Measure it to manage it: an idea to make your student recruitment display ads more effective

An inter­est­ing arti­cle crossed my desk today. It showed the results of an AdReady/​Stamats sur­vey with respect to the use of dig­i­tal dis­play adver­tis­ing by American insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion (EDUs). The sur­vey shows that one rea­son for uti­liz­ing this tac­tic is to reach and attract stu­dents; EDUs want to stand out from the crowd.

As a for­mer adver­tis­ing agency gal – and one who spent time in the cre­ation of media plans back in the age of the dinosaur (read: before the inter­net), the ques­tion most often asked was how to mea­sure the results of these buys. We could talk about impres­sions, read­er­ship, viewership…but ulti­mately, unless a cus­tomer told you specif­i­cally that he or she showed up at your place of busi­ness based on the bill­board on Main Street, it could be a chal­lenge to measure.

With the onset of the inter­net, bud­gets were re-​jigged to con­tinue with tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing, sup­ple­mented by dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing. And still it was dif­fi­cult to mea­sure exactly how many peo­ple were brought to you via a sky­scraper ad on a tar­geted web­site. Again it was page hits and impressions.

So, as the EDUs plan to increase the dig­i­tal por­tion of their mar­ket­ing bud­gets sig­nif­i­cantly over the next year, we come back to the age-​old ques­tion of how to tell if it’s really work­ing? Links to spe­cific pages, or spe­cial land­ing pages can be tracked of course; how­ever, that still gives raw num­bers allow­ing you to pre­pare reports and jus­tify dol­lars allo­cated. But what if you could see actual results? What if you could make that dis­play ad work harder for you?

An ideal use of the dis­play ad would work like this: cre­ate some­thing engag­ing enough to prospec­tive stu­dents to encour­age them to click through. It has to be very good to cap­ture their atten­tion amidst all of the other visual noise, and it should tell them exactly what will hap­pen or what they’ll get by click­ing. Place the ad on an appro­pri­ate web­site and link it to a very short, branded, sign-​up form – again pre­ceded by ver­biage at the top which will tell them how sign­ing up will make find­ing out about your insti­tu­tion very easy – that you’ll do all of the work for them as soon as they share a bit more infor­ma­tion. Tell them you’ll be send­ing an email with a slightly longer form…and then do so instantly via an auto­mat­i­cally trig­gered, branded email in which you ask per­ti­nent ques­tions regard­ing their interests.

If a prospec­tive stu­dent clicks through and signs up, you have a per­son who is gen­uinely inter­ested in inter­act­ing with you. As a higher edu­ca­tion mar­keter or enroll­ment direc­tor, you know that’s pure gold. You will have gone beyond reach­ing out to large num­bers and cross­ing your fin­gers to see­ing a stu­dent who is truly engaged. It’s good to see insti­tu­tions look­ing at inno­v­a­tive ways to reach prospec­tive stu­dents and allo­cat­ing bud­get dol­lars to do so dig­i­tally, meet­ing the stu­dents where they’re at. For those who take it one step fur­ther, the quan­tifi­able results will be obvi­ous, for once the rela­tion­ship has begun, it will be easy to fol­low a student’s path from a dis­play ad to enrollment.

This is a win-​win on both sides: although you might be using some­thing to auto­mate these actions, the stu­dent feels it’s very much one-​to-​one as all inter­ac­tion with your insti­tu­tion focuses on his or her spe­cific inter­ests. It shows you really care — and that’s using the dis­play ad medium really well.

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing more, the orig­i­nal University Business arti­cle can be found here.

January 6, 2012 – 12:04 pm
By Catheryn Hodgson | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Student Recruitment, The Student Experience, WYNIWYG | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
The polar bear is awakening – hunting for students from around the world

In June of 2011 the Government of Canada decided to allo­cate $10 mil­lion dol­lars of fund­ing to estab­lish an International Education strat­egy; the aim of which is to rein­force Canada as a coun­try of choice to study and con­duct world-​class research. Canada is the 3rd most pop­u­lar coun­try in terms of migra­tion des­ti­na­tions, fol­low­ing the US and the UK – but is only the 8th most pop­u­lar inter­na­tional stu­dent des­ti­na­tion. Clearly Canada’s gov­ern­ment would like to boost the lat­ter number.

For that rea­son the Minister of International Trade & the Minister of Finance selected an advi­sory panel of emi­nent Canadians from both the aca­d­e­mic and pri­vate sec­tor to develop rec­om­men­da­tions for a revised International Education Strategy. The objec­tive? To pre­pare rec­om­men­da­tions on how inter­na­tional edu­ca­tion can con­tribute to Canada’s con­tin­ued growth and pros­per­ity in both the near and longer term. The rec­om­men­da­tions will be devel­oped in a three-​phase process con­sist­ing of con­sul­ta­tion, engage­ment and collaboration.

The first phase of con­sult­ing ended on November 28th 2011. In it, con­stituent groups from the Higher Education field were invited to high­light the efforts they are cur­rently under­tak­ing to pro­mote inter­na­tional edu­ca­tion, to iden­tify pri­or­ity mar­kets and to out­line the sup­port they need to be more suc­cess­ful at — among other things — recruit­ing stu­dents from inter­na­tional regions.

The sec­ond phase of engage­ment – tak­ing place now – con­sists of a series of round­ta­bles across Canada, in which stake­hold­ers from both the aca­d­e­mic and pri­vate sec­tor will be asked what they can con­tribute to the strategy.

The process ends with a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort at the end of next month (January 2012) in Toronto, where part­ners and stake­hold­ers will join the Advisory Panel to dis­cuss the ideas that came out of the con­sul­ta­tions and round­ta­bles. From these dis­cus­sions the final rec­om­men­da­tions will emerge, which will be pre­sented to the Ministers in March, includ­ing the allo­ca­tion for funds from all par­ties for the fis­cal year/​budget of 2012–2013.

Now all of this might seem incred­i­bly slow and tedious, but from a Higher Education and gen­eral polit­i­cal per­spec­tive it is fly­ing and thrilling! In 2011 the Ministers of International Trade & Finance (cer­tainly not the least influ­en­tial and pow­er­ful of min­istries!) detects the need for Canada to boost their per­for­mance in the inter­na­tional edu­ca­tion field. And rather unusu­ally, the Minister puts his money where his mouth is and allo­cates $10 mil­lion dol­lars just to pre­pare a strat­egy which will unfold and be financed from 2012 on.

That is remark­able. To me, it shows both Canada’s appetite for growth AND the lux­u­ri­ous posi­tion they are in:

•They are not in a cri­sis mode as many of Higher Education sec­tors in the key com­peti­tor coun­tries are and they can actu­ally take time to pre­pare and get ready;
•They are in the com­fort­able posi­tion of hav­ing their uni­ver­si­ties offer excel­lent English spo­ken edu­ca­tion at afford­able prices;
•And they know they can offer stu­dents and PhD’s a secure future by offer­ing them to stay after grad­u­a­tion, given Canada’s increas­ing need for an edu­cated and skilled workforce.

A stun­ning com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors which offers a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage that other coun­tries bet­ter take notice of. Something that might be a new con­cept to many, when it comes to Canada’s role internationally.

And that made me think of the polar bear… nice and cud­dly from a dis­tance, when they are mind­ing their own busi­ness or snooz­ing in the sun. But some­thing to be very aware of once they are hun­gry and go on a hunt. Canada might just be that polar bear… per­haps a lit­tle com­pla­cent and slow, but in real­ity ready to start hunting.

June 15th 2012 is when the final ver­dict on the strat­egy and fund­ing is out. We will keep you posted on the polar bear’s adventures.

December 16, 2011 – 1:16 pm
By Inez Uerz | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Student Recruitment | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Check back regularly?! Prospective students don’t have time for that

Researching the higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket, I get to see a lot of uni­ver­sity web­sites. Lately inter­na­tional stu­dent recruit­ment has my par­tic­u­lar inter­est and so I come across quite a num­ber of International Offices and their recruit­ment mes­sages. All too often I am shocked by sen­tences like: ‘Check back reg­u­larly to find out when we will visit your region’.

I mean come on… it’s 2011! The com­pe­ti­tion for inter­na­tional stu­dents lit­er­ally gets more intense every day. And these International Offices expect stu­dents to make the effort to see when they are actu­ally inter­ested in talk­ing to them?

‘Check back reg­u­larly’ is a line you can only get away with when you have some­thing to offer that is incred­i­bly high in demand. The sort of thing that peo­ple are will­ing to camp out for – vir­tu­ally or for real – in a sleep­ing bag, first in line, spend­ing the night on cold pave­ment with strangers who become friends and then turn into fierce com­peti­tors once day­light breaks. Only fuelled by the euphoric knowl­edge that they will be FIRST to get it, what­ever that might be: the lat­est iPhone, tick­ets for a Justin Bieber con­cert, a Hermes Birkin bag… any­thing! Just as long as it’s extremely high in demand and almost impos­si­ble to get your hands on.

Now this is where it becomes inter­est­ing for uni­ver­si­ties. Yes, there is an incred­i­bly high demand for higher edu­ca­tion degrees and it is grow­ing. At the same time how­ever, access to higher edu­ca­tion is no longer as exclu­sive as it once was. On the con­trary – there are so many options to choose from and it doesn’t mat­ter any­more where in the world you live. With access to so much infor­ma­tion instantly via the web, the con­cept has fun­da­men­tally changed from a seller’s to a buyer’s model.

It is not the stu­dent who should make the effort to find out when you will pro­vide some infor­ma­tion; it is you!

To think oth­er­wise is to con­tinue to linger in the ‘build-​it-​and-​they-​will-​come’ men­tal­ity that once ruled higher edu­ca­tion. A phrase up to this day still used by some peo­ple in a uni­ver­sity – typ­i­cally high up in the hier­ar­chy and a bit out of touch with reality.

Hearing phrases like that or read­ing the ‘Check back reg­u­larly!’ in a cheery voice, makes me think that many in higher edu­ca­tion recruit­ment need to wake up fast! Or else the mar­ket will do that for them.

What’s ironic is that this “Check Back Regularly” approach — which is still so com­mon­place — need not be the norm for uni­ver­si­ties and their over­worked recruit­ment and admis­sions staff. Like I said, it’s 2011. There are purpose-​built tech­nol­ogy solu­tions out there that can actu­ally help; that can be deployed quickly and are very afford­able given the ben­e­fits they pro­vide to stu­dents and staff.

Consider let­ting a CRM sys­tem be the front line sup­port for you. Imagine pro­vid­ing effi­cient self-​service func­tion­al­ity with auto­mated and per­son­al­ized updates to your stu­dent audi­ences. Instantaneous. Automated. Personalized. These are not mar­ket­ing buzz­words but essen­tial processes for higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als in today’s hyper-​competitive market.

In this day and age there really is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion any­more for state­ments like ‘Check back reg­u­larly’ which ulti­mately shows an under­ly­ing assump­tion: that the stu­dents should wait for you. They won’t. Not today. Not ever again.

November 25, 2011 – 4:20 pm
By Inez Uerz | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Student Recruitment, The Student Experience, WYNIWYG | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
Technology AND Service — Students Deserve Better

The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) recently pub­lished the National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. The study con­cludes that the major­ity of under­grad­u­ate stu­dents are sat­is­fied with their university’s abil­ity to bridge tech­nol­ogy and acad­e­mia. It was nice to see that because it shows that uni­ver­si­ties are really cater­ing to the new gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents. Some of the more sur­pris­ing find­ings revealed that stu­dents at two-​year insti­tu­tions dif­fer from other under­grad­u­ates in their tech­nol­ogy own­er­ship and pref­er­ence, and that stu­dents as a whole are still attached to tra­di­tional tech­nolo­gies such as desk­top com­put­ers. Being a stu­dent myself, I can relate to some of these find­ings but I think the study missed a crit­i­cal point of interest.

I was really dis­ap­pointed that this study focused solely on tech­nol­ogy for aca­d­e­mic pur­poses and excluded how tech­nol­ogy was being used to opti­mize admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices. When I say admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices, I’m refer­ring to things like: the appli­ca­tion process, course reg­is­tra­tion, aca­d­e­mic advis­ing, pay­ing fees and finan­cial ser­vices, pur­chas­ing books, sched­ul­ing, etc. From my expe­ri­ence, these ser­vices are light years behind the rest of the insti­tu­tion. They are stuck in the stone age.

For exam­ple, I would like to be able to go online and see if the book­store on cam­pus has my Economics text­book in stock. I want to have the abil­ity to pay my tuition online instead of wait­ing in a queue for 45 min­utes. I want to be able to talk to an aca­d­e­mic advi­sor via chat because I don’t live on cam­pus. And for cry­ing out loud, I really wish an email would get sent out when there is a class can­cel­la­tion that affects me. These sorts of things aren’t lux­u­ries any­more — they are expected as basic stan­dards for cus­tomer (stu­dent) service.

Believe it or not, my frus­tra­tion was even more pal­pa­ble when I was apply­ing to uni­ver­si­ties three years ago. I’m sure the added stress of tran­si­tion­ing to uni­ver­sity life had some­thing to do with it, but I was bewil­dered by how long it took to receive the infor­ma­tion I wanted. Everything was done via snail mail, phone calls and face-​to-​face meet­ings. I was dri­ving all over the city to meet with advi­sors, get­ting stuck in traf­fic and check­ing the mail every day. It was tedious and annoy­ing to say the least. I thought to myself ‘uni­ver­si­ties might be bea­cons of knowl­edge and per­sonal growth but they’re cer­tainly not on the fore­front of tech­nol­ogy’. Fortunately the class­room envi­ron­ment turned out to be more advanced than the appli­ca­tion process would have you believe — but why did I have to wait until I walked through the door in September to see that?!

Now that I look back on it, I think about how much eas­ier it would have been for every­body if these uni­ver­si­ties would have com­ple­mented their ser­vices with dig­i­tal tools or alter­na­tives. For the “dig­i­tal natives”, it’s the lit­tle things that mat­ter, like timely responses to emails, fre­quently updated web­sites, cen­tral­ized infor­ma­tion, social net­works and user friendly appli­ca­tions. We look for con­ve­nience and usabil­ity in tech­nol­ogy which extends to all aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, the jour­ney of choos­ing a uni­ver­sity — arguably one of life’s most impor­tant choices — did not reflect this. It was very incon­ve­nient and inef­fi­cient. The deci­sion is never going to be easy but get­ting the infor­ma­tion you need to make the proper deci­sion should be.

In clos­ing, the ECAR find­ings empha­size that “In stu­dents’ eyes, effec­tive, fre­quent and seam­less use of tech­nol­ogy char­ac­ter­izes a highly effec­tive insti­tu­tion” and I couldn’t agree more. I also believe that this rep­u­ta­tion is shaped long before a stu­dent enters the class­room. Prospective stu­dents are siz­ing up the institution’s abil­ity to employ even the sim­plest dig­i­tal ser­vices; from the time they make the first inquiry all the way to grad­u­a­tion. Digital natives are a cru­cial demo­graphic — as both the present and the future of their respec­tive uni­ver­si­ties, they will define their insitution’s rep­u­ta­tion. They are here to stay, so it’s about time uni­ver­si­ties started accom­mo­dat­ing them.

November 10, 2011 – 1:18 pm
By Mathieu Taillefer | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Retention, Social Media, Student Recruitment, The Student Experience | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
Strategic Marketing for Student Recruitment: a vital approach for today’s higher education sector

I have had the plea­sure of being in the UK quite a bit recently and the changes occur­ring in the higher edu­ca­tion sec­tor are truly astound­ing. We were once again the pre­mier spon­sor at the CASE Europe Annual Conference held in Manchester this year. And what a con­fer­ence it was… high energy, fun, packed with great ses­sions and – as always – the most sat­is­fy­ing aspect of the con­fer­ence was meet­ing so many inter­est­ing peo­ple. There was some­thing quite dif­fer­ent about the con­fer­ence this year though, as there is a great deal of con­cern for British uni­ver­si­ties regard­ing the new fee struc­ture sched­uled to impact the 2012 class.

For those who might not know all the details, the British gov­ern­ment has sig­nif­i­cantly cut fund­ing to uni­ver­si­ties and as a result has forced a dra­matic increase in tuition fees from approx­i­mately 3,000 GBP to up to 9,000 GBP. This pro­found finan­cial shift from the ‘state to the stu­dent’ is hap­pen­ing within the span of only one aca­d­e­mic year and cer­tainly has many wor­ried about its impact on UK uni­ver­si­ties and as impor­tantly, stu­dents and their families.

Implied in this new fee struc­ture is a height­ened sense of com­pe­ti­tion as stu­dents con­tem­plate their higher edu­ca­tion choices; not just in the UK but within the European Union and the rest of the world. While it’s dif­fi­cult to pre­dict exactly how stu­dents will respond, early indi­ca­tions show that enrol­ment lev­els will not be neg­a­tively affected by this sud­den and dra­matic increase in fees for 2012. However, while enrol­ment may be rel­a­tively unaf­fected in terms of sheer num­bers, accord­ing to the NUS (National Union of Students), 65% of stu­dents believe that if they are expected to pay more for their uni­ver­sity expe­ri­ence, they will have higher expectations.

Such a dras­tic change in the basic struc­ture of fund­ing higher edu­ca­tion puts the stu­dent at the cen­tre of the storm… and dare I say the stu­dent has become the cus­tomer with sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence and buy­ing power.

From the lens of a CRM com­pany focused on enquiry man­age­ment, recruit­ment and admis­sions, it is becom­ing abun­dantly clear that oper­at­ing in a business-​as-​usual mode will not suf­fice for British uni­ver­si­ties. In fact, one thing that appeared to be quite dif­fer­ent at this year’s CASE Europe con­fer­ence was the role of each university’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment… from being seen, his­tor­i­cally, as out­siders at the ‘top table’ to being piv­otal in deter­min­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing an institution’s value proposition.

As many from the UK know, Professor Peter Slee is a won­der­ful speaker and this year’s con­fer­ence was no excep­tion. Peter is the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Huddersfield and one of the ses­sions he was involved in iden­ti­fied the evo­lu­tion of the role of mar­ket­ing at a uni­ver­sity in three ‘gen­er­a­tions’. The first gen­er­a­tion is ‘push mar­ket­ing’: sim­ply send­ing out “stuff”, be it a brochure, prospec­tus or one’s mes­sage via web­sites or email. Most uni­ver­si­ties in the UK and, for that mat­ter many around the world, are still in this first phase of higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket­ing accord­ing to Peter.

The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of mar­ket­ing in higher edu­ca­tion evolves into the con­cept of ‘brand man­age­ment’: posi­tion­ing the uni­ver­sity and being respon­si­ble for con­sis­tently deliv­er­ing the brand mes­sage and the brand promise. Quite a num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties have adopted this approach for their mar­ket­ing depart­ment, yet cer­tainly not all.

And finally the third gen­er­a­tion of mar­ket­ing in higher edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to Slee, will develop into a much more strate­gic approach where deci­sions will increas­ingly be made based on mar­ket intel­li­gence. Not all uni­ver­si­ties cater to the same audi­ence; not all uni­ver­si­ties have the same ambi­tion or focus (teach­ing, research, employ­a­bil­ity) nor should they. This kind of intel­li­gence needs to be taken into account when a uni­ver­sity decides on its posi­tion, and mov­ing for­ward can­not occur with­out this type of intel­li­gence either. Slee did recog­nise that only a hand­ful of uni­ver­si­ties in the UK have entered this gen­er­a­tion with such a strong empha­sis on strate­gic mar­ket­ing. Having said this, he also sug­gests there will be a rapid increase in the num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties adopt­ing this approach – par­tic­u­larly in light of the tuition fee dri­ven envi­ron­ment and increased com­pe­ti­tion glob­ally for students.

Strategic mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence is essen­tial for all exec­u­tive deci­sions, and also for stu­dent recruit­ment. “Know thy­self to attract the stu­dents you want” was the title of our ses­sion at the CASE con­fer­ence and it meant just that: as a uni­ver­sity you need to know very well who you are, who your real com­peti­tors are, which audi­ence you cater to in order to make the most out of your recruit­ment efforts. Two of our clients — the University of Leicester and Edge Hill University shared their sto­ries on how they have employed CRM to trans­form their recruit­ment and admis­sions processes.

The year ahead for uni­ver­si­ties in Britain will no doubt be uncer­tain and maybe even a lit­tle scary for some. Which uni­ver­si­ties will get it right and move ahead, rid­ing the wave of these recent devel­op­ments? And which ones will not? And what will it mean to stu­dents and their families?

Higher edu­ca­tion in the UK will cer­tainly never be the same based on these mas­sive shifts set to occur in 2012. Whatever the out­come, one of the likely effects will be the more rapid evo­lu­tion towards that “third gen­er­a­tion” of higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket­ing that Peter Slee dis­cussed. There is clearly a lot of anx­i­ety sur­round­ing these changes, but change may not nec­es­sar­ily be a bad thing. For the uni­ver­si­ties who have already refined a student-​centric approach to recruit­ment, these changes could rep­re­sent an oppor­tu­nity to gain an advan­tage in a hyper-​competitive global mar­ket. For oth­ers, it could be the ulti­mate real­i­sa­tion that busi­ness as usual is not an option; that in fact imper­fect move­ment is far pre­ferred to per­fect paralysis.

Ben Franklin famously stated “when you’re fin­ished chang­ing, you’re fin­ished.” For higher edu­ca­tion, both within Britain and beyond… the changes are just beginning.

October 11, 2011 – 5:04 pm
By Stephen MacDonald | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Student Recruitment | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
From Good to Great

I have learned a lot since I started work­ing for Azorus eight months ago. As a stu­dent, I was com­pletely unaware of the pres­sures post-​secondary insti­tu­tions face every year. Tuition is expen­sive and there doesn’t seem to be any short­age of stu­dents. Having a degree or diploma is no longer a lux­ury – it is almost a neces­sity to suc­ceed in today’s work­force so nat­u­rally there are more stu­dents pur­su­ing higher edu­ca­tion. So what prob­lems could uni­ver­si­ties pos­si­bly have? My skewed train of thought seri­ously had me believ­ing that uni­ver­si­ties were “liv­ing the good life”.

As you can imag­ine, get­ting an inside look at the chal­lenges higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions are cur­rently fac­ing was an eye open­ing expe­ri­ence for me. I had never seen the words yield, reten­tion and attri­tion used in the con­text of higher edu­ca­tion and I quickly dis­cov­ered how dif­fi­cult it can be for a uni­ver­sity to find the right stu­dents. I also learned how easy it could be.

Institutions that employ a CRM sys­tem to bet­ter serve their stu­dents are already “good” – but what ini­ti­ates the tran­si­tion from good to great? From what I’ve seen, it’s as sim­ple as know­ing who you are. Knowing what your insti­tu­tion sym­bol­izes to your stu­dents and your com­mu­nity, know­ing your strengths and weak­nesses. Knowing where you are and where you want to go and most impor­tantly – know­ing your stu­dents and what they want. True cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment is a sys­tem of inter­con­nected ele­ments: strat­egy, tech­nol­ogy, processes and people.

The clients who achieve the great­est suc­cess with our ser­vices under­stand this. They align our CRM solu­tion with their strat­egy and vision, and then plan the best course of action based on their unique sit­u­a­tion. These are the clients who take their CRM solu­tion extremely seri­ously. All pis­tons are fir­ing with com­plete buy-​in from staff and their sys­tem becomes a well-​oiled machine.

A CRM solu­tion is a lot like a uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion, because what you get out of it is what you put into it. Often times, uni­ver­si­ties get overex­cited by the instant results CRM brings them and for­get to invest in the future. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that a great CRM solu­tion is part of a jour­ney, and from what I’ve seen, it’s worth every minute of it. The beauty of CRM is that it builds on itself, and a great solu­tion becomes expo­nen­tially greater year after year.

August 24, 2011 – 2:59 pm
By Mathieu Taillefer | Posted in Optimizing Resources, WYNIWYG | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Scholarships in Higher Education Getting Fresh With Social Media

The University of Iowa is offer­ing a $37,000 schol­ar­ship to its busi­ness school for the best tweet by a prospec­tive stu­dent who explains why he or she would make a good MBA hire, reports USA Today. It’s the price of a full schol­ar­ship, and it’s a mere 140 key strokes away for thou­sands of hope­ful students.

Some think it’s a cheap effort to tar­get the tech-​savvy social media
con­nois­seurs which make up the tra­di­tional appli­cant pool. “They’re devalu­ing their future, because they’re iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves with a fad rather than some­thing more long term. It comes off as a school try­ing so hard to be cool,” says Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto.

But the pur­pose of this schol­ar­ship actu­ally has a lot more integrity
than that. It aims to stir up some cre­ativ­ity and level the play­ing field for appli­cants by ensur­ing that their thoughts are their own.

Jodi Schafer, the University of Iowa’s direc­tor of MBA admis­sions and finan­cial aid, says that appli­ca­tion essays were becom­ing uno­rig­i­nal and often highly edited. She goes on to say, “We’re hop­ing that incor­po­rat­ing social media in the process will help bring back some of that creativity.”

As a stu­dent, I think this schol­ar­ship is absolutely amaz­ing but I really have to won­der about the logis­tics at the other end of it. I think the
uni­ver­sity is going to get flooded with thou­sands of vari­a­tions of the same tweet, and even the cre­ative ones will have dop­pel­gangers. It might be hard for them to boil it down to the best entry.

However, I’ll still be keep­ing my eyes open for the win­ning tweet. It will
be inter­est­ing to see how cre­ative and thought­ful stu­dents can be when lim­ited to a minis­cule 140 char­ac­ters of text.

July 18, 2011 – 3:08 pm
By Mathieu Taillefer | Posted in Social Media, The Student Experience, Yield Management | Comments (0)
Yield—the elephant in the room (a student’s perspective)

The first day of sum­mer has finally arrived, and most of us will be tak­ing a deep breath and look­ing for­ward to vaca­tion – it’s time to leave it all behind and recharge the batteries.

For many recruiters and mar­keters in higher ed, the sum­mer sea­son
trig­gers an entirely dif­fer­ent set of emo­tions – one of anx­i­ety and stress. There is an ele­phant in the room and its name is yield management.

Yield can be a huge prob­lem because it rep­re­sents the unknown. Unexpected yield num­bers can throw a wrench into even the most
impec­ca­ble strate­gic plans. Until the actual enrol­ment num­bers show up in September, uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges are for the most part fly­ing blind. It’s an uneasy feel­ing for mar­keters and recruiters alike, and is akin to the wait­ing period stu­dents face after exams. They work hard all year and then they wait patiently to see the results of their labour.

The best way to increase yield is to take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion. Universities who keep their stu­dents close through fre­quent, infor­ma­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sum­mer events tend to have higher yield num­bers. It keeps the brand fresh in the minds of prospects, gives them a taste of the excit­ing com­mu­nity they will be a part of, and eases the tran­si­tion from high school to uni­ver­sity life. Showing prospects that you actu­ally care about them, and want them to come to your uni­ver­sity, can make all the difference.

I am liv­ing proof that reach­ing out to prospects dur­ing the sum­mer can make a dif­fer­ence. As a stu­dent who applied and was accepted to three uni­ver­si­ties only a cou­ple of years ago I dis­tinctly remem­ber that all of a sud­den, once I was accepted, the silence was deaf­en­ing. It was a strange feel­ing as this was such an impor­tant deci­sion for me. I was the first of my fam­ily to be for­tu­nate enough to attend uni­ver­sity, and as the sum­mer went on, I started to have sec­ond thoughts. There was no per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion from these insti­tu­tions. It would have been so reas­sur­ing to get updates and emails telling me what to expect – just to keep me “in the loop”.

Eventually one of the uni­ver­si­ties reached out to me. It was some­thing as sim­ple as a warm tele­phone call to ask me how my sum­mer was and inform me about upcom­ing frosh events. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was to me. I really liked all the uni­ver­si­ties I had applied to but only one had taken the time to treat me like a per­son. After that, the deci­sion was obvious.

June 24, 2011 – 11:11 am
By Mathieu Taillefer | Posted in Retention, The Student Experience, WYNIWYG, Yield Management | Comments (0)
Step away from the mirror—why higher education institutions need to look beyond vanity metrics in social media

The results from a recent eduGuru sur­vey on social media in higher edu­ca­tion revealed that uni­ver­si­ties mea­sure suc­cess in the fol­low­ing ways:

• Number of fol­low­ers – 75%
• Click-​through rates – 59%
• Number of shares – 45%
• Number of inter­ac­tions – 63%
• We are not mea­sur­ing – 21%
• Other 13%

No sur­prise here. Vanity met­rics are the eas­i­est and most obvi­ous way to mea­sure social activ­ity, but should only be used for run-​of-​the-​mill social media engage­ments that are designed to “increase aware­ness”. They are not enough for a strate­gic cam­paign with spe­cific goals and I will explain why.

These mea­sure­ments give you a vague idea about the amount of
expo­sure social media gen­er­ates but noth­ing more. In the case of Twitter fol­low­ers – they rep­re­sent pop­u­lar­ity and not influ­ence. If none of your
fol­low­ers take your opin­ion seri­ously, then they are nearly mean­ing­less from an impact stand­point. The same applies for fans/​likes on Facebook, as they do not give us an aver­age daily audi­ence size, and tell us noth­ing about the inter­ac­tion and engage­ment of the com­mu­nity. Not all Facebook fans are cre­ated equally either; in fact many of them are only there to keep an eye on you while oth­ers are just wait­ing for the per­fect oppor­tu­nity to trash your brand. As you can see, these met­rics have too many vari­ables at play to be ade­quate for rig­or­ous mea­sure­ment. They still come in handy as they rep­re­sent a good over­all snap­shot of cur­rent activ­ity and aware­ness, but should not be empha­sized as a fac­tor in
influ­ence or impact, let alone ROI.

In order for uni­ver­si­ties to make social media a true part of the mar­ket­ing mix, they need to find ways to effec­tively mea­sure if and how it works. Universities must begin to eval­u­ate social media not only by usage, but by other types of out­comes as well. Marketers have always used
for­mu­las and mod­els to mea­sure their suc­cess, and they must con­tinue to do so with social media. There is no best prac­tice yet, and it will take some time to find what works best for you…so don’t be afraid to try new things. Remember, mea­sure­ment mod­els will dif­fer greatly depend­ing on the pri­or­i­ties and goals of your institution.

Marketers can com­pare reten­tion rates of first year stu­dents who were active in the university’s social media chan­nels against stu­dents who had no activ­ity in the social chan­nels. If the reten­tion rates are higher for the sam­ple that used social media, it is liv­ing proof that hav­ing a social media pres­ence is return­ing real and mea­sur­able value to the uni­ver­sity. Since the major­ity of uni­ver­si­ties iden­tify engag­ing alumni as their top pri­or­ity, they should look at the amount of dona­tions received from those who are active on the university’s social media chan­nels vs. those who aren’t – the same applies for atten­dance at alumni events. It is these types of obser­va­tions which can give uni­ver­si­ties a tan­gi­ble sense of ROI and can also help when it comes to strate­gic planning.

June 6, 2011 – 11:25 am
By Mathieu Taillefer | Posted in Optimizing Resources, Retention, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
“Seeks education—will travel”, or how changing tuition fees could impact the European Higher Education dream of free exchange of students.

“We do have to remem­ber cross-​border flows.”

In the ongo­ing spec­u­la­tion of how English and Welsh stu­dents will respond to the new tuition fees, there are those who men­tion the influ­ence it will have on ‘cross-​border traf­fic’ and they only think about the bor­ders within the UK. [http://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk/​n​e​w​s​/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​1​3​0​6​5​039]

British stu­dents, on the other hand, seem to be start­ing to explore the options they have out­side of the UK now that the fees their home coun­try intends to charge might become unaf­ford­able.[www​.tele​graph​.co​.uk/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​u​n​i​v​e​r​s​i​t​y​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​8​5​2​1​0​2​8​/​S​t​u​d​y​i​n​g​-​a​b​r​o​a​d​-​i​t​-​p​a​y​s​-​t​o​-​h​a​v​e​-​e​u​r​o​-​v​i​s​i​o​n​.​h​tml] [http://​www​.inde​pen​dent​.co​.uk/​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​/​s​t​u​d​y​-​a​b​r​o​a​d​/​n​e​w​s​/​g​e​t​-​m​o​r​e​-​s​t​u​d​y​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​r​-​m​o​n​e​y​-​i​n​s​i​d​e​-​t​h​e​-​e​u​r​o​z​o​n​e​-​2​2​8​9​2​4​1​.​h​tml].

Where will they go? Having lived in the Netherlands most of my life and hav­ing worked in higher edu­ca­tion for more than 15 years, I am quite famil­iar with the Dutch sit­u­a­tion and—as the above men­tioned news­pa­per arti­cles point out—I know there are a quite a num­ber of excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties there for British stu­dents. But where else could they go in Europe? I decided to dig a lit­tle deeper into this, fig­ur­ing two cri­te­ria were going to be essential:

1. The uni­ver­sity needs to be set in an English friendly envi­ron­ment (mean­ing not just the peo­ple at uni­ver­sity but also locals who speak English well), and
2. Low cost air car­ri­ers cater to the region.

The first cri­te­rion unfor­tu­nately rules out most, if not all, of the Mediterranean coun­tries as well as France. It could make Germany a chal­lenge, although you prob­a­bly would be fine in the big­ger cities like Berlin, Frankfurt or Munich. No short­age of excel­lent uni­ver­si­ties in Germany, and tuition fees sit at €1.000 a year in three of the 16 states within the coun­try. In the other states, it’s free! Between them the uni­ver­si­ties offer 112 Bachelor and 601 Master pro­grammes con­ducted in English.
Austria would be tricky in terms of English, but Vienna might work and apart from liv­ing in a gor­geous city, you could get into a ‘Times Higher Education top 200’ ranked uni­ver­sity for free.

The most English-​friendly envi­ron­ment of course is offered by Ireland where every­body speaks English. EU stu­dents who meet cer­tain require­ments are exempted from pay­ing tuition fees for under­grad­u­ate pro­grams, but they will have to pay a gen­eral con­tri­bu­tion of around €2.000 (£1.750) per year, which is still quite a bit more than tuition fees else­where in Europe. Master degrees do not come cheap in Ireland nei­ther for the Irish nor for EU stu­dents. Most of the post grad­u­ate tuition fees sit between €5.000 and €20.000 a year (£4.300-£17.000).

The most afford­able options for adven­tur­ous Britons are to be found in the North of Europe. The Scandinavian coun­tries and neigh­bour­ing Finland are known for their broad com­mand of English in all lev­els of soci­ety. They are also known for the over­all high level of their edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Less known is the fact that higher edu­ca­tion is free for EU citizens.

The uni­ver­si­ties in Scandinavia and Finland offer a vast amount of English-​spoken pro­grammes. Most of them lead to Master degrees, but for those who search well, there are enough inter­est­ing bach­e­lor pro­grammes to be found. For instance in Finland: this coun­try tops the list of Bachelor pro­grammes in English with no less than 105 pro­grammes. After com­ple­tion of their Bachelor degree, stu­dents could of course stay in Finland and go ahead with one of the 226 Master-​programmes in English. But they could also explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties in the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries: Denmark offers 117 Ma-​programmes, Norway 220 and Sweden a stag­ger­ing 696. Living expenses for stu­dents in these coun­tries vary between €700 and €1.100 a month (£610-£950), mean­ing that 10 months in Oslo (the most expen­sive of all the options) would be only a frac­tion over the £9.000 tuition fee level of almost every uni­ver­sity in England and Wales.

More infor­ma­tion on these and other European coun­tries and their uni­ver­si­ties can be found in a pdf in our research sec­tion.

The peo­ple of the European coun­tries which offer access to higher edu­ca­tion for free, find higher edu­ca­tion and equal access so impor­tant that they finance it by way of their taxes. They hold strong to the idea that every stu­dent who wants to attend uni­ver­sity and is qual­i­fied to go, should be able to do so. To me, this ded­i­ca­tion to safe­guard­ing high qual­ity HE and keep­ing it so acces­si­ble is to be applauded. The European leg­is­la­tion aimed at stim­u­lat­ing free exchange of stu­dents through­out Europe, stat­ing that all EU stu­dents will pay the same as national stu­dents, should be as well.

It took enor­mous effort to get all European coun­tries on the same page in 1999 when the Bologna process was started, aim­ing at cre­at­ing the European Higher Education Area wherein stu­dents would be able to move freely and study every­where in Europe at the same con­di­tions as national cit­i­zens, thus elim­i­nat­ing the notion of for­eign­ers and cel­e­brat­ing the idea of Europeans — at least where stu­dents were concerned.

To me it is wor­ri­some that these joint efforts and this shared ideal now could actu­ally be threat­ened because of the tuition-​fee deci­sions of the UK gov­ern­ment which ulti­mately will make some Europeans more equal than oth­ers. The hard fought free exchange of stu­dents within the European Higher Education Area is likely to become one-​way traf­fic where England and Wales are con­cerned. With their tuition fees ris­ing up to £9.000, very few EU stu­dents will opt for obtain­ing a degree in these UK coun­tries. On the other hand, all options on the con­ti­nent are still wide open to English and Welsh stu­dents and these options in fact have only become sig­nif­i­cantly more attractive.

So, will they cross the North Sea in hordes? That is hard to pre­dict, as so much is so hard to pre­dict at present. But no mat­ter the num­ber, this move of the British gov­ern­ment is bound to influ­ence cross-​border traf­fic over many more bor­ders than just the ones in the UK.

J

May 27, 2011 – 5:35 pm
By Inez Uerz | Posted in The Student Experience, WYNIWYG | Comments (0)
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