Teenagers spend an average of 7 hours per day on their phones.
Are you keeping this in mind when planning your recruitment and campus comm strategies? Let’s talk about how universities are adapting to the mobile revolution.
First, let’s talk about why they’re feeling the pressure to up their mobile game at all.
The Stats Don’t Lie
Hop-Online’s stats on mobile recruitment tells it all:
All these stats point to one cold, hard truth: the use of mobile is increasing, and if you’re not riding that tidal wave of technological progress, you’re getting left behind. So what’s a higher ed marketer to do?
Your first line of defense: mobile responsiveness. At the very least, your website needs to be as responsive as possible, meaning it needs to work just as well on mobile as it does on desktop—or perhaps even better.
You’ve got 3 options:
The ideal situation: having a mobile app for recruitment.
It’s the most expensive—but hands down, absolute best—option. It’s an investment.
You should follow our advice above about making sure your website is mobile-friendly no matter what, but having a mobile app, too will put you way ahead of the game. Oh, and you don’t even have to do it yourself. You could find an agency to help you out.
Case in point: 75% of high school seniors say they visit a college campus without ever contacting the admissions department. Why is this such a problem? Because then students leave with unanswered questions and no lasting contact with the university.
The solution? Make it easer and less committal (than making a phone call or scheduling a hard appointment) for a visiting prospective student to touch base with you by making communication easy through a mobile app.
What if a prospective student could download your app, tap a button that says “I’m visiting!” and quickly access an info screen on some tips for making the most of their visit? And what if those tips could include things like, “Stop by the admissions office to say hi!” or, “Be sure to check out the Hendrix Student Center, famous for its freshly-churned ice cream”?
A recruitment app like this could be a perfect way to stay in touch with prospective students and guide them through your recruitment funnel without being all in-their-face about it. It makes contacting the school easy and noncommittal and gives them a comfortable way to contact you on their terms.
A lot of schools are combining their communication needs into one mobile app that covers recruitment contact and current student contact. That’s the case with Sullivan University (in Kentucky)’s Connected Campus app: they use it for connecting with prospects and undergrads.
In the age of mobile, it’s way more likely for a prospective student to respond to an instant message than an email; way easier to engage with a student over in-app messaging than over the phone. These truths are at the core of Sullivan University’s recruitment strategy: they connect with prospects through the app and send them videos to watch, making it easier and more comfortable than ever before for a prospect to engage with admissions staff.
The University of Oregon has a killer recruitment-through-apps strategy that works especially well for students who can’t make regular campus tour dates or who just don’t like the structure/pressure that often comes from the traditional guided tour.
U of Oregon’s comprehensive “Be a Duck” app has a whole section dedicated to the new self-guided campus tour that has amazing capabilities like: GPS to guide the smartphone user throughout the tour and display photos/important info at each landmark, info about housing all around campus, and an option to easily submit contact info/request application materials from the admissions office.
Oh, and the coolest thing of all? You still get the guidance from a student ambassador like you would a traditional campus tour—just pop in your headphones and hit play to start the self-paced (and pressure-free!) journey around campus.
Just because we’ve got ‘em enrolled doesn’t mean we can drop the ball. Let’s talk about using mobile design & apps to communicate with undergrads.
Some Tips & Stats On Students + Phone Use
That last one’s a big one. So let’s talk about how a mobile app can mitigate these problems.
My college has a stellar mobile app; it’s so comprehensive and useful, I don’t know how students today would make it through without it.
Here’s some of the capabilities of their mobile app that proved invaluable to me and thousands of others, including a few other ideas for capabilities to include in your mobile app.
Campus Transit
At Clemson, there is the Cat Bus. Cute, right? There is also Tiger Transit—a smaller vehicle, usually a van—used much like Uber, but totally free for students and a perfectly safe and convenient way to get back to the dorms after a night of drinking.
Does your school have services like these? If you do, think about including maps and schedules for regularly scheduled buses and an Uber-type interface that lets students request and check on the status of rides (if you have anything like Tiger Transit). This part of the app’s functionality was a lifesaver all throughout college and really made me feel like my school cared about my safety and success.
Mail & Keys
Replacing your lost key or picking up a package was always quite an ordeal when I was in college. What if you could request and pay for a new key all through an app, and pick it up at a set location whenever (not just during super inconvenient office hours)?
Likewise, what if your students could know immediately when they’ve had a package delivered?
Instructor Evaluations
It always seems like universities have the hardest time getting feedback on professors from their students; it’s like pulling teeth. Make it easy by making end of term surveys available through the app and watch your response rates soar.
Community, & Support
Another way Sullivan University uses their app: connecting students through forums, alerting students about events around campus, and providing quick access to advisors, who can support a student through financial/academic struggles.
And…Everything Else
California State University wins coolest and most functional app award in my book. Students can manage everything within the app: class registration and scheduling, bill pay, meal plan, athletics news and schedules, employee directory, social media, news, emergency contacts, and heck—just everything.
Using mobile apps is still a fairly new thing in the higher ed world, so we don’t even know the most powerful way to fit social media into all of this yet. What we can tell you is this:
And here’s the even bigger news: your students are already mobile. Are you ready to keep up? Are you ready to invest in an app, or stellar mobile web design, to meet them where they are and communicate in the ways that work best for them?
Let us know how you’re mobile-fying your recruitment strategy this year in the comments below.
Steve Pogue is the Marketing Operations Manager at Workzone. He writes about project management tips and the buying process. When not at Workzone, you can find him playing vintage base ball or relaxing with his family at home.
