Career Center First Year Campaign

The Fordham Career Center launched a campaign targeted at engaging first-year students in the Fall 2024 semester.

Problem

• Low first-year Handshake activation rate
  • Compared to other class years at Fordham, and first-year activation rate at peer/aspirant institutions
• Low first-year event attendance
• Lack of awareness of Career Center’s services and resources with benefits for specifically first-year students
• Students report feeling “overwhelmed” by the quantity of resources available to them

Strategy

• Curate specific recommendations for first-year students based on their positioning in the marketing funnel
  • CTAs to only fall within the scope of:
    • Promoting Handshake as a resource and “home base” for the Career Center
    • Notifying students of the type of events
    • Informing students of services available through Career Counseling
• Create a separate email segment for the population
  • Adjust content structure to be more focused on exploration and discovery
  • Reduce frequency of sending compared to standard newsletter
• Redesign the first-year orientation handout to be a single-page graphic instead of a catalog-style booklet

Outcomes

In the first communication period (August 13 – August 28), the first-year population saw:

• 107.26% increase in Handshake activations
• 18.41% increase in event attendance
• 48.86% increase in career counseling appointments

(Data reflects growth from 2023 to 2024)

Read the Introductory Email

Sent to First-Year Students with Mailchimp