Before students can register and engage with GivePulse, they need to know what the platform is, where to locate it, and how it benefits them. Below, we’ll walk Campus Administrators through building out a marketing plan to encourage student engagement with GivePulse, while offering communications tips and best practices along the way.
What is a marketing plan?
A marketing plan provides a structured, purposeful opportunity to get the word out to students and encourage them to register and engage with GivePulse. Your marketing plan should include announcements across the following platforms: email, LMS, text, and social channels.
Where should I begin?
Start by looking at your campus’ calendar, and schedule your marketing tactics around relevant dates to increase timeliness. From there, you can begin planning your delivery of content through the platforms listed above. Organization and consistency are key to developing your marketing plan. Consider using an organizational tool, like Asana, or creating your own content and editorial calendars on excel or google sheets.
Now you’re ready to get the word out!
Post your GivePulse page link, paired with a short description and call to action, in high-traffic areas both online and on campus. Below are tips for getting started with marketing GivePulse on your campus.
Hint: the below tips pair nicely with free pizza
- Post announcements on campus
Chalk sidewalks, post flyers, and place handouts like the GivePulse Mobile Guide for Students in high-traffic areas on your campus to encourage GivePulse registration.
- Build registration into your existing process
Include GivePulse registration in the first-year orientation process to ensure that all students are registered within the first month.
- Team up with advisors
Encourage advisors to tell their students that GivePulse is a centralized location for internships, research, volunteering, course sign-ups, etc.
- Leverage extra credit
Ask faculty members if they will accept volunteer hours in exchange for extra credit from students who complete opportunities that are relevant to their service-learning courses. After you have coordinated with faculty, make sure that the course syllabus lists this as an extra credit opportunity.
Marketing in Action: Campus Highlights
Campus Example: Make a Game out of Registration
Create business cards to hand out that read “Want to solve a mystery for your community”. On the back, print a customized QR code that directs people to download the GivePulse App or to your GivePulse page to encourage them to sign up.
When the University of Memphis rolled out the GivePulse platform campus-wide, they experienced great success with their mystery QR code initiative. They created business cards to hand out that read “Want to solve a mystery for your community” along with a customized QR code that directed students directly to the University of Memphis GivePulse registration page. On the back, they included their institution’s logo and office information. The hint of mystery engaged students and helped establish their initial user base on campus.
Campus Example: Fine Forgiveness
Create a program on your campus that allows students to give back to the community in exchange for parking fine forgiveness. For example, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio worked with their parking services office to create a program that allows students to do community service hours in return for forgiveness of a parking ticket and had the students track their service on GivePulse. Alternatively, a campus could have students donate food or gently used items to a community partner in exchange for fine forgiveness and have them track their contributions on GivePulse.
Campus Example: Social Media Takeovers
Have students who are volunteering together document their experience, and post it to your campus’ social media pages. This is a great way to connect with other students and shine a light on community service. Students can even create volunteer groups, which makes it easy for student-led societies and organizations to track their combined impact.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham reaped the benefits of utilizing social media to drive user growth and increase student engagement. They implemented social media campaigns for Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok wherein student volunteers took over the institution’s social media accounts for the day and documented their experience. They made sure to show how to access the platform, and then spotlighted a day in the life of a student attending a volunteer opportunity from sign up to completion of the activity. This highlights the simple steps to involvement from registration to event completion.
Get Creative: Potential Marketing Initiatives
Put Your Own Spin on GivePulse
To enhance visibility and accessibility for students on campus, create campus-specific instructional videos for students and staff to better understand how to access and utilize all of the GivePulse features. You can also create campus-based training materials for students, such as PDF guides covering how to join the platform, register for events, and track service hours.
GivePulse Ambassadors
Facilitate awareness and engagement within the community by training student leaders on the GivePulse platform as GivePulse Ambassadors to promote campus and community engagement outcomes. Have these GivePulse Ambassadors present at different campus events and meetings, as well as classrooms for courses with community-based themes or opportunities.
Launch GivePulse alongside New Student Orientation
Staff and student leaders hold sign-up drives during New Student Orientation and Parent Orientation to inform incoming students of the platform and establish a greater user base on campus from the moment students arrive.
Incentivize with Swag Bags
Raffling swag bags or giveaways including t-shirts, water bottles, backpacks, and more is a great way to grab student attention. Student leaders can place themselves at campus events or in centralized locations on campus to recruit their peers to sign up for the platform. When showing proof of their registration, students would be eligible to enter their names into a raffle. Winners were drawn periodically throughout the registration campaign.
We hope these tips and ideas were helpful in guiding your GivePulse marketing efforts on campus. For further information, check out our guide for marketing to students on social media, where we dive into specific tips for messaging on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.