WACRAO Presentation Notes

Intro and General Information:

Hello my name is Joan Ebnet and I am the Marketing Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Stout admissions office. I currently manage our CRM (Hobsons Connect) and help with the events held on our campus. Since September 1st we have had over 700 families visit campus. They attended one of our Campus Preview Days, Stout Saturdays or weekly visits Monday through Friday. I am going to share with you how we go about using our CRM and technology for our campus visits.

And I am Katelyn Santy. For the past two years, I can been the Visit Coordinator at UW-Green Bay, but I recently transitioned into a new recruitment marketing position in the Admissions Office. We have hosted over 2300 student over the last calendar during our daily visits, Preview Days, Admitted Student Days, and shadow visits. I look forward to sharing a little bit of what our campus does, and we really look forward to some questions and discussion time near the end of the presentation.

Invite and Marketing of Visits:

At UW-Stout we use multiple avenues to help invite and market our events on campus. The first place we market is on our website. We list short descriptions of each visit to help set the expectation for the student and their family. We also send out invites via email through our CRM. We are able to filter a certain group of students to invite based on different attributes (State, Entry Term, Not Visited Campus in the last year etc.). Once we have the group of students I create an E&I email template and send out the invite. Lastly we use social media (facebook/twitter) to market the visit options.

Much like at UW-Stout, we use our website as a hub for visit information—ultimately, the goal is for guests to be compelled to complete a visit registration form on the web page. We also use targeted CRM mailers to email students, in addition to paper postcards. One unique thing we use is digital advertising. We contract through a third party to manage our digital media presence. We partner with our institution’s marketing office to design mobile and desktop ads that have seen excellent engagement. (I’ll provide sample images.) In addition to our contracted organization’s presence, we have also placed our own Facebook promotions for specific events, especially if the marketing timeline is short to fill the visit.

Registration of Visits:

At UW-Stout we use our CRM for all registration of events on campus and off (weekday visits, campus preview and stout Saturdays plus high school visits and college fairs). I start out by creating the event in Hobsons Connect. I have the option to set the event up as public if I want it to be listed out on the visit calendar or private if I don’t want it to be listed on the visit calendar. I also am able to set up automatic email communications that I can schedule to go out when I would like (registration confirmation upon registration, reminder two days before event etc.). I then create the registration form based on attributes that I would like to collect from the student. Once I have created the event, email communications and registration form the event is ready to publish.

UW-Green Bay’s system is similar. Events are created in CRM that link to our web form (created and altered by our IT department). Guests receive an auto-response about their visit day/time, and then we used a “canned response” (similar to an email signature) to confirm each guest, which allows us an opportunity to examine and respond to special requests. We often follow this with email reminders and confirmation phone calls.

During Visit:

For our on campus events we are able to use our CRM to export the list of registered students. This is what we use to check students in the morning of our event. During the event we use technology in multiple ways.

  • Photo Booth (props and Blaze)
  • Slideshow of campus photos
  • Video
  • Prezi for Admissions Overview
  • Texting questions for student panel

At UW-Green Bay:

  • Guests often view/interact with flat screen TVs we have displayed in the welcome/waiting area that have personalized welcome messages for the students, outcome stories, and quiz questions.
  • We also use a prezi for the Admissions info, including a video
  • Advisors will use iPads to follow up with visitors
  • We encourage guests to engage with social media (examples)

After Visit:

At UW-Stout after the visit we use our CRM to mark attendance for each event. This will then allow the correct follow up email to be sent to the students (Thank you for visiting or Sorry we missed you etc.). In the thank you for visiting email we have a link to a survey for the students to fill out. This survey is created in Hobsons Connect and linked into the email communication. We then can look at the results of that survey for feedback about the event.

We use the CRM similarly to email attendees, and we also run a campaign to create a label allowing us to mail a postcard to each guest. Our email links to a Qualtrics survey that we review weekly. We also engage with students on social media after the visit.