Marketing Report: February 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this report is to show trend information for admissions and marketing programs. Periodically collected information includes source information for first-time inquiries and applications; recruitment activities by location; applications received by location and program; electronic and phone contacts to the university; web page analytics, and any other special marketing initiatives underway. Where possible, comparisons over time are shown. Marketing programs and recruitment activities differ for traditional and nontraditional programs, so comparisons are not shown for some types of activities.

Introduction: Recruitment activities, purchased media, website traffic and other promotional and marketing efforts help to get the name of University of Mount Olive out to our target audiences. The change in our institutional name has not shown a significant impact on the response rate to our marketing efforts, at least not in our measureable statistics, so far. We hope for an upswing in the coming months.

First-time inquiries and applications for nontrad programs: First time contacts and applications give us up to date information about how prospects are responding to what they hear and see about our programs. In February 2014, despite the new programs we have added this year, we received fewer first time contacts than we did in Feb 2012 or Feb 2013. The chart and graph below demonstrate diminishing first time contacts in nearly all programs.

Program/Location / FEB 2012 / FEB 2013 / FEB 2014 /
ACCT (begin F13) / 0 / 0 / 16
BusMgt / 54 / 66 / 29
HCM / 56 / 66 / 37
MIS / 4 / 11 / 10
CJC / 34 / 40 / 39
Rel/MRM / 6 / 11 / 8
ECE: with/without licensure / 38 / 63 / 34
GenStd(HP) / 42 / 42 / 28
HRM (began 1/1/12) / 15 / 23 / 17
Virtual/Nursing (began 1/1/12) / 1 / 28 / 22
Other Teacher Licensure / 0 / 3 / 8
Other/Undeclared / 12 / 10 / 8
Total All / 262 / 363 / 256

Advertising/promotional sources linked to top application/inquiry responses: The Hobson’s Nontrad online marketing program continues to generate the most leads at five UMO locations, but the responses from this source have not been as numerous in recent months. A new collegiate advertising company has made a strong presence in the digital media market in the past two months and is taking away impression shares from the University of Mount Olive for our branded search terms (other colleges and universities nation-wide have also been negatively affected by this company). Hobson’s is working with Google to make a case for them to pull these ads, and we will know more in about a week. This is a high priority because Hobson’s has always been a top lead generator, and this decrease greatly affects our overall numbers.

TV commercials caused the most responses at the Wilmington location, while friends, family, employers and co-workers helped to generate leads at all locations. The top leads at the SJAFB /Goldsboro location came from the Base Education Office, while the RightStudent campaign produced the most leads for the traditional programs. RightStudent, a branch of Scholarships.com, is giving UMO a 3-month free trial program, which began January 22, 2014. In partnership, we have developed special outreach campaigns for agriculture and ag-related program interest (396 prospective student opt ins), lacrosse (77 opt ins) and music (447 opt ins) which appear on the scholarships.com website. Some of you have been receiving these inquiries or copies of spreadsheets daily showing these leads. We appreciate your follow up to these prospects.

Traditional Daytime Inquiries and applications by type: In February 2014 first time contacts totaled 564, which was an increase of 329 over the 235 received during February 2013! This is very good news to our traditional admissions team—if we can convert these numbers into accepted and confirmed (deposits) for Fall 2014. Students who are undecided about their major numbered 464 (82% of those inquiring or applying); this high pecentage indicates that we will probably have a large number of undecided new freshmen who will start in Fall 2014.

Trad (Daytime) Program Inquiries/Applications by type / FEB 14 / FEB 13 / Difference /
Inquiries by program / # / # / #
Undeclared / 464 / 167 / 297
All others combined / 8 / 9 / -1
Business (all types) / 13 / 24 / -11
Education (all types) / 16 / 6 / 10
RLS (all types) / 12 / 9 / 3
CJ / 18 / 8 / 10
Biology/Chemistry/Envir Sci / 12 / 5 / 7
Art/Vis com / 9 / 2 / 7
Psychology / 12 / 5 / 7
Total All / 564 / 235 / 329

The Cappex Company works with the trad admissions team to help prospective students find their way to the University of Mount Olive. In February 2014, 101 new prospects found us and expressed an interest in applying. There is tremendous competition for high school seniors from private and public colleges as well as community colleges all over the country, so Cappex helps to push the most interested students our way with multiple messages developed in partnership with our admissions team. By way of the agriculture and agribusiness, science and religious preference campaigns, 33,274 messages were sent on behalf of UMO in February 2014!

First time contacts and applications at Goldsboro/SJ: The number of first time contacts at the SJAFB/Goldsboro location for February 2014 was down by 26 vs. February 2013. Students who were interested in business majors stayed level, while all other academic areas were down.

Programs at MOC Goldsboro/SJ 1st time apps/ inquiries / FEB 2014 # by source / FEB 2013 # by source / Difference
Undeclared / 12 / 24 / -12
Business--all majors / 4 / 4 / 0
Gen Studies / 2 / 9 / -7
Psy / 0 / 3 / -3
CJC / 0 / 4 / -4
Total / 18 / 44 / -26

Recruitment Activities are conducted by admissions personnel at all locations. At the nontrad locations, where admissions personnel have targeted local territories, these types of activities include visits to daycares and businesses, community colleges, banks and law enforcement agencies, UMO classes, health departments and hospitals, and chambers of commerce—all places where working adults are likely to be interested in college programs. Special mailings, email blasts and presentations are also a part of these activities. The graph below shows that 218 of these activities were conducted in February of 2014.

In traditional admissions, the month of February was filled with many campus visits where admissions personnel and student tour guides worked with prospective students and their families to find the right fit. Financial aid personnel usually meet with these families too. When not doing campus tours, traditional admissions personnel are visiting in local schools and contacting accepted students to encourage their confirmation deposits in preparation for the April 12 admitted student day. There are three admitted student days, which are led by Meg Dutnell from student affairs, with the help of selected faculty and staff members.

Purchased media, (TV, radio, billboards, print ads) by type for all locations, continues to help drive inquiries to the website for campus visits as well as to complete applications, athletic questionnaires and contact forms.

New Goal calls: Most of the NEW GOAL calls are coming to the new vanity number at 855-MOC-GOAL, which went live last March. Our marketing campaigns drive all media responses there; this approach allows current students, prospective students and general inquiries to be quickly routed to their location of interest or attendance.

800 NEW GOAL& 855 MOC GOAL CALLS: Unique Callers / FEB 14 / FEB 13 / FEB 12
Mount Olive: EC, Trad, Online and Virtual / 127 / 97 / 39
Jax / 3 / 14 / 10
NB / 1 / 11 / 9
RTP / 5 / 35 / 12
Wash / 5 / 16 / 13
Wil / 2 / 17 / 11
total / 143 / 190 / 94

Applications received by location: The chart and graph below demonstrate the number of applications received by location for Feb 12-13-14. There were 320 apps received overall in Feb 2014; however, 127 went to the traditional program. The green bars on the graph show that apps have leveled off some since Feb 2013 (blue bars). Online programs brought in 15 extra apps, but they were insufficient to cover the losses at some locations.

Apps received by location / FEB 2012 / FEB 2013 / FEB 2014 /
Mount Olive Traditional / 127 / 102 / 111
Evening College / 51 / 27 / 47
Jacksonville / 12 / 29 / 18
New Bern / 21 / 17 / 10
RTP / 40 / 31 / 38
Washington / 14 / 24 / 16
Wilmington / 18 / 19 / 13
Goldsboro/SJ / 10 / 21 / 16
Online Programs / 0 / 0 / 15
VirtualRNtoBSN start Jan2012 / 27 / 15 / 13
Total / 320 / 285 / 297

Web analytics: The graph below demonstrates where traffic to www.umo.edu originated for the last eight months. Search engines and direct traffic help us to get our name out to interested prospects. The average visit length in minutes was 3:38 for Feb 2014, and most visitors looked at 1-2 pages per visit. About 30% of our visitors were new to the site in February 2014. The bounce rate has continued to drop by the month since July 2014, and is now at 24.55%.

Search engine placement helps to drive traffic to our website. The chart and graph below show how search engines push traffic to our site, with Google still being the primary driver to umo.edu.

Search Engines / Jul-13 / Aug-13 / Sep-13 / Oct-13 / Nov-13 / Dec-13 / Jan-14 / Feb-14
Google / 21,719 / 28,651 / 27,549 / 27,085 / 24,170 / 18,535 / 26,472 / 24,162
Yahoo / 2,238 / 2,590 / 2,299 / 2,348 / 2,074 / 1,672 / 1,933 / 1,511
Bing / 3,786 / 4,570 / 4,805 / 5,207 / 4,506 / 3,131 / 4,935 / 4,430
Others / 637 / 460 / 599 / 912 / 826 / 538 / 605 / 710
TOTALS / 28,380 / 36,271 / 35,252 / 35,552 / 31,576 / 23,876 / 33,945 / 30,813

Social Media: Facebook—Face book continues to attract friends to UMO and provide increasing visibility for the institution as shown in the graph below.

The information provided in this report is compiled from SSRS reports prepared by Ken Davis, admissions reports compiled by Georgette Prichard and location admissions representatives, and special marketing ventures analyzed by Jennifer Merritt.

Barbara Kornegay, VP for Enrollment

3