or US students!) can use to get a feel for the campus:
With international students, you're recruiting the family, not just the student, and making a little effort on your international student page to accommodate the language requirements is a small investment that will yield greater conversions throughout your funnel.
Do you have a translated page for your international students? Link it in the comments below!