My thinking with promoting the Blogger position via Facebook and the BUForums is that we will be able to target kids who are plugged in and will hopefully be somewhat tech savvy.

The BUForums are a great place for me to track incoming freshmen who might be good bloggers, like you mention ID’ing students early. Some of my top freshman applicants have been active in the forums and answering questions for me in the late hours of the night, which is exactly the kind of kid I’m looking for! Haha

Could you not simply do a dump of names from either Hobson’s or Peoplesoft to get a list of first year students, and then deliver your promotional email to that list? On a larger scale, Peoplesoft would be able to give you all your undergrad names.

Thinking forward, perhaps this kind of promotion might be a great communication piece next spring. When students have been accepted and you are trying to increase your yield (conversion from accepted to enrolled.) A promotion of this kind of will not only help entice some kids, but also help Butler identify students early in the cycle who actually plan to attend. Thus, this gives your enrollment team time to get on the phone with other students to entice them to attend.

….some random thoughts…