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Inquiry and First Impressions: 2025 Secret Shopping
- Will Patch
- Feb 19
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 29
Secret shopping is an important part of the market research process. Secret shopping is a valuable exercise for university admissions and marketing leaders to undertake because it allows you to:
Evaluate the effectiveness of your inquiry response processes
Identify areas for improvement in your student comm flows
Benchmark your performance against competitors
Make data-informed decisions about how to improve their marketing and recruitment strategies
You’ll often find when secret shopping yourself there are timing issues, content might not land how you want it to, or in the order you originally thought most valuable. If you also secret shop a few peers or competitors you can also use that information to ensure you’re not all sending the same things, in the same order, using the same words. (You most likely are.)
To get the most out of the experience you also have to be able to put yourself in the mindset of a student. You know what a registrar or a major is, but does Kevin or Susie? Does Johnny or Joanie know what a Pell Grant is?
This year, I’m breaking down the secret shopping experience into several pieces to keep the results more focused. In this first look, I want to explore the inquiry experience, autoresponders, and students' first week.
College selection and our student
Our student is a senior just hitting the search hard. Because it’s spring, he expects quick responses because he feels the rush. He has a 3.5 GPA, is interested in business and art, study abroad, is the first in his family to attend college, and getting the most out of the campus experience.
Because the search started at the beginning of February, only colleges still accepting applications were selected. Colleges were selected based on location (in-state, adjacent state, and national) and their type (4-year private, 4-year public flagship, 4-year public regional, community college, or online).
The inquiry experience
The inquiry process has improved over the past several years. However, there is still room for improvement:
86% of colleges selected had an inquiry form that could be found on their site. You likely won’t have guessed only 75% of 4-year public colleges had an inquiry form, influenced by only 60% of regional public 4-year colleges sampled having a form. If the form wasn’t immediately available or found through a site search a Google search was performed.
30% of community colleges didn’t have an inquiry form, but was always replaced by easily accessible application buttons.
67% of colleges that had an inquiry form were easily discoverable on the homepage. Three even had the form embedded on the homepage rather than just a button or link.
Nine colleges had start terms in the past, as far back as 2 years.
The average inquiry form had 13 fields with as few as 3 and as many as 25. On average, only 9 of those were required. Even better news? Several colleges asked for the preferred contact method; a drum I’ve been banging for nearly a decade!
n | Had inquiry forms | Avg fields | Avg required fields | Requested parent info | |
Private 4-year | 25 | 96% | 13 | 9 | 33% |
4-year public flagship | 10 | 90% | 14 | 8 | 44% |
4-year public regional | 10 | 60% | 13 | 7 | 83% |
Community college | 10 | 70% | 13 | 10 | 14% |
Online college | 10 | 100% | 8 | 7 | 0% |
Opportunities for improvement
Overall, the process has gotten much better, but here are some areas to audit your form and fix any problems:
Check the start terms/grad years. Also, make sure you offer far enough in the future so that underclass students can request information and start building affinity too.
Check the placement of the form. Can it be easily found across your most common landing pages and highest traffic pages on the site and not just on admissions?
Have a way to collect parent contacts. It doesn’t have to be on the initial form, a supplemental form or follow-up email are great ways to keep the forms short but still collect the information.
Simplify the form. If you’re not using the information collected to assign a student or to provide personalized and relevant information early in the comm flow you likely don’t need to ask for it now.
Autoresponders for student inquiries
Only 43 of the 56 colleges with an inquiry form had an autoresponder set up to acknowledge the submission. The autoresponders varied significantly, but there were some highlights I wanted to hold up and some examples of how not to respond.
Positive ways to respond to inquiries
Program brochures or relevant student life information. A handful of colleges sent information about the intended major or indicated interests in the automated response. This is the way it should be: recognizing the inquiry form is asking for information.
Supplemental information request. Keep the inquiry form simple, but then ask for additional interests, concerns, parent contact information, or other things to personalize in a follow-up email. One college even sent a text and email link to the form.
Facts and figures that matter. Telling students about outcomes, support, financial aid, and student life is a great way to answer some questions before following up more personally. This doesn’t include the “X majors!” or “Small classes with caring faculty” generic proof points though.
How not to build an autoresponder
Simple and generic. A sentence or two thanking them and saying you’ll be in touch in the following weeks is not the sort of quick response students expect. They’re asking for more information, so telling them they’re not a priority is a bad look.
"As per your request..." Nobody talks this way, don’t start a response to prospective students like this.
“Apply now!” The student knows they can apply, or if they’re underclass students they can’t yet. Responding to someone asking for more information by telling them you’re not going to answer and only want an application from them ignores their needs.
Burying information. Providing some facts and information about the timeline and what you’re looking for is a perfect response. Burying information in six paragraphs about the history of the college from a dean is not the way to do it.
Opportunities for improvement
Knowing financial aid, majors, and finding community are some of the most important things to students these should be the first concerns and questions addressed in the autoresponder. If your CRM allows for variables this is a great way to add more relevance to the first touchpoint. Share information about their major, campus life interests, extracurricular activities, sports, or support resources.
Students’ first impression: Week 1 of inquiry comm flows
Given the inquiry occurred in February I expected a more compressed comm flow. There’s more urgency to complete an application, submit a FAFSA, and connect to resources than there would be in the fall. I assumed that would mean more personal touches or outreach to quickly assess the needs and barriers the inquiry might have and what led them to inquire in the spring. If their search was just starting there are different conversations to have than if the student inquired because their previous plan fell through.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the volume of outreach, especially from the online institutions.
Only 8 colleges sent information about the intended major of interest, but unfortunately, 3 of those were about the wrong major. The major is one of the most important things to students as they research colleges, but only 9% responded with it in the first week.
Financial aid and cost are also critically important to students, but just 3 colleges broached the topic in the first week.
30% of contacts were telling students to apply, almost always before any information was given to nurture them and give them a reason to want to apply.
16% of contacts were encouraging visits. In one case, at a college over 22 hours away, I was encouraged to attend an on-campus event coming up in 3 days. With such a short lead time this should have been sent to a tighter radius to campus.
2 colleges provided information about supporting first-generation college students, a nice touch for someone who identified as such.
Avg contacts | Median contacts | Max | |
Private 4-year | 3 | 2 | 13 |
4-year public flagship | 3 | 2 | 5 |
4-year public regional | 4 | 3 | 8 |
Community college | 2 | 1 | 10 |
Online college | 7 | 7 | 13 |
Emails were the most common outreach, but phone calls and text messages were much more common than in prior years.
47 colleges sent a total of 174 emails
10 colleges sent a total of 22 text messages
6 colleges placed a total of 25 phone calls
The phone calls and text messages were not used equally by all colleges. Out of 47 contacts, 33 were made by online colleges, and even though I’m indicating I’m a high school student all but 2 were made during school hours. The only other college to call was a community college — which was also during the school day.
Texting was more widespread. Three colleges were public 4-years, two were private 4-years, one was a community college, and four of the ten colleges texting were online colleges. The text messages primarily came from counselors and often reiterated what was being sent in emails.
Opportunities for improvement
Some solutions have been mentioned in prior sections, but there are a few simple ways to make quick strides in early engagement.
Use the information students provided. A lot of information is collected through the inquiry form and any supplemental forms, but it was rare to have it be used. If you ask about intended majors, interests, or extracurriculars they should be addressed in the comm flow.
Less is more. Students don’t need to hear from you daily. They probably don’t want to hear from you daily. If you’re contacting them more than once per week there needs to be a lot of value in what is included. Just checking in, sending irrelevant information, or sending multiple emails asking for an application are just noise and training students not to read or respond.
Use the preferred contact method. I appreciated that some colleges asked for preferred contact, so if you don’t that’s a good start. If you ask it, then their preference should be the primary outreach method. One college asked for both preferred contact methods and what information I wanted to receive, and in the first week hadn’t sent the requested information and called or texted almost 3 times as often as the preferred emails.
Final thoughts and next steps
This first look is part of my secret shopping process this year and in the coming weeks, you’ll learn more about the full comm flow. Secret shopping can be an important part of student journey mapping. Understanding your comm flow and benchmarking can help you see what you might want to do better, do more of, or change outright.
If this is something you don’t have the resources to tackle on your own let’s talk! Maybe there is something smaller I can help you brainstorm or you can hire Clarity EM to help build a student journey map and work with you to improve your recruitment experience.
