IU Indy: Focused Program Recruitment

Situation

As part of an effort to grow overall enrollment for a School of Liberal Arts at a large public regional university, there was a push to promote all programming including minors and double majors. Faculty had a vested interest in enrollment growth because of the implications for their teaching load. Some programs had high visibility or a traditional track record, so promoting a double major or minor is relatively straightforward (for instance Psychology or even English). Some programs, like the Arabic Studies Program, were only available as a minor. Faculty looked to us to help them grow enrollment for this program.

Solution

A program like Arabic Studies at a university like this was the perfect laboratory for the Woolston Inventive recruitment philosophy. The highly specialized nature of the program meant that it was going to be small relative to other programs within the school, but that specialized nature also played to its advantage. There are definitely students for whom this program would appeal, we just needed to make it more well known!

We began as we always do with content and messaging, letting the format follow. In conversations with the faculty chair he really emphasized how ubiquitous and present the Muslim and Arabic community was throughout the city. We realized that we had real opportunity in capturing, categorizing, and literally mapping that presence. We determined a handful of categories that we could readily highlight including restaurants, mosques and churches, historical sites, and social services, and located them on a map of the metropolitan area. We then built a recruitment marketing plan that revolved around an actual version of that map. We produced it digitally and planned for some interactivity to allow viewers to select or deselect various categories (obviously defaulting with all categories available to show the wide presence). We then displayed that map prominently along with other content we developed along the way via social media and the website. Naturally we printed a large copy of the map for distribution, display, and in some cases framing since it turned out to be such a beautiful image. For more distribution options we also captured the content in a brochure.

Success

As noted, the map that resulted from this as well as the other end products were absolutely beautiful, and therefore easy to share. People took note, and actually helped us get the word out! We had thousands of views within two months, and an interaction rate in excess of 5%. The paper copies we produced were also very popular. They turned out to have multiple uses as we learned that they were attractive to program donors as well as prospective students.

Most importantly, we saw real enrollment results! The number of minors enrolled in the program more than doubled within the first year of the campaign!