79% of UW-Tacoma's Inquiries Now Come From Halda. Here's What That Looks Like.

UW-Tacoma serves a student population that's new to all of this. Nearly 60% are first-generation college students — navigating the admissions process without a family roadmap, often overwhelmed by the volume of information, and quick to disengage if the experience feels too complicated.

Navia Winderling, former Assistant Director of Admissions at UW-Tacoma, built her strategy around meeting those students exactly where they were. She needed a way to do it at scale — without a central CRM, without expensive name-buys, and without adding headcount.

Halda gave her that. What followed was a lead generation system that now accounts for 79% of UW-Tacoma's total inquiries — and has contributed to 1,067 admitted students in a single enrollment year.

The Challenge: Serving First-Gen Students at Scale Without the Infrastructure

UW-Tacoma operates in the shadow of a nationally recognized brand. The University of Washington in Seattle is highly competitive, and the purple W carries weight — sometimes too much.

"People see that purple W and say 'I can't do this.' You get a UW degree and the same academics, but the experience at Tacoma is so different."

— Navia Winderling, former Assistant Director of Admissions, UW-Tacoma

For first-gen students already intimidated by the process, that perception gap is a real enrollment barrier. Winderling needed a way to humanize UW-Tacoma early — before students self-selected out.

She also had a data problem.UW-Tacoma's campus runs on shadow systems, with academic programs managing their own student information outside of a central CRM. Admissions had no visibility into those touch points — and no clean way to coordinate outreach across departments.

On top of that, the old playbook wasn't working.

"We used to spend a lot of money on name-buys, and we weren't getting qualified leads with that money. Now we're spending a comparable amount on Halda and getting tangible information that helps us identify exactly what students need."

— Navia Winderling

The Solution: Personalized Website Engagement Built for First-Gen Students

Meeting Students at the Moment of Confusion

Halda's landing pages sit on UW-Tacoma's website and surface relevant information based on what a student is looking at and what they're likely to need next. For a first-gen student trying to figure out financial aid eligibility or build a program plan, that's a significant shift.

"The website is great, but a lot of people don't want to scroll the website to search for information. People see Halda's Program Plan landing page and say 'Holy cow, I can just get the information I need right now' — that's a big deal."

— Navia Winderling

Students respond because the interaction immediately signals value. It's not a generic 'contact us' form. It's a tool that helps them with something specific.

"Students respond immediately to the idea that this interaction is gonna help them."

— Navia Winderling

Persistent Engagement for Students Who Don't Convert the First Time

Not every visitor is ready to submit their information on the first visit. Halda's Hub follows students across the site, picking up the conversation where it left off whenever they return.

"We have the Hub on every page. I love it because it follows them, and they eventually complete it. Scholarship eligibility is one of our best performing landing pages— they have money questions and they want answers."

— Navia Winderling

Connecting Admissions to the Rest of Campus

One of the more unexpected outcomes was what Halda did for cross-campus collaboration. By placing landing pages on individual academic program pages, Winderling gave each program visibility into the students engaging with their content — and gave Admissions a bridge to departments it previously couldn't reach.

"Putting a Halda landing page on individual program pages has allowed us to provide information about those programs while gaining information about those students. Then we put them in our communication flows."

— Navia Winderling

She built dashboards for each program so they could see engagement data directly — no more operating in silos.

"Now we, as a campus, are operating as a team. The programs know who's getting our first-touch emails and other parts of our communication. It's really built a new level of trust with our campus partners."

— Navia Winderling

The Results

• 79% of UW-Tacoma's total inquiries — 4,368 out of 5,513— are first-source leads from Halda.
• 1,067 students admitted over one enrollment year, tracing back to Halda-sourced interactions.
• Conversion rates on many Halda interactions are running well above 5%.
• Replaced expensive name-buy spend with qualified, self-identified leads at comparable cost.
• Academic departments now share enrollment data with Admissions through Halda-powered dashboards — a first for UW-Tacoma.

The number that matters most isn't the 79% — it's that those leads are qualified. Students who share their information through Halda are telling Admissions exactly what they need. That's the foundation of a warm handoff.

"Everything we do revolves around getting qualified leads. Halda pops up and they can get a program plan or find out immediately if they're eligible for a scholarship. It's the first step to saying 'Let's create a program plan for you. Let's find out what you need, what you want to know, and what's most important to you.'"

— Navia Winderling

What This Means for Enrollment Teams Serving First-Gen Students

First-gen students need earlier, clearer signals that the process is manageable and that someone at the institution is paying attention to their specific situation. Generic website content and name-buy lead lists don't deliver that.

UW-Tacoma's model —personalized on-site engagement tied to real student behavior, persistent across visits, and connected to department-level outreach — produced 79% of its inquiry volume from a tool that meets students where they already are: the website.

1,067 admitted students in a year is the outcome. The mechanism is removing friction at every point where a first-gen student might otherwise disengage.