Benedictine College uses MobileUp solution to engage students in homecoming

Not only does homecoming present a time to bring your campus together for fellowship and football, it also offers a great opportunity to introduce your student population to a new app.

MobileUp Software client Benedictine College in Atchison, KS, was successful in both regards this fall.

The Ravens won on the field, 52-7. Meanwhile, the app administration team at Benedictine successfully connected students to its homecoming activities through a few clever features and generated some impressive user statistics in the process.

Tip: Integrate Competition in your app

Instead of simply connecting users to static data (images and text) for information, the team at Benedictine incorporated an interactive competition within its app with minimal effort through MobileUp’s administration tools.

Here’s a look at some of the features Benedictine used:
Calendars in the app inform students of upcoming homecoming events

A calendar listed homecoming events and enabled users to add them to their itineraries with one tap (on the button) leading into homecoming weekend.

Students can read about the history of Benedictine's homecoming and see a list of activities they can complete during the weekend

Information about how to use the app to get involved with Benedictine’s homecoming was built with custom HTML inside the app. Note the giveaway! Anyone completing 10 of the 15 traditions listed in the app was entered into a drawing for an Apple watch.

Students used the cameras on their smartphones to document the weekend's activities and the leaderboard in the app to see which students were completing the most activities.


For one of the tradition challenges, students needed to post a selfie at a homecoming event. The photos were aggregated and displayed in the app for all as a highlight reel. A leaderboard shows which students were completing the most traditions across campus.

Positive results

Homecoming weekend was preceded by a soft launch of the MobileUp app at the school. The team at Benedictine waited for homecoming to make its first big push with the app and the results were obvious to see.

The effect of homecoming on Benedictine's app usage: New Users, Total Users, and Total Sessions

The effect of homecoming promotions the weekend of Oct 21, 2017, on Benedictine’s app usage: New Users, Total Users, and Total Sessions

Actionable data

The MobileUp solution also provides valuable participation data to the Benedictine team.

For example, in the administration tools, it is a simple process to identify which activities were most popular.

App administrators can also drill down to individual students who have completed a particular activity.

Lists can be downloaded as Excel friendly CSV files for follow-ups or students on the reported list can be re-targeted with a notification that surfaces on their smartphones. You can see the download and notification bell buttons in the administrator tools here:

Download participation activity as CSV files or re-target participants with a notification from inside the MobileUp administration tools

“Our students are used to getting information from their phones so our app made the distribution of details about our homecoming events easy and effective,” said Elizabeth Carey, Director of Student Activities at Benedictine. “The interactive contests we put in the app generated a lot of participation and competition among the students and added to the excitement of homecoming on campus this year.”

Expand your mobile strategy today

As shown in this example, the best way to realize your investment in an app and a mobile strategy for your organization is to push past static information delivery and leverage the features a native app provides.

Using the pre-built modules in the MobileUp solution, you can easily build functionality that encourages interaction and connects your users in common activities and competition.

If you have an idea for your app or would like suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us to help you expand your mobile strategy.