About the Episode
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About the Episode:
Welcome to the first installment of The Melt Season Playbook—a 3-part, quick-hit series designed for enrollment marketers navigating the tricky post-deposit stretch. Each episode is under 10 minutes and packed with actionable insights you can try today.
In this kickoff episode, Allison breaks down how to use AI to find the students most at risk of melting—and how to spot the signals hiding in plain sight. From tapping into behavioral patterns in your CRM to listening in on what parents are posting online, this episode is your cheat code to early intervention.
This isn’t about more guesswork or more stress—it’s about using AI as your behind-the-scenes partner to see what you might be missing and make smarter, faster decisions.
Key “How Tos” You’ll Hear in This Episode:
- Use ChatGPT to analyze melt risk factors from your CRM data
- Surface parent concerns using AI’s live research tools
- Pressure-test your onboarding plan from a student’s POV
- Map the emotional journey between deposit and move-in
- Feed your real-world knowledge into AI for better insights
Next Up: The Melt Season Playbook: Part 2 — Make Your Outreach Smarter (and Still Human)
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How Can You Use AI to Spot At-Risk Students Before They Melt?
The episode kicks off by reframing melt season as a mystery to be solved — and AI as your newest investigative sidekick. Turcio urges enrollment marketers to stop relying solely on gut feelings and instead harness their CRM data for pattern recognition. Your CRM is a gold mine, holding behavioral data like email opens, portal logins, housing status, and orientation sign-ups. But who has time to comb through it all?
That’s where ChatGPT comes in. By uploading anonymized data from last year’s deposits — including who did and didn’t show up — you can ask ChatGPT to identify patterns that may correlate with melt. For example, students who stopped opening emails or those who checked financial aid pages but never followed up may be showing early warning signs. The episode emphasizes that AI isn’t a crystal ball — it won’t make decisions for you, but it can surface meaningful insights to help you act faster and smarter.
Once red flags are identified, the next step is operational: build filters and call lists in your CRM to engage these students. It’s not about replacing your team’s intuition — it’s about augmenting it with sharper data inputs.
What Are Students and Parents Thinking Right Now?
In one of the episode’s most actionable insights, Turcio reminds us we’re not just working with our own data — we can use AI to tap into real-time sentiment data from across the web. Using ChatGPT’s Deep Research capability, enrollment marketers can ask what first-gen parents are saying online about topics like orientation, housing, or financial aid.
The results are telling: parents want clear, timely, and detailed communication. They’re navigating uncertainty and appreciate information that anticipates their concerns. This can serve as a quality check on your outbound communications — are you answering the questions your audience is actually asking?
The real power here lies in empathy. Using AI to understand what students and families are worried about — not just what you want to tell them — helps bridge communication gaps and build trust during this critical phase of the student journey.
How Do You Pressure-Test Your Melt Plan?
AI doesn’t just identify risk — it helps you test your assumptions. One clever prompt shared in the episode is this: “Pretend you’re a student who just deposited at [Your University] — what do you expect to happen in the next 30 days?” This flips the script and forces teams to view their enrollment process through the lens of the student.
This kind of empathy check helps uncover communication blind spots, especially for institutions that have relied on rinse-and-repeat strategies. For instance, a student might expect a welcome text, a clear checklist, or immediate roommate match info — small gaps in these areas can lead to anxious silence, which is a fast track to ghosting.
Turcio also suggests pressure testing your plan with actual students. Ask freshmen what worked and what didn’t. AI helps you guess better, but the student voice is still your ultimate guide.
Can AI Help You Map the Entire Student Melt Journey?
The final section explores using AI as a co-pilot to map the emotional and logistical journey from deposit to move-in day. With a prompt like “Map the key emotional and practical moments a student experiences during this time,” AI can generate a journey timeline that includes everything from anxiety about finances to excitement about majors to radio silence in July.
This isn’t about generic templates — it’s about aligning the emotion of the journey with your outreach plan. When you map these moments, you can better understand whether your communications are hitting the right tone at the right time.
And remember: the more institutional knowledge you feed AI, the better the output. You know your students best. AI simply helps you turn that insight into action.
Connect With Our Host:
Allison Turcio
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonturcio/
https://twitter.com/allisonturcio
About The Enrollify Podcast Network: The Application with Allison Turcio is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows, too!
Some of our favorites include Mission Admissions.
Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — the next-generation AI student engagement platform helping institutions create meaningful and personalized interactions with students. Learn more at element451.com.
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