ERIC Number: EJ1258349
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0734-6670
EISSN: N/A
Information Overload: Students Are Overwhelmed with Marketing Chatter. How Can Colleges Get Their Attention?
Neutuch, Eric
Journal of College Admission, n246 p27-31 Win 2020
College outreach efforts are sometimes received as nuisances, or worse, as maddening spam and junk email. New digital technologies and data-driven targeting innovations are reducing the amount of paper materials distributed, yet they are not reducing the oversaturation experienced by many prospective students. Colleges use Search and Encoura to target their outreach by a variety of demographic, academic, and college interest characteristics. For instance, if a college seeks to recruit female Hispanic students from the Southeast, with intended majors in the life sciences, SAT scores within a certain range, and an expressed preference for small-size campuses, it can license a set of data that matches such criteria. But colleges don't always target their communications narrowly. Some schools reach out to broad sweeps of students with tsunami waves of emails. And, increasingly, colleges reach out to students using a multitude of channels, creating a college admission marketing juggernaut. Students and parents are marketed to via email, text messaging, live chatboxes, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and, for the media savvy, Snapchat, TikTok, and whatever emerges tomorrow), and digital retargeting--those advertisements that follow users around the internet. This article goes on to discuss some of the useful materials being sent, the College Board's data, and counselors' perspectives. It concludes with six tips for college marketers trying to get the attention of both students and parents.
Descriptors: Student Recruitment, Information Dissemination, Social Media, Electronic Mail, Telecommunications, Advertising, Marketing, High School Students, Access to Information, College Bound Students, Printed Materials
National Association for College Admission Counseling. 1631 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA 22314-2818. Tel: 800-822-6285; Tel: 703-836-2222; Fax: 703-836-8015; e-mail: info@nacac.com; Web site: http://www.nacacnet.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A