Giving students what they want when they want it

By Andrea Jarrell

Today's prospective students are a different breed when it comes to the way they conduct their college search. And yet, while much has been made of the "stealth applicant," the essential role of the Web, and the significance of third-party Web sites including social networking sites, institutions continue with the same basic student recruitment publications order they have been requesting for years. This article examines how the thinking and strategy about viewbooks has changed-in light of the Web, considering how much students have changed, how much the admissions process and timing has changed, and in light of fully integrated communications and marketing efforts.

Phillips Exeter Academy senior Sam Jackson wants to be wooed by your viewbook. "Seduced" is actually the word he uses in his blog, the Sam Jackson College Experience (www.samjackson.org/college), which should be on every institution marketer's favorites list. He likens the viewbook to the ring presented as part of a steady courtship during which students express interest in institutions and institutions "keep that flow of mail coming to establish a nice trusting relationship." Getting a viewbook or worse, an application, prior to establishing such trust is "creepy" according to Jackson-a "come-on" that's just too strong.

Whether or not college-bound students fit the Neil Howe and William Strauss Millennial profile (see "Dispelling the Millennial Myth" on page 16), one thing is certain: Today's prospective students are a different breed when it comes to the way they conduct their college search. And yet, while much has been made of the "stealth applicant" phenomenon, the essential role of the Web, and the significance of third-party Web sites including social networking sites, institutions continue to approach consultants with the same basic order for recruitment materials that they have been requesting for years: a direct mail search piece, a travel piece used when recruiters visit high schools and college fairs, and a viewbook.

Some things about the old recruitment model remain true: Institutions still need ways to communicate with students during their search, on the road, and to seal the deal. But whereas the wooing process used to take a year, now it can stretch to three or four years, with prospective students beginning their search as early as freshman year of high school. How do colleges and universities extend and deepen their conversations with prospective students? And how can they afford to establish a courtship rapport with thousands of Sam Jacksons? While institutions might add other pieces to the mix-a sophomore- or junior-year viewbook, a yield piece sent to accepted students to encourage enrollment-these are most often introduced as stopgaps to bandage an old system rather than as part of a re-envisioning of the entire communications cycle.

A definitive model remains unclear, but there are certain truths and innovations institutions should consider before they submit another RFP for the standard search, travel, viewbook triumvirate.

Death of the funnel

"Thinking in terms of the old 'funnel'" says Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting, a higher education marketing firm, "isn't going to help anyone recruit in today's environment." Given the advent of "secret shopping" on the Web, Johnson says, the word funnel doesn't make sense because nobody really knows how many inquiry equivalents they have in play.

By secret shopping Johnson is referring to the ease with which students and their parents can research institutions without ever needing to contact the admissions office, exploring the official story via campus Web sites and bypassing marketing-speak altogether by plugging into third-party sites. The boon in social networking allows prospects to find and talk to current students from practically any institution and to compare notes with other prospective students conducting their own searches. Many institutions now report that 25 percent of their applicant pools never officially contacted the institution prior to applying. Brian Niles, CEO of TargetX, a marketing firm, says some of his clients have recently bumped that number up to 50 percent. At most institutions, the stealth pool yields about the same number of enrollees as the traditional pool.

"With traditional 'inputs'-responses to direct mail search pieces-plummeting but 'first contact' applications and applications overall increasing, the funnel becomes very difficult to control," says Robert Massa, vice president for enrollment management and college relations at Dickinson College. Many institutions also report lower yield numbers-the conventional measure of funnel success-because students have begun to apply to more colleges than they used to. Still, Massa says that a school of thought persists among some admissions officers to the effect of, "We are not going to let these Millennials tell us how to market to them-with their Facebook and MySpace way of communicating and their IMing and podcasts. We are going to control the medium." He says he'd like to believe that is possible, "but I really can't. Students are not agreeing to be marketed to, and we cannot force them to be receptive to our message."

With at least a year of data about stealth applicants now available, some institutions are finding that although these applicants were not part of their inquiry pools, they were part of their original search pools. This means that while a search piece might not be effective in compelling students to "agree to be marketed to," it can put the institution on a student's radar screen, and drive him or her to the institution's Web site for more information. "If it's true that prospects receive the mailing and then go to our Web site to learn enough about Dickinson to apply," Massa says, "wouldn't it make a lot of sense financially to devote fewer resources to a direct mail brochure and more on the Web site?" In the future Dickinson will be testing Massa's theory by sending a portion of the college's prospect pool a postcard rather than a brochure that will direct prospects to the college's Web site. "It may sound ho-hum to some, but this will be quite a departure for Dickinson," he says.

"In this environment," says Michael Stoner, president of mStoner, an Internet strategy and Web site development consulting firm, "Web sites need to be optimized for virtual window shopping." Basic information needs to be very easy to find, and content needs to be timely and rich enough to compel students to return to the site again and again. "Too many sites make it impossible to discover important facts, like the price of tuition," he says. "Institutions often want to do something flashy with their sites when a good search tool would do wonders in appealing to prospective students and parents."

First responses

Some institutions might find they could spend less on producing and mailing expensive search brochures, but most spend far too little on responding to students when they do inquire early in the process. "Significant response to an early inquiry to demonstrate serious interest on the part of the college is critical," Johnson says. A postcard or letter as the first response doesn't do that, he says, which speaks to student Sam Jackson's point about establishing trust.

Unfortunately, many institutions do send cards or letters as the first response and hold onto the only significant response piece they have-the viewbook-until the summer before the junior year. Regardless of when institutions receive a formal inquiry from students, Johnson says, "most continue sending the viewbook about the same time they did 10 years ago." Such an approach can leave students hanging for months, during which they might cross an institution off their list or begin their own research. By the time a student does receive the viewbook, it may be too little, too late.

Johnson cites Colgate University's "24/7" book as an excellent example of a first-response piece. With few facts and figures, the piece does what the Web can't-immerse readers in an emotional experience through great photography. The book chronicles seven days in the life of Colgate.

"We still have a viewbook, and we still send a search piece," says Karen Giannino, Colgate's senior associate dean of admission, "but we have added several substantive new pieces and a postcard series in a deliberate effort to document life as it happens at Colgate and to let members of our community tell the Colgate story in their own words." If quantity and quality of applications are the measure of success, she says, the plan is working. "It's clear that prospective students and their families are picking up on what is real and true and special about Colgate through these materials."

Multiuse publications

When the recruitment cycle lasted less than a year, sending a viewbook as the chief response piece worked. "Now you can't put all your eggs in one basket," says Tom Sternal, creative director of Jan Krukowski & Company and president of Generation. "There will be too many gaps in the cycle, and you can't be sure you will reach prospective students with the right message at the right time in their search," he says. To extend the conversation with prospective students and let it run deeper, some institutions have turned to serialized viewbooks sent over multiple months. For students who enter the recruitment cycle at the application stage, these pieces can also be sent as a set. In such a scenario, the viewbook becomes a substantive yield piece. It is an intentional strategy to make the communications cycle work in two directions: identify students as sophomores and sustain their interest through application senior year, and ensure that students who jump into the cycle at the application stage are brought up to speed with the information admissions officers want them to have.

"Institutions have always tried to bestow a lot of qualities and messages on the viewbook," Sternal says. "One of the appeals of a serialized approach is that you can start to hammer home a single key message more dramatically or more deeply than you could in a traditional viewbook." One challenge with a series is to help prospective students understand that a single volume is not the only publication they will receive. "You need to keep announcing that each volume is part of a larger whole," Sternal says, "giving them opportunities to catch up if they came in late to the cycle and telling them what's coming." He says each piece should begin with the institution's central positioning and then riff on a single issue that deepens that position, such as academics, outcomes, or an international emphasis.

By abandoning the traditional viewbook altogether and moving to a three-times-a-year magazine for prospective students, Furman University meets the criteria of a strong first response piece while also establishing a regular method of contact. "Students as young as high school sophomores learn about Furman without increasing the number of institutional pieces, like a sophomore brochure or junior viewbook," says Robert A. Sevier, senior vice president for strategy at Stamats, which partnered with Furman to create the program. "Furman reinforces key messages through feature stories that have more relevance and authenticity than traditional viewbook copy." The magazine dovetails with Furman's Web site, deepening the print content.

But given the avalanche of campus marketing materials prospective students receive, isn't a move to serialization simply going to amplify the clutter, making students even more immune to institutional messaging?

"What we want to do is start the search process in a much smarter way than ever before," Sternal says. Collaborating with Brian Zucker of Human Capital Research Corporation, Generation uses geodemographic data going back five to 10 years to help predict responses to search, likelihood of applying, and yield. "We have consistently seen that most institutions could cut a third of their search orders without losing any yield," Sternal says. "If more colleges would narrow their searches in this way, the volume of direct mail would decrease and institutions would save thousands of dollars on printing and mailing-money they could use for more direct interaction with the prospective students."

Next generation viewbook

The significant power of the Web has led some communicators to question the usefulness of the viewbook altogether; however, to borrow from Mark Twain, rumors of the viewbook's demise are greatly exaggerated. In its annual survey of teens, Noel-Levitz, an enrollment management consulting firm, found that 44 percent would rather look at brochures than Web sites, and 64 percent would like to receive information in the mail from a school they are interested in.

"It's clear that the role of print in the college search process has changed dramatically in the past five years," says Mark Edwards, president of Edwards & Company. "Nobody flips through a viewbook to find out about language offerings or whether certain sports are available. Print provides the lens through which smart communicators want their audience to experience their [campuses'] features and benefits," he says. Because the mindset of Web site visitors is so geared to finding answers, it's hard to communicate emotional information and brand messaging without getting in the way of functionality. Edwards believes the best viewbooks are a powerful tool for communicating ideas that engage, differentiate, and provoke deeper inquiry. "While print should push audiences to the Web, viewbook 2.0 is about more than being an usher," he says. "Viewbooks should stand on their own as a destination that is serving a different end than the Web."

Because students want to be affiliated with institutions that are "best" at something, Edwards says, those that have figured out what they can legitimately claim they are best at can create viewbooks that celebrate that idea that is at the core of their excellence. Printed publications become less about the institution and more about the importance, value, and coolness of an idea. He cites three client examples: Skidmore College's "Creative Thought Matters" book, Grinnell College's "No Limits" book, and Oberlin's "Fearless" viewbook.

"For Skidmore our claim was that creativity is at the core of everything important in life, and that Skidmore is a place that has aligned itself with this idea in everything that it does." The Grinnell book contains remarkably few images of Grinnell, he says, "but there are many provocative images that conjure the notion of what it means to exist in a world with no limits." The Oberlin book "doesn't even attempt to tell the breadth and depth of Oberlin, the institution-it's focused on the idea of what it means to be fearless."

As long as an institution can authentically own such big ideas, viewbooks built on them can have the power to seduce students like Sam Jackson to continue their courtship. But institutions should be extremely cautious in making claims. When students and parents are intrigued enough to visit the campus in person-the ultimate purpose of the viewbook-they should find the world the institution has promised. Next-generation viewbooks must be born of the same strategy and authenticity as online and in-person communications.

To guarantee such authenticity, institutions are turning more and more to student storytellers. It requires a bit of a leap of faith on the part of an institution to move away from a promotional institutional voice, says Colgate's Giannino, but it's clear that this generation is skeptical of that kind of marketing. "I figure they are going to seek out the real scoop somewhere anyway-chat rooms, Web sites, current students, and alumni-so we might as well share it with them, and if we can entertain them a little in the process, all the better."

Edwards predicts that viewbooks will be around for a long time, but they will also become less literal and more conceptual. Viewbook 2.0 will engage not by recounting features, but by communicating an idea in a nontraditional way. "I once saw a collection of talks given by seniors at one university," he says, "A dozen of these, compiled with an introduction to frame these talks, would be a powerful viewbook."

This is from the February 2007 edition of CURRENTS.