For the past three years, the university has adapted its integrated marketing framework to incorporate Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites and the Internet in general, said Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president of university relations who has a doctorate.
Integrated marketing, Sinsabaugh said, aligns different media outlets (such as the Web, TV, flyers, etc.) to build on the activities occurring around campus in a cohesive manner.
With this plan, Sinsabaugh and her team will be shifting both financial and human resources toward the Web, weening off newspaper advertisements. Sinsabaugh declined to give any figures relating to the budget. She expects 10-15 percent of the current budget would move toward Internet advertising.
However, when looking into advertising in Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia, the marketing department cannot afford TV, print or radio ads in those large areas but can afford Web and social media ads.
Without giving figures, Sinsabaugh said New York state resident college attendance numbers continue to dwindle, but New York still remains the second-largest importer of college students. With that information, Bonaventure is expanding to Atlantic 10 Conference and strong alumni cities such as Charlotte, N.C., and the Washington, D.C., metro area, to name a few.
Andrew Metoyer, a freshman finance major and rugby player from Texas, discovered Bonaventure through his high school coach. An alum who already sent six of his high-schoolers here said Bona’s would be the best place for a small campus and a good rugby team. After contacting Bonaventure, Metoyer received e-mails and mailings.
Bonaventure recently invested in a customer relations management system that would be in place next year, Sinsabaugh said. She declined to state the cost of the new system.
“If we get a student to communicate with us electronically it’s constantly gathering information about that student and that enables us to communicate with that student in a much more personalized way … It will greatly open up the world to us in terms of being able to do targeted communications to perspective students with particular characteristics or areas of interest.”
This would allow the university to profile students who appear to best fit at the university, Sinsabaugh said. By using the prospective students specific interests, location in relation to Bonaventure and other key factors, both marketing and admissions would be able to determine their interest in Bona’s.
Currently, Sinsabaugh’s team would do all of this work manually, however, that could not be done for all majors at Bona’s.
“It would just be too much,” Sinsabaugh said.
Instead of making one-size-fits-all brochures to send out, Sinsabaugh said, soon all brochures will be individualized to the interests of each student.
“It may look like more cost on the front end, but if you look at the return on investment it might be less expensive,” Sinsabaugh said. “If the communication is more effective while the layout may be more expensive, the return is better.”
As part of an admissions initiative, Ashley Oliver, a student representative of Bona’s in the high school she graduated from, agreed with the change.
“I think brochures have information on them but not enough,” said Oliver, a sophomore political science major. “It tries to tell a story, but alls I really wanted was the facts … I had a brochure to give out to my students and it had this long story they aren’t going to read. They want information: how to apply, tuition, study abroad and internship opportunities, clubs and athletics.”
When the program becomes operational, professors would have the opportunity to contact potential students interested in their department, this system would allow professors to see when a student opens an e-mail and how much time he spends looking at the message. Professors then would have a sense of the student’s interest in Bonaventure, Sinsabaugh said.
“So you can throw your message out there to a 100,000 people, but of those 100,000 there may only be 4,000-5,000 that would realistically look at St. Bonaventure in this situation,” said John J. Watson, marketing professor and former department chair. “The important thing is to identify those 4,000-5000 people and then to start communicating with them regularly so that they’ve got a better likelihood to come here than anywhere else.”
Sinsabaugh said that no matter how this new system works, marketing is heading toward the Internet.
“There is nothing, nothing of anything that we do from a marketing perspective that is more important than the Web,” she said. “Nothing.”
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