160 lbs of MAIL?

July 29th, 2009 | Social Media, Student Recruitment

This video makes me shake my head this morning:

160 pounds of mail from colleges and universities during this student’s search. Wow. While there is certainly a discussion and post in there about the OVERabundance of information thrown at high schools students in the US, what *I* thought about was how many Universities were sending viewbooks overseas? How much are you spending on mailing tons of paper across the world? Often to countries where the mail system is so poor the chances of the student receiving it in a timely manner is completely out of the question (yeah Saudi Arabia, I’m talking to you).

So are you still doing this? Are you still spending money on random direct mail campaigns? Does it work? What is your ROI? I am curious because I would think on average a University should be sending a hundred or less viewbooks to a country like Saudi Arabia each year. The rest of your budget should be spent on using the hundreds of better and more effective methods of connecting with the student on a personal and emotional level. That’s what will connect most of them to your institution and make them interested in attending.

…of course I say all this as an international student who chose her school based on its brochure and chose NOT to go to another based on theirs. Of course that was more than 10 years ago…the recruitment game has changed, and its time to give the students virtual hugs and handshakes, not just more mail.