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In fall 2024, 36 US and Canadian institutions used their Circuit virtual tour to promote 44 fall on-campus “open house” events. Timed calls to action (CTA) notices were scheduled with variation in how far in advance CTAs were enabled, when the CTAs were timed to display during the tour experience, and the messaging and media included in the notice. The average click through rate of 7% surpasses publicized benchmarks for other types of higher education marketing. Best practices based on above-average CTAs were analyzed, including scheduling CTAs to display 2.5 weeks before an event after 3-5 scenes within a user’s virtual tour experience.
Fall open houses are flagship recruitment events for higher education institutions in Canada and the United States. With applications opening in early fall and deadlines approaching in late fall or early winter, these events are an important opportunity to attract students and supporters to campus and generate excitement and even applications during the day. As institutions seek to broaden and diversify their recruitment efforts domestically to combat new enrollment challenges, the 2024 Open House season represented a chance to create a strong start to the enrollment funnel for the application season ahead.
Using Circuit to Promote Open Houses
Our philosophy at Circuit is 'the first visit is virtual.' In line with this, promoting in-person events on virtual tours is a proven way to encourage virtual visitors to make their next visit in-person. Realizing an opportunity to drive impact at this important time in the cycle, the Customer Success Team proactively engaged our customers to schedule timed call to action “pop ups” (CTAs) to promote their Open House events leading up to those events. Throughout fall 2024, 36 institutions in North America promoted 44 events using 45 timed CTAs within their Circuit experiences. These CTAs varied in when they were timed to display, how far in advance they were activated, and what types of messaging and media were included.
CTA Timing
In Circuit, timed CTAs can be set to display at three different times in the virtual tour, which are:
-On Entry to the virtual tour experience: 3 institutions adopted this frequency
-After the tour splash page of a particular tour (or multiple tours): 12 institutions adopted this frequency
-After a specific number of scenes of a particular tour: 30 institutions adopted this frequency
All of the CTAs above can be "scheduled", meaning they display on the site from a certain start date and hide after the end date.
Activation Timeframe
On average, customers had open house CTAs enabled for 37 days before an event. The maximum time a CTA was enabled was 107 days, whereas the minimum was 4 days.
Messaging and Media
With timed CTAs, institutions provided a title for the pop-up, an optional descriptive paragraph and image or video, and text for a clickable button linking to the event's registration or landing page. It was a very light lift to repurpose copy and media from event landing pages.
Outcome
Timed CTAs promoting fall open houses notified a total of 19,006 users during virtual tour visit sessions. Buttons to take a next step to engage with the event were clicked in 1,153 sessions. On average, the click through rate (CTR) for an open house event on Circuit during this time period was 7%. This outperforms the average CTRs in the higher education industry cited by Sixth City Marketing for search ads on mobile (4.45%), display ads on mobile (5%), pay-per-click campaigns (1.7%) and email marketing campaigns (4.4%). When evaluating the three dimensions of an open house timed CTA outlined above—timing, activation timeframe, and messaging and media—the following best practices surfaced when looking at the CTAs with the highest CTR.
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CTA Timing
CTAs displayed after 3 to 5 scenes performed the best as measured by CTR. Thinking through the user journey within a virtual visit, we know users who have already engaged with tour content are more likely to take the next step towards in-person opportunities by visiting registration pages. Comparatively, On Entry and After tour splash page CTAs achieved lower click through rates but higher awareness impressions. For example, one institution utilized both an On Entry CTA and an after 3 scenes CTA with all other variables constant. The On Entry CTA displayed 1824 times with a CTR of 3.8% vs. 498 times with a CTR of 10.8% after 3 scenes. Despite the lower CTR, the overall total number of visits to the event page from the On Entry CTA were higher along with the number of views.
Activation Timeframe
For the CTAs with high-performing CTRs, the median number of days before the event that the CTA was activated was 18.5 days or 2.64 weeks. However, based on the assumption that not all visitors who learned about the Open House clicked during the virtual tour and may have looked up the event later through another channel, the maximum number of days where a CTA still performed with a high CTR was 38 days or approximately 1 month and 1 week before the event.
Messaging and Media
No notable findings around messaging and media stood out when comparing high-performing CTAs and lower-performing CTAs.
Implications
Circuit virtual tours are a successful way to promote upcoming on-campus events and convert virtual visitors to connect further with a higher education institution. Institutions using Circuit are recommended to schedule calls to action for large-scale on-campus events approximately 2.5 weeks in advance of the event to display after 3-5 scenes in their tours. These can be built in advance with the opportunity to make modifications in scheduling, timing, and messaging and media, to achieve the benchmark click through rate of 7%. When planning for campus event promotion throughout the year, institutions can schedule a calendar of CTAs to show up and come down, as well as modify or copy the CTAs from previous years’ events.
