How leading institutions are building and executing continuous video-powered engagement
During the height of the pandemic, the rapid shift to a virtual environment led many institutions to copy the structure of their in-person events in the digital sphere. While there’s still value in live events, it’s unsustainable to build a virtual strategy centered around these types of engagements; particularly when trying to translate a day-long in-person open house into an online experience that will keep viewers engaged along the way.
Rather than simply replicating in-person strategies, institutions will find best success through leaning into digital engagement’s strengths to guide their decisions. Leveraging the immense capabilities of the virtual world gives valuable time back to your team, while simultaneously equipping your audiences with the ability to consume information on their time.
So, where do you go from here? What tactics can you tangibly implement now to begin this vital engagement shift?
Our team pulled together a few concrete examples from some of our most successful partners who have gotten ahead of the curve and implemented continuous engagement in the Fall of ‘21. Keep reading to gain insight into two tactics you and your team can use to enhance your continuous digital engagement.
Focus on your campus and the surrounding community
As prospective students explore your institution and its story, they hope to gain a sense of people and place. They want to know if they’ll fit in and find their community. Whether they’re challenged by the pandemic, distance, budget, or other factors, you’ll always have a subset of your prospective population who won’t have the opportunity to visit your campus in person before applying. So, how can you present your institution’s sense of community in a way that goes beyond the virtual tour and gets to the heart of your story and the impact it can have on their lives?
Put your community front and center with consistency — not just during events, but throughout the enrollment process. Connect prospective students with a wide swath of content topics, student voices, and events they can explore at their leisure. Share more about your location — not just the buildings on campus, but the broader neighborhood they’ll be a part of.
Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly known as Humboldt State University) built an on-demand hub that allows them to both connect with students across a variety of topics, and glean data from those insights to better understand and engage with their audience.
“Our team’s goal was to launch a comprehensive Fall program that covered diverse topic areas that students from any walk of life would connect with. This holistic approach enabled us to engage with a wide variety of students, including many who may have not traditionally come to campus, and capture data centered around who they are and where their interests lie. Looking ahead to the admit cycle, this will help in providing individualized messaging in hopes of yielding students in a more meaningful way. Our partners at PlatformQ remained agile in helping us navigate our desired outcome whilst considering best practice across engaging students virtually. Their team provided guidance on how we create a virtual engagement hub rather than just an events platform by integrating launchpads to 1-1 video conferencing with Zoom, adding live chats elements, and highlighting on-demand video content.
This spring, we married our in-person programming with the virtual realm we’ve cultivated. Virtual engagement is a great tool for pushing out a wide variety of information that students and their families historically receive in-person. Instead of sitting through an hour-long presentation about different academic programs, academic resources, etc.; we shift that information from in-person to virtual to enable us to focus on community building activities & more interactive sessions with these audiences when hosting them at our campus. Our team gleans more data from the Conduit platform than we would otherwise and can now compare those data points to what we see in-person to take a holistic and individualized approach to engaging with each and every student.”
Address FAQs through Intentional On-Demand Campaigns
Whether you’re a seasoned enrollment professional or navigating your way through your first recruitment season, your position is tapped into the topics that are of highest interest to your prospective students and their families as they navigate their search. Many of these questions remain the same year after year:
- What materials do I need to submit for admission and financial aid?
- What clubs and activities can I get involved in?
- What are your institution’s traditions?
- What is the campus community and surrounding community like?
This repetition opens up the opportunity to build some of these topics into digestible, on-demand content. You may already have this content in existing videos, or you can record it during calmer times of the year. Then, using the email tools you have at your disposal, serve this content to your audiences through automated campaigns at key points in the admissions cycle. You’ll support them by anticipating their needs, and you’ll provide access to information that they can access on their time. Depending on the tools you’re using, you’ll also be able to track which audience members are interacting with this content over time, helping you to hone in your focus on your most engaged prospective students and families.
Fresno Pacific University ran a monthly email campaign through the fall with a focus on topics of highest interest to prospective students, including clubs and activities, financial aid, and student support services. This dedicated push tripled the number of visitors they’d typically see for a live event.
Loyola University New Orleans (also known as Loyno) brands their engagement platform as “Inside Loyno” and links off to sections on academics, affordability, applying, and acclimating to Loyno. This space also links off to their virtual tour and their student’ “Day in the Life” stories, giving visitors a one-stop-shop to explore further after viewing the content they’re driving to in their campaigns. These campaigns are built around particular audiences, ensuring that they’re providing the most relevant content possible to first-year, transfer, and graduate students, as well as to school counselors.
Check back next week for two more tips to enhance your continuous digital engagement!