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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

Let’s get visual

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I consider myself a “visual” learner. Draw out my thoughts on a whiteboard, watch a video tutorial, type out my weekly tasks in Evernote. So I wasn’t surprised to see Fast Company’s article “Fast Talk: The Visual Shift” — where industry experts were asked to weigh in on how businesses can adapt to our image-obsessed culture.

Experts from retail, news, government and more shared tips on how to infuse more imagery in your user and online experience, and they had some valid points that translated well to higher ed.

The Creative Visionary: Joe Stewart, partner and global creative director at Huge
“Consumers expect the same level of quality and service from digital that they would get in a store,” says ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Experience, Marketing, Online Experiences, Social Media, Storytelling, Student Recruiting

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

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

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

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

Campus Visit Tip: Reveal Outcomes

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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 “Tip”.

Reveal Outcomes

Open up a newspaper and you are bound to see an article that questions the value of higher education. Heck, this morning on the Today Show there was an entire segment on it. The articles and stories all ask the question “is college still worth it?”. It is the question on the minds of most families as they come to campus for a visit or ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Campus Visit Three T's, Campus Visit Tip, Experience, Graduate Recruiting, Storytelling, Student Recruiting, 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: Jodi Bailey and Alfred University

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Welcome to the first of a series of posts related to the Campus Visit! 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.

Recognizing that so many of us learn from the stories of others, we want to give you a glimpse inside the experiences of our clients. Each month we will profile one of our campus visit clients with the hopes that you can learn from them and ...

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Categories: Blogs, Blogs/Diaries, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, Experience, Storytelling, Student Recruiting, Student Yield

My baby, the marketer

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Having a new baby at home has led to a change in my reading habits. I never thought I would spend my time studying infant sleep patterns, best performing bottle warmers, or the finer differences between identical-looking car seats.

Brian Millar’s article “5 Things Toddlers Can Teach You About Marketing” seemed like a great opportunity to read outside the infant literary spectrum, but not too far.

Millar is the Strategy Director at Sense Worldwide, but during a two-year stint as a stay-at-home Dad, he found himself immersed in a culture that taught him some valuable marketing lessons. Yes, marketing lessons… from his children.

1. Emotional benefits sell better than rational ones. Ravioli was only a hit in Millar’s house after being renamed “pasta ...

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

Improving customer (and student) loyalty

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In my early days as an admissions counselor, I knew that my job was to help students get into their best-fit school. However, if anyone had told me then that I was working in customer service, I probably wouldn’t have defined my role in that way. Looking back, that connection is much more clear to me now.

As lead trainer and a client services team member for TargetX, customer service and customer loyalty are a huge part of my job. That’s why I love the article “5 Ways to Take Customer Loyalty to the Next Level,” by Joanna Lord of Entrepreneur magazine. It had a lot of value for me and I see many parallels to higher ed. Here are a ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Customer Service, Student Recruiting

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

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

Presidential wisdom in 140 characters

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Babson College President Len Schlesinger extended an invitation to his campus: “Hope to see you tomorrow at 10:30 AM to Meet the Sharks..watch two Babson students pitching their best ideas to Daymond John and Mark Cuban!”

In case you didn’t notice, that invite to a taping of “Shark Tank” is 140 characters long.  It’s a tweet from one of the few college presidents who regularly shares his thoughts via Twitter.  And Lauren Landry, who covers higher education for a Boston news site, can’t figure out why Schlesinger is the exception and not the rule.

“I’m able to follow students, professors, deans and student newspapers, gathering all that I need into 140-character snippets,” she writes.  “The one group missing? College presidents. I follow ...

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Categories: Social Networking, Student Recruiting, Twitter

International recruiting goes social

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International recruitment has become a top priority for many universities. There are a number of reasons for this trend.

Universities benefit by internationalizing their campus, enhancing their reputation and scoring higher in international rankings. International students also pay higher tuition fees, which is a welcome addition for cash-strapped institutions in today’s financial climate.

Traditional methods for recruiting international students include establishing strategic partnerships with other institutions, sending recruiters abroad to attend university fairs and hiring overseas agents.

The problem with these methods is that they are expensive and time-consuming. While the use of recruitment agents is a common practice in many countries, the issue is controversial in the United States and is currently being examined by a NACAC panel.

Dr. Rahul Choudaha, a renowned ...

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Categories: International Recruiting, Social Media, Social Networking, Student Recruiting