open houses/info sessions
We have recently started having regular open houses. We change our radio and newspaper ads to promote it, as well as put it on our website. We either send out an email or letter (if they don't have an email address) to invite past, present and potential students as well as corporate contacts. We follow this up with a personal phone call. We flyer drop the businesses in the area and then follow up with a phone call. This has been working quite well, however I think we can improve by making sure the local media always knows what is going on at our school via press releases and news articles. I will also try to get on the public announcements.
Hi Susan
Sounds like you have a very comprehensive strategy to get the word out about your open houses. Do you ask for people to RSVP and then do you follow up? Can you tell us the format of your open houses? Is there an agenda or guided tour or activities that people participate in? Who on staff participates?
Thanks
Susan
We also have regular open houses and it is being advirtised in many ways, as well as flyers sent directly to prospective students' homes that we haven't heard from in a while.
Whenever there is returned mail, I look up students' email address' and write directly to them, if necessary. It works very well.
HI Ailen
You're pointing up the importance of follow up. We believe in 7 - 11 follow ups. It's great that you are updating the email addresses. If students contacted you in the first place it is likely they are still interested in your school. They may just need to be contacted.
Good job
Susan
We recently had an open house. There was a great response with several contacts made and students enrolled. This is a great marketing tool.
Byron
Yes Byron, Open houses are a great marketing tool. We suggest inviting the prospective students' parents and friends. YOu never know who will enroll. And hold at least 4 open houses year. Maybe more. An important part of any publicity event is to follow follow follow. And of course to send announcements to the local media to get lots of people to attend.
Best wishes, Susan
Hello Susan. We too offer informative sessions two days a week and have used our ads to advertise it.
We have had some challenges because not a lot of people show up, even do we send them postcards with their appointment date and time and a map to our campus. We also call them the day before to confirm.
How has been your experience regarding attendance?
Hi Jessica
It is a challenge to get people to attend. However, if you offer the Open HOuses on a regular basis and make them really fun and interesting, then people will come. Also you have to invite 4 or 5 times the number of people you really want to attend. Tell your students and grads to visit and bring friends and family.Keep evaluating each event to see how to make it better. It takes patience and persistence.
Best wishes
Susan
Thanks for your input. Iwas a bit frustrated because we have an average attendance of 30%. Now I know is close t what we should expect.
Hi Jessica
Maybe there will be only 30% of people attending now. But you still need to think of ways to raise that average. It takes time, calling, persisting, offering something that people will want to be invited to. Make it a reward only for those people who qualify. Always think of ways to increase attendance. Susan
At our institution during our quarterly open houses we have a survey that we request our attendees to fill out asking such demogragphic questions such as: age, gender, zip code, county, how they heard about our school, favorite magazines etc..and utilize this information to expand our publicty and marketing goals, curious to know if anyone else has used this method and their results?
Great idea, Fiona. How are you using the information and how is it working for you? Also, do participants actually fill in all the information? If not, how can you motivate them to do so? We always believe that everything be measured and surveys used as much as possible so there is a lot of data to make decisions. The reality is that people don't really like to take time to complete a survey. So the goal is to find out how to get them to do so. It make take human questioners to ask the questions and fill in the forms! Best wishes, Susan
