Last week on the MARTA in Atlanta, Georgia I sat next to a poster advertising business courses at Herzing University. Having never heard of it, I looked it up to find that it is a for-profit establishment, as opposed to a traditional research university, which may in-part explain the approach they took.
This poster advertises a number of products and services provided by Herzing University, though it is not always clear what is meant by the terms:
- Business and MBA
- Single parent
- Flexibility
- Associate
- Bachelor’s
- Master’s or MBA
- On campus and online
Okay great, it looks like Herzing offers quite a lot of good things, so now I wanted to find out more. Keeping up with the times they have a QR Code, so I scanned it expecting to be directed to an informative mini-site suitable for consumption on my iPhone, where I could learn more about each of the topics mentioned. Instead what I got was a demand for my contact information and the enticement of wining $25:
Nice, a web form! It tells nothing of Herzing University’s programs and services, nor does it even tell me anything about Herzing University. Why should I invest my time and consider an online program from them? What it does say is they want my information, so I can be sold something. Not what they can do for me!
In our times successful sites should engage and inform their potential audience or customers, before requesting the privilege of your personal data. Instead Herzing went straight from a print campaign to requesting lots of information and $25 gimmicks. Your education is worth so much more. This is where they lost me as a potential customer.
Brendon, All I can say is…oops. This was not our intent, and it is certainly not standard practice at Herzing. Our last set of MARTA posters had a line on many of them that said, “Tell us your career goals and enter to win a $25 Visa gift card,” using the QR code as the means to register. When creating this newest set of posters, we started from the same files since they were already built to the correct design specifications. We rarely deviate from using our standard QR code, and inadvertently did not swap it out. We are fixing the error and future users will be directed to the proper page.
Angela, It’s nice to see that some organizations do listen to feedback. I think this is a great case of improving customer value through social media.