Waikato leads the way with on-line advertising

Waikato University is changing the face of student recruitment in NZ with its innovative on-line campaign which ‘follows’ visitors to its site.

The recruitment campaign for A Semester involved tracking people who visited the website but then moved away without filling in an on-line enrolment form.

The tracking involved following them to other sites in a network of NZ’s top 100 websites. They were then targeted with Waikato University advertisements drawing them back to its enrolment page.

The university’s marketing manager, Justin Hare, said the aim was to drive those people to the on-line enrolment page because they had obviously shown an interest in enrolling.

“We know nearly all of our young student market spends a lot of time on-line, so we thought carefully about the best medium to communicate with them.”

Data from the campaign shows nearly 14,500 people visited the University of Waikato website, and were followed during that time. A total of 1140 people then entered data, which Mr Hare said represented an excellent on-line result.

The university is also the first university to advertise on the Vodafone Live mobile network to specific demographics. That too drove people to the website to enrol.

As part of the wider campaign, the university also advertised on NZ sites such as Facebook and sporting websites. Mr Hare said the university had served up 15 million advertisements in this fashion over a four-month period.

The balance of the recruitment campaign was carried out in newspapers, on radio, on billboards and at bus shelters.

Vice-Chancellor Prof. Roy Crawford said Waikato University was known for its student experience and this recruitment campaign reflected the amount of time and energy staff spend on enhancing that experience.

“Our enrolment numbers are well up for the same period last year and while it’s hard to define any one reason, innovative and cost-effective campaigning sits well with the university’s philosophy of being a leader in the tertiary sector.”