February 12, 2013

Tailoring Campus Visits Using Digital Technology

Feb. 12, 2013 at 08:59 AM | By Marlysa Connolly | Comment Count

When Al Nunez Jr., associate director of multimedia communications at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, needed a better way to track campus visits he didn’t look to traditional email forms, he got personal. Using QR Codes (What the heck are QR Codes?) and some “pretty cool” digital technology, Al solved a problem many admissions and enrollment teams face on the regular: tracking tour attendees in a way that simultaneously builds relationships with prospects through personalized communications.

“Our goal was to track tour attendees,” said Al. “Those that were actually attending and coming to the tours.”

As with many colleges and universities, Cal Poly does not require students to register for campus visits. In turn, this created issues with collecting student information and deciphering whether or not Cal Poly’s digital marketing and recruitment campaigns were successful at driving visitors to campus.

So how did Al and his team of “three FTEs and Twenty-Eight student assistants” do it?

By incorporating QR Codes into their digital strategy, beyond building relationships with Hobsons’ VIP Pages, Cal Poly has not only streamlined efficiencies (one time they scanned more than 400 visitors in 15 minutes) but has created additional opportunities to collect student information and continue the conversation about Cal Poly well after the campus visit.

“It’s useful. We have introduced it at other events. We have receptions across the country for new students [. . .] and we send them the QR Codes and then our representatives go out there, have the iPods with them, and they scan them in so we can get an accurate count.”