This year - more than ever - you need to think creatively to meet your enrollment goals.

Parent orientation can help.

Not sure where to start? Staring blankly at a screen? It doesn’t have to be scary. CampusESP technology supports remote parent engagement without any IT support. Parent orientation is your opportunity to:

Build trust with families by delivering regular updates
Decrease student summer melt by keeping families (and their students) engaged
Help families help their students by providing them the information they need to support student success

If you’re a current CampusESP customer, the following guidance should take less than one week to set up. There is nothing new that you need to purchase. And if you have any questions - we’re here for you.

If you’re not a current CampusESP customer, we hope the information below is helpful. If you are interested in learning more about CampusESP, including online parent orientation, please let us know. Implementation usually takes less than 3 weeks.

Let’s get started!

Create Your Parent Orientation Hub

First, let us introduce you to a new term: Parent Orientation Hub. What is it? It’s not just another pretty term. OK…maybe it is.

The Parent Orientation Hub consolidates all your orientation content in one place for parents. When a parent clicks into your Parent Orientation Hub, the portal will only show orientation content.

It works seamlessly with your Parent Portal, integrating your existing newsletters, announcements and events.

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4.

We know you have a lot to do, so we’ve segmented this guide into four parts to make it easier to follow. We’ve also included links to more detailed “how-to” guides.

1- Create a community structure.

CampusESP includes three options for structuring your Parent Orientation Hub. You’ll need to determine which option is best for you, based on the needs and the size of your college:

Single community

A single community is the easiest implementation and is perfect for smaller schools where all parents receive the same information at the same time.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create a Community

Multi-community

Multiple communities are best if you segment your parents into multiple orientation sessions, either to:

Segment parents by college/interest to provide more personalized info
Schedule parents by time periods in order to not overwhelm your staff with parent questions (usually with larger schools).

Multi-community implementations are more complicated, but CampusESP includes tools, such as the ability to copy communities and their content, to make the process more manageable.

In addition, multiple orientation communities can be grouped together with a community type so that engagement stats for all orientation communities can be viewed together.

CampusESP offers service packages to help schools set up multi-community orientation.

Multi-campus

Multi-campus is the best option for schools that have a completely separate online orientation experience for families. Customized branding, dedicated communities and a whole lot more can be accommodated with a multi-campus setup. This option is best for larger schools with a formal parent orientation program.

This option may require additional CampusESP fees.

2- Connect a campaign.

A campaign makes it easy for parents to access orientation information from their portal and newsletters. Clicking on a campaign will take a parent directly to their Parent Orientation Hub.

Campaigns are usually something visual that consistently occupy the same location in your portal and on your newsletters. CampusESP provides multiple templates for campaigns, including different color and button settings so that parents can easily access their Parent Orientation Hub.

Campaigns can be date-based, meaning that they can appear/disappear for different groups of parents depending on the day. This is useful if you plan to run multiple orientation sessions.

Campaigns have additional reporting capabilities. They can track clicks and impressions to give you a complete view of parent engagement levels in your Parent Orientation Hub.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create a Campaign

3- Involve your families.

CampusESP makes it easy to get parents signed up. It’s common for schools to use one or more of the option below.

Import Parents

Whether you have a list of parents registered for orientation from your CRM, event management system, or just a spreadsheet, it’s a snap to import them into CampusESP. Remember, each import can:

Load parents into one or more communities. Communities can be orientation session specific.
Include custom fields. CampusESP only requires parent email address for each import, however, other information (such as address) may also be included.

Once families are imported, parents will immediately start receiving orientation focused content through newsletters and email announcements.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Import Users

Sign-up parents

CampusESP’s event management functionality supports parent orientation registration, including payment processing. Some of the benefits of event management:

Register parents outside of CampusESP. Event forms created within CampusESP can be distributed outside of CampusESP. Parents signing up for an event will be asked for their email and a password, which will automatically create a CampusESP account and add them to your parent database.
Set attendance limits. If you have a multi-community deployment, events can help you manage attendance to ensure that parent orientation session are balanced throughout the summer.
Raise funds during registration. Whether it’s a sweatshirt or a mug, parents want to be part of the campus experience. And let’s face it: every dollar counts. Sell swag during the registration process to boost your budget and super-charge parent enthusiasm.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create a Registration Event

Survey parents

Whether you import parents or they sign-up on their own, families will see your regular onboarding survey the first time they login. The onboarding survey is distributed to every new parent automatically. It’s worth taking a fresh look at the survey to see if it’s collecting the information you need.

PRO-TIP: Every answer on your survey can trigger community rules that move parents in or out of communities based on their responses. For example, you can ask parents, “are you an alum of Great Lakes University?” If they answer yes, CampusESP can automatically add them to your alumni community.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create a Survey

4- Deliver orientation content.

CampusESP provides multiple ways to deliver an engaging and informative online experience:

Announcements

Send targeted emails to communicate important messages in a matter of minutes to capture parents’ attention.

EXAMPLE: Email reminders such as registering for move-in, completing immunization requirements, finalizing financial aid, etc.

PRO-TIP: Announcements can link directly to posts so that you don’t have to spend time recreating content.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create an Announcement

Drip Posts

Automate and schedule parent communication in digestible “sessions” without additional administrative burden.

EXAMPLE: Your orientation agenda can appear in multiple posts “in order” based on your drip feed rules.

PRO-TIP: The same drip post can be added to multiple parent orientation communities. Based on when you import parents into those communities, different sets of parents can receive the same message, just at different times.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Create a Post

Featured Posts

Ensure parents see your content at the top of their portal or newsletter during specific time periods.

EXAMPLE: An FAQ post can always appear at the top of your portal so that parents can easily ask questions (using the comment feature). When FAQ time is “over”, simply un-feature the post. Want to share the FAQ with another segment of parents? Simply add that orientation community to the post and re-feature it.

PRO-TIP: Featuring a post can be turned on and off. Turning off the featured post still keeps the post, it just shows lower in the parents newsfeed, based on the post date.

Linked Resources

Standardize support links and other information that parents need. Links appear on the “right rail” in the portal and can be unique for each community.

EXAMPLE: Links to the landing pages for housing, financial aid, etc. reduce your need to recreate content in the portal.

COMING SOON! Support for pdf attachments.

Videos

Deliver YouTube videos directly in the portal. No need to click out of the portal, videos play directly in each parent’s newsfeed.

EXAMPLE: Video each of your sessions into more manageable sessions (15-20 minutes). Encourage parents to share important videos with their students (yes, there is a feature for this in CampusESP as well!)

PRO-TIP: Provide closed captioning options for parents to ensure you are ADA compliant.

Parent Comments

Moderated commenting makes it easy to reply directly to parent questions, reject unwanted comments, and maintain a positive, student-focused tone.

EXAMPLE: Create an “Ask Me Anything” post that is featured at the top of parent newsfeed. Parent comments won’t be posted until you are ready (just in case you need time to research an answer!)

PRO-TIP: As an admin, your comments appear with a “check” badge so that you’re distinguished as an expert.

HOW: ESP Guide: How to Approve/Reject Parent Comments

Need help?

We’re here! Well…that is, here at home. From a simple question to a virtual high-five, we’re socially distant, but still less than a couple clicks away.