dotCMS - CORE Starter site

DM & Gettysburg College launch CRM in dotCMS

Jan 12, 2008

Prospective students and alumni can now personalize their experience of Gettysburg College´s website.

New customer relations management tools and social networking, known collectively as "myGettysburg," went live this November in the latest phase of an evolving redesign of www.gettysburg.edu.

myGettysburg allows prospective students to log in and create an account, update academic and extracurricular interests, receive individualized content based on their interests, set site–wide bookmarks, learn about events in their area and connect with contacts they have made on campus.

Users can also check on the status of their application for admission to the college and pay their enrollment deposit.

Alumni can log in and personalize their myGettysburg accounts, maintain email forwarding for their @gettysburg.edu accounts, find classmates and friends in the searchable directory, track their gifts to the Gettysburg College, and learn about upcoming events.

"This is what our users are expecting," said Paul Redfern, Gettysburg College's director of web communications and electronic media. "It's what they see when they go to sites like Google or Amazon. We want to provide a similar experience of personalized service."

In June 2006, Gettysburg College launched a redesigned website and implemented the dotCMS campus-wide open-source content management system of Dotmarketing. A second phase added an integrated e–communications tool. myGettysburg is the third phase, and maintains a consistent look and feel with the pre-existing site. It represents a yearlong collaboration involving Gettysburg College's offices of Admissions, Development & Alumni Relations, Information Technology and Web Communications & Electronic Media, as well as Dotmarketing.

"So far, we're very pleased, but it's too early to gauge success," Redfern said in late November. For the first 3 months, some 1228 prospective students and 386 alumni had established myGettysburg accounts.

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