Print & Web Communications for Education
MSW Recruiting Campaign
Columbia University School of Social Work Master’s Program
Columbia University School of Social Work, the nation’s oldest school of social work, partnered with Zehno in the creation of recruitment strategies and materials that conveyed the school’s longtime leadership. The marketing focus included ratings and reputation, balance among practice areas, breadth of specialization options, successful outcomes and New York as a social work mecca.
This approach had been applied successfully to the program’s print pieces for three years. During that same time period, prospects increasingly turned to the Internet to investigate potential schools.
To ensure the School’s continued recruitment success, Zehno recommended cutting the page count of the next viewbook, and earmarking the resulting cost savings for the creation of an admissions-specific print, Web and e-mail campaign. The total budget remained the same.
Zehno launched the site in January 2002 with a direct mail postcard to existing prospects in the school database (many MSW prospects consider the degree for multiple years before taking action). Between site launch and early July 2003, the site had more than 60,000 visitors. The total U.S. pool of social work master’s program applicants in any given year is between 9,000 and 10,000.
Of these visitors, almost 10% took some action — signing up for e-mail news, registering online for an information session, requesting a viewbook, applying to the school, etc. Once registered, prospects receive e-mail from the school about once every three weeks. At any given time, the school communicates with more than 4,000 active prospects.
The campaign features extensive segmentation and personalization—giving students specific, changing information about the areas in which they have expressed a particular interest. The print and e-mail strategy drives results through the inquiry, application, admission and commitment stages. Admitted students have access to a password-protected area of the site that focuses on yield communication.
Prospects couldn’t be happier. One posting on the message board read: “If this is any indication of the type of encouragement we will have for one another in our respective programs, we are truly blessed!”
The school is equally pleased. In August 2003, CUSSW welcomed one of its largest classes ever.
Download the full case study on the Columbia University School of Social Work, “Creating a Compelling Cross-Media Campaign.”