Introducing a new comprehensive tour approach to better attract and retain students
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How our first-of-its-kind partnership with Mass Interact enables higher education institutions to increase their discoverability and employ a cutting-edge, comprehensive approach to tours.
College and university tours play an invaluable role as students consider where to enroll and attend. In fact, recent research shows 85 percent of students said campus visits were of considerable importance to their college search process.
Campus visits, whether in-person or virtual, have always been a pivotal engagement opportunity to tap into, but — amid increased competition for fewer college-bound students — it’s an increasingly critical way to attract and retain students.
Post-secondary enrollment has been sliding since the pandemic began, according to reports from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Overall enrollment has decreased by nearly a million students (a 5.1% decline) since fall 2019. Undergraduate enrollment specifically shows a 3.5 percent drop since fall 2020, for a total decline of 7.8 percent since fall 2019.
StudentBridge has helped institutions across the nation make the most of this engagement opportunity with a proprietary mobile-first approach. Our Campus Visit Experience enables institutions to offer impactful virtual and self-guided tours, personalize the visit experience based on what matters most to students, design interactive content cards for various audiences to send via text and email, and track key metrics and insights (including students’ self-selected interests, which can be used to customize follow-up engagements).
But we’re not stopping there.
To help institutions amplify their efforts and get even more out of their virtual tours, we’ve entered into a first-of-its-kind partnership with Mass Interact — a Google Street View Trusted Agency and leader in 360 virtual tours. Leveraging panoramic images, drone videography, voice-over narration, and more, they help institutions create an immersive and navigable view of campus, increase online discoverability with a Google Virtual Tour, and reach more students early in their search process.
Unlike other 360 tour solutions in the higher ed space, Mass Interact offers fully customizable tours, provides clients with full copyright ownership to use their content wherever they see fit, and publishes imagery directly to an institution’s Google listing.
Bringing together our two tour solutions offers seamless integration opportunities for institutions, such as being able to add 360 images produced by Mass Interact to StudentBridge tours and the ability to launch a personalized StudentBridge tour from within Mass Interact’s platform. Plus, our mobile-first campaigns enable institutions to easily engage visitors before, during, and after they explore campus — offering a meaningful and cost-effective way to drive tour traffic and ensure impactful visits.
By using both solutions, institutions will see additional benefits such as greater tour participation, improved student and family engagement, increased application volume (especially from out-of-state and international students), higher enrollment and matriculation, and more.
It’s a powerful, cutting-edge approach for institutions to get and stay ahead. And it’s only the beginning.