Top 4 tips for student recruitment online

With virtual events proven to be one of the most effective methods for online student recruitment, it's no surprise that universities and higher education institutions are moving their events online. From virtual open days to careers fairs, online lectures, recruitment events, and onboarding sessions — all hosted in the same event space — we’ve compiled our four top tips for best practice.

Tip 1: Host your event across multiple days

Around 40–50% of those registered for a single-day event will log in and attend. In comparison, events hosted over 2–3 days typically see around 80% of registrants logging in and attending. The reason is simple: convenience and flexibility of virtual events for your audience.

With daily life getting busier, finding time to attend an event isn’t always easy for most people. Moving your student recruitment online and extending the event across multiple days creates more opportunities for attendance and greater flexibility in busy day-to-day life. By doing this, you’re likely to see higher attendance from registrants, as they’ll have the time to explore the event at their own pace—enhancing both their overall experience and the quality of interaction data captured on the platform.
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Tip 2: Decide on your most important content

Content can sometimes be forgotten in the run up to an event, especially when it comes to student recruitment online. We often find that the primary focus is around design rather than creating valuable and interesting content for registrants to enjoy. Although it differs based on event format, content is the most important part of your event and the reason your attendees will return multiple times.
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So what kind of content would you expect to see in online student recruitment?

Content you can expect to see in online student recruitment are:

• 1) Live or pre-recorded presentations hosted by lecturers on a particular subject, or student enrolment teams discussing the application process. You may also find a student panel discussing their own individual experiences and offering advice for future students tend to be very well attended.
• 2) Student ambassadors in a student lounge where attendees can get to know each other as well as the students already attending the university.
• 3) Faculty specific booth spaces with on-demand content as well as their own live chat rooms.
• 4) 1-2-1 meetings in either video, audio or text chat format. Another great way for prospective students to get individual help and advice.
• 5) Event agenda where students can see what’s coming up and plan their own personal event schedules based on the topics that most interest them. Ideally, this should be included in your pre-event marketing communications — both to those who have already registered and to those yet to confirm.

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Tip 3: Plan your post-event strategy

It’s important to consider how you plan to use your event data post-event. When analysing the data make note of the following:

• 1) Most visited areas such as booths and resource centres.
• 2) Which content had the most interactions. This should aid in understanding the topics that resonated most with your audience. If your event included presentations, consider analysing the types of questions submitted, as they offer valuable insight into your audience’s interests and concerns.
• 3) If you didn’t manage to respond to all the questions, could they help shape the agenda for a future webcast? The same approach applies to questions from live chats in your booth areas.
• 4) Always review where your audience is coming from. Were they mostly international or UK-based students? Could you host smaller events at different times to reach a range of global time zones?

We always recommend maximising your on-demand time in the same way you would in the main event, especially for online student recruitment events. Even though your main event may have ended, your event space is still open and available for students to interact with your content and ‘attend’ as and when they see fit – something we call on-demand. If your post-event data highlights recurring themes or interests, consider hosting smaller, targeted one-off events — either within a single booth or as a webcast — to explore those topics in more depth. These mini events can form the agenda for your post event marketing communications to both those that attended and those that were unable to.

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Tip 4: Always remember to test

It may seem obvious however this is consistently the one thing that gets forgotten in the pre-event last minute rush. No matter how hectic your last few weeks may be, always make time for a thorough test and mock run through. Double and even triple checking not just the wording and spelling, but also make sure to visit every piece of content in the same way your audience will. A huge benefit in hosting a student recruitment event online is that your event space is accessible several weeks, if not months, before your live date.