Backstory
Seton Hall University is a major Catholic university. In a diverse and collaborative environment, it focuses on academic and ethical development. Seton Hall students are prepared to be leaders in their professional and community lives in a global society and are challenged by outstanding faculty, an evolving technologically advanced setting and values–centered curricula. Seton Hall’s 58–acre campus is located in the township of South Orange, New Jersey, only 14 miles from Manhattan (see Figure 1). The University is home to eight schools, more than 60 majors, with about 10,000 students. It is the only U.S. Catholic university to be governed by a diocese, in this case, the Bishop of Newark.
Ambition
To create a new image for Seton Hall, stressing its tradition, benefits of its campus location, diverse student body, community service emphasis, all within the motto: Mind, Body, Spirit.
Action
Using our innovative “Step–up Redundancy” approach, we collaborated with Seton Hall to increase applications by more than 50 percent, according to latest reports. (Please refer to impact section.)
Initially, Peterson Ray & Company was engaged only to design a viewbook. But as we visited with the communications director and director of enrollment services, it became apparent that they were putting all their hopes on one piece to inspire an application. In reality, because there was but one piece, it was cumbersome, expensive to produce and costly to mail.
By taking the same funds and splitting the project into “pre–visit” and “visit” pieces (described earlier), they were able to create multiple touch points for each prospect. We created a 4“ x 9“ search mailer that went out to 140,000 prospects, followed by an additional search mailer that was sent specifically to “warm” prospects or those who had already made contact with the University. These pieces were followed by other “pre–visit” pieces, which included a travel piece for College Fairs and a viewbook. “Visit” or close pieces included a campus visit piece, parents brochure, financial aid piece and an affordability or values–based brochure.
Interestingly, the cost of multiple publications was comparable to what was being spent creating the single viewbook (see Figures 2–3 below).
Impact
A significant part of the 50 percent increase, cited above, we attribute to prospects applying to multiple universities in order to increase their chances of being accepted. “But the biggest jump,” comments Courtney Sollie, director of admissions communications and special events, “is because of how we now conduct our search campaign. We jumped from about 2 percent to 15 percent by including e–search and delivering a first/fastest search.”
In the University’s search campaign, the Admission Office gives prospects three chances to respond via e–mail and one chance via print. No response? The prospect is deleted from the applicant pool. SHU purchases more than 300K names annually; yield is about 15 percent, or 45K responses. “That is enough to make our numbers,” says Courtney.
