4 top takeaways from the 2025 CampusESP Summit
This May higher ed leaders converged in Philadelphia for the 2025 CampusESP Summit. With live demos, real-world results, and customer-led strategy sessions, one message echoed loud and clear:
Family engagement isn’t a “nice to have” — it’s a strategic necessity.
And the energy? Unmatched.
80 institutions in the room. 18 presenters on stage. Our customers didn’t just attend, they led. They shared wins, roadblocks, and how they’re rethinking the role families play in enrollment, retention, and giving. We’re beyond grateful for their brilliance, and proud to power their progress.
Here are our top four takeaways — and what to do next. (Want to dive deeper in the insights? Click here to skip ahead to the webinar here).
🧩 1. Family Engagement: No Longer a One-Person Job
At the 2025 Summit, one shift stood out loud and clear: family engagement is now a campus-wide strategy.
Attendees represented every corner of campus — admissions, student affairs, advancement, and registrars — all united by one goal: empowering families to support student success.
Our latest data shows that institutions that engage families across departments see:
Higher student yield rates when parents of prospective students are informed and engaged
Significant increases in retention when families receive regular updates on their students’ progress and how to help if their students struggle
More donations when families are included in personalized giving campaigns
Whether it was VPs aligning family outreach with yield strategy or coordinators using segmentation to fine-tune messages, the theme was clear: parents aren't just stakeholders, they’re partners.
👉Want more? What we heard from 32,423 college parents — parents from 81 colleges told us exactly what they need to stay informed about their student’s college experience.
🎯 2. Personalization Isn’t Just Nice — It’s Necessary
At the 2025 Summit, a familiar message rang out: families want relevant content, not just more content.
Montclair State showed how translating and segmenting communications helps them authentically connect with Spanish-speaking families
The New School shared how NYC-based, student-authored stories help prospective parents envision their student’s college life
These aren’t just great anecdotes … they’re smart strategy. And the data backs it up: student yield rate are often 7% higher for students with a parent in CampusESP.
👉Want more? Boost enrollment by personalizing your institutional voice to families — University of Mary Washington and Holy Family University share how they’re using CampusESP to turn authentic communication into a competitive advantage
🤖 3. AI is the Scalable Superpower You Need
At Summit 2025, James Bright, our CTO and co-founder teased the future of AI-driven automation—from intelligent content suggestions to predictive enrollment modeling. But the real story from the Summit is how CampusESP colleges are using it already:
University of Montana uses AI to streamline content review, freeing team members to plan campaigns and build partnerships—without losing their human touch
Salem State University saw financial aid communications soar in reach and relevance once they layered in AI templates and automation
Since the launch of CampusESP’s AI tools, just a few months ago, we’ve seen them used 9,500+ times by 336+ campuses to generate, refine, and translate communications. UMBC reported a 80% time reduction in content creation—from ~1 hr/day to ~1 hr/week—while increasing clicks by 33%.
👉Want more? AI strategies for family engagement: save time and scale impact — University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Framingham State University share tips and tricks for using AI
🌱 4. Parent Giving = Untapped Potential
At Summit 2025 we saw how more and more schools are expanding their giving strategy through parent fundraising:
Miami University — Their Move-In Miami campaign saw 25% growth in parent participation and raised $294K, a 34% increase year-over-year
University of Oregon — Using CampusESP’s Parent Promoter Score™, they tripled parent donations during their annual Day of Giving — and now parents make up one of their top gift sources
Families are already emotionally invested. All they need is structure and the right ask at the right time. From capacity scoring to drip campaigns, advancement teams are using CampusESP’s tools to grow their donor bases.
👉Want more? How 3 institutions turned parent engagement into a powerful fundraising pipeline — read how Miami University, The University of Tulsa, and Flagler College grew their parent giving programs.
💡 The Bottom Line
Parent engagement is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a data-backed driver of yield, retention, and giving.
From AI-powered content to text outreach, the Summit showed that when families feel informed and trusted, they become your strongest advocates.
👋 Until next year: Thank you to all who joined us in Philly! We’re already counting down to the 2026 Summit!