Prospective Student Engagement 2020 - CASE

This presentation, by Alex Garrido, Director of Digital Marketing & Analytics at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, explores how the university adapted its graduate recruitment strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Presented at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's Annual Conference on Marketing and Branding in June 2020, it details the challenges faced and the innovative solutions implemented, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision-making and digital engagement. Key takeaways include the successful use of webinars, two-way texting, Facebook Groups, and live chats to connect with prospective students, as well as the importance of A/B testing and 'soft sales' techniques in optimizing conversion rates.

1. Prospective Student Engagement Graduate Recruitment in the COVID-19 Era By Alex Garrido, Director of Digital Marketing & Analytics The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Council for Advancement and Support of Education Annual Conference on Marketing and Branding June 2020 @MrAlexGarrido

2. About me Josse Alexandro Garrido “Alex Garrido” Director of Digital Marketing & Marketing Analytics Over 7 years teaching social media/digital marketing with our office of Continuing Education. I love conducting workshops. I have a dog (“Jueves”) and recently rescued a cat (“La Gata”).

3. We will cover Challenges Our lucky surveys Adapting our communication strategy Creating support groups Testing everything Soft sales

4. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Challenges : Relatively new (est. 2015) In a corner of Texas Not widely known for graduate distance education Technical issues (website) Advantages : Affordable (MBA: $16,000) Fast-track options (1-year tracks) 29,000 enrolled students (Fall 2019)

5. Graduate Applications & Inquiries

6. We got data, just in time We conducted two surveys to improve our communications with graduate students just before COVID-19. This allowed us to quickly pivot to digital-only interactions. Undergraduate Social Media Usage, Nov. 2019. Graduate Communications Preferences, Jan. 2020.

7. 2019 Fall Student Social Media Report

8. 2020 Graduate Communication Preferences Survey We surveyed about 500 prospective UTRGV graduate students about their communication preferences when applying to a graduate program. We conducted this survey in January 2020. 80% of students prefer an email over a phone call . 60% of students prefer a website live chat . Students expect a social media response within 3 hours . 40% of students prefer to communicate with a recruiter via two-way text message . Prospects like to follow our institution on social media before requesting information. 65% of prospective graduate students use Facebook Groups. 45% of prospective students have engaged with a live or recorded webinar in the past year.

9. Adapting our communication strategy: Live chat Given that most of our staff had to work from home and our students prefer live chats over phone calls, we enabled livechat on all of our graduate program pages and added additional support staff to maintain it. We use LiveChat, Inc which allows us to centralize website live chat requests and social media direct responses (Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp).

10. Adapting our communication strategy: Webinars Originally, one of our major recruitment strategies was in-person information sessions across the state of Texas. We started using Webinars via GoToWebinar to engage with prospective students. All of our webinars are recorded and all participants receive a recording link.

11. Adapting our communication strategy: Texting Older prospective students prefer SMS text messages over social media messages. We expanded our SMS recruitment strategy to include two-way text messaging with all prospective students. We use Mongoose Cadence .

12. Facebook Groups, your secret weapon

13. Adapting our communication strategy: FB Groups Let students help each other. Sometimes prospective students wish to learn more about a program from students currently enrolled. We had seen this trend within our undergraduate student group and decided to expand it to our graduate students. Prospects receive an email with a link to the UTRGV Accelerated Online Facebook Group and they request to join. All requests are manually approved. Once subscribed to the group, they can post questions and other students reply.

14. Test Everything : Landing Pages Our central CMS is Cascades, this stopped us from conducting optimization experiments. We decided to implement Unbounce to create highly targeted program pages that we could use to continuously test and optimize our landing pages. We take the results of our temporary landing pages and use them to inform our permanent program pages.

15. Test Everything: Ads We run several ad variations per program. We A/B test copy, creative, and landing pages and continuously optimize to improve conversion rates. We also test page placement, some of our ads come from our Graduate College Facebook Page, others come from the main university page.

16. Soft Sale : Not just ads Program ads are necessary in order to capture leads. However, very few people request information after seeing just one ad. Boost top organic posts retargeting people who have previously visited your program pages (even if the post doesn’t directly relate to the program visited). If they only hear from you via your program ads, they are less likely to request information.

17. Soft Sale: Not just ads Organic reach is very limited and, unless you go viral, people who do not directly follow you are not likely to see it. We aim to inspire with our promoted content.

18. Soft Sale: Not just ads Do not be afraid of going live on Facebook. According to our survey, most prospects that requested information via a social media ad followed our page prior submitting the RFI form. These are confusing times. Go live if you have experts that can provide clarity around key topics. We use the Facebook Zoom Integration to make it easier for administration/faculty to go live. As an added benefit, when you go live, all of your followers will get a notification.

19. @MrAlexGarrido LinkedIn/in/AlexGarrido [email protected]