Assistant Director, Marketing and Publications
Moraine Valley Community College
Palos Hills, Illinois

Although Moraine Valley Community College's nickname is the "Cyclones," each summer you're more likely to see students wearing T-shirts with names such as Blue Demons, Fighting Illini and Huskies.

More than 1,400 four-year college and university students choose to enroll at Moraine Valley during summer. How do we get these students to sign up at their local community college? Since the early 1980s, Moraine Valley has created a direct mail package to attract four-year students during their summer break. The package, with a new theme each year, consists of the vital elements of an effective direct mail piece: attractive envelope, letter, brochure, class schedule booklet, and response device. We've recently added an insert promoting the ease of online Web registration and automated phone registration.

Envelope:
The envelope includes a clever statement to get students to open the package. The 1999 package shows a photo of a bored student on a couch, flipping TV channels with a remote. The statement says, "Summertime blues headed your way? Look inside for the cure." A sentence in a smaller type size states, "Information about Moraine Valley's affordable summer classes for college students is enclosed." This sentence is included so parents (and often the tuition payers) might save the packet if their college student is still away at school and encourage them to enroll.

Letter:
A letter from the dean of Enrollment Services announces the answer to the "summertime blues" - classes - with highlights on why learning can be a fun and convenient part of summer vacation.

Brochure:
The brochure explores why students should enroll at their local community college during summer: lighten your fall load; take that class you need to graduate; enroll in morning, afternoon, evening, weekend, or online classes; choose four-week or eight-week sessions; easily transfer credits back to four-year institutions; and save money. Students also are given the five easy steps to register: look through the class schedule booklet; consult your college to make sure the courses you pick fit the requirements for your program or major; check your calendar and note Moraine Valley's three-week session that starts in May; share the extra registration form with a friend; and register for classes.

Class Schedule Booklet:
The booklet contains descriptions and schedules for courses that are designed to transfer to four-year colleges and universities. Detailed registration information also is provided.

Insert:
The insert promotes Moraine Valley's convenient online and touch-tone registration for students who've previously registered for a Moraine Valley course. These students are unable to be counted as summer "reverse transfers," so the number of four-year students joining our student body in the summer is actually higher.

Registration Form:
The form is a self-mailing, postage-paid folded piece with a "pouch" for students to include payment. Students also can pay by credit card.

The success of the direct mailing is not only due to a quality package but also a carefully selected mailing list. The purchased list includes students within Moraine Valley's district ZIP codes who attend four-year colleges and universities. Freshmen, sophomore, juniors, and unclassified students are chosen. The list company is able to eliminate Moraine Valley students. These students receive the packet at their home address in early April. The mailing list averages 4,400 names, while about 600 individual requests are received by phone, by e-mail through our Web site, by mail, or from walk-ins. Of those students who receive the mailing, more than 30 percent of students register for summer classes, for an average of 4.7 credit hours each.

In addition to the direct mailing, Moraine Valley also places ads in five major university student newspapers in Illinois (80 percent of our summer "reverse transfers" attend college in the state). These ads run the week before these institutions' final exam weeks on the days with the highest readership. The ads target students in our community college district by including a statement, "If you live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago."

Information selected to include in the direct mailing and ads stems from comprehensive data collected by Moraine Valley's Institutional Research Office. Data collected on summer "reverse transfer" students (through registration data as well as follow-up surveys) ranges from the most popular courses they register for to the reasons they enroll.

For a copy of Moraine Valley Community College's summer "reverse transfer" packet, research report or follow-up survey to students, e-mail: stewart@moraine.cc.il.us.

About Mary . . .

Mary Stewart is the assistant director of Marketing and Publications at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Ill. She is an 11-year veteran of the college and oversees the writing, editing, proofreading, production schedules, and printing of publications and advertising, as well as writing and organizing Web content. Her work has earned awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the University and College Designers Association, Admissions Marketing Report, the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations, NetGuide, and The Videographer Awards Competition. Mary has a B.A. in journalism/communications from the University of St. Francis. Her hobby is finding typos on restaurant menus.

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