On this date 10 years ago, @BlueFuego hosted a live video chat with @choosewidener. Simple concept - put 3 students on camera and let them answer questions. 441 Q's came in that night, and we knew there was something to the simple concept.

It looks like our *first* hosted chat was a week prior, on 4/15/10. The right column FB ads are hilarious, and I love that top comment from Andrew - imagine this scene 10 years ago (these admits would be 27-28 years old now)...

Back in 2008 when I was at Butler, we were doing the standard text-based 'chats' and I thought... it'd be awesome if students could actually SEE the people they were chatting with. So I asked FireEngineRed if they could take my uStream embed code and place it next to chat box.

They told me it'd have to go through QA, product testing, revisioning, etc. etc... so instead I just took *their* chat code, iFramed it against a uStream embed on the .edu side, and I think we even offered a call-in phone # for people who didn't believe it was real.

(I never really know when I'm about to go on a thread until I do... researching some more details from the archive... bare with me, haha!)

That first 'video chat ' was October 2008 - 3,948 lines of chat were entered in that evening. Archive blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20081102102152/http://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/10/30/taking-chats-to-a-new-level/#more-273

And it's funny to see the reference to this post from April 2008 about 'timing the email' for a chat event ( https://web.archive.org/web/20080703152742/http://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/04/14/timing-the-email-chats) , because so many schools miss the timing on their live events.

So here are a few takeaways from my experience of 12 years of live admissions video chats, nearly 1,000 total, with almost 40 institutions...

1) We never put our homebrew platform (product?) on our website and I also rarely mentioned it at conferences when I used to speak because we regularly watched 35-40+% of attendees deposit afterwards. Super valuable to keep it close for clients and keep it unique.

2) When people asked why we'd keep it close, I'd say "because I don't want someone like Hobsons doing this at 800 schools." That competitive advantage is obviously gone now. But I chuckled today when I saw that EAB bought YouVisit. What *won't* they own eventually?

3) Video chats will be ubiquitous moving forward, but most schools will suffer from over-saturation. Imagine how many Zoom/webinar/online meetings your admits are getting invited to right now. Please don't think you're the only ones attempting to get digital face time with them.

4) This all ties in to to Kotler's five product levels from the 1960's that I used to reference in most of my presentations - 12 years ago a video admissions chat was an augmented product. A 'wow' offering. But COVID-19 has quickly moved it into Generic, possibly, core benefit.

I always cautioned when presenting this slide, "it's dangerous to hang out in the expected product area with your marketing." And always noted that over time, everything shifts inwards. What was once amazing becomes expected or basic.

Applying online to a college - once augmented, now core offering. Videos of campus, same thing. Opportunity to engage and interact with the campus community digitally without ever stepping foot on campus... once a 'wow factor' - now and forever expected from your audience.

5) TIMING. We *refuse* to let any of our clients utilize Slate SMS for promotion of an event that is time-sensitive. Learned our lesson once when a Slate text for a 7pm video chat was still being delivered at 10, 11pm and beyond. Cheap, yes. Effective, no. Pay for immediacy.

We call it the lightning bolt - we want to absolutely strike when the moment occurs, and we have found that we can promote an event with a single text at the moment of going live and have more success than a week of emails and ads leading up to the event.

Here's an east coast client who hosted a chat on March 13, in the whirlwind of shutdowns and unknown, with zero promotion prior, we sent a single text at 6:55pm for a 7pm stream and over 600 families entered the chat. Don't overthink it.

Looking at data from 75 video chats this year, the average RSVP show-up rate is around 20%, and the average audience is made up of roughly 15% RSVP's. That means we get 85% of our audience from the 'right now' text message. Lightning bolt.

6) Put your students on camera, but also make sure they have good energy together in advance - otherwise it gets awkward quick. I've seen average viewer time swing from 28 minutes to 12 minutes in a week, same audience, same format, different personalities on camera.

7) The technology matters so little. A Macbook camera or a Logitech C930e and an internet connection will take you farther than you can imagine.

8) Provide both active and passive live video. A Zoom is active. I'm here, I signed up, I'm asking the Q's, I'm engaged. Passive - FB/IG Live, etc. I'm here, I'm anonymous, I'm consuming. Think Friday night, Comedy Club vs. Netflix. Different environments for different folks.

9) In the end, it's all people. This 2012 @ThisIsSethsBlog post is still so relevant ( https://seths.blog/2012/04/do-you-have-a-people-strategy/). You don't need a Zoom strategy. You don't need a virtual ASD strategy. You need to use tools to connect with humans and tell your story. Figure out the people part.

10) I do miss the days of sharing our data deep dives, speaking at conferences, etc to larger community, but super thankful for those moments when I get locked into a conversation with folks like @terpowl @lordkevin @stefanopapaleo @allisonturcio @admissionsnerd @trentgilbert and

so many others who trust us to do smart, solid work for them and represent their institution. Thankful that our spring has felt not so much a 'scramble' but a 'realignment' of strategy to adapt to COVID-19. Continuing to develop on augmented products for Class of '24 and beyond.