Since the end of March, college stores have had to make quick adjustments to meet the unprecedented demands created by COVID-19. As the San Joaquin Delta College campus responded to the pandemic, the Delta College Bookstore stepped up with a plan to safely offer students a centralized location to return and pick up materials.
Online customer communication is multifaceted. Emails and text messages, online ads, promo codes and social media all contribute to building a strong digital presence that strengthens your store brand and elevates service.
The importance of eCommerce for college stores has grown exponentially over the past several months. While making sure your eCommerce website it up to date and offers students the same products they can get in your store is important, it is also necessary to actively promote your site and work to engage students online. With excellent planning, your campus store can host online events with a strong return on investment and increase student engagement.
With more importance than ever before placed on online shopping, stores are doing what they can to improve customers’ eCommerce experience and better compete. College stores have fewer resources than large online competitors, but they have a greater ability to continue to offer customers a personal touch — even online. Today, we have five tips to engage the campus community from afar.
As summer rush approached, Hagerstown Community College Bookstore Manager Tammy Crockett knew there was a way the store could continue to serve students, keep them safe and give them convenient, one-stop shopping. By holding a drive-up rush event, the store could provide students with everything they might need to start a new term and save them shipping costs.
A strong mobile order fulfillment tool makes it easy for college stores to pick, fill and distribute orders. Online shopping or order pickup will continue to grow as retail evolves to meet customer demands. Your college store needs to be prepared to offer students and customers a seamless online shopping experience with quick and easy shipping or in-store pickup.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County Bookstore has curated a collection of creative events that entice student participation throughout the year. With fun games, giveaways, community-generating sidewalk sales and an incredible convenience shop with a diverse selection, every student can find something in the UMBC Bookstore that inspires them to come back. In February, we sat down with UMBC Bookstore Director Erin McGonigle to discuss how she inspires campus store foot traffic with bookstore events and marketing.
Going into the fall term, it is important to strengthen your position on campus by lowering costs, both for students and the college store. However, how can stores lower costs while maintaining the service and quality customers expect? MBS offers college stores many cost-saving solutions that are also designed to help streamline store operations and elevate the customer experience.
Every year the University of Utah Campus Store holds a large Apple® sale in their store. This year, unable to open the store to customers, they decided to do the next best thing: take the event online. The official order pickup event was held from May 4-8. However, the store began taking preorders three weeks before the official event. The end result: more than $1 million in sales.
There is a very simple way to decrease textbook costs in your store. In addition to low-cost used books, MBS also offers college stores a 12.5 percent discount off the publisher net price on new textbooks. By simply selling the new books you get from MBS first, your store saves money on the cost of textbooks.
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