E-cards

Assist. Dir of Admissions and manager of Web Design & Support are the presenters.

Giving us the stats about Southeast MO State Univ.

E-cards. Really? :-) His words, not mine. haha

quality and detail can promote your brand: mediocre idea executed excellently better than great idea poorly exectuted.

Southeast offers publicly avialable designs for holidays, university occasions (move-in, commencemnt) and activities. This seems easy to make them cool with the use of their mascot. We don't have a mascot at TCC, so would take some brainstorming to get ideas to make them great.

Q from audience: Are these for marketing dept to send out or just for public use to send to each other?
A: we offer both. we'll get to the ones sent to prospective students later.


UPDATE 10:59 AM

If you offer the public versions, have to make sure people know they're available. They use their website landing pages to market the postcards.

Admissions E-cards:

• personalized greeting cardes from each of the counselors
• use cards to inform students of upcoming events: visits to high school by college counselor, freshman orientation, high school guidance counselor training
• "feel good" like h.s. graduation to those that have accepted southeast as their college of choice

UPDATE 11:06 AM

They use professional photographer for Ecards b/c want quality images. They also use their own staff in the photos so students recoginze the staff when get the Ecard as those they've seen at their h.s. or orientation or a campus tour.

The admissions counselors get feedback from the ecards via email since the ecards are sent by the counselors to each student.

Greencard Pro is what they use. Form fields then cards are automatically generated to web pages with persistent URLs. They can separate cards by categories. E-mails are plain text and contain link to image.

Will allow HTML formatting. Can imbed jpg, png, gif flash

Q from audience: isn't imbebedding flash a problem for IE?
A: again, the emails are text only with a link. The link takes them to their persistent URL for the actual card. Exception to this is one dept at their school that "steals" the artwork and sends emails with imbedded jpgs, but that is just that one dept.

UPDATE 11:17 AM

Q: Can you track click-thrus?
A: No, we do get a notice if it's been opened, but that doesn't tell us about click-thrus

Q: Students don't use email that much, so have you looked at using the cards in Facebook?
A: Ecard software not the important part, the point is the personal touch, so you can set this up in Facebook, too. He's not trying to sell Greetingcard Pro, just the idea of sending personal "cards" to your prospective students.

Q: If you don't have click-thru data, how do you justify the time resource if you don't know how many are using them?
A: It only takes an hour or two to design, so it's worth it to them if even have 5 students view it. From the admissions standpoint, they focus on personal communication. They used to send hand written cards, birthday cards, notes so this is more cost effective and they're able to continue the personal communication.

Q: Asking Qs about the actual software but he inherited it, so not sure of costs, etc.

Q: Other than for admissions, how has it been used; alumni, foundation, etc.
A: Those depts are the ones that "steal" the artwork and send them out on their own. Fac/staff use the public ones.

Q: Are the ecards sent one by one?
A: Birthday, yes. admissions counselors used to do those by hand anyway, but can include multiple email adresses if want, but then the email will be generic such as "Future Red Hawk".

UPDATE 11:25 AM

A particpants' school--Univ of New Mexico--does virtual gifts (burgers, bobble-heads, etc). Most popular item was an aggies' voodoo doll (their big rivals).