“The website evolves and adjusts based on behavior. Somehow, almost magically, what I want to see is going to show up in front of me.”
That was Capture Higher Ed’s Senior Vice President of Data Science Thom Golden explaining our technology to reporter Melissa Korn in a July 14 Wall Street Journal article. The front-page story was about colleges and universities turning to “consumer-driven marketing” to recruit students.
The premise: as the number of new high school graduates stalls, higher ed institutions are taking a page from the high-tech corporate marketing playbook of online retailers.
Korn writes about Capture’s work with former client Kentucky Wesleyan College, who “posted ads akin to the ‘Were you still interested in that blouse?’ messages that online retailers use after a shopper leaves a site. Once web users toggled over to another page after visiting the school’s admissions website, they would see a banner ad reminding them it isn’t too late to finish applying.”
While Kentucky Wesleyan ended its contract with Capture this past spring due to budget constraints, school spokesman Eddie Kenny tells Korn: “We certainly wish we had the resources to utilize more of what they have to offer.”
Golden explains that colleges and universities only use tracking technology on individuals who opt in to sharing their information via browser cookies. He goes on to explain how other schools who work with us can “trigger an online advertisement or automatically send a personalized note inviting a prospective student to an on-campus dance recital after determining that the person visited the website for the school’s dance program,” Korn writes. “[Capture] also helps schools personalize their home pages with specific information depending on whether someone had previously checked out the admissions page for an engineering program or a nursing school.”
Visit our Press page to read Korn’s entire story, “To Recruit Students, Colleges Turn to Corporate-Marketing Playbook.”
By Kevin Hyde, Senior Content Writer, Capture Higher Ed
