Over the past year we’ve highlighted some innovative ways in which campus card offices are marketing their services. Contests and giveaways on social media are an increasingly popular option, while the construction of an attractive, user friendly card office website remains a effective tool as well.

Whether spearheaded by the card office manager, employees or students, marketing a modern day card program involves, at a minimum, some sort of online presence be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, or likely some combination therein. But regardless of the marketing channel you take, the goal is always the same: to connect with students and promote valuable services.

With that in mind, we’ve dug to the depths of the CR80News archive to find this week’s Throwback Thursday entry in an attempt to see how card programs marketed their services in the past. In 2002, we ran a story that detailed a two-pronged approach to get a card program up and running and then market the credential’s valuable services to the campus community. The story was published in a world largely devoid of social media (gasp) and while the methods may seem somewhat antiquated now, it still contains valuable insight that applies nearly 15 years later.

In “Making your card program a success,” we discuss campus card program marketing from two primary angles: Initial Program Marketing (IPM) and Program Awareness Marketing (PAM). Initial program marketing focuses on the beginning of a card program’s lifecycle — which may be less common now that campus card programs have reached maturity at most institutions. Program awareness marketing, meanwhile, is performed throughout a program’s lifecycle and is used to remind cardholders of the services and uses associated with their ID card. In short, IPM kick starts the card program and PAM keeps it going.