UGA Pathways Case Study

Welcome UGA’s goal was to educate new freshmen on the opportunities available to them in their first semester. To do so, they sent a series of 16 “posts” (essentially emails and texts; see below) over a period of about one month. These included items like “Welcome to UGA!”, “Participate in ‘North of the Arch’”, “Attend Freshman Welcome”, and “Try a group fitness class”. You can view this 90-second demo for an example of the communication workflows Pathways enables.

We measured the effectiveness of this pilot by:

1. Total Engagement
   Tracking total engagement with any message (what percentage of students saw and interacted with these texts and emails?)
2. Email vs. Text Engagement
   Comparing email engagement to text message engagement by tracking link clicks (are texts really more effective than email?)
3. Attendance at FYE Events
   Comparing attendance at in-person FYE events with prior semesters (did Pathways contribute to a more engaged semester than usual?)

Results

This pilot exceeded UGA's expectations on all three measurables:

1. Total Engagement
   Over 90% of students engaged with a message in some way (opened or clicked); the average student engaged 10.1 times throughout this series
2. Email vs. Text Engagement
   Email and Text Message were nearly 50-50 in total clicks generated by each channel. Critically, the students clicking texts were substantially different than those opening the email. To be specific, there was a 50% increase in the students who engaged with the message due to having the text message. Further, Welcome UGA heard many qualitative stories from students appreciating the texts as a preferred communication channel
3. Attendance at FYE Events
   Perhaps the most important result, Welcome UGA saw considerably more active welcome month at their in-person events, with attendance between 30 and 50% higher across the board.

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