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New Year's Concerns for Stale Marketing of Graduate Programs
As the New Year begins, so do my worries of being stale in our marketing of graduate programs. We are a small graduate office at a small, liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia. I feel isolated and lack opportunities to brainstorm about marketing due to a lack of other staff like me. In the economy pinch, even the funding for webinars as professional development are questionable much less travel to a conference. I'm seeking stimulation from others from marketing discussions. Anybody else out there feeling any of the same things???
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cecil Boothe on -
Bruce,
I'm in the same position that you are. We are a branch campus of a small liberal arts university. We have about a dozen grad programs and seem to have about satuarted the market in our area. Why don't we share some of the things we each have done and maybe we can pick up an idea or two.
Cecil Boothe
Harding University
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Permalink Reply by Bruce Donald Bryde on
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Cecil,
Great to hear from somebody! I started off the new year with the prospect of our college's marketing dept. proposing using the same post card for a monthly mailing leading to our once a month open houses. We'd be using the same mailing lists we've been using so far this school year. Also advertising on the same radio stations, and a little web advertising. My concern is that we have mined our mailing list already. We also use a lot of TargetX mass e-mailing but to our existing recruits and existing old contact lists. Standing pat with what we have been doing is not comfortable enough. We've been having good results and we will make our revenue goals by June 30. Do you know of any other discussion opportunities? If history holds true to form on this forum, you'll be the only respondent.
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Permalink Reply by Cecil Boothe on
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Bruce,
We've done some of the same thigns you have. We've had an open house or two with limited success. I'm not for sure how to improve in this area. I would appreciate any ideas. We use mailing list of current students and some alumni but like you, we've just about mined that out. We just started a campaign called "Enroll A Friend." I could send you more info if you're interested. We are very close to a junior college campus and I go over there on a regular basis and that helps some. We also have a mailing list of principal's and superintendents in the area and use that to send course schedules out. Do you do any community outreach activities (speakers, staff development, seminars, special events, etc.) or let other groups use your facilities?
Cecil
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Permalink Reply by Bruce Donald Bryde on
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Hi, Cecil,
It might help if I just told you who we are...Cabrini College. A lot of what we do is try to drive people to our open houses and our website. We have almost everything online...not classes, but all recruiting and admissions information. We've gone to an online grad catalog only, online new student orientation only, etc. We do 8 open houses a year (we used to do 9) Feb., Mar., Apr., June, Aug., Oct., Nov. & Dec. We buy mailing lists and send out 32,000 post cards, non profit postage, each open house and advertise on radio for them as well. We TargetX e-mail anybody and everybody we have an address for. We e-mail recruits and have not gotten into social networking, yet. For open houses, we have to send almost daily reminders as they come up, and use a grad assistant to call them the night before, but it DOES make a difference in attendance. We've done our version of enroll a friend. Concerning community outreach and and events, it's continually evolving. We really have only two programs, but one is big for us...grad Education with 500 students, which includes a Master's and teacher certifications, and a Master's in Organization Leadership. The economy is pushing people out of work into trying to become teachers...we probably have 250 of the 500 like that, so we've already made our yearly revenue goal, but I know this is a bubble. We've stopped attending all college fairs at corporations and at community colleges and the like...we don't get anybody from these. We started working with local chambers of commerce for the Master's in Org Leadership and sponsored a really good women's leadership conference last semester, but we're not seeing ANY enrollment from any of these. Because are offerings are so limited, we are really looking at adding new programs and diversifying what we have since we have so many Ed. eggs in our basket. And, the college is really looking to us for revenue to offset reduced undergrad enrollment. Letting groups use our facilities for free is a constant battle, but you know how it is, get them on campus any way you can. Know of any really good mailing address providers?
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Permalink Reply by Cecil Boothe on
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Bruce,
Your numbers are a lot bigger than ours. We are very small by comparison. One of the things we have done with our undergrad business program is put a flyer in the Chamber of Commerce newsletter. They let us do this for a small fee. We have a lot of Ed. eggs in our basket as well. On of the things we are looking at is approaching the community college on their Associate of Applied Business degree. This is the degree that they have set up with Wal-Mart. We are hoping that since Wal Mart home office is in our community that we can arrange an articulation agreement between this degree and our Bachelor of Arts in Business. It's a stretch because of the "applied business" vs. the Associate of Arts but we are hopeful. Can you tell me more about your Women's Leadership Conference? Could you share an agenda?
Cecil
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Permalink Reply by Bruce Donald Bryde on
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Hi, Cecil,
I will try to get you an agenda for the women's leadership conference. It was really strong as these kinds of things go. GOOD speakers, good attendance, good contact list from it...it was a little long. We got nothing, however, in the way of new enrollment so we were disappointed. We will probably do it again anway, because it was such a good event. Corporations have pulled back on tuition remission for employees or they do it for an MBA but not for Leadership or they do their own in-house leadership. We are having problems breaking back into that business. Of course we offer a corporation's employees a discount, deliver classes on site, their choice of night, etc., but we are having great difficulty getting our foot in the door.
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Permalink Reply by Cecil Boothe on
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Bruce,
I would love to get a copy of the Woman's Leadership Conference schedule. I think something like that would be successful in our area. We have some corporate tuition reimbursement from Tyson's and J.B. Hunt but not many are doing this. We don't offer classes at any of the business sites. This may be something to think about. I'm enjoying sharing ideas. Hope you had a good week-end.
Cecil
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Permalink Reply by Bruce Donald Bryde on
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Cecil,
Before I pass along the women's leadership conference, can you please tell me the name and location of your school?
Thanks!
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Permalink Reply by Cecil Boothe on
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Bruce,
Our main campus is Harding University located in Searcy, Arkansas. Harding was incorporated in 1928 and has 6,000 studetns and is the largest private school in the state. We are a satellite campus located in Bentonville, Arkansas (northwest Arkansas). Our campus is called Harding University Northwest Arkansas Professional Center. Our address is 1803 Phyllis Street, Bentonville, AR 72712. Harding's webpage is www.harding.edu and our webpage is www.harding.edu/nwapc.
Cecil -
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