Getting students onto your Welcome Call

We want as many new students to attend your CU welcome call as possible. This means you need to

ensure people have heard about the call and understood what it’s for, and that you’ve removed any barriers to attending.

Advertising your welcome call

Publicity is therefore very important.

• You should begin advertising in the weeks leading up to your welcome call, with particular emphasis on results day, so that people are given as much advanced notice as possible.
• Share all relevant information when advertising the welcome call, such as the date, start time, content of the call and how to attend. Confusion or uncertainty can be a barrier to attending, so make this information as clear and informative as possible.
• A good social media plan incorporating sharable content across multiple platforms will ensure the broadest reach and make it easy for new students to find. Make sure you share the sign-up links on all your social media platforms.

Signing up to the welcome call

We recommend you give new students two ways of signing up:

1. Create a closed Facebook group for new students. This provides you with an ongoing forum to talk to new students as well and you can then safely publicise the call details within this closed group.
2. Use Eventbrite (or an equivalent service) to get students to sign up for the call. This allows students who don’t have Facebook to still be able to sign up.

Both these means of signing people up will help to keep the call secure whilst remaining straightforward.

IMPORTANT: Don’t share the call details publicly. See Appendix 1: Keeping Your CU Welcome Call Secure for more.