Keep your applicant pool in the loop with Tatango

Last week I talked about using SMS — text messages — to communicate with your applicants using a service called Textmarks. A commenter on that post pointed out another service for using text messages to communicate to a group of people called Tatango.

I’ve only tested it out a bit, but already it looks like an even easier solution than Textmarks to send text messages to a group of mobile users. It works like Textmarks: You create a free account, and then can enroll mobile phone numbers in your group. You can then send one text message that cascades out to all of the subscribers.

Text messages are an outstanding way to communicate to Millennials for several reasons:

1. Captive audiences. Unlike email, Millennials aren’t used to filtering text messages for spam like they do with email, so your message will be read.
2. Brevity is good. Text messages have to be short (less than 160 characters), so they force you to create a message that is direct, helpful and concise. Just the kind of information a millennial likes.
3. Cheap. It doesn’t cost you anything to send text messages this way. You don’t need to ask the IT department to install servers for an email blast system or even call them at all to use this service.

There are lots of ways to use texts to communicate to prospects. Reminders for application deadlines, advertising web chats and recruitment events, admissions decisions, etc. Just remember my golden rule of sending alerts to a group: Keep your messages relevant, concise, actionable and infrequent.

Oh, and Happy texting New Years!

Millennials are as hopeful as ever

The results of a new survey reported over at At Week show that despite the failing economy, Millennials are as positive as ever. The survey goes on to show that while these Gen Ys are a bit nervous about the future, they are still happy and optimistic.

So it might not be helpful to fill you marketing copy with dread or doom and gloom. Better to support and work off of the optimism for this group, then to advertise your school as the recession killer.

Further results confirm what we already know: whole life wellness — with family, friends and flexible work lives — are at the top of the Millennial wish-list. Try tweaking a message or a campaign to focus on how your programs can enhance that work-life balance, and you just might find a few more, better qualified applicants in your pool.

Another reason to have students promote your campus

If you heard about the Deloitte study on the state of media that was released the other day, you probably weren’t too surprised about some of its conclusions.

Millennials are leading the way in the consumption of user-generated media, and they’re absorbing online video, sound, and text in copious amounts through their computers, iPods, and phones.

In our white paper we offer some tips for getting students involved in the creation of campus videos and blogs. This information may be even more useful now that the  Deloitte study has confirmed what you probably already knew: Top-down, traditional media is on the decline.

Millennials we interviewed for our white paper generally said they didn’t like the “official” marketing videos that were made by admissions officers. But student-generated videos were “cool.” It’s well worth getting some of your current students, or even the applicants themselves, involved in this.

How To Run a Web Chat Webinar Video Online

We recently recorded our December 4th webinar about How To Run a Web Chat to make it available to you offline of the actual webinar.

Nothing beats attending the live webinar, where we answer live questions and you get to participate in a real, live chat. So don’t be afraid to sign up for the free webinar.

I’ve embedded the presentation video below. Enjoy!

(If you can’t see the video, you can watch it here.)

Two examples of reaching out to millennials

I’ve been impressed with the different ways that some univeristies and colleges are using to reach out to millennials. The Boston Globe reports on the increasing use of websites that let high school students search and sort through colleges, and chat online with current students:

“The shift is reshaping the admissions process, long dominated by mass mailings and college fairs, into a virtual, yet highly personal, courting process many liken to online dating… ‘It’s almost as if you’re talking to them,’ Duncan said.”

This is an excellent example of how to use online chat. Consider hosting a chat for applicants or admitted but not confirmed students with a couple current students. Let your current students chat openly about how they like your school.

In another example, California State University has used a fast-paced and compelling YouTube video to remind applicants that they have a limited time to submit their application to attend CSU schools:

Both examples are useful in helping to think strategically about how to use new technologies to reach out to millennials using the formats that millennials are increasingly using.

Don’t dwell on the dark side with Millennials

It has been said that higher learning does well in a recession, especially graduate schools. When skilled professionals have trouble finding full-time work to match their training, they go back to school to weather the storm and emerge with yet more skills and training.

But this generation may be different. Pepsi sponsored a study by StrategyOne, which found that a whopping 94% of Millennials are optimistic about the future.

The implications for recruiting are subtle but important. In the past, there was a common belief that “life is tough, and it’s hard to succeed without and education.” College was sometimes a survival tactic.

But the results of this new study suggest that most Millennials attend an institute of higher learning in order to build for a future that is already positive. Higher education may not be seen as strictly essential, but as highly desirable for much more positive reasons.

How this plays out in your institution’s marketing message is worth some thought. One key is to simply be more spontaneous in your communication with new applicants and interested students.  In our white paper we offer a lot of new ways to communicate with Millennials.

Are you texting admissions results?

Millennials text. The love it. They use it all the time with their friends to stay in touch. And now, even the parents are jumping on board.

A report from Iconculture had this to say:

Credit Millennials with getting their folks to text. 20% of 55- to 64-year-olds are tapping out messages in 2008, up from 13% just two years ago, according to a Sprint study. And three quarters of those texters are messaging their kids (MarketWatch 10.22.08).

Staying in touch with offspring in college drives many Boomers to write with their thumbs. So does the rapid response time: kids under 30 are four times more likely to reply to a text within minutes, compared with a voicemail message.

To get a response from that busy millennial, parents and even grand-parents are using texts to communicate, in lieu of email and phone calls.

So why shouldn’t your admissions office send text messages to let students know they got admitted, to send them reminders of upcoming recruitment events (like a web chat, nudge, nudge) or alerts on critical application deadlines? Heck, most Millennials we talked to in the research for our white paper preferred texts to emails.

So what are you waiting for?

In my next post I’ll explain how to use the free Textmarks service to setup a community to communicate with interested applicants via SMS.

Banking on Millennials’ interests

In a previous post I talked about the advantages of closer collaboration between Admissions and Financial Aid. PNC has now created a new opportunity for this.

Their new online account service, Virtual Wallet, was specifically targeted to Millennials to help them monitor and manage their money from a cell phone or other portable device.  It’s loaded with features such as calendars and cash flow projections in a quick, accessible format. Users can even get their balance via text message.

Here’s why you should take notice. Virtual Wallet attracts an average of 130 new customers a day, according to Business Week, and 70% of their 20,000 customers are Millennials.

There’s an opportunity for a strong partnership here.  If the Financial Aid Office at your institution can offer a financial aid package that is Virtual Wallet friendly, or mimics this style, you’ll have one more unique and outstanding trait to recruit Millennials.

As shown in our recent white paper, there’s a growing pool of already countless ways to make every aspect of recruitment, application, and admissions more digital and typically more attractive to Millennials. When a student has been accepted and needs to make a final decision, these forward-looking amenities may make the difference.

Four tips for moderating large web chats

Moderating a large group chat of 30, 40 or even 50 or more eager prospects can be a daunting task. I’ve helped clients conduct web chats and conducted a few myself, so I think I would share a few must-have tips for running a wicked large web chat.

Tip 1: Have enough moderators, but not too many

Generally speaking, we recommend one moderator per 15 students you expect in the chat. So if you expect 50 people, three or four moderators would be best. Be careful not to have too many moderators, and don’t be afraid to let some moderators exit the chat your attendance is below what you expect. A chat with 10 students and four moderators looks less successful than a chat with one or two moderators.

Tip 2: Use the phone to avoid double answers

When you have several moderators in the same room it’s important to avoid the mistake of having two moderators give an answer to the same person at the same time. It just looks unprofessional.

To work around this, get all of your moderators in the same room so you can call out questions to answer as they come in. “I’ll take Sarah’s question, you take Jill’s” is an easy way to keep the chat efficient. If you can’t be in the same room, no problem. Just have each moderator call into a conference line and put the phone on speaker.

Tip 3: Use a Word document for common answers

Inevitably, you will get asked the same question over and over. The quickest way to handle this is to have a Word document on your desktop where you keep the answers to frequently asked questions. You can simply cut and paste answers from the Word document into the chat text box and keep the conversion flowing nicely.

Tip 4: Dealing with pushy students and push parents

One question we get asked frequently is “How do you deal with pushy parents or students in a chat?” The best method we recommend is to say to the pushy person “How about we move to a private chat where we can address this issue one on one?”

The great part about this approach is you accomplish two things: you move the person from the main chat, improving your main chat, and you make the pushy person feel special by offering a one-on-one conversation.

Bonus tip: Attend our “How to conduct a web chat” webinar

Shameless self promotion, yes. But we do offer a free webinar with tips on how to conduct web chats.

Improve your online chats with students

Example of a webchat

Taking advantage of group chats to communicate with students (prospects or current students) is one of the several techniques we cover in our recent white paper. (For example, tools like our own University WebChat, Hobson’s Chat University, or UserPlane Chat are options for offering groups chats.)  As part of our work in researching the white paper, I discovered a series of articles by Dr. Ruth Reynard in T.H.E. Journal, in which she evaluates the possibilities of using chat in a classroom setting, and how instructors can use chat to engage students in the learning process.

“The idea of using chat as a communication tool with students is widely accepted in education. Using the same tool to progress critical thinking is not often discussed… we still see many educators using the tools to simply deliver pre-set content, present teacher-led sessions, and encourage student passivity rather than engagement. In short, many times, chat tools are used to simply reproduce lecture sessions…”

Dr. Reynard offers a variety of tips that are relevant not only for instructors, but also for admissions officers using chat tools.

“…[S]tudents should feel empowered through the openness and flexibility of the design and presentation to interact as needed, utilize the mixed media as needed, and to build knowledge as it is relevant for their specific needs.”

As you plan your next webchat, keep in mind how you can stimulate interaction with your participants, and identify a few photos from around the campus or your community that you can quickly upload into your website if there is a relevant opportunity during your chat.