Marketing Report January 2017

Introduction The following data is gathered from inquiry calls/visits, contact forms, applications, and SSRS reports. Recruitment activities, purchased media, website traffic, and other promotional and marketing efforts help drive students to our website and other points of contact. Information is used to track what kinds of advertising prompts action for various audiences.

Purpose The purpose of this report is to show trend information for recruitment and marketing programs at all University of Mount Olive locations. Where possible, comparisons over time are shown. Marketing and recruitment activities differ for traditional and nontraditional programs, so some comparisons are not appropriate. This is not an enrollment report.

January 2017 Applicants There were 535 applications for all locations and programs during January 2017. The timing of these apps reminds us that people make new year’s resolutions and sometimes that means a new start on their education. The chart below demonstrates this trend with the first week showing 155 apps received, and Wednesday and Tuesdays being high receipt days. In January 2016 UMO received 567 applications.

Gender Mix of January 2017 Apps to all Locations There were 535 applications to all locations in January 2017. The majority of applicants received in January were female, 69% vs. male, 31%. In the nontraditional population, where 342 apps were received, 75% were females, and in the traditional population, where there were 193 applications, 59% were females. As we plan for the future, in programs and in residence life facilities, these are important trends to be tracking.

Military Affiliation for January 2017 Applicants UMO received 78 military affiliated applications in January 2017, with 64 coming to the nontrad locations and 14 to the daytime location. See the graph below for the type of military affiliation for these applicants.

Source Mentions for Traditional Applicants During the month of January, there were 193 applications to the traditional admissions office. There were 189 responses to the inquiry about where the applicant first heard about UMO. Word of mouth, college fairs, web searches, admissions presentations, and other communication sources were mentioned. In January 2016 UMO received 205 trad applications.

Traditional Recruitment Activities: January 2017 During the month of January, traditional admissions representatives visited local schools and held an open house for new freshmen and their families.

Cappex Inquiries January 2017 The Cappex Campaign is designed to help UMO reach more traditional students in specific core states, and students with interest in the biological and physical sciences, music, art and graphic design. There were of 60,000 messages sent on behalf of UMO to our core states.

Traditional Virtual Tours Since July 2014 the virtual tour has had many downloads: Apple: 1,533 New Downloads/ 5,383 Sessions                   Android: 1,324 New Downloads / 6,577 Sessions

Traditional Applicant Profile: January 2017 The gender mix for the January trad apps was 59% female. Traditional applicants were mostly from NC (137) vs. out of state or country (56). Their curriculum interests were varied, with the most (36) being undeclared. Business management, biology and RLS had high interest.

Nontrad Recruitment Activities: January 2017 The nontrad location admissions representatives completed 257 recruitment activities, most of which were visits to local businesses, banks, schools, medical facilities, daycares, libraries and municipal offices. Over 250 of these visits were to new prospective customers in the home and surrounding counties of our locations. January is a target month for these kinds of visits since it represents the start of a new year and a new semester. In January 2016 there were 220 recruitment activities by the nontraditional admissions reps.

Hobson’s Nontrad Marketing Program The Hobson’s nontrad marketing program provides adult prospects/leads to UMO nontraditional programs. The cost per lead is very economical, with an average conversion rate of 4% across all channels. The campaigns use Google and Bing Search, Google Display, Google Retargeting and Facebook Click to Website. Hobson’s microsite web banners help UMO to get noticed. There were 131 new leads promoted by the program to UMO this month.

Nontrad App Source Information: January 2017 Most applicants told us where they first heard about UMO. Nontrad applicants mentioned word of mouth, radio, online ads, web searches and other sources of information. Three hundred and forty one (341) applicants gave us this information.

Curriculum Preference for Nontrad Apps: January 2017 Applicants to nontrad programs showed interest in management, criminal justice, general studies, HCM and the MBA in large numbers in January 2017. See the graph below for specifics.

Traffic to umo.edu Our website traffic continues to grow. From January 1, 2016 – December 31, 2016 there were… 231,961 unique users (31.67% were new visits) 1,398,619 page views Users stayed on our site for 2:33 minutes on average and visited 2 pages

Traffic to umo.edu January to December 2016 Visitors 65.6% female / 34.3% male About 32% of visitors were ages of 18-24 with the next highest percentage being 23% for visitors 25-34 years of age

Visitors to umo.edu Visitors to umo.edu from Jan.-Dec. 2016 were primarily from the United States (97.36% ) followed by Russia, Canada and the UK (.44% Russia; .28% Canada; .24% UK)

Traffic to umo.edu Visitors to umo.edu during the 2016 year (Jan to Dec) viewed the site from the following: desktops (70.96%) mobile devices (25.18%) tablets (3.86%)

Phone Calls Received During January 2017, the University received 333 phone calls directed at recruitment, with the majority (297) going to the main switchboard. There were 267 unique callers making 333 calls overall, for a total of 1027.6 minutes or 17.12 hours. This compares to 1090.8 minutes (18+ hours) in January 2016 when UMO received 329 calls from 273 unique callers.

Conclusions: January 2017 1. January continues to be a new year’s resolution time for applicants thinking about coming/returning to college. 2. Although applications to the traditional program in January 2017 were not at high as the number received in January 2016, there are more confirmations already received compared to confirmations last year in the same month. 3. A larger number of our phone calls are coming directly to the receptionist at the switchboard. We have changed the menu of caller choices and provided more training for our student workers on the front desk. As a result we have fewer callers hanging up and re-calling or just giving up. 4. Visitors to umo.edu continue to increase, with most coming from the US. The virtual tour app is very popular among traditional students. 5. The Hobson’s nontrad program continues to bring in solid leads. 6. Business management, criminal justice and general studies continue to garner high interest among nontraditional applicants. 7. Word of mouth, radio, web searches, online ads and various other modes of communication continue to be identified by applicants as their chief sources of information. 9. Females continue to outnumber males in applications, and military affiliated students continue to find UMO as their application destination.

Thanks Thanks to Jennifer Merritt, Georgette Prichard and UMO admissions representatives for their help in compiling the information for this report.