You're spending 4-to-7 times more to recruit students than to keep them
$2,849
$429 to $623
cost to ENROLL one student
spent to RETAIN one student
The "leaky bucket" math is clear: overspending on recruitment while underinvesting in retention is unsustainable for higher ed. When you lose a student you've already paid to enroll, you're not just losing tuition. You're losing the investment it took to get them through the door in the first place.
You prayed over those students.
You didn't build an online program to watch students vanish between terms. Every name on your roster is a calling, a career change, a family betting on a better future. When one slips away in silence, it isn't just lost revenue. It's a story that ended one chapter early. Become the institution that noticed in time.
Chamberlain University
Ran Motimatic stop-out recovery campaigns to 2,440 students who had been away three to five sessions, measured against a holdout group.
Result: stopped-out students registered at more than twice the holdout rate, 3.93% vs. 1.75%.⁴
Hartnell College
Partnered with Motimatic on five behavioral science digital campaigns that reached continuing and stopped-out students across a full academic year.
Result: 4,901 registrations and an estimated $3.29M in tuition revenue.³
Germanna Community College
Put every student on a course plan and ran advisor outreach campaigns to keep them on track. Students with a plan were 12.7 points more likely to persist.
Result: $507,770 in added and preserved tuition in a single semester.¹
UT San Antonio
Partnered with ReUp Education to reach stopped-out adult learners with personal outreach and one-on-one success coaching.
Result: 714 students re-enrolled and $5.8M in recovered tuition.²
Schools that invested in retention and won
¹ EAB, Navigate360 Two-Year Case Study Compendium (FY25), Germanna Community College. ² ReUp Education, The University of Texas at San Antonio partner story (2026). ³ Motimatic, Hartnell College case study, Fall 2023 to Spring 2024. Revenue estimated at 8 credit hours per student at in-state tuition. ⁴ Motimatic, published campaign results, Chamberlain University stop-out recovery with a 5% holdout group.
73%
Lift in student email engagement
Proven where retention is the whole business
Before Southpaw, our team led lifecycle and retention marketing inside some of the largest online universities in the country, where every student who registers again is the business model. These are results from that work.
22,000
Advising hours saved every year through automation
23%
Improvement in term-over-term retention
60%
On-time practicum applications at a leading online nursing university, up from 36%
Three steps to students who re-register.
1
Map the silent windows.
We find the weeks between terms when your students hear nothing, right when life interference does its worst.
2
Write what earns re-registration.
Messaging that gives students a reason to come back, not another deadline reminder.
3
Build it on your platform.
HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Eloqua. We build in the system you already own. No rip-and-replace.
Retention Systems That Actually Work
data activation
Use your student data to trigger timely messages and personalize every student's experience.
RE-REGISTRATION CAMPAIGNS
Drive semester-over-semester persistence with high-conviction institutional messaging suites.
AUTOMATED NUDGE CAMPAIGNS
Deliver timely, automated messages that guide students through critical registration milestones.
ADVISOR AUTOMATION & TRAINING
Empower your advising team with tools that automate outreach and increase high-value interactions.
STORYBRAND MESSAGING
Clarify your value proposition so students understand exactly why they should say 'yes' to next term.
Pick your engagement
Workshops for your team. Builds for your platform. Partnership for the long haul.
Workshop
StoryBrand Messaging
A half-day working session with your leadership team, led by a StoryBrand Certified Guide.
A review of the student communication you send today
A guided walk-through of the StoryBrand Messaging Canvas
Your finished Messaging Canvas and one-liner
A plan for where the new message goes first
Workshop
Moments That Matter
A journey mapping session that walks your team through the student experience, term by term, to find where students decide to stay or leave.
A map of the student journey from first term to graduation
The moments that matter, ranked by retention risk
What students hear, and miss, at each moment
The communications to build first
Build
Retention Campaign
Four to six weeks to build and launch one lifecycle campaign, like re-registration, in your platform.
One lifecycle campaign, written from your message
Email and text sequences built in your platform
Testing, launch, and a results readout
Ongoing
Retention Ecosystem Retainer
Strategy, campaigns, and optimization across the whole student lifecycle. Limited to 5 university partners.
Monthly strategy and reporting
New campaigns every quarter
Ongoing testing and optimization
The student who almost left walks at graduation.
That's the end result of retention marketing done right. Registration deadlines stop being cliffs. Census stops being a surprise. And the students you prayed over finish what they started.
Start with 30 minutes. We'll map where your students go quiet between terms and show you the first fix.
Enrollment doesn't end at yes.