For more than 35 years, Carnegie Dartlet’s lead generation service has been setting the standard in higher education marketing. From its birth as Private Colleges & Universities magazine in 1985 to today’s fully integrated, multichannel CollegeXpress Platform, we have fulfilled one mission above all others: connecting students with the right colleges and universities while helping colleges and universities find the right students.
But times have changed. Higher education has changed. And students have changed too. Over the years, we’ve adapted, evolved, and continued to lead the way. When we needed an online presence, we launched CollegeXpress.com, a site that’s now trafficked by more than half a million unique college- and scholarship-searching visitors each month. When colleges needed to reach students with specific academic interests and international students, transfer students, graduate students—you name it—we added platforms to reach those audiences.
What hasn’t changed are the results. CollegeXpress continues to provide unparalleled reach and exposure for hundreds of colleges and universities to millions of prospective students across the country.
In 2020, the evolution continues.
Going green
Starting next year, we are transitioning the major print component of CollegeXpress to electronic delivery, which, in addition to the positive environmental impact, will expand the reach of the platform for participating schools and align more closely with content consumption behavior of today’s prospective students.
In fact, it was the students who drove our decision. They have indicated loud and clear through survey responses that the print magazine is no longer as critical to their engagement with CollegeXpress as it has been in the past, and the vast majority of inquiries generated in recent years have converted through electronic pathways.
Print magazines for niche audiences
There are a few CollegeXpress audiences that still desire and interact with the print magazine, however, and we’re responding to their needs too. Our international, graduate, transfer, Catholic, and Christian publications will still be produced and circulated to high schools, community colleges, feeder schools, and other locations around the country and world. The utility of these publications has always been a little bit different, and they are still an important piece of the puzzle.
Expanded digital reach
While most of the magazine content is shifting online, we’re also doubling down on digital reach. No one does digital advertising like Carnegie Dartlet, and we’re leveraging that industry-leading expertise to expand and enhance the reach of CollegeXpress in a way that will build upon the strong foundation we’ve laid the past three and a half decades.
Using proprietary methods, we will be able to promote the platform and the more than 500 participating schools with hyper-targeted digital advertising to some 250 million US households based on as many as 750 different demographic variables, data modeling for academic achievement levels, and even audience personality tendencies.
The possibilities truly are endless, and we’ve never been more excited about the future or confident in the service we provide. Through year-round, multichannel outreach, the more than 500 participating colleges and universities will be connecting with more students than ever before, and, as we have from the beginning, we’ll continue to serve students by connecting them with the right-fit schools—and vice versa.