Duke University Union members have a new strategy for student outreach-they'll simply swipe your DukeCard.
At their weekly board meeting Tuesday night, DUU executives discussed new organizational and marketing tactics with George Grody, an instructor of sociology, in an effort to involve every student with Union programming.
"Part of [successful marketing] is getting the right message for the right crowd, and the other part of it is delivering it in a manner and a place where they'd be the most open and most receptive to it," said Grody, who is also a member of the University Union Board, which acts as an advisory board to DUU.
In order to target the majority of the student body, he said the Union must consider the needs of three distinct audiences: individuals who regularly attend Union events, individuals who attend only a handful of events before losing interest and individuals who have never been to any DUU events.
"How do we find out things about these groups, what sort of things do they like and how do we deliver those things to them?" said Grody, who worked in business before coming to Duke.
One possible strategy for collecting more information about current DUU audiences is to use the information available through DukeCard, said DUU President Chamindra Goonewardene, a senior.
In response to student privacy concerns, Goonewardene said no identifiable data would be collected and that the DukeCard Office would only return a breakdown of audience statistics, such as gender and year. He added that other campus organizations like the Office of Alumni Affairs already use this method to track its target demographic.
Individual Union committees also should be conscious of promoting each other's events, Grody said.
"It's all about leveraging the strengths of the different brands to help each other," he added. "If someone is going to one event and they're happy about it, how do we let them know about some of the other events to let them try a broader array of what the Union puts out?"
Goonewardene said he hopes practices such as these would enable DUU to broaden its reach and to increase attendance at all events.
"I think we need to make students aware that the student activities fee they pay at the beginning of each year isn't just a lump sum fee that goes to waste, but that it's being used on a regular basis for different things, like subsidizing tickets to 'Rent' and Freewater Productions," he said.
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