OVERVIEW

A forward-thinking communications platform built specifically for the needs college athletic bands, Bandwindow helps band programs in one or more of the following areas:

  1. Supercharge Recruiting - Increase both the quantity and quality of band member you recruit with outreach that is 10X more engaging for today's Gen Z student
  2. Drive Event Attendance - Increase attendance at events like Band Member For A Day, concerts, Spring Game, and others, with modern-looking and effective communications
  3. Engage Your Fans - Excite your fans, alumni, and donors with attention grabbing, compelling communications
  4. Streamline Auditions - Manage a college band-specific audition (ie. video uploads, scheduling, scoring, communications, and more) process with fast easy-to-use tools that make your band look great from the student's perspective
  5. Capture Video Stories - Convert the passion of both your current students and alumni into an ever-growing library of content that brings prospective band members over the fence toward joining

Bandwindow provides enormous relief and powerful capabilities for time-starved band directors, band recruitment committees, and administrators.


RECRUITMENT

The Future Of College Athletic Band Recruiting Has Arrived

"Bandwindow is the reason why our numbers for the Fall season actually increased even post-pandemic."

The traditional recruiting tactics have significant gaps with today's Gen Z student. A typical, plain, static outreach email simply is not holding on to their attention anymore. We're in this new era where prospective band members have new standards and new expectations.

To get the attention, interest, and excitement necessary to cause a potential band member to move forward, all communications and interactions need to be tightly matched to the individual student's unique interests.

Check out this less than 4-minute video to see a few examples in action...

RECRUITMENT

Change Your Recruiting Game At High School Clinics

Recruiting at high school visits comes with several challenges:

  1. The high school teacher wants the visit to be educational for the students - completely understandable - so there is not an opportunity to give a detailed pitch about joining.
  2. Passing out paper forms to capture the students' information is clunky - you can't read the student's handwriting, it takes hours to type into a spreadsheet, and it's a boring and lame first impression.
  3. If you hand a student a business card or tell them to visit your department's website, you know they are probably never going to do anything.

This video below gives one example of how to create an unbeatable first impression with prospective students.

To see how something like this might be molded to your unique organization, please book a product walkthrough.

"I knew this would be a successful tool if we could have 57 students enroll with a music scholarship. That's what we were aiming for. In our first year using Bandwindow, we actually ended up enrolling 91 music students. Our faculty couldn't be more excited."

Dr. Peter Folliard

Dean of the Augustana University School of Music

VIDEO STORIES

Generate Recruitment Content That Moves Students Forward

Prospective music students and band members are making a high-impact decision. For many, there is fear that comes with deciding to pursue music as a major or continue band in college.

In a recruitment campaign, it's important to have the right videos that address these fears and build trust. You are wondering, "Gosh, how do we ever find time to produce all this content?" Creating videos is typically a time and resource-intensive process that isn't always an option for music departments with limited bandwidth.

The solution is Video Stories. The most compelling content to convert these students, is an authentic story, told by one of your current students, over video. To build the trust necessary to cause the recruit to move forward, you need authentic human-told stories. Video Stories enables music departments to collect this content in the easiest way imaginable.


University Music Department Recruiting Is Competitive

The highly digital Gen Z music student has many competing options. At the same time, young students are questioning if they should even continue music at the university level.

The old-school traditional ways of recruiting have significant gaps with the Gen Z music student audience.

To attract a higher quantity and quality of music student, you need a modern engaging approach that instantly puts your music department in the leader spot in the student's mind.


RECRUITMENT

1-To-1 Recruiting Outreach Instantly

When we find out that Kaitlin plays Tuba, is interested in Music Ed, and likes Athletic Bands, if our communications are not speaking directly to those music-specific interests, that is a gigantic missed opportunity.

"Billboard-like" communications are static - they are unchanged by a person's interests and appear the same to different people who want different things. This style of outreach makes your prospective students feel like they are "just a number in a database," making you 5-8 times less likely to recruit them 😞

The dream is to package a precise set of information to speak directly to the one individual student's unique musical interests. This can also include videos, events, audition materials, faculty spotlights, student testimonials, social posts, web pages, and documents. This might be based on the student's instrument, talent area, academic interests, ensemble interests, musical backgrounds, and timelines. Visual Explainer

"Our university's overall enrollment is actually down and this is a focal point for the university, but thanks to the tools and strategy from Musicwindow, the Music Dept. is up about 50% in enrollment this year compared to last year!

Get Prospective Music Students To Reply Back

A prospective student has expressed some level of interest, but they haven't yet signed up for an audition. Hmm...

Previously, you would email your list of students to announce events, audition days, and other opportunities. The problem is, static, plain, mass emails are not getting their attention. Students might not even being checking the inbox these emails are going to!

In 2023, a single mass email will never move a student over the large hump of deciding which university to study music. It's simply too high-impact of a decision.  

Conversation Center empowers your faculty to reach out to and get replies from the prospective students for their unique area (ie. the flute studio, the jazz ensemble, the low brass section within the marching band). Built around proven messaging best practices, it's the easiest way imaginable to initiate conversations that get replies. See An Example

"Our faculty have been very pleased with how responsive students have been to these texts. I feel like we're meeting these young students where they are at."

What Bandwindow'ers Are Saying...


Commonly Asked Questions

It Sounds Like This Is For Our Admissions Office

Somewhat, but not exactly... We'd love to loop in Admissions after you take a look and decide if it's a good fit for your music department. We're very focused on the countless nuances of music departments and typically like to start with you, the music faculty.

Recruiting for a music department is more competitive compared to other departments. Students are questioning if it's a good idea to become a music major or participate in music in college. The students who are sold, are shopping around and looking at competing institutions. There's a finite pool of quality talent out there that all music departments are fighting to win over. It's very challenging. For these reasons and others, music departments require specific tools that have more competitive capabilities than the typical tools used within the university at large. This is the lane that Musicwindow is focused on and it supplements what Admissions does quite well.

Musicwindow is a very different product than what your university currently has implemented. Our objective is not to admit students into your university - you already have this covered. Our role is to provide a music-centered process, touchpoint strategy, and tactical execution to create an emotional layer that excites a Gen Z prospective music student to choose your music department. This is through a unique set of capabilities which cannot realistically be offered by an Admissions department, especially one that is slammed supporting the needs of 60 other departments on campus.

Is Our IT Department Going To Approve Of This Tool?
And if so, how does that process work?

The software is just one component of our offering, and we've never had an IT department reject the software.

It sometimes takes a few weeks to go through the IT Office's approval process (university IT teams are super busy helping everyone out!). If you anticipate IT would like to review some information, we encourage you to initiate that request early after seeing our demo.

We have the following documents available for your IT team:

  • Technical overview document - Covers the commonly asked IT questions
  • HECVAT - A 300+ row spreadsheet detailing all the specs that IT typically likes to know
  • VPAT - For the accessibility team to review how Musicwindow adheres to accessibility standards

Please request these documents via the form below. We will follow up within 1 business day. The approval is typically pretty straightforward from there.

How Do I Learn More?

A typical process goes like this:

  1. Schedule a demo. We'll meet over a Zoom and look at how this might work for you.
  2. Afterward, with your permission, we provide a recording of the meeting and any PDFs, short videos, client references, or materials you can use to best introduce this to any additional decision makers.
  3. When you're ready we'll decide to either A) get it rolling, B) schedule an additional meeting with other staff members, C) plan customized next steps as you see fit, or D) do nothing.

At any point, if you decide we’re not the right fit for you (or vice versa), we'll just part ways professionally.

Does Musicwindow Integrate With Slate?

Yes, we are pleased to offer an integration with Slate and other Admissions tools so that data can flow seamlessly back and forth between your music department and the admissions office. This is done through a live JSON object which updates automatically. There are other options as well to suit a range of needs and situations. Let us know what works best for you and we typically have no issues getting all departments what they need.

I Have A Different Question

Contact

215 West Michigan Avenue

Ypsilanti, MI 48197

+1 248-410-1667

Would you like to join our growing team? hello@shopwindow.io