IU Bloomington Recruitment Materials: Personalized Cards
CLIENT
IU Bloomington Undergraduate Office of Admissions
CHALLENGE
To connect on a personal level with prospective high school students and to stand out among the hundreds of universities recruiting the same audience.
SOLUTION 1
Prespective Students
High school sophomores and juniors receive mailings from hundreds of universities every year. Many of these students have never considered nor heard of Indiana University. The IU Bloomington Undergraduate Office of Admissions needed a way to stand out in a sea of college recruitment postcards, many of which use campus or classroom images and similar messages. The initial “search” piece is sent to 200,000 high school students. To appeal to an audience that responds to personalized attention, we used an innovative print process called digital production printing that allowed us to personalize text fields. The front-panel copy addresses the student personally (“Kay, there is life after 517 E. Kirkwood St.”) and the design employs a modern, simple, colorful style that features an IU student. The back panel text is a personalized letter that presents the vast array of opportunities available to IU Bloomington students.
SOLUTION 2
Admitted Students
To retain the high school students who were already admitted to but had not yet enrolled at IU Bloomington, we used the same personalization technology (digital production printing) to create a holiday card. We created a card that featured each admitted student’s name on the cover as if it had been written in snow, next to an image of a red IU winter hat. The inside of the card shows the same IU hat perched on the head of a snowman, and the interior message is a personalized holiday greeting from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. The unique personalized snow-writing font that was created specifically for this project, the classic and playful design, the image of the snowman in an IU hat, and the personalized message from Admissions made our admitted high school students feel welcome and excited about enrolling at IU Bloomington.
