Queensland’s Bond University has enlisted the help of an online student recruitment tool in the aim to attract students with information easily accessible via smartphones.
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Developed by Australian Platform-as-a-Service provider, Blink Mobile Interactive, the tool acts as a mobile-enabled course guide containing information about the university’s courses and admission requirements, and is used by students, teachers, and rural and international managers meeting with potential students at school discussions, career days and educational expos.
Bond University director of marketing and admissions, Valerie Runyan, said the mobile brochure was part of the university’s strategy to deliver more marketing content via digital platforms.
“We needed a system to allow us to automatically deliver the latest information and to provide our recruitment team with tools to deliver this information at exhibitions,” Runyan said in a statement.
“We've been able to create a more personalised approach; one that allows us to better demonstrate and guide prospective students through the course information.
“Prospective students are able to more intuitively browse the course content, save their selection and email themselves that list for follow-up when they get home.”
The platform was developed within a two-week period, in time for the commencement of the 2011 academic year.
The service automatically withdraws data from the university's website, shedding unnecessary information and re-formatting it “on-the-fly” to suit each mobile device.
It also enables staff to demonstrate course information to prospective students and to capture new lead information while offline until the next time a connection is made when each device can automatically upload new leads into the university's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Prior to the Blink Mobile platform, the university’s recruitment was limited to a PC and access to an internet connection or for staff to travel with multiple physical volumes of graduate and postgraduate brochures.
The tool is accessible via a 3G smartphone, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, Windows 7 or Android device.
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