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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

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

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

Mailing Millennials

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Talking about “snail mail” as an effective recruitment strategy is sure to raise an eyebrow or two, but don’t discount its benefits and the value it adds. In the second half of this year’s recruitment cycle, admissions offices are thinking more about acceptance letters, open house invitations and financial aid packages — all traditionally print recruitment pieces — that still work according to Deliver Magazine.

In the article “Making sense of the Millennials” by Allan Nahajewski, Millennials don’t mind direct mail. According to one study, Millennials say 75 percent of the mail they receive is valuable, and 73 percent of them have used direct mail coupons.

With this in mind — what’s the most effective way to use direct mail? ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Marketing, Millennial Generation, Millennials

Persuading the parents

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Beware the parents, says popular thought leader Jeff Kallay. They’ve morphed from the relatively benign helicopters to more savage stealth bombers, and you’d better be prepared to make a good case for why they should pay all that money to send their kids to your school.

Today’s college-bound students are the offspring of Generation Xers, who are more cynical, skeptical and stealthy than the parents of your previous classes. So forget the hype, be authentic, demonstrate your return-on-investment, said Kallay in a rousing conclusion to TargetX’s Xpert Summit — the company’s annual event for users of its technology and consulting services.

Kallay’s concluding keynote was not the first time many of the attendees thought about parents during the two-day conference. In fact, ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, CRM, Email Recruiting, Generations, Millennials, Parents, Xpert Summit

Video in recruitment

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Are you utilizing email effectively?

With all the recent additions to our marketing plans, we often forget about the power of this tool. Enhance your recruitment campaigns by including video messages.

Georgia Christian focuses on this topic in “Using Video in Email — Facts, Figures and Benefits,” on TheEmailGuide.com. Did you know that there is a 96.38% higher click-through rate and 5.6% higher open rate for email that contains video?  That statistic alone should give us reason to give this medium a try.

If not, here are some additional benefits that may persuade you:

Video is simple to use. All you need is your content and something to record with (phone or flip camera) and you’ll be all set.

It’s a standout. According to Christian, ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Email Recruiting, Videos

Forget Facebook, if you want to yield students you should be on YouTube

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Any dyed-in-the-wool Gen Xer can tell you that the first video MTV played when it launched on August 8, 1981 was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Not as many can tell you the second video played on MTV. Do you know?

Video facts you need to know:
-43% of current prime time internet traffic is real time entertainment ( 12.2.2010)
-Netflix streaming accounts for 20% of internet traffic on any given evening (BusinessWeek 12.2.2010)
-Cisco predicts that by 2013 video will be 90% of consumer internet traffic (TechCrunch 7.9.2009)
-YouTube is a top “search engine” accounting for 28% of Google searches (Google 1.31.2011)
-There are 500 million monthly YouTube ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Did You Know?, Facebook, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media, Social Networking, Storytelling, Student Yield, Videos, Web Traffic, Webcast, Your Website

XpertTip No. 179: Thanks again

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In honor of the holiday this week, I thought it would be a good time to “talk turkey” about how important it is to maintain regular communication with prospects (especially as the admissions cycle shifts from fall travel to winter file-reading).

But it’s not enough just to contact inquiries and applicants regularly if you’re not providing something of value. So today I thought I’d point you to a tip that may just help you accomplish both.

I’d like to revisit a Thanksgiving tip I did a few years back — one which, thankfully, is still relevant today.

Read my “Ideas for Thanksgiving week” post for a slew of campaign ideas (served up with a side of holiday humor).

Even ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Email Campaign Ideas

XpertTip No. 163: "Flip the Funnel" part II

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Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned a presentation I’m working on called “Flip the Funnel?“

Well, as usual, the weeks have flown by and tomorrow is the big day.

I’ll be presenting “Flip the Funnel” here in Chicago tomorrow at this year’s EduWeb Conference.  And, as predicted, it’s the day before and I’m still working on finishing my slides;)

In case you missed my initial description, my presentation makes the argument that the traditional “admissions funnel” as we know it has a few, shall we say, “holes” in it.

Sure, “the funnel” does a nice job of illustrating the process most prospects go through to eventually enroll at your institution.

But as the be-all-and-end-all rubric for planning your marketing communications ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication Plans, Student Yield

Sell your Ideas.

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It’s May 28th and you have a laundry list of good ideas that you told yourself you would tackle post-May 1st. It’s time to start moving forward. How will you communicate your new ideas to your colleagues, director, dean or VP?

FastCompany.com featured helpful “how-to” tips from Sam Harrison’s new book IdeaSelling: Successfully Pitch Your Creative Ideas to Bosses, Clients, and Other Decision Makers. Harrison shares his top 12 ways to have your ideas heard.

A sampling of Harrison’s tips from IdeaSelling include:

“If they feel they birthed it, they can’t kill it.” Make the idea their idea. Allow your supervisor to help you come up with the idea and the sell will be easier.

“Stand tall, talk short.” No one will ever wish ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Change, Communication Plans

Be more social, be more…corporate?

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Corporate websites need to make an effort to be more social — does yours?

A recent blog entry from Hubspot.com says corporate websites are guilty of producing boring content. “These sites end up being a time and financial drain without delivering the appropriate value to current and potential customers.” Sound familiar?

If you have heard comments like this around your campus or by prospective students, then you should sit down with others and reevaluate your site’s priorities. Hubspot’s suggestion: “Four Ways to Make Your Corporate Website More Social.”

Focused on engaging customers and empowering them to share with others, Hubspot suggests a level of interaction between the customers and the organization that does not exist when the website spews one-way messages.

While the article ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Online Experiences, Social Media, Social Networking, Summer Projects, Web Traffic, Websites, Your Website

XpertTip No. 154: Freeze the melt

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Well, folks — the results are in.

May 1, 2010 may be visible only from the rear-view mirror, but we’re hearing that most of you are still in full-on “recruitment mode.”

Has it really happened?  Has “May-one” officially become “June-one” (or even “July-one?”)

From my recent discussions, many of you are still brainstorming ways to get this year’s incoming class to respond, register, sign up for an orientation session, etc. — all of the quote-unquote “normal” action steps for the newest members of your campus community.

Except it seems like this year’s brood is a little late to the game in many respects.

Others among you are feeling the effects of what happens when the “big-name” school down the road decides it’s time to hit ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Student Yield, Summer Projects

Wooing the admitted

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“Apps are up, deposits are down.” As these six words echo across many campuses this spring, there is a bigger spotlight than ever on “yield.”

Even the press has noticed. Eric Hoover, the superb writer and reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, took a look this week at “The Sweet and Subtle Science of Wooing the Admitted,” focusing on the concerted efforts of Lafayette College to improve its yield rate for the incoming class of 2010.

Rebecca Kern, education reporter for U.S News & World Report, is working on a story that describes “unique types of outreach…to attract admitted students to increase their yield.”

While yield has long been a focus of admissions offices, it has traditionally finished a distant third to ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, Student Yield

XpertTip No. 152: A lesson from graduate admissions

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People don’t always realize that TargetX has deep ties to graduate admissions because we spend a good bit of our time focusing on issues related to undergraduate recruiting.

But we work with a fairly large number of grad schools to provide everything from online applications and CRM to email broadcast support and educational seminars.

TargetX CEO Brian Niles actually spent the majority of his admissions career on the “grad” side as well — so it’s safe to say we know a thing or two about life after the B.A. (and B.S.;)

We also know that most undergraduate offices think there’s nothing to learn from their graduate counterparts on campus.

I beg to disagree.

Last week I presented ...

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Categories: Communication Plans

XpertTip No. 151: How much is too much?

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Last evening I had the pleasure of attending the President’s Welcome Reception here at SACAC in Jacksonville, FL (that’s the Southern Association’s regional conference for any of you following my jet-setting as of late;)

As fun as those receptions can be, I did eventually get around to talking about work with some pretty smart SACAC clients and friends.

Lee Ann Afton, the Associate Vice President for Enrollment at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA asked me a question about email that we all agreed would make a great tip — “How much is too much email?”

I get this question all the time.  But it’s really hard to give a cookie-cutter answer because it really should be different for every campaign, every audience ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Email Recruiting

XpertTip No. 131: Don't shoot the messenger

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You know how this time of year goes — before you can even put your Halloween costume away, department stores will be all decked-out for the holidays and radio stations will be spinning The Waitresses 24-7.*

But while the premature holiday push can be frustrating, it does remind us that the end of the year is coming on fast.

So today I’d like to remind you to start making plans for any special holiday campaigns you’d like to execute in the next few weeks — especially if they involve creative services.

I know it’s early, but you’ll need the time to brainstorm, refine your concepts and get the right people involved (before it’s too late).

Here are a few ideas to help kick your ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Email Campaign Ideas, Storytelling

XpertTip No. 111: Summer planning checklist

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It’s that time of year again — spring cleaning has blossomed into full-blown summer planning.  And we all know fall will be here quicker than you can say “college fair.”

To help you make the most of this much-needed planning time, here’s a quick list of TargetX-related “stuff” it’s time to refresh:

  • Email letterheads/html templates
  • Email communication plan(s)*
  • Email content (for messages you know you’ll be sending, like open house invitations, incomplete app reminders, etc.)
  • Fall chat schedule
  • Fall event information
  • Blogs/bloggers
  • Social network content (ongoing)
  • Campus visit:  check/update directions to campus, website info, train tour guides, monitor feedback, reappropriate staff/budget, etc.
  • “Student Search” plans
  • Any web content related to the items above

Have lots of summer help?  Revisit the “Summer Projects for Student Workers” tip for another list that’s ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Summer Projects

XpertTip No. 94: Yield Better Results

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“This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.” – Bill Murray as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)

We’re officially into the second month of the new year — and already another Super Bowl is history and the soothsaying rodent has had his moment in the sun (literally).

But regardless of the prediction from Punxsutawney, on campus, the Spring semester is well under way.  And for us admissions folks, that means on to more important things — like yield.

Have you given much thought to your upcoming yield initiatives?

If you’ve been in the field for some time, you already know that around this time of year, prospective students ...

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Categories: Chat, Communication Plans, Email Campaign Ideas, Lists, Student Yield, Twitter

XpertTip No.86: Chiefs, chefs and eManagers

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Last week’s tip touched on the hot topic of adding a staff member to handle interactive and social media efforts for admissions.

I was glad to see my client and friend Nikki Chun from the University of Miami join the discussion. As Miami’s “eManager,” Nikki has a fair amount of experience in this type of role. She shared a bit of what she does and how she came to be queen of all things “e” for the Hurricanes.

In her post, Nikki wrote: “I actually wonder if my job will be kind of obsolete in about five years. If things keep going in this direction, everyone on the admission staff could be an eManager in some way, shape or form.”

It’s a great ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Millennials, Misc., Outside Resources, Research, Social Media, Social Networking, Uncategorized

XpertTip No. 71: What guidance counselors want

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Two of my best friends and college roommates are high school guidance counselors.

When they aren’t working with students on the college selection process (or wearing one of the myriad other hats that come with the counselor gig), they rely heavily on technology to keep up with their personal lives.

They text message, share YouTube videos and post to photo-sharing sites. And they’re on Facebook. A lot.

Is this your image of the school counselor? If it isn’t, perhaps the way we communicate with prospects isn’t the only thing that needs to change.

Modern guidance offices want what we all want — a better way to keep up. That means making it easier for them to stay updated on important things like new ...

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Categories: Blogs, Chat, Communication Plans, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, eXpressNet, Invitations and Reminders, Lists, Misc., Summer Projects, Uncategorized

XpertTip No. 63: The 4 M's of Communication Plans

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“Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised at how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it’s easy to beat most folks.”
-Paul “Bear” Bryant, football coach, University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide

You’d be amazed at the number of quotes on planning I had to wade through to find this one (I desperately wanted to spare you from the old “failure to plan is planning to fail” mantra;)

But tired cliches aside — the importance of having a plan is so fundamental that pundits and poets alike have been writing about it for centuries.

If you’re looking to create or revise your communication plan, it helps to start with the basics. I’ve put ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Lists, Summer Projects, Uncategorized