Client Story: St. Ambrose University
We have a long history with St. Ambrose University, dating all the way back to the late 1990s when Numads Ted and Matt were undergraduates at the small, private liberals arts school in Iowa.
It has been a long history steeped in partnership and collaboration, supporting a number of their communications and marketing efforts over the decades. Linda Hirsch, Sally Paustian and the team at St. Ambrose have been particularly awesome to work alongside over the years.
Our communication team has worked with St. Ambrose University as a consultant (both independently and in partnership with the cool and creative folks at Zehno Cross Communications) on a spectrum of branding and marketing projects—from overhauls of the website to photographic art direction to new publications to advertising—that created a fresh, vibrant and comprehensive visual identity, and brand, for the university.
Most recently, we've partnered with St. Ambrose on research and development for a new alumni website, strategy and creation of a re-recruitment campaign (if you will) to bring students back to the university who previously stopped taking courses, and a refresh of their undergraduate viewbook and search publications.
Overview
Specifically, Numad Ted has moved along the development and completion of more than 40 recruitment and institutional publications, all of which told stories of how students and alumni were surprised at all the unexpected value they got from their uniquely Ambrosian education. These publications included:
Undergraduate viewbooks, search pieces, fact sheets, Facebook advertising, financial aid guides and a parent book;
Graduate outcomes brochures for 14 master and doctoral programs, as well as new websites for each program;
Art direction of photography both in the Quad Cities, and around the country;
An alumni outcomes publication that told the stories of five alumni who are living examples of a Catholic, liberal arts education; and,
A communication audit for adult education programming.
Website Development
Our work with St. Ambrose has also included a much-needed overhaul of their robust website, with more than 10,000 pages of content needing to be reviewed, edited and migrated. Their previous site had a strong navigation, but had not grown with the university. Ted worked alongside Zehno and Ingeniux (a content management provider) to:
Review, refine and implement the technical specification and navigation, which leveraged technology by Ingeniux.
Enhance strategies for engagement, particularly in the areas of undergraduate and graduate recruitment.
Write hundreds of pages of new content for admissions-related websites and microsites.
Provide training and support to content contributors across the university.
Launch the new website, and migrate departmental websites.
Other Work
Other recently completed work includes a creative and strategic stop-out recruitment campaign that re-engaged students who have previously left the university prior to finishing their degree. The immediate impact has been felt by increases in enrollment, and long-term benefits are anticipated due to new structures that have been developed and internal capacities that have been strengthened.
Numad continues to work with St. Ambrose University, including writing feature articles for the university’s alumni magazine, Scene and Ambrosian, and advising on the fundraising efforts for a new Academy for the Study of Saint Ambrose of Milan..