An alternative to this method involves printing your QR code within your institution’s hand-out literature. Or printing a specific card that’s passed around during the presentation (see the bottom image for our version). Or even adding your QR code on your business cards! As long as you have a way for kids to scan the code, the options are endless!
Give yourself options for how you capture student data
Quick aside: when using a tablet at recruitment events, many of our partner schools use a shortened version of their online inquiry form. They recognize that, in the hustle and bustle of a college fair, they can’t have students taking 20 minutes to complete a form. They have to find a balance between capturing as much actionable data as they’re likely to need, whilst keeping their forms as short as they can. So schools will generally sacrifice capturing every last morsel of information about a student in a trade-off for capturing a greater number of inquiries.
Now, given that a QR code is just a shortcut to a mobile-optimized version of a form, it’s natural to assume that you would just link the QR code to the same form as you’re using on your tablet device. As we’ve discussed, you’ve already optimized that form for capturing data at events, so it makes sense. And often, that is the best option. But it’s not the only option.
As we’ve mentioned, you’re using QR codes to get your forms into the hands of more students. Often, if these students are part of a large audience or they are waiting in a line, then you’re not standing next to them when they’re filling-in their information (as you would be if they’re using your tablet device). As such, you’re less able to influence how — or whether — they complete the form.
Therefore, isn’t there an argument for making the form even easier to complete on the student’s own mobile device?
Making student inquiry form completion as easy as possible
To do so, what if you only asked students for the absolute minimum amount of information needed to continue a dialogue with them after the event? Say, name, email, cell number, and perhaps estimated year of enrollment and course of interest?
Sure, this probably wouldn’t satisfy all their fields your CRM needs from an online form. But if the goal is to get students into an enrollment funnel — where you can communicate with them and learn more about their preferences over time — wouldn’t you rather just capture the required information about them? What if the alternative was not capturing the inquiry at all because the student got bored completing a super-long form?
You’ve already made the decision to sacrifice extraneous information when optimizing your forms for at-event use. This is just taking it a step further. Obviously, you’d have to run the numbers to estimate how sacrificing thoroughness of data for more inquiries could impact your event performance, but it’s a worthwhile thought-exercise.