EAG recently worked with two college partners on their campus visit programs. In the first partnership, EAG created an extensive and successful visitation program from inception. In the second partnership, EAG worked with an existing team to optimize their visitor program.
EAG BUILDS WORLD CLASS VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Our client was a new college with no existing visitor program for prospective students. They had to quickly develop a visitor program to showcase facilities, programs and other opportunities available for students.
Discovery
EAG’s team met with administration to understand the college’s timeline for opening. With a campus under construction and limited facilities to show, EAG needed to come up with creative ideas for a visitation program.
Approach
Once the discovery phase was completed, EAG worked with campus leadership to create a visitation program that would meet their objectives not only during the construction phase but after the campus was fully open.
EAG presented the client with several proposed visitor programs they could launch, including a brief description of each program, outcomes for each program and intended audiences.
EAG worked with the client to develop messaging, sequenced communication plans, presentations, scripts, and analytics for their visitation programs.
EAG developed a comprehensive tour ambassador training program to ensure consistent messaging and performance.
Outcome
The college met its visitation goals and implemented visitation and yield-based events which resulted in the college meeting its inaugural enrollment goal.
COLLEGE LOOKS TO BOOST DECLINING VISITOR NUMBERS
Although this client had a robust visitation program in place, yield had been declining over the last two years despite a significant number of visitor participants annually. Our client was looking to build more market segmentation within their tour programs and increase yield. They were also looking to generate ideas for new programs as well as ways to engage other departments with prospective students and their families.
Discovery
- EAG’s team met with events staff to understand how many events were implemented on an annual basis and the client’s goals for future programming.
- EAG spent time touring the campus and meeting with student tour ambassadors to gain insight on questions and interests from students and families who tour the campus.
- EAG conducted an analysis of campus visitor data to understand the impact of these events on yield.
Approach
EAG first conducted an in-depth audit of the client’s existing tour programs. We looked at budget, staff resources, campus participation and communication plans to identify opportunities for meeting their visitation goals. With our findings we put together a plan of action that outlined areas of priority including:
- Campus visit communications
- Student tour ambassador training
- Tour routes and scripts
- Engagement activities for non-Admissions personnel
- Collection of data points from students during their visit
- Visitor relationship-building post-tour
- Types of events for different stages of the admissions funnel
- Analytics for continuous improvement
Outcome
This client implemented recommended changes and immediately realized an increase in visitor participants. They also invested in virtual visitation programs to impact yield.
