UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS
Student Marketing & Recruiting
Programs and Enrollment Services
PROPOSALS MUST BE RECEIVED BEFORE:
9:00 A.M. Central Time on December 10, 2024
Proposal Delivery and Opening Location:
University of Central Arkansas
Procurement Department
201 Donaghey Avenue, Wingo Suite 113
Conway, AR 72035
QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD
Inquiries regarding this RFP must be submitted in writing via email to Meghan Cowan at meghanp@uca.edu. The cut-off date for questions and inquiries relating to this RFP is indicated on the solicitation schedule, section 1.7.
Questions and Answers to this RFP, if any, will be posted on the University of RFP# UCA-25-025Student Marketing & Recruiting and Enrollment Services Central Arkansas Procurement Department website at www.uca.edu/purchasing, click on Current Bids, RFPS, and RFQ’s
INFORMATION FOR BIDDERS
1.1 BACKGROUND
Founded in 1907, University of Central Arkansas is one of the best and most affordable options for higher education in the South. The university strives to provide strong academic programs to meet the diverse needs of those it serves.
Located in Conway, Arkansas, “The City of Colleges,” the university’s bustling, Georgian-style campus is among the most beautiful in the region.
In fall 2021, more than 10,000 students from seventy-seven (77) different countries, forty-nine (49) states, and every county in Arkansas are part of UCA’s diverse community. The university is large enough to offer academic diversity, yet small enough to show personal interest and support. The student-to professor ratio at UCA is 15 to 1. Students engage in research and publication opportunities at the undergraduate level that most students don’t have until graduate school.
UCA offers more than eighty (80) undergraduate degree programs, thirty-three (33) master’s degrees, and six (6) doctoral degrees. UCA offers programs of study in five (5) different colleges – the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science, the College of Business, the College of Education, the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Each college offers different opportunities to learn and grow.
The university’s Honors College is nationally known for its unique, challenging curriculum. The Honors College offers small, discussion-based seminars, close student- faculty relations, funding for travel abroad and internships. UCA Honors College students have a 100 percent acceptance rate to law school.
The mission of the University of Central Arkansas is to maintain the highest academic quality and to ensure that its programs remain current and responsive to the diverse needs of those it serves. A partnership of excellence among students, faculty, and staff is a benefit to the global community. The university is committed to the intellectual, social, and personal development of its students; the advancement of knowledge through excellence in teaching and research; and service to the community. As a leader in 21st-century higher education, the University of Central Arkansas is dedicated to intellectual vitality, diversity, and integrity.
Further information about the university can be found at www.uca.edu or
1.2 PURPOSE AND INTENT
The University of Central Arkansas or (“University”) is issuing this document, a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) to select a vendor who can provide comprehensive strategic and operational support through a unique combination of 1) best practice research services, 2) enrollment management services, and
3) student success technology and consulting services.
The intent of this RFP is to award a contract to a responsible bidder, whose bid, conforming to this RFP, is most advantageous to the University, price and other
factors considered. Should additional work be required that falls under the subject of the awarded contract during the contract term the University reserves the right to separately procure the individual requirements and subsequently requesting the contractor to submit a written proposal and upon approval, a purchase order and an approved contract amendment will be issued to authorize the work.
The University considers any information which it may have released either orally or in writing prior to the issuance of this RFP, to be preliminary in nature and the University shall not be bound by such information.
The University’s obligation is contingent upon the availability of funds.
SECTION 2: SCOPE OF WORK
2.1 OBJECTIVES
The University is interested in establishing a contract(s) with a sole vendor who will provide enrollment management services and technology combined with higher education research as part of a holistic and comprehensive strategic partnership. Vendors should describe their capabilities and approach to the requirements in each of the following areas: Enrollment Platform, Virtual Tour, Financial Aid Optimization,
Transfer Enrollment Platform, and Academic Affairs Research Services.
2.2 ENROLLMENT PLATFORM
Experience
• Describe your experience providing marketing services for undergraduate student enrollment. This should demonstrate an ability to produce results with numerous institutions over an extended time.
• Provide case studies demonstrating your experience with marketing for undergraduate student enrollment.
Marketing Strategy
• Develop and implement Inquiry Generation campaigns that include triggered digital communication streams that are dynamic, and variable based on student behavior and interest. Must run through the point the student is invited to submit an enrollment application.
• The inquiry generation campaign must nurture all inquiries, which may include existing inquiries, web inquiries, previously marketed students, and others.
• The campaign must include a dedicated strategy for non-responders so that they do not receive the same messages as new names and inquiries.
• Email and Paid Social communication flows must be personalized for each student individually based on the content they are interacting with on our website, virtual tour interactions, and data captured from college exploration platforms.
• Develop and implement Application Generation campaigns targeted at high school seniors. Describe campaign strategies for generating application RFP# UCA-25-025Student Marketing & Recruiting and Enrollment Services interest ahead of application season and driving application submissions ahead of deadlines.
• Develop and implement parent/guardian engagement campaigns leveraging consumer data to maximize reach. What kind of impact does your parent engagement have on application and enrollment rates?
• Use AI to translate campaign content into Spanish for parents and possibly other languages.
• Deploy campaigns that are integrated across multiple channels and leverage immersive interactive content.
• Describe resources you deploy to maximize email deliverability.
• Share the average email deliverability rate across all of your clients from the previous year.
• How frequently will you launch new campaigns?
• Describe how many communications are typically included in your
campaigns.
• All communications and online landing pages must be device-optimized an responsive in design.
• Support the University of Central Arkansas in marketing to students through the College Board’s new Connections platform.
Audience Strategy
• Identify high-quality audiences for campaign outreach using the following data sources: College Board, Encoura, Appily, and CBSS. Include in your
description a discussion of the following:
o How you will ensure full saturation of primary markets.
o How you will identify new markets.
o Any proprietary databases you will leverage for audience identification.
o Are your audience strategies built exclusively with historical data, or do you use other sources?
• Generate inquiries by hosting a profile for the University of Central Arkansas
on a student-facing college exploration platform. Describe data integrations that enable inquiries to be automatically entered into campaigns for seamless engagement and timely follow-up.
• Indicate how frequently new names will be purchased. After a new name is acquired, how quickly will the student begin to receive outreach?
• Indicate any list of purchase discounts you offer.
• If predictive modeling is used to identify campaign audiences, describe how
your approach mitigates the potential for exclusion of viable candidates from campaign outreach.
• Manage all aspects of list purchasing, acquisition, and processing.
Virtual Tour Platform
• Provide a virtual campus tour that collects inquiries from visitors and describe how these inquiries are included in campaign outreach.
• Describe how your solution creates an immersive virtual experience for the
University of Central Arkansas. Please include a description of features that allow visitors to interact with the University of Central Arkansas via 360- degree video footage. Describe any embedded multimedia experiences that visitors can interact with.
• How do you leverage AI in your virtual campus tour to customize tour content
based on individual visitors’ interests?
• Integrate virtual tour content into marketing campaigns to create immersive marketing experiences.
• Provide an analytics platform for reviewing tour performance data.
Financial Aid Optimization Strategy
• Conduct a historical analysis of the University of Central Arkansas’ data to identify trends in the relationship between aid, tuition discounting, and different enrollment outcomes.
• Based on this analysis provide guidance and advice to the University of
Central Arkansas throughout the enrollment cycle to optimize enrollment results.
• Provide enhanced insight into family finances using consumer data.
• Integrate your financial aid strategy with our current enrollment marketing efforts.
• Describe your approach to supporting the University of Central Arkansas with the FAFSA Simplification Act and the introduction of the Student Aid Index (SAI).
Analytics Strategy
• Provide ongoing campaign oversight by a team of analytics professionals and generate recommendations for campaign optimization.
• Track, analyze, and share data on the website behavior of campaign responders.
• Monitor deposits throughout the admit and award cycle and advise on strategies to optimize financial aid strategy performance.
• Describe your capabilities for using AI to generate lead scores.
• Provide online dashboards for analyzing the performance of our campaigns and financial aid strategy.
• Benchmark enrollment performance against other institutions.
• Transfer tool that allows students to gain an estimation of their enrollment at the University of Central Arkansas for future terms from their community college or transfer destination
• Analyze non-retaining student trends to recommend enrollment strategy enhancements that will enhance student success.
Expert Resources and Oversight
• Provide a full-time, dedicated account manager; an enrollment consultant; a financial aid expert; and a support team for the duration of the partnership. Itis expected that you will provide a large team with broad expertise to supplement and expand our internal capacity.
• Provide planning sessions, training, and campus visits for strategy and service.
• Develop all campaign creative. Describe your creative research and development process and how many rounds of review with the University of Central Arkansas are included.
• Provide ongoing enhancements to the services provided. Describe your process for systemic innovation of campaigns and capabilities.
• Describe your ongoing research program that drives innovation. Specifically identify how many full-time researchers you have, the number of research studies you complete annually, and the volume of resources you have available on higher education best practices.
• Describe how you will coordinate your campaigns with our financial aid optimization services. Provide specific examples of how data and strategies will be shared between services to optimize outcomes for the University of Central Arkansas.
Data Services
• Explain how your organization will support the exchange of data necessary for the successful execution of the programs and strategies described. It is expected that the selected vendor will provide adequate support so that the data exchange process is secure and the lift on our data team is minimal.
• Provide campaign responder files on a regular schedule, ideally daily, and in a format that is acceptable for loading into institutional system(s).
2.3 WEBSITE ENROLLMENT OPTIMIZATION
Experience
• Describe your experience developing website strategies for undergraduate student enrollment. Discuss any results that are typical for your partners.
• Provide case studies demonstrating the impact that your website strategies have at your partner institutions.
2.4 TRANSFER ENROLLMENT PLATFORM
Experience
• Describe your experience providing transfer enrollment technology, includingany results your platform can deliver.
• Provide case studies demonstrating the experience and results of institutions that have implemented your platform.
Platform Capabilities
• Provide a user-friendly, web-based platform that integrates the latest course equivalency and degree audit data to provide a seamless transfer process and guide prospects to enroll.
• Describe how your tool guides students to enter coursework when equivalencies don’t exist so that the institution can proactively evaluate courses and keep students on track to transfer.
• Describe how your tool provides progress-to-degree estimations for multiple degrees, side-by-side comparison, and personalized degree recommendations based on estimated time to completion for individual students.
• Guide students through program selection and career exploration based on their unique interests and accumulated credits.
• Provide a personalized checklist of admissions activities and deadlines based on target enrollment terms with the ability for students to track their progress and get connected to key transfer campus resources.
• Describe how your tool captures student information in a way that can be connected to the CRM for use by the admissions team.
• Provide an admissions counselor workflow to optimize the admissionsprocess. Describe specific capabilities for communicating with prospective transfer students and equivalency tracking.
• Provide an analytics dashboard with utilization data for both anonymous users and account holders.
• Describe any consulting provided with your tool to assess our transfer friendliness and identify areas of opportunities for growth and improvement.