Wyoming Community College Issues Digital RFP

The primary purpose of the College’s website is to advance Western’s mission, brand, and collegiate experience to prospective students, parents, faculty, staff, and donors. The site will also serve to provide essential information and access to resources for the campus community (e.g. current students, faculty, staff, administration, trustees, alumni, and parents).

Background:

Western Wyoming Community College (Western or the College) is a public, tax-supported, two-year, medium-sized, comprehensive community college accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges & Schools, recognized by the Wyoming State Department of Education, the Veteran’s Administration, and is an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is under the control of a locally elected Board of Trustees responsible for governing Western Wyoming Community College District. The College’s current student population includes 1156 full-time students and 2139 part-time students with a total student FTE of approximately 2248. The College employs approximately 285 full-time employees, 76 of whom are faculty. The College was established in 1959 and has been situate in its present locations since 1969. The College’s main campus in Rock Springs is situate on approximately 342 acres. Of this acreage, approximately 60 acres are zoned business/commercial. The College’s gross square footage of building space on the Rock Springs campus is approximately 719,781 of which 181,469 is Student Housing buildings. The College’s satellite center in Green River, a community approximately 15 miles west of Rock Springs, is located on a 35-acre parcel of land. The Green River Center has approximately 34,500 gross square feet.

Scope of Work:

Primary Objective:

Alignment with Marketing and Recruitment

An Institution’s primary website is a critical recruitment funnel touch-point for engaging with prospective students and their families. It is the primary digital face of the College and its visitation is typically the result of a marketing campaign’s “call to action” conversion. Therefore, it is essential that Western’s website present prospect constituents with an engaging experience that reinforces the brand and value of the institution.

From a technology perspective, each digital touch-point in the enrollment funnel is both an opportunity to convert and measure performance, as well as a potential ‘leak’ of potential students.

Marketing Campaigns create awareness and attract prospective audiences to the primary website, which in turn, informs and facilitates their decision to inquire further or apply. The relationships between these events must be explicitly defined and may occur several times before progressing to the next stage of the funnel.

Thus, understanding ‘why’ prospects move from one stage to the next, and ‘how many’ are in each stage, adds emphasis to ensuring that the user experience is carefully scripted and measurement points are added to track progression.

Marketing campaigns will strive to use uniquely identifiable URLs, campaign IDs, and metadata so that campaign performance and ROI can be measured and evaluated. Each of the following engagement channels should include elements that will assist in tracking conversions to key digital web resources within the Recruitment and Admissions processes, such as the institutional web site, CRM (Recruit), and main college application:

• Email
• Social Media
• Digital Advertising
• Pay-for-Click (PPC)
• Print Advertising
• Text Messages
• Live Chat

Creative Deliverables:

• Improve the Visitor Experience – Provide an engaging visitor experience that effectively provides relevant and actionable information to targeted constituencies, regardless of existing or future devices and methods of accessing web information.
• Integrate Marketing and Enrollment – Ensure that marketing campaigns driving visitors to Western’s web resources are integrated with recruiting and enrollment strategies, reports, audience profiles, and conversion tracking.
• Ensure Consistency of Brand and Design Standards – Present a consistent brand experience using templated and centralized design standards.
• Ensure Relevance and Accuracy of Content – Policy, procedures, and workflows established to reinforce the accountability of content owners to maintain the integrity and accuracy of the content for which they are responsible.
• Decentralize Management of the Website – Reduce administrative and technical bottlenecks by distributing content ownership and continued upkeep.
• Empower Non-Technical Content Contributors – Enable non-technical users to contribute content to the website quickly and easily, without assistance from Information Technology.
• Meet Accessibility Standards – Ensure Web resources provide compliant accessibility solutions and validation to meet both statutory requirement and support the needs of visiting audiences.
• Reduce Technical Administration – Take advantage of outsourced web hosting and application services to minimize the web technology stack that Information Technology must support.
• Minimize Total Cost of Ownership – Utilize a holistic approach to Web Strategy that balances internal and external resources and services to minimize long-run total cost of ownership. (i.e. staffing and operational strategy, technology selection and procurement, etc.).
• Increase Website Security – Deploy web systems and procedures that meeting strict security requirements to reduce the risk of information security incidents.
• Increase Website Performance and Resiliency – Deploy web systems and methodologies that ensure minimum performance standards to visitors, as well as establish operational service levels.
• Improve Flexibility – Ability to configure, adapt, and grow as future needs necessitate without having to create custom code, module/plugins, or substantially change technology infrastructure.
• Device Interdependence – Emphasis on dynamic web systems that can be used across multiple device without the need to customize or create independent solutions for each device, version, or operating system.

Due Date:

August 6th

Address:

Tammy Register, Administrative Services Officer

Western Wyoming Community College

2500 College Drive, D-481

Rock Springs, WY 82901

Schools with PR firm experience include Finn Partners and Ruder Finn.