Blog

The Future of Viewbooks

Jun 6, 2016

Admissions officers recognize the traditional viewbook. It’s that bulky 30+ page printed piece that compiles anything and everything about your college with the hope that one of the many pages will spark the interest of the prospective student who receives it.

We also all quickly recognize the problems associated with creation and mailing of the traditional viewbook. As summarized by J.R. Rogers, Director of Recruitment at Pacific Union College, during our recent “The Future of Viewbooks” webinar,  “[Our viewbook was] costing way too much. It was too large and it was getting too out of date. We were wasting so much paper that we didn’t even offer a viewbook for a while.”

J.R. and other admissions officers have found that traditional viewbooks are not immediate or relevant, two demands made by both the “always-on generation” of traditional students and by adult students who aren’t digital natives but have digitally migrated. Among other things, they’re also:

  • Expensive, especially when considering costs associated with writing, design, postage and the manual tasks associated with printing. Add in the possibility that you’ll over or underestimate how many you’ll need for a given year and staying on budget can be quite difficult.
  • Static — and therefore quickly outdated. If you’ve already printed your viewbooks for the next two years and your college is acknowledged with an impressive award, you’re out of marketing luck.

With Liaison’s Enrollment Marketing Platform (EMP), Pacific Union College and many other schools like it have said so long to the traditional viewbook and hello to books that are:

  • Targeted to the interest and needs of each prospective student.
  • Dynamic and easy to update in real time.
  • Part of a cross-media enrollment marketing strategy through an integrated and user-friendly CRM.  

Want to see the targeted, trackable viewbook of the future? Watch the recording of our recent “The Future of Viewbooks” webinar here, and access the webinar slides here.

Then, see the EMP from the perspective of a student. Sign up for the demo here.

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Over the last three decades, Liaison has helped over 40,000 programs on more than 1,200 campuses more effectively manage admissions through its Centralized Application Service (CAS™) technology and complementary application processing and support services. The higher education technology leader supports its partner institutions’ total enrollment goals by pairing CAS with its Enrollment Marketing (EM) platform as well as the recently acquired TargetX (CRM) and advanced analytics software Othot.