Marketing Report June 2015

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.

Introduction Marketing 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.

Traditional Admissions Recruitment Events During the month of June 2015, traditional admissions recruiters made announcements at high school awards nights, attended high school graduations to see prospective students, scheduled private campus visits, and with the help of many of the UMO staff and faculty, shepherded over 60 new freshmen to the Trojan 1st Day.

Curriculum Interest of 1st Time Contacts June 2015: Traditional Students During the month of June 2015, interest in business, psychology and RLS increased versus previous months; however, many traditional students are still undecided about their academic major.

Source Information Mentions by Trad Applicants: June 2015 When applicants mention their source of information about UMO, they can choose from list of possible choices. “Other” tends to be selected most often, as happened in June, but we see evidence of other sources, with word of mouth and web search being high on the list.

Program Interest of Trad Applicants June 2015 Undeclared applicants were the largest group in the June 2015 group, followed by business, RLS, CJC and psychology.

Traditional Applicant Profile-Gender: June 2015 Females out numbered males in the applicant pool for traditional students during the month of June. Most females plan to be resident students, while about 50% of the males wish to be residents.

Traditional Applicants by State/Country: June 2015 About 73% of the traditional students making application to UMO in June 2015, were from NC; other states represented included Md, MI, MO, NY, OH, SC, TX and VA. Thirteen June applicants were from out country.

Nontraditional Recruitment Activities During June, the nontraditional admissions teams completed over 400 recruitment activities in their local communities. Over 50% of these activities were first time visits, events and other visibility efforts to promote enrollment at UMO locations.

Curriculum Interest of 1st Time Contacts All Nontrad Locations Nontrad students contacting the locations for the first time were interested in various programs; however, ECE, CJC, HCM and BusMgt were the top ranked programs in June 2015. Online MBA and nursing programs were also popular, and psychology appeared on the nontrad list this month as well.

Ad Source Mentions of Wilmington 1st Time Contacts In June 2015, there were 39 first time contacts to the Wilmington location. Eighteen used the application as their first mode of contact to UMO.

Ad Source Mentions for Washington June 2015 First time contacts to the Washington location used the application as their first means of communication to UMO.

Ad Source Mentions of 1st Time Contacts at RTP “Application received” was the most popular information source mentioned by RTP contacts in June 2015. Word of Mouth was also often mentioned.

Ad Source Mentions from 1st Time Contacts: Onlines In June 2015, the most popular ad source mentioned was “application received.”

Ad Sources of 1st Time Contacts to New Bern There were 51 unique persons who contacted the New Bern location in June 2015, with the Hobson’s Nontrad program being the most often cited. “Application received” was the source of info for 19 first time contacts.

Ad Source Mentions by Jacksonville 1st Time Contacts Over 20 1st time contacts to Jacksonville used “application received” as their first means of communication with the admissions office. Hobson’s nontrad marketing program, other and WOM were also mentioned frequently.

Ad Source Mentions Evening College June 2015 The most often mentioned advertising source mentioned by first time contacts for evening college was “application received” followed by Hobson’s Nontrad marketing program.

Ad Source Mentions of SJ 1st Time Contacts In June 2015, there were 24 first timers contacting SJ admissions, with “application received” as the most often mentioned source.

Cappex Outreach for Traditional Students The Cappex company acts as an agent for UMO traditional admissions to reach out to various program and affiliation segments. In June, the company sent out over 43,000 messages on behalf of UMO, and we received 214 unique responses. While the return seems small (about 4%), it is above the norm for traditional recruitment programs nationwide. The highest returns are coming from psychology, Honors scholarship program, arts and graphic design, and criminal justice.

800 UMO Phone Calls During the month of June 2015 there were over 750 phone calls received at various UMO locations. The Switchboard received the majority of these calls (339 unique callers, 638 calls and 2,590 minutes) and routed them to their destination.

Web Analytics Traffic to umo.edu continues to be driven by search engines, referrals from other websites where we have purchased advertising and direct traffic. Google continues to be the driver with the most visitors; the average visit is 2.45 minutes and the average page view = 2.15. Almost 1/3 of the visitors are newcomers to the UMO site. UMO has over 6,000 face book friends.

Hobson’s Nontrad Marketing Campaign Since its inception a couple of years ago, the Hobson’s Nontrad Marketing Campaign has been revised several times. In June 2015, it generated 111 leads which were worked by the admissions reps at the location of interest.

Conclusions “Application received” continues to be the most often mentioned source for many students this month. These individuals have skipped the inquiry stage and gone straight to the application online, a trend we have been seeing for some years now. Word of mouth continues to be a strong source of information, and the Hobson’s nontrad program continues to generate leads. ECE, HCM and CJC took the lead for program interest in June 2015, while “undeclared” was the most often mentioned status of most traditional applicants in June 2015. Females outnumber males at most of our locations, with more trad females than males planning to be residential students in the fall.

Thanks Thanks to Jennifer Merritt, Georgette Prichard, Ken Davis and UMO admissions representatives for their help in compiling the information for this report. ~~~~~~~~ Submitted by Barbara Kornegay VP for Enrollment