We’ve been sharing that today’s college student chooses a campus and stays enrolled because they have a powerful experience. That experience goes beyond the campus tour, stretching into your town or city, and into the activities students engage with after enrolling. Your success in engaging prospective students and retaining your current students can be boosted greatly by using technology to serve up these experiences: things like food, businesses, attractions, culture, and events in an easy, app-free experience pass.
It’s changing how colleges and universities think about the campus visit and student activities, to make them more connected, customized, and inclusive. There are some key ways to amplify that success. Here are three ways that a well-crafted experience pass program can help you meet your goals.
The biggest way an experience pass adds value is to make the activities that you have curated easy to access and to serve them up in an inviting and exciting way. You probably already have a suggested list of restaurants and local attractions that you provide students and families. Now, you can provide them in an app-free, social experience that can include discounts and gamification (like check-in challenges), all in one place.
Bonus: you’ll get data on what is most popular, so you can work with local business and cultural leaders to improve the experience. In today’s connected environment, a flat list of options just won’t cut it. It’s time to level up your experience engagement.
Watch the webinar: find out how the Bandwango campus experience pass can take your visit and activities programs to the next level.
A big way to provide the rockstar treatment to prospective and current students is with customization. The great thing about higher education is that we have a ton of information about students: we know what they are interested in, and we also often know about their backgrounds and preferences, because we’ve been talking to them since they were in high school, and everything is stored in a CRM.
That’s very uncommon in the commercial world, where we often have to search for data to customize experiences. You know which students are interested in history, art, or architecture, for example. You can put together great experience passes around these topics that could include tours, museums, and exhibitions. You can see, right from admission applications and interest surveys, who might be excited by specific cause areas like the environment, social justice, or work with children. You have local agencies, events, and businesses that mesh with these students’ interests and who are ready to partner.
A student who finds themselves greeted with an experience pass that “matches” them will feel welcomed, embraced, and invited – and that means they’ll be more likely to engage, enroll, and be successful.
Every campus town, small and large, has diversity to showcase. But because students are often trying to pack in multiple campus visits on a trip, they’ll sprint through and could miss what your community has to offer. That’s a big mistake, one that college experts say to avoid.
A key to truly valuing diversity is to showcase it, and just like I’ve described above, reduce friction and customize the experience. This strategy has been successful for Bandwango partners, and we recently hosted a webinar to showcase key diversity and inclusion experience strategies.
Put your diverse community front and center with an experience pass curated to specifically show off an inclusive array of experiences, cultures and opportunities. It’s about more than just talking about diversity: tell the story in a way that prospective and current students can truly experience it.
It’s never been easier and more cost-effective to leverage technology in these ways to meet your recruitment, retention, and student success goals. You have ready community partners and business leaders ready to join up, and campus activities by the dozens ready to showcase. To find out how Bandwango’s technology can help you put it in a low-friction, customized package for your diverse audiences,contact us for a demo today.