How Universities Can Revolutionise Open Day Engagement

For university admissions teams, the Open Day is the single most important, high-stakes event of the year. It's the one chance to make a first impression, to move beyond the glossy brochure and show prospective students what your campus and community truly feel like.

The problem? The traditional Open Day is broken.

It’s a passive, one-directional experience. Visitors arrive, get a map and a tote bag, listen to a lecture in the main hall, and are then left to aimlessly wander. The result is a chaotic, overwhelming, and untrackable day.

Did those high-potential students see your brand-new, multi-million-dollar science lab? Did they discover the vibrant student union café, or did they get lost and leave? You have no idea. You've spent a fortune on the day, but you're blind to what your visitors actually experienced.

What if you could change that? What if you could turn that passive, analogue day into an active, digital-first journey of discovery?

The "Discovery Passport": Gamifying Your Open Day

The solution is to stop handing visitors a map and instead give them a mission. By gamifying the Open Day, you can create a "Discovery Passport" that encourages exploration, guides visitors to your most valuable locations, and provides you with invaluable, real-time data on attendee behaviour.

It’s a strategy that transforms your Open Day from a lecture into an interactive game, and the results are transformative.

The Strategy: A Playbook for Engagement

This isn't about commercial sales; it's about subtle, smart incentivisation. It’s based on the same principles used at major festivals and markets (like the French GourMay market) to create heatmaps of engagement and encourage exploration.

1. Define Your "Key Points of Interest" First, map out the 5-7 locations you need every visitor to see. This isn't just the main lecture hall. It's:

• The Impressive New Facility (e.g., the Engineering Lab, the Media Suite)
  

• The "Heart of the Campus" (e.g., the main Library)
  

• The "Community Hub" (e.g., the Student Union)
  

• The "Hidden Gem" (e.g., the amazing, student-run coffee shop, the art gallery)
  

• An Accommodation Show-Room
  

2. Create a Multi-Step Journey Design a simple "quest" for your visitors. A STEP card is perfect for this—a digital card with multiple rewards along the way.

• Visit 2 locations: Unlock Reward 1
  

• Visit 4 locations: Unlock Reward 2
  

• Visit all 6 locations: Unlock the Grand Prize
  

3. Make the Rewards Subtle & Valuable You're not discounting tuition. The rewards should be about enhancing the day and reinforcing your brand.

• Reward 1: A digital coupon for a "Free Barista-Made Coffee" from the Student Union café (driving traffic to a key social hub).
  

• Reward 2: A digital coupon for a "Free, High-Quality Branded Tote Bag" (a genuine piece of desirable merch, not the cheap one they got at the door).
  

• The Grand Prize: Automatic entry into a prize draw for a set of university hoodies or vouchers for the campus bookstore.

The Tool That Makes It Possible: STAMP for EVENTS by meed

A paper passport is clunky, easy to lose, and still impossible to track. A dedicated event app is a non-starter—no prospective student is going to download an app they'll use for six hours.

The solution is STAMP for EVENTS by meed. It’s an instant, app-free digital loyalty platform that’s perfect for this.

• Instant Onboarding: As visitors register, they scan a single QR code. Their "Discovery Passport" instantly opens on their phone's web browser. No app, no download, no friction.
  

• Simple Stamp Collection: At the entrance to the Engineering Lab, the Library, and the Student Union, you place a unique QR code. Visitors simply scan it with their phone to "stamp" their passport and mark that location as visited.
  

• Automated Reward Delivery: When a visitor hits 2 stamps, meed automatically sends the digital "Free Coffee" coupon to their phone. When they hit 6, it sends the "Tote Bag" coupon. It’s all automated, requiring zero staff intervention.

The Real-Time Data You've Been Missing

This is where it revolutionises your planning. Just like the heatmaps from the French GourMay report, meed's dashboard shows you, in real-time, which locations are getting traffic and which are not.

• You can see: "The Law Faculty has 800 visits, but the new Science Lab only has 50."
  

• The Action: You can react live on the day, sending a push notification to all attendees: "Don't miss a demo at our brand-new Science Lab in Building 12! Scan your passport when you arrive."
  

• Post-Event: You have a detailed, data-rich report that shows exactly what your visitors did, where they went, and how engaged they were. This is invaluable intelligence for planning your next event.
  

Stop broadcasting to your visitors and start engaging with them. By turning your Open Day into an interactive journey, you create a more memorable, fun, and effective experience for your future students—and a more insightful, data-driven one for you.

If you are interested in using meed to encourage participation at your event, contact us through the form on our home page.