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What do the Most Innovative Campus Apps Have in Common?

John Bertoli / John@bertolimarketing.com
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Create Personalized Mobile-First Experiences for Your Campus - Modolabs

A mobile campus experience is no longer just a nice to have, it’s essential — and expected– from today’s digital-first students and visitors. With as much as 85% of US consumers aged 18-24 owning a smartphone, meeting them on their channel of choice only makes sense. How do you decide what information and services to make available? More than 300 of the most recognized colleges and universities are transforming their digital campus experience with a unified mobile campus app using Modo Campus®, the leading app-building platform for higher ed.

Taking a deep dive into the most successful campus apps of the year, we have compiled a list of the apps that best engage, elevate and empower student success. Whether your institutional goals center around increased student engagement, maximizing the campus experience or driving student success — the following strategies can help you reach those objectives.

Unified Campus Experience

Simplify campus life by unifying all essential information and services into a central hub eliminates the need for multiple apps or programs. Providing students with a single access point they can visit on a daily basis: from bus schedules to dining hall menus, campus maps to advisor appointment scheduling, and much more — saves time and increases engagement. When building the app it’s important for you, as an administrator, to identify what’s most important for the users of the app, whether that includes students, faculty, graduate students, alumni, or prospective students — and build an app that addresses the challenges your audience faces — both on and of campus. 

Delegation

Great apps also have a delegation structure, dividing up content ownership by department helps streamline operations and increases content’s value and relevance. One person should not be the subject matter expert in all areas. The app’s content and implementation can be divided and responsibility-shared across departments. 

Focus on Student Success

The most innovative campus apps all focus on student success first and foremost. The app is about more than just providing information, it’s there to enable student success and increase retention. Personalize the app experience by creating personas for each group on campus from students and grad students to faculty and staff to alumni and more. Within each persona, personalize the experience with audience-specific communication and dashboards — creating a mobile fit bit experience vs. static information.  

Evolve and Elevate

The app’s first day shouldn’t be its best day. The best apps evolve and grow over time as the needs of the campus and students change. Don’t set it and forget it: the app should be constantly changing to reflect the current needs of the campus population. Regularly monitor analytics to see what your users are engaging with and what they are not, then use that data to evolve your app and elevate the digital campus experience. 

There is a common journey for all the best apps. Those that evolve over time by becoming hyper-personalized. Those who use Modo Communicate(™) to send relevant and timely (and personalized) messages to their students. Those who amplify events like New Student Orientation, Commencement, Homecoming or Gameday, for example, and promote them in the app. Those that use XModule(™) to further engage their communities. Those who continually grow and evolve their app to elevate the student experience. 

We have rounded up the most innovative campus apps of the year for your benefit. Want to see who’s on the list? Watch the on-demand webinar to find out. 

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