The U.S. Army, 3rd MRB
Challenge: The U.S. Army’s Medical Recruiting Battalions (MRB) struggle to recruit medical students through traditional advertising and direct marketing campaigns – campaigns that today produce fewer and fewer qualified leads at ever-increasing acquisition costs.
TOur task was to use mobile technologies to increase response rates and deliver qualified leads.
We designed an interactive recruiting platform for the 3rd MRB. Through a SMS call to action in outdoor ads and direct mail, prospects were asked to text a keyword to the Army vanity short code ‘STRONG’ (787664). After a few questions designed to qualify the lead (all via SMS), prospects were presented with three ways to start a conversation with an Army Recruiter:
1. Text in a ZIP CODE – to get the name and phone number of a Local Army Recruiter nearest them (a click-to-call the number feature was included)
2. Text in their NAME – to have an Army Recruiter call them directly
3. Text in their E-MAIL ADDRESS – to be sent recruitment information at a later time.
To increase participation levels, a mobile sweepstakes to win a prize (iPod) was added.
Detailed Prospect data – including Phone Number, Zip Code, Name, e-mail address – was captured, cross referenced against an Industry Wireless Number database, as well as an Army Recruitment database, and provided to the Army on a daily basis.
Our solution dramatically increased the number of Prospects interested in the 3rd MRB recruitment efforts. All while decreasing the cost per lead.
