Every day, your students are bombarded with notifications, texts, emails, and ads. This makes it difficult to get their attention for important announcements from your school. Last year, when the pandemic shifted most classes online, students adapted to instant online access for information about campus events and resources. As a result, college and university students are now even more accustomed to online communication. With the return to campus this year, it’s clear that schools need to be able to effectively engage with students digitally.
As Montana Technical University discovered last year, CampusWell’s online platform was essential for staying connected with their students.
“[CampusWell] is a great way to get out information in a COVID environment. I could disseminate information about upcoming [events] or needs that we saw on campus,” says Tara Kloker, the wellness program coordinator at Montana Tech.
CampusWell is more than a centralized area to share wellness resources—it is a communication tool that schools depend on to share important health messaging, campus initiatives, and event details with students. Here’s how Montana Tech leveraged CampusWell to reach and engage with their students.
Montana Tech captured students’ attention with relevant, quality content
CampusWell offers schools ready-made wellness content tailored to students’ interests and issues. Students want expert advice in every area of their life—from budgeting for student loans to effective study strategies—and CampusWell provides that.
“The content that’s given is so professional,” says Kloker. “It’s evidence-based and well researched. And so I think that is important—especially to my campus being a STEM school. Being able to tell students, ‘hey, I might not always be available, but check this out, because you can trust the information that you get from here.’ I think that has been pretty impactful for not only our students but our staff.”
The first step to engaging students is grabbing their attention. Montana Tech did that with unique banners at the top of their CampusWell homepage. These eye-catching banners quickly informed students of the monthly wellness theme that the campus was focusing on for its events and programming, such as Pride Month.
“I wanted to use the banners as just a quick title or statement about what our month here on campus was going to be addressing,” explains Kloker. “It gave students a way to know right away what we were doing and what was going on, and then [they could scroll] down to our custom [articles] talking about that subject or telling them how to find out more information.” The students easily found activities that they were passionate or curious about, and then had instant access to the full details and relevant resources.
High engagement proved that Montana Tech students want to stay informed
Montana Tech took advantage of every CampusWell tool available to them, from the customizable website with its extensive article archive, to the weekly digest emails, social media content, and on-campus posters and slideshows. Using the analytics provided in CampusWell’s client portal, Montana Tech saw an astounding 80+ percent engagement rate—meaning more than 80 percent of students on their distribution list accessed CampusWell at least once during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Another statistic of note was that the CampusWell app had one of the highest click-rates in Montana Tech’s weekly emails. This shows that students weren’t just reading the articles; they were downloading the app to their phones so they could take CampusWell with them and access the content anywhere, anytime. These are key indicators that students are interested in what Montana Tech had to say.
Instant access to relevant information led to increased attendance
The combination of Montana Tech’s attention-grabbing banners and the popularity of the CampusWell app meant that students knew of, and attended, events they may have otherwise missed.
For example, Montana Tech hosted a virtual screening of the documentary, “Picture a Scientist” about women in science navigating the male-dominated field, and held a panel afterwards to discuss the film. Klocker says that their students were very engaged and many attended and participated in the event, despite the fact that it was planned quite spontaneously. According to student feedback, it was the custom content promoting the event on Montana Tech’s CampusWell site that prompted them to attend the event.
Student feedback and real-time analytics helped Montana Tech direct students to the resources they needed most
Knowing which articles were most popular on Montana Tech’s CampusWell site gave the Student Affairs Department insight into the health and wellness issues that were most important to their students. CampusWell’s fun but informative quizzes on topics such as roommate relations and sleep habits were a big hit with students. The quizzes acted as a “middleman” for students by directing them toward the Montana Tech campus resources they needed, at the time they needed them. “I actually saw students doing [the quizzes]. So it was kind of like ‘I’m going to check this out, and based on that, then maybe I’ll move forward and talk to career services or the counselor’,” says Kloker.
Detailed website analytics (clicks, referrals, etc.) helped Montana Tech be proactive about their campus resources and adjust their services to meet their students’ needs. This insight gave them an understanding of topics students were most concerned about so they could effectively anticipate increased demands in those areas. “The big one for us was the distance relationships,” says Kloker. “Being able to see how many clicks that was, and how many students took the quizzes, that was huge because that helped me direct later on in the year.”
With students back on campus, Kloker expects that continuing to leverage CampusWell’s communication platform will encourage more students to make use of Montana Tech’s resources and draw even more attendance to on-campus events.
Learn more about the CampusWell online platform here or request a demonstration to see how CampusWell can benefit your school.
CampusWell is a versatile platform that helps make a multi-departmental wellness initiative simple, sustainable, and engaging. Using technology, high quality, research-based content, and proven marketing strategies, together with your existing assets, we deliver a campus-wide wellness platform that will positively impact your students and institution.
Tara Kloker, Wellness Program Coordinator/ MH Counselor, Student Affairs, Montana Technical University, Butte, Montana
(Visited 36 times, 1 visits today)
