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In the Fall of 2009, the Roanoke Times wrote two articles about enrollments at Virginia Institutions, and Radford University was mentioned several times. First, the Times noted that RU had fallen 400 students short of its enrollment projections. To make matters worse, the Times followed with an article listing RU as the only public institution in the state to fall short of its goal. Bad times.
By the time the Fall 2010 class entered, the Times ran a very different story about RU. On the front page, the Times reported that enrollment had surged at RU and that the University was leasing local apartments to accommodate the increase in enrollment of over 500 students. Good times.
So what happened between Fall 2009 and Fall 2010. Lots of things, actually, but we were very pleased to be invited into the enrollment solution. Our work with Radford University allowed us to use many facets of abeedle's offerings and allowed us to build a full-scale admissions portal. Essentially, we built the enrollment marketing plan as the plane was rolling down the runway.? In the summer, we built a search portal to generate inquiries; between September and November we added four microsite and we are able launch a well-structured student search; between December and February we complete the entire site and focused on yield.
In short, we built a web portal from scratch and RU made strategic use of our marketing services. The end result was a turn-around of 500 hundred students between Fall 2009 and Fall 2010. New freshmen enrollment increased from approximately 1450 to 1840 and transfer enrollment increased from approximately 650 to 700+. To ice the cake, RU also posted the strongest new freshmen profile in 16 years.
Admissions Portals work because they are built to serve a very specific purpose and a very specific audience. We know what our audience (high school students) are looking for and we know how to market to them. And there is a difference between recruiting students to apply, encouraging applicants to complete their applications, and encouraging accepted students to enroll. The portal addresses all of these needs in a compact, well-defined way.
The Radford experience allowed abeedle.com to use its full arsenal of creativity, technology and experience, and we are proud to say that we played a significant role in one of the most significant one-year turn-arounds to our knowledge.
Oh, and the applicant pool for 2011 is currently poised to set an all time high.
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