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Alfred Conference Bike a lesson in authenticity and change

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Chances are you’ve read about the Alfred University Campus Tour Conference Bike in various higher education press resources or in my colleague Ray Ulmer’s Recruitment Minute.

But let me give you the inside story.

Alfred University and their Director of Marketing, Jodi Bailey, are the kind of clients all services providers love to work with. They embrace change (even though they face internal hurdles) and are fun to work with.

Back in the winter of 2008 when I first toured Alfred’s beautiful mountainside campus in Western New York, I told them, “Your admissions office in Alumni Hall is on one far end of campus, and you’re walking tours about the full length (about 1/2 mile) to the other end ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Parents, Student Workers

"Taking Baby Boomers Back to School"

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Let me connect two emails I received this week into a rambling stream of consciousness:

Millennial World Video
Bryn Campbell at the University of Delaware is co-presenting at a PACAC Workshop with my colleague Trent Gilbert, Experience Evaluator. They’re talking about Customer Service, Generations and the Campus Visit. Bryn found a video that so humorously captures the Millennial mindset:

Millennial World

There’s a great line in the video, “Taking Baby Boomers Back to School.” Yes, for years we’ve all been dealing with the great co-purchasing generation: Millennials and their Boomer parents have invaded campuses as prospective and “dual-enrolled” students.

Chances are you saw the recent Boston Globe ...

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Categories: Lists, Uncategorized

Smart Signature Moments and Memorabilia

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Two of the tenets of The Experience Economy are Signature Moments (think throwing a coin in the Fountain Trevi in Rome and having your photo made with Mickey Mouse at a Disney park).

Recently I’ve come across three really great ones:

San Francisco Zoo

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Created posters with various animals parts, guest stand in front of them and they take photos where it appears they have wings, antlers and other animal parts. And as reported in Advertising Age, they’ve created an online gallery for guests to upload them and share. As put them out on city bus shelters as part of an award wining outdoor ad campaign.

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Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campaign Intelligence, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized, Website

New visitor spaces at University of Akron and Kennesaw State University

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Nothing makes me happy like change on a client campus!

Last week Trent Gilbert, our Experience Evaluator, and I attended the “reveal” ceremony of Kennesaw State’s Insight Room. This is the room where they host their guests and conduct the information session. Along with a long list of improvements to the visitor experience and tour, KSU had created a one-of-a-kind mural. It’s from the perspective of standing on the center green of campus and reveals many traditions. It’s also a provides storytelling talking points for presenters. It’s got great energy and has transformed a boring stale corporate room, into one with a fun, collegiate feel.

KSU Insight Room Before

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KSU Insight Room ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Lists, Uncategorized

FLIP for a better campus visit evaluation

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flipevaluation

All campus visits should be evaluated by students and parents. (And each should have different evaluations.) And the data for evaluations should be constantly used towards improvement.

The problem is most schools provide detailed, 20+ questions on two-sides of 8.5″x11″ paper and the whole thing is too taxing on those filling them out and those processing them.

This weekend I ate at FLIP burger boutique here in Atlanta. (By Top Chef contestant Richard Blais.) The place is contemporary homage to an American classic. But I’m not here to review restaurants.

Tucked inside the bill folder was a simple evaluation form on card stock. It asked to rank five simple topics ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Two Tales of Customer Service – which is your school like?

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I’ve often said what’s hindering The Experience Economy movement is the lack of customer service in our current service/information economy. Our k-12 schools are still preparing graduates to go work in factories as cogs on an assembly line, not for jobs in a service economy.

The State of the Experience Economy (and the progression from a service to an experience) came up at the 10th Anniversary/Birthday of the publishing of Pine and Gilmore’s Book,
The Experience Economy (TEE). Held at the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland, OH. Some 80 people from across the country attended.

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore next to a cake of ...</p><a class=Continue Reading

Categories: College Recruiting, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Happy 10th Birthday to The Experience Economy

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teepartycake

On April 28, 1998 Harvard Business School Press released Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore’s ground breaking text The Experience Economy-Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage

While I’ve referenced this book, applied it to campus visit and given away countless copies to clients, colleagues and more: now it’s time to celebrate this 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

On April 28, 2008 fans of the book and experience economy folks from across the globe will gather at the Ritz-Carleton in Cleveland for a 10th Birthday Party thrown by the authors and their consultancy, Strategic Horizons.

Click here for details or to RSVP.

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Categories: Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Consider your advertising (it's a cluttered marketplace)

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It’s my goal to make this blog about the campus visit experience and the experience economy, so rarely do I post about traditional advertising.

On my “endless road trip” (as Chronicle of Higher Education writer Eric Hoover called my campus visit travels) I take Atlanta’s MARTA rail to and from the airport. I noticed that the car I was riding on had 4-5 “higher education” ads. Now there are only 10-12 ad spaces per car. I thought this was a fluke, so at each station I changed cars and saw this repeating itself in every car.

There amongst the fast food, felony search, and mobile phone ads was a plethora of “college” ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Leaving Las Vegas (and bad customer service)

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February 25-27 was the TargetX Client Xpert Summit in Las Vegas. We had some 60+ clients from some 40+ colleges and universities from across the country participate. (Some of whom paid their own way to attend because of travel/budget cuts.)

The presentations were engaging and featured many clients.

The conversations and networking even better.

The Experience Excursion an experience.

But customer service in Las Vegas was terrible.

Ironically on the flight out I was reading a two articles in the 3/2/2009 Businessweek that I found relevant:

BTW – What Doesn’t Happen in Las Vegas
Short article about the decrease and cancellations of business meetings in Las Vegas. While perception is everything the article says,

“But in December, the number of corporate meetings was down ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized, Xpert Summit

Campus Tours as Tourism (from the NY Times)

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Even before I became higher education’s first “Experience Evangelist” I always loved touring college campuses. Would do so whenever travel and time permitted.

It seems that I’m not alone in this pastime. The Sunday New York Times Travel Section’s “College Campuses as Affordable Travel Destinations” reports about other who do the same and tips on doing so.

Click here to read the main article: “No Application Needed: College Tours”
This article focuses mainly on Yale.

Click here to read the companion piece “There’s More to See Than Classrooms and Football Stadiums”
It features: Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Illinois Institute of Technology and others.

But remember this tip: admissions job isn’t to tour every visitor to campus-only those ...

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Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized

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. 90: Facebookgate Part II: Lessons learned

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In case you missed it, a major social media scandal broke in higher education just before the holiday break.  Need to catch up?  Read my XpertTip from December 22 for a summary of what went down:

If you have been following, you already know that “Facebookgate” has some important lessons to teach us about social media and recruitment.  And while I’m certainly not the only person to weigh-in on the matter, I would like to share what I think are some key takeaways from the incident.

From my corner of the world (and in no particular order), here they are:

  • You can’t hide from social media. And in this tumultuous environment, authenticity is king.  If your efforts lack transparency, they ...
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Categories: Authenticity, Lists, Outside Resources, Social Media, Social Networking, Uncategorized

XpertTip No.84: 'What would you say…you DO here?'

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From where I sit, the movie Office Space stands head and shoulders above the rest — at least as far as workplace satires go.

Its varied philosophical lessons disguised as sarcastic dialogue make it ultra-relatable (though hopefully not too much;) I even wrote a paper on its management lessons when I was in graduate school.

One of the most memorable scenes involves “The Bobs” — two consultants fumbling over the task of deciding who is valuable to the company and who should get the axe. They attempt to make that distinction by asking that now famous and often-imitated question: “What would you say…you DO here?”

Here at the AMA Symposium in Chicago, I find myself being asked the very same thing. More ...

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Categories: Did You Know?, Lists, Misc., Uncategorized

XpertTip No. 82: 'Cents' and sensibility

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Regardless of who you’re voting for tomorrow, I think we all agree that there are very serious economic challenges ahead.

From the collapse of financial giants and 401k blues to dismal projections for the holiday “retail season” — it seems we’ve all got money matters on the brain.

It makes perfect sense then that the cost of college will continue to make headlines in the coming months. And it’s certain to impact your yield.

Is your office prepared to handle it?

On the eve of our nation’s biggest election, I thought I’d offer a few ideas for you to proactively address your cost. While you can’t completely control it, you should be able to control how you communicate it.

Have you considered:

  • Adding sessions on ...
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Categories: Email Campaign Ideas, eXpressNet, Lists, Parents, Social Networking, Uncategorized

XpertTip No. 81: All apologies

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Recently, I received a frantic call from a client who had just done an email broadcast with a typo in it.

Sometimes you can get away with small errors like this, but this situation was a little different. The typo in question was a misspelling of the school’s name — and it went to 90,000 people inviting them to an Open House.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), it was a situation we’ve encountered before.

It’s been said that technology is only as good as the humans who operate it — and we all have those days when we’re either too tired or too distracted to notice a mistake (like right now as I sit here delirious from staying up to watch the World Series;)

Today I ...

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Categories: Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Lists

XpertTip No. 78: 'I didn't know I could do that'

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Writing this tip poses an interesting challenge for me.

Each week I attempt to write something that resonates with everyone; walking the line between “quick and dirty” product features and broader issues in recruitment marketing.

But in my efforts not to bore those of you who’ve been clients for years, I sometimes neglect the need to talk about the most basic functionality of our tools.

I was reminded of this last week when I had a conversation with a long-time client who didn’t know about the Seed/Test List feature in their Email account.

Clearly even seasoned TargetX-ers can benefit from a little review of features they might not be using well (or at all).

So this week I decided to focus on a few ...

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Categories: Did You Know?, Email, Features, Lists, Uncategorized

Xpert Tip No.77: There's got to be a better way

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Well folks, put another NACAC Conference in the books.

Seattle stood out to me as one of the best cities — with great sessions, great venues and lots of smart people.

For me, the only bad part about it was the trip home.

My colleagues and I experienced one of those fifteen-hour travel days, courtesy of weather delays that make it really tough to handle the already exasperating airline experience.

If you travel often, you know what I mean. I’ve found that every step in the process, from booking to boarding, has me repeating the same mantra: “There’s got to be a better way.”

I decided to make use of my time to catch up with Seth’s blog (one of my favorites). To ...

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Categories: Lists, Misc., NACAC, Summer Projects, Surveys, Workshops and Events, Your Website

XpertTip No. 75: What to blog about (a new list)

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We’re midway through September, and friends, I’m starting to see it already.

Those excited and eager student bloggers you trained just a few weeks back begin to morph into posting procrastinators — a deflated version of their former, highly-motivated selves.

To help you cope, a few months ago I did a tip with a list of possible topics for student bloggers. It seemed to help; I heard from many of you that giving your students more direction really kept them focused on posting (ahhh… Millennials;)

The response was so great that I made a note to revisit the subject again.

This new list comes on the heels of new research that showed less than 20% of bloggers acknowledged the specific audience ...

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Categories: Blogs, Lists

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. 67: 7 strategies to keep bloggers posting

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“How the heck do we keep them interested and posting regularly!?”

It’s the question I get most often about student bloggers.

It was also a popular topic of conversation last week at our Boston workshop. More than a few clients told me they have trouble keeping their bloggers…uh…regular;)

If you’re dealing with blasé bloggers, here are 7 strategies that could help spark a renewed interest:

1. Reinforce that brevity is ok.

  • Hey, it’s a blog, not a book. A three-sentence post is fine! If students feel like they have to write something long and drawn out, they’ll put it off. Plus most readers prefer short posts.

2. Meet with them regularly.

  • You should treat your bloggers like any other student organization — and that includes meeting ...
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Categories: Blogs, Lists, Student Workers, 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

XpertTip No. 51: A year of tips that got you talking

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Today’s announcement: This week marks the one-year anniversary of the XpertTip!

Thanks so much to everyone for your support and for allowing me to invade your inbox every Monday. It seems you’ve found my musings helpful — guess we’ll have to continue with round 2;)

Since today is St. Patrick’s Day, this (mostly) Irish girl thought it would be fun to celebrate the tips that really made some noise this year.

In no particular order, here are the topics that really got you talking:

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Categories: Lists, Misc.

XpertTip No. 47: The social media election

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Ok — let me just start by saying I’m no political analyst.

While I certainly follow election coverage enough to educate myself as a voter, most times the political pundits’ affection for talking in circles leaves me nothing but dizzy.

What I am quite clear on, however, is the role that social media has played in this election.

Last July saw our very first YouTube debate and Facebook didn’t take long to get in on the act. Bloggers (both paid and unpaid) have become a political tour de force-to-be-reckoned-with. And let’s not forget how candidates across the political spectrum are learning to respect the power of viral video and Twitter.

Yes, it’s web warfare out there — and we’re just scratching the surface.

So what ...

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Categories: Blogs, Lists, Misc., Outside Resources, Web Traffic, Your Website

XpertTip No. 46: Six ways to embrace parents

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The intimate (and co-purchasing) relationship between Millennials and their parents is, well, kind of old news at this point.

These days, admissions professionals are regularly called on to take part in their own version of “Meet the Parents” (hopefully with much more poise than Ben Stiller;)

But all joking aside — the importance of parents in the college selection process has forced most offices to stand up and take notice.

Many of you have adjusted inquiry forms to include parent first names and email addresses. Gold stars to those of you who have even created a parallel “Parent Communication Plan.”

We’ve definitely gotten pretty savvy about collecting the 4-1-1 on Mom and Dad — but what are you doing with all of that info?

Here ...

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Categories: Blogs, Chat, Email Campaign Ideas, eXpressNet, eXpressSUITE, Lists, Millennials, Student Yield, Uncategorized, Your Website

XpertTip No. 41: Avoid blogger's block

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In the 48 years since To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Harper Lee has produced only 3 magazine articles (all in the 60′s).

After In Cold Blood, Truman Capote never published another book.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez commented that “2005 was the first year in my life that I didn’t write a line.” He decided to give up writing because his heart was not in it anymore.

While your student bloggers probably aren’t gunning for the Pulitzer, they often face the same feelings of apathy when they simply don’t know what to write about.

It may help to remember that posts shouldn’t be long, detailed accounts of the day (frankly, no one cares if they took a longer-than-normal shower and their roommate was on the ...

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Categories: Blogs, Lists

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