Archive for 'College Recruiting'

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A student’s perspective

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Applying to college has been a big part of my life for the past year and a half. It is an extremely important process for someone my age, looking ahead to where I’ll spend the next four years. But it’s definitely a process that could use some work! Here are some of the things I experienced, that I thought might be valuable to share with you.images

I think simplifying applications would be beneficial to all colleges (and helpful to the students who are applying). Sometimes, when completing applications, I felt like the information that was being asked of me was a little too personal.

The fees associated with certain schools’ applications was ...

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Categories: Campus Visit, College Recruiting, Communication, Cost, Experience, Storytelling, Student Recruiting, Student Search

Pinpoint what’s hot on campus

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Pinterest is growing up. The showy image-sharing social media site is not just about pinning pretty pictures anymore, says higher ed marketing specialist McKenzie Coco. Now colleges can measure user engagement thanks to a new built-in analytics tool. pinterest

“Pinterest has taken social media by storm, already catching up to Twitter in its short existence,” says Coco, founder and president of FSC Interactive, an online marketing agency that specializes in social media strategies for higher education. “The addition of metrics solidifies its place in the online marketing sphere. This is not a shiny new toy, but rather a formidable and results-driven online marketing tool.”

The addition of data-mining means colleges can now answer such ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Student Recruiting, Tracking

Render authenticity (Part 2)

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authenticity_erasedIn last week’s Recruitment Minute, Render authenticity (Part 1), I talked about why it is important to render authenticity in your campus visit experience.  In this week’s conclusion, I want to help you understand a few ways you can move that process along on your own campus.

College is a transformative experience.

Most colleges and universities hope to light a spark within their students, encouraging them to spend their lives learning something new, trying something different and striving to be their best. Institutions want students to participate in class, sign up for an internship, study abroad, engage in community service, live in the residence halls — and most importantly — ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, College Recruiting, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Millennials, Storytelling

Making college fairs count

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Conference season is rapidly approaching for our team here at TargetX. Many of our folks will be traveling around the country meeting with current and future clients, presenting on higher ed industry trends and of course, showcasing TargetX products and services. NACAC college fair

As the conference planning coordinator, I’m very much involved in the process — from session proposals to final shipping (I know, super glamorous right?) – and I’m always looking for tips on how to improve our presence at tradeshows.

I came across a great article this week by Dan Roche in MediaPost, and that got me thinking about its value to all of you, our friends in ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Fall Travel, Spring travel

Into the cloud

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Amazing how quickly things can change in today’s digital world. In a survey of Americans seven months ago, one-third said cloud computing literally has to do with clouds and one-half said that bad weather messes with the cloud. More than half said they don’t ever use the cloud even though it turns out 95 percent of them do. Got Cloud?

Compare that to last month when USA Today, the newspaper that prides itself on giving Americans only what they really need to know, published a testimonial to cloud computing, highlighting how it is revolutionizing corporate computing.

“Cloud computing is exploding and growing faster than a swirling funnel crossing the Oklahoma plains,” wrote ...

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Categories: Change, Cloud, Cloud Computing, College Recruiting, CRM, Student Recruiting

How to do more with less

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Since I started at TargetX, I would say that I’ve talked to over 200 schools about student recruitment and how technology can assist them. When I have these conversations about the latest trends and tools, I find that we often return to a common topic — the economy and budget. Which usually shifts the conversation to ROI, data-driven decision making and how to do more with less.
CT article

Clearly my friends on campus and I are not the only ones talking about this. An article in the February edition of Campus Technology magazine explores 7 different aspects of customer relationship management (CRM) technology that colleges and universities are using to ...

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Categories: Cloud, Cloud Computing, College Recruiting, CRM, Data, Enterprise CRM, Return On Investment

Lessons from the NFL

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As someone who has worked in both the corporate and higher-ed worlds, I have always been impressed with the willingness of admissions officers to share their successes and failures with colleagues. While corporate marketers operate in secrecy as if they’re Cold War operatives, admissions folks stand up at conferences around the country, telling their competitors and anyone else in the room what worked for them this year, even providing details in case people want to replicate their successes while avoiding their stumbles.

There’s an openness and collaborative spirit that makes higher education unique among industries. That’s why it’s intriguing to hear an expert on enrollment policy suggest that colleges follow the model of the National Football League, and establish rules that ...

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Categories: Change, College Recruiting, Student Recruiting

Have you seen the restrooms?

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Do you have a driving route that you normally take for family vacations? One where you know all the proper places to stop and use the restroom? For example — my family stops at the Dunkin’ Donuts before we get on the NY Thruway.

We have all had moments with friends or family where they need to use the facilities and we say “Wait. Don’t go here, the bathrooms are gross, wait until we get to the next place, the restrooms are cleaner.” Clean restrooms are such a priority for people that a close friend of mine recently introduced me to the iPhone app, “Where to Wee.” The ...

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Categories: Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, College Recruiting, Experience

If you’re not content marketing…

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If you’re not content marketing these days, you’re not marketing. That’s the battle cry of Joe Pulizzi, author, speaker and content marketing evangelist.

Six years ago he launched a marketing services website that has evolved into the Content Marketing Institute, aimed at helping organizations move away from interruption-based marketing and toward the creation of a content-centered strategy. Content that is relevant and valuable to readers, likely to generate a sense of trust, and perhaps over time, prompt them to buy from you.

“Basically,” says Pulizzi, “content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication, Content Marketing, Marketing, Student Recruiting

Brand shifts and yield in 2013

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Coming back from holiday break means that it’s time to kick into high gear your accepted student communications, yield events and many conversations with students and parents. It’s the time of year where the conversation shifts and families are getting serious about where they might go to school in the fall. It’s important for admissions (and the rest of campus) to start thinking about what message you want to be sending to those students in order to help them make a final decision.

My colleague Jeff Kallay passed along an article before the holidays, “A Brand Shift for 2013: From Aspiration to Inspiration” by Alan Snitow. It’s an interesting concept that I thought was worth holding onto and sharing at ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Change, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Marketing, Storytelling, Student Recruiting, Student Yield, Yield

Hide not your talents

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“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”
-Benjamin Franklin

As we come to the end of what seems like a fast year, many of us take stock in what has been and what could be. We’ll celebrate the successes we’ve achieved, and for some, mourn the losses hoping for a better new year.

New Year’s Eve has become a special holiday to me — excited about the potential that lies ahead and what I could do to improve my life going forward.

Many people will do the same, but will focus on their weaknesses, trying to improve through starting a weight-loss program or joining a gym, cutting out the swearing, drinking less, being more ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Marketing, Professional Development, Student Recruiting

Campus engagement pays off

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Within higher education’s increasingly competitive environment, admissions counselors are well aware that their outreach involves not simply providing reliable information, but the responsibility to actively seek students who will succeed at their institutions.

Even so, while pressure mounts for counselors to produce numbers (visits, applications, etc.), the most talented representatives will look beyond standard drivers to find creative ways to demonstrate what words can only describe.  For example, the claim that college is a time to explore, learn and create, and that “College X” knows how to support students throughout the process is, at best, a promise.  Easily made, easily broken, and not particularly memorable.

If college is about learning, then we believe that the admissions process ought to be about learning, ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, College Recruiting, Experience, Student Recruiting, Student Yield

A picture is worth a thousand words

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Popular photo-sharing site Instagram has been added to the social media mix by many colleges and universities. Proving itself to be a useful tool not only for prospective students — but current students and alumni too.

While you might cringe at the thought of adding something else to your “to do” list, there are a few articles making the case for the new(er) channel with examples of how it’s working for campus communities.

Highlighted in a BestCollegesOnline.com article, here are just a few from their “top ten” list:

Going behind the scenes.
University of Florida is using Instagram to go behind the scenes of the university. Sharing photos from a variety of locations like class lectures, the university TV station and ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Marketing, Online Experiences, Social Media, Storytelling, Student Recruiting

Campus Visit Talk: Brittney Joyce and Furman University

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Each month the Experience Team from TargetX will share with you a Campus Visit Tip, Trend and Talk. All of the “three T’s” are designed to give you a bit of insight into the work we do, the people we work with, and the places we pull our inspiration from. Here is this month’s “Talk”.

This month’s featured Talk is with:
Brittney Joyce, M.Ed.
Campus Visit Manager
Furman University, Campus Visit Client since 2009

Q: How did you work to create change within your campus visit?
If I can pinpoint one single thing that I helped to orchestrate that created change for our campus visit, it would be the ...

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Categories: Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Talk, Campus Visit Three T's, Change, College Recruiting, Student Workers

NACAC — A gathering of 4,000 extroverts

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This year’s NACAC conference was all about the conversation. At the TargetX booth, in the hotel lobby, over drinks and meals, in the streets of Denver, I learned one thing for certain:

Admissions people like to talk.

Pattie Skrha, Director of Admissions at Baldwin Wallace University, summed it up best when she said, “It’s a gathering of 4,000 extroverts who like to talk!”

Most conversations were about admissions and recruitment. Even better most were optimistic and gave the conference an upbeat tone. Maybe it was Denver’s elevation, maybe it’s that everyone is accepting that things have really changed in the past five years and we’re in a new ...

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Categories: Change, College Recruiting, Conferences, Free on Friday Webcasts, NACAC, Professional Development

3 mistakes that are killing your marketing efforts

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I admit it.  I was pretty jazzed about the Spice Girls reunion at this year’s Olympic Closing Ceremony.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em — for me it was a fun journey down memory lane with the gals who literally laid the soundtrack for the era of “girl power” (plus I’ll take anything that brings me back to the 90′s).

In honor of those brassy Brits, today I’m relating some advice on how to, ahem, “spice up” the writing in your marketing communications.

It comes from “copyblogger,” a favorite of the Marketing team here at TargetX.  If you don’t already subscribe, you should.  I mean it.  Don’t even read the rest ...

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Categories: Blogs, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Email, Email Recruiting, General, Marketing, Online Experiences

How to connect with prospects

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Here’s someone who seems to understand college-bound teens, respects them, treats them like adults and assumes nothing when it comes to their understanding of the often bewildering process of choosing an undergraduate institution.

Catherine Sloan is a former enrollment officer at Washington State University who now works for student-coaching company InsideTrack. She offers one of the better collections of best-practice tips for engaging — and eventually recruiting — traditional-age students.

“The key to turning prospective students into enrolled students is to form early and meaningful connections,” she writes, “and to let them know you have their best outcomes in mind.” Here are some of her 13 suggestions:

Leverage a student’s own momentum. When students engage with you, make sure that next steps are ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Millennials, Student Recruiting

CRM tools don’t recruit students.

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CRM technology can help you save money, track key metrics, fire comm-flows and become a much more efficient operation.  But good luck if you think CRM tools recruit students.

“Wait…what?!” you say? Can the VP of Marketing — for a CRM company — actually be telling you that our main recruiting product isn’t going to recruit students?

My friends, that is exactly what I’m saying.  Because CRM tools don’t recruit students.  People do.

Today I’d like to offer this important reminder to clients, prospective clients, colleagues and our industry at large.  Yes, CRM is the “hot” technology upgrade du jour — but it’s the people behind the tool that ultimately determine its usefulness and overall success.

Allow me ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, CRM, Leadership, Student Recruiting, Uncategorized

How’s your ROI?

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It’s one of those terms that fills most of us with dread.  ROI.  Return on investment.  Justify your existence.

The pressure on higher education seems to be coming from all directions these days, including internal.  And one of those internal pressure points is a growing emphasis on showing where, how and how effectively you’re spending marketing dollars and resources on student recruiting.

The American Association of Community Colleges has recognized this, and is devoting much of its professional development this year on helping members measure return on investment.

Kathy Corbalis, who serves as executive director of college relations at Atlantic Cape Community College, notes that higher-ed marketers “are being asked to demonstrate the value of their work,” and she offers some suggestions for ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, Marketing, Return On Investment

Sometimes the answers are simple

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This year marked my 18th NAGAP conference. For my acronym-challenged friends, this is the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals. My first presentation, in 1994 in San Francisco, was entitled “What is WWW?” Oh how the times have changed.

Over my career in higher education, I’ve attempted to bridge the divide between the undergraduate and graduate recruiting efforts — bringing the lessons learned recruiting an 18-year-old to the world of recruiting adults. However, I received pushback on a regular basis from the graduate professionals with claims of “we’re different” or “we don’t have the resources they have” or “we don’t have the same issues.”

Then came those pesky Millennials to their graduate program interview and campus tour with ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Graduate Recruiting, Student Recruiting

A little less conversation

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Change.

It’s an emotionally charged word in higher education, if not a dirty one.  And it’s been the war cry here at TargetX since day one.

When I joined the company back in 2005, I was quickly immersed into a culture of higher ed professionals trumpeting the need for industry change.  Defects from a world of cushy benefits and questionable accountability, they struck out on their own to become a voice of change in an industry sliding desperately into denial.

Together the team here wrote blog posts and email newsletters outlining how colleges needed to engage a new generation and operate more efficiently.   We spent years speaking at conferences about the impending shifts in technology, generations, demographics and more.  We even created our ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Change, College Recruiting, Leadership, Marketing, Overthrowing Dead Culture, Uncategorized

Ready for your Facebook facelift?

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SUNY Cortland believes in looking at the big picture. At least when it comes to Facebook.

So the central New York campus is inviting students, faculty, staff and alums to submit photos for the new cover image that will dominate its Facebook page starting on March 30th. That’s the day the social goliath has set for its worldwide switch to “Timeline,” a redesigned interface that emphasizes photos, especially the one that spans the top of the page.

Many colleges have already converted to the new design, posting everything from breathtaking campus vistas, to inspirational taglines, to depictions of their athletic mascots. Others — like SUNY Cortland — have at least a strategy in place, if not an actual image. But there are ...

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Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Facebook, Social Networking

Facebook without the whining

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“I would have written this article sooner,” says business journalist Lydia Dishman, “but I was busy on Pinterest.” Turns out, she wasn’t alone.

In her recent story in Fast Company magazine — entitled “Why Pinterest Is So Addictive” — Dishman explores the reasons this relatively new social networking site is attracting so many people, including, perhaps, students you’re trying to recruit.

Launched in 2010, Pinterest has suddenly exploded in popularity, with nearly 12 million unique U.S. visitors last month. The site is a virtual bulletin board that enables you to create online image collages, then easily share those collages — called pinboards — with other users.

Part of Pinterest’s appeal is that it is visually beautiful and overwhelmingly positive (“like Facebook without the ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking

How to redesign a website

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When Marketing VP Adrienne Hamson decided to redesign the TargetX website, she immediately thought about making it faster and simpler to navigate.  She knew it had to be more interactive.  And she vowed to make all the product information easily digestible.

But the real challenge, she realized, was to build upon all the best-practice advice that TargetX has become known for — and make the site a place where admissions professionals can go for content that will make them better recruiters and marketersShe succeeded, and TargetX just launched a new website that offers:

  • A video library consisting of the company’s popular “Free on Friday” webcasts aimed at admissions officers.

  • The iThink Blog, a compendium of posts about student recruiting from a variety of ...
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Categories: Campus Visit, College Recruiting, Websites

Writing your school’s resume

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You’ve heard it a thousand times — Be distinctive; stand out from your competitors. You can’t do that with your faculty/student ratio, no matter how impressive. Or with your small class sizes, no matter how important. Or with the personalized attention your professors provide their students, no matter how beneficial.

Start your story with something that cuts through the college marketing clutter, say all the experts. But perhaps no one has said it quite like advertising executive Angie Jones.

“I have a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing,” Jones writes in a recent blog post. Pretty good, but unfortunately millions of people in America have the same degree and emphasis, she says. “Education-wise, I don’t stand out from ...

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Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Marketing

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