Success Story: First Virtual Open Day for Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL)

RHUL is a prolific university that boasts a purpose-built campus with magnificent architecture. The university also offers a broad range of academic programs ranging from majors in Criminology to Economics and spreading all the way to Drama, Theatre and Dance. With an experienced faculty contributing to the research institute and an exceptional Undergraduate and Postgraduate program in place, RHUL wanted to take its next leap towards innovation with its next annual Open Day.

They chose to stay up to par with technology and miles ahead of its competitors by hosting its first Virtual Open Day with vFairs. By going virtual, RHUL was able to host students from all across the world showcasing its beautiful campus and comprehensive academic programs to a wider and more diverse demographic. By breaking all geographical bounds and enabling attendance through mobile screens, RHUL furthered its goals of hosting an engaging Open Day that offered uncompared convenience and ease-of-accessibility to its attendees.

The Event

The Virtual Open Day was held on 22nd Feb 2017 and 22nd Mar, 2017. The easy-to-use landing page led attendees to a well-designed virtual environment that mirrored RHUL’s campus and auditoriums and offered a window into their diverse academic programs, highly-qualified faculty and immersive student life. A separate Exhibitor Hall was constructed for attendees interested in learning about Support Services to resolve queries over fee, accommodation and co-op programs.

Engagement

To serve RHUL’s second goal of hosting a highly engaging event, several interactive features were peppered throughout the virtual environment to keep the conversations going and give attendees an experience akin to physically stepping into the university. Some key features included:

• Virtual Booths; to disseminate information in clearly categorized compartments.
• Individual Chat Tool; to enable easy interaction between attendees and RHUL reps at particular booths
• Video Vault; to archive all introductory and informative videos for on-demand viewing
• Virtual Briefcase; to aid attendees in storing documents or videos for future viewing and sharing

Start conversations with RHUL reps through the super convenient chat tool.

Result

With the help of these tools, RHUL was able to achieve a bigger audience and higher engagement score for the Open Day compared to the physical events they had hosted previously. The increased engagement offered by the virtual event allowed the university to bring attendees one step closer to applying for admission and provided positive publicity as a byproduct.

“We were looking for a platform provider who could deliver a bespoke platform which would facilitate one-to-one chats and display information and videos in a visually pleasing way. vFairs offered this, alongside an extremely high level of customer service and the willingness to go above and beyond. We were pleased to see feedback saying that the platform was visually engaging and easy to use.” – Camilla Potter, Student Recruitment Digital Manager, Royal Holloway, University of London.

About vFairs

At vFairs, we believe in events that are well thought out, driven by purpose, measurable and free from all constraints that hamper the event’s goals. Our highly skilled team helps construct tailor-made events for you and offers responsive customer service to guide you with your event from ideation to execution. By taking all the fuss out of planning your event, we leave you to focus on what really matters; engaging with your audience.

Request for a free demo at www.vfairs.com/contact-us to find out all that we can help you achieve.