Building a Winning Enrollment Strategy in One Year

Challenge

When Benedict College was named Best College for 2025 in The State publication’s annual community choice awards, the broader community said what enrollment data was already showing — Benedict is an institution on the rise. That recognition reflects a transformation that had been quietly building for two years. Starting in 2024, Benedict’s strategic plan called for growing new student enrollment by 50 to 100 students per year, while the college was working with an almost entirely new admissions team. The goals were ambitious: drive yield, strengthen brand recognition across South Carolina, expand into key markets, track ROI on every effort, and shift from simply making the class to intentionally shaping it. To get there, Benedict needed smarter tools, better data, and a partner that understood the unique context of a growing HBCU.

Solution

Benedict College deepened its partnerships with Encoura + RNL, building out a comprehensive strategy that balanced two equally important goals: driving yield and strengthening brand recognition. The college used predictive modeling alongside enrollment data matching to create a unified view of every prospective student’s likelihood to enroll. That allowed the team to front-load energy on the highest-probability prospects, while more personally supporting every student along the way — a shift that paid off significantly in the third and fourth quarters of the enrollment cycle. Working in tandem with Encoura + RNL on financial aid optimization and strategic scholarship awarding, Benedict was able to shape not just the size of the class but its composition — balancing in-state enrollment targets with net tuition revenue goals.

In parallel, digital efforts worked to reframe and reintroduce the Benedict brand so that by the time a student received a conditional admit letter, Benedict College already felt familiar. Through a strategic mix of geofencing, custom audience targeting, and social media ads, the college strengthened counselor travel efforts, warmed interest among future classes, supported first-generation families, and helped Benedict grow its footprint within its own backyard and into neighboring markets.