Marketing in the Digital Age–UMass Boston Online
One of the many challenges a university faces is recruiting students to its fully online programs. When you’re targeting a population that doesn’t require a physical campus, there’s a lot more competition. You have to meet prospective students where they are, which is to say, online.
A newly created microsite—UMass Boston Online—addresses this challenge. It’s a story about process that speaks to the power of collaboration and communication.
In her new role as executive director and associate vice provost for Strategic Initiatives, Mya Mangawang approached IT to brainstorm a marketing solution that would feature all of UMass Boston’s online and hybrid programs in one digital space. Mangawang invited Jonathan Lee, director of digital marketing for Graduate Admissions, to join the conversation.
“Before creating the site, we considered whether this was too big a job for us to pull off internally,” said Lee. “We met with Ray Lefebvre [Vice Chancellor and CIO] and asked if we needed outside consultants. He said no; he’d assemble the right team and process.
“And he did. We proceeded with a project management approach, spearheaded by Project Manager Terry Phalen. We identified key stakeholders, communicated frequently, and moved forward as a cohesive team.”
From a marketing perspective, the functionality of the site hosted at online.umb.edu couldn’t be simpler: filter a list of online programs, click to a page of information about your chosen program, and fill out a brief form to express interest. UMass Boston registers a new prospect in their system, and the prospect gets personalized outreach from the program staff.
“What this does is consolidate all our online programs in one big bucket,” said Linda Modiste, assistant vice chancellor for Application Services. “Before now, you couldn’t approach UMass Boston from the sole vantage point of online learner.”
The hard work is reflected under the hood. Marketing staff can add new programs, plug in new forms, and spin up specialized campaign pages without additional web developer help.
“IT has some great shop designers and developers who came up with really slick capabilities and a great look and feel for UMass Boston Online,” said Jim Wyse, director of IT Web Services.
Since its launch in November 2019, the site has generated an average of 600 organic (read: free) leads per month and hosted several successful paid campaigns.
Phase Two of UMass Boston Online will take things a step farther, helping prospective non-degree students find and register for individual courses. That’s no small feat—UMass Boston offers more than 1,000 courses a semester.
“The ultimate goal is to provide students with a shopping cart experience,” said Modiste. “To execute that requires a lot of coordination between our team and the leadership team. We have that collaboration.”
Mangawang is pleased with the results of Phase One. “This was a great opportunity to really explore and celebrate the creative talents of our own design and development team. I hope this effort will serve as a model for the future development of marketing-forward web design.”