Archive for 'Uncategorized'

Render authenticity (Part 1)

Posted by:


be-authenticIt’s that time of year. The ball is no longer in your court. Your accepted students are in control and they decide which institution they attend next fall. It’s time for you to get real, ditch the script, and connect with your best-fit students.

Authenticity. It’s a topic mentioned both directly and indirectly in higher education circles and in articles talking about ways to get the most from your college visit experience. However, it isn’t always the easiest subject for campuses to wrap their head around, especially this time of year.

Admissions leadership is constantly forced into a corner, thinking “Ok, accepted student, I know you want to see what is real, ...

Continue Reading

Campus Visit Talk: Jennifer McLendon and University of North Texas

Posted by:


Each month the Experience Team from TargetX will share with you a Campus Visit Tip or 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:
Jennifer McLendon
Visitor Experience Manager
University of North Texas, Campus Visit Client since 2008

Q: How did you work to create change within your campus visit?

I’ve been the Visitor Experience Manager for my alma mater, the University of North Texas, for over 11 years now. During that ...

Continue Reading

Campus Visit Trend: “How much financial aid did ‘they’ give you?”

Posted by:


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 “Trend”.

Ten years ago the number one question parents asked during a campus visit was, “What’s the party scene?” Then after the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois the priority question by parents was “How safe is this campus?” After our economy tanked the mainstream media began beating up Wall Street, then they singled out the mortgage industry; now they have their sights on higher education. ...

Continue Reading

Storytelling lessons from Pixar

Posted by:


So what do a Pixar storyboard artist (Emma Coats), a songwriter (me), and a marketing or recruiting professional (you) have in common?

We are all trying to tell our authentic story in a way that our audience finds interesting.

Writer Cyriaque Lamar offers “The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar” — compiled by Emma Coats, a former storyboard artist for the CGI-focused movie studio who is now pursuing life as a film director.

This article has some great advice for anyone who is going to write anything… ever.

Here are my three favorite rules from the article:

#2 “You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, ...
Continue Reading

Professional development is not your employer’s responsibility

Posted by:


Whoa!  If you’re an employer reading this, I can already hear your exhales of relief.  But we’ll get back to you in a moment.  If you’re an employee, I feel your anger directed toward me right now.  So, let’s focus on you first.

Let me repeat.  ”Professional development is not your employer’s responsibility.”  If you have decided that the job you are in is the basis of your career, then why on earth would you put the ownership of your growth in the hands of someone that might not care or might not give it the priority it deserves?  It is your responsibility to manage and pursue your professional (and yes, personal — they are in fact connected) goals.

But it’s not ...

Continue Reading

CRM tools don’t recruit students.

Posted by:


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 ...

Continue Reading

“I didn’t know we had a pool”

Posted by:


There’s a scene in Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E where the humans are in their space cruiser, floating about on hover chaise lounges, focused only on their computer screens and oblivious to their surroundings and to reality. Two of the characters’ computers break and they have an epiphany. They discover that their space cruiser has a pool and they dip their toes in and begin splashing about. They live in the moment.

It’s summertime! And millions of us are escaping our offices and computers (do you go off the grid on vacation?) and are heading to the pool, beach, shore, mountains and amusement parks. And many prospective families are including a visit to your campus as part of their summer ...

Continue Reading

“No Duh,” Higher Ed

Posted by:


Know where some of the most talented professionals I ever worked with in Admissions work now? (Hint: It’s not Admissions).

Sadly, our industry’s best and brightest often feel as if they have no other choice but to leave campus in search of professional development, career advancement, and in many cases, a decent salary.

In my time (and when did I get old enough to say that by the way?), phrases like “you’ve got to move over to move up” were the norm. Despite the fact that I worked full-time — plus “nights, overnights and weekends” as we liked to say in the business — my MBA advisor kept asking me when I was going to get a “real job.”

True — my colleagues ...

Continue Reading

A little less conversation

Posted by:


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 ...

Continue Reading

New Millennials in the Work Place and Old Style Business Cards

Posted by:


Seems like we have been recruiting millennials for a long time and now they’re joining our ranks in the workplace.

AdAge recently published “What to Know About Your Latest Class of Employees”. The article outlines five observations and best practices that are relevant to millennials in the workplace:

1. Loyalty is back
2. Engagement is essential
3. Watch for short circuits
4. Make time for face time
6. Harness the coffeehouse effect

Read the quick article for all the details.

Regardless of what generation your work team is; Millennial, Gen X or Boomer, all employees should have well designed and well thought out business cards. Even in today’s digital world a business card reigns supreme for connection. However, keep your business cards simple in ...

Continue Reading

Avoiding data paralysis

Posted by:


When I conjure up characteristics of a typical admissions professional, I immediately think of words like friendly, knowledgeable, professional, fun-loving (remembering NACAC 2011). My first thoughts aren’t about leveraging financial aid, predictive modeling or data integrity.

Being responsible for data can be a scary thought, even to those “techie” people in admissions who claim to love it. One hazard that CRM expert Mark Miller warns about is data paralysis. Sometimes knowing that all the data is out there waiting to be put to good use can be enough to stop you in your tracks. So, let’s talk baby steps.

Miller offers three suggestions for bringing things under control:

1. Favor smart data over big data. What data ...

Continue Reading

“Take Your Parent To Work Day” and other tales of helicopter parenting

Posted by:


For over a decade we’ve been attempting to understand Millennials and their relationships with their helicopter parents.  As a former latchkey kid, maybe I’m jealous of this dynamic; my own parents were fairly absent from a host of major and daily milestones in my development. Now I am a proud and somewhat bitter GenXer who is a bit fed up with Boomer narcissism and Millennial entitlement and having to see members of my generation serve as the managers in the work place caught in the middle of this overindulgence.

The helicopter is still hovering. Take a moment to see where and how.  Ranging from insane to the hilarious, here are some examples:

More parents helping adult children get homes, ...

Continue Reading

What the Superbowl can teach higher ed

Posted by:


According to the Neilsen Co., an estimated 111 million people watched last year’s Superbowl. But I wonder how many people took their bathroom break during the game and stuck around for the commercials.

This advertising juggernaut has brought us some of the most iconic 30-60 second ads of all-time. Brands bring out the creative “big guns” to catch people’s attention and hopefully have them talking about their product long after the Lombardi Trophy has been awarded.

So you are probably asking yourself, “What does the Superbowl have to do with higher ed?” Well, if you’re in recruitment marketing those ads are doing something that colleges and universities need to be doing much more of — using creativity to grab ...

Continue Reading

Would you like fries with that?

Posted by:


Ever heard the one about “How the liberal arts major says hello?”
(answer: “Would you like fries with that?”)

[go ahead, guffaw]

An NPR reporter recounts the old joke in a recent piece on how new trends could be challenging the notion that specialization in higher ed is the only path to success. They go on to tell the story of how food giant ConAgra — think Chef Boyardee and Marie Callender’s — has revamped their internship program to include the recruitment of such “off the beaten path” employees as journalism or biology majors.

Could it be? Are media outlets finally recognizing that there is value in educational pursuits that don’t reduce to 1′s and 0′s?

USA Today seems to think ...

Continue Reading

Is branding the solution?

Posted by:


Vince Lombardi would begin practice each spring by lifting a football and, with deep resonance, announce, “Men, this is a football.”

To winning teams, the fundamentals are etched in stone; they make up the DNA of every player. When it comes to enrollment, many colleges and universities have lost sight of the fundamentals.

Over the years, I’ve helped build the importance of “institutional branding” as it became a taskmaster, dictating to all who follow. Many say that branded messaging is the cornerstone for enrollment success and the engine driving the perception of institutional significance.

After more than two decades of creating institutional brands, my experience has proven otherwise.

Institutional branding should begin to form after the fundamentals have been drilled into the team. When ...

Continue Reading

What Mercedes and other auto brands can teach you about your visit experience

Posted by:


I’m a car guy.

Back in 6th grade I had subscriptions to Road & Track and Car and Driver. My father sold cars and managed dealerships. He used to quiz me on the year, make, and model of cars we passed while driving – by day and by night (Yes, I can identify a car based upon its headlights).

Take a look at the Global Fortune 500 top 25 companies list. It’s inundated with oil and car companies.

So what does all this mean to you in admissions? At TargetX, we always encourage you to look beyond the school up the road for best practices and to look outside of admissions. Car companies are a great place to look for best ...

Continue Reading

The Pillars of Technology

Posted by:


Two pillars stand tall in the shifting landscape of recruitment technology: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Social Media.  Providing real-time access to data, CRM solutions offer in-depth information on every touch-point with a student; Social Media allows admissions staff to meet students where they are, delivering (and receiving) multimedia messages across a variety of channels.

In many cases, however, both solutions face solely outward, addressing the relationship between recruiters and prospects, but ignoring the relationship of recruiters to each other.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, confronts this chasm in a recent Forbes magazine article (the magazine gives Benioff the top spot in an issue focused on innovators in business).  In the accompanying article by Victoria Barret, Benioff effuses about Chatter — “software ...

Continue Reading

What do your walls say?

Posted by:


While there is no official definition, everyone seems to have something that comes to mind when they think about hotel art. On a whole it refers to those generic art pieces on hotel walls designed not to invoke any real emotion from an individual looking at it. Basically, it won’t offend anyone but makes the room look less empty. Playing it safe.

College admissions spaces have an unfortunate tendency to lean the same way. Your lobby and waiting room walls are frequently covered in historical images of the old gentleman who gave a lot of money to the school and has since died or bragging point articles from years before your current prospective students were even born. The items shown in ...

Continue Reading

An important population

Posted by:


Trends within corporate marketing and media often foreshadow what’s to come in higher education. A great supplemental piece provided by Advertising Age dedicated to a hefty slice of the American population holds great value for the corporate world and higher education too.

The eighth annual Hispanic Fact Pack was developed as a guide to Hispanic marketing and media in the United States — keeping advertisers and marketers up to speed on a population that Laurel Wentz of AdAge calls “the future of America.”

While some sections of the Fact Pack may not be of immediate relevance to some college admissions professionals — notice the steady increase in advertiser spending to this key population as well as their language preferences when buying from ...

Continue Reading

You travel too

Posted by:


Welcome to iThink’s newest blog! At TargetX we think higher education needs to look outside of itself to learn best practices so my blog, Lessons from the Road: From Atlanta to your campus and back will help you do just that! It will be tough to rival the masterpieces of TargetX’s other bloggers, but I’m up for the challenge!

For those of you who know us, you know the campus visit team is always on the go. Since joining the team a year ago, I have been on 83 different airplanes, driven many rental cars, stayed countless nights in hotels, and been on as many as four different campuses in a single week. Unless I experience excessive delays or cancellations, you ...

Continue Reading

A simple solution for summer

Posted by:


In college admissions, summer is a popular time for new initiatives and revamping processes. A simple change to make, yet we often forget, is the value of good customer service for your prospective students and parents.

Andy Hanelsman writes that Apple is a great example of exceptional service, with intensive training for employees who consistently provide a customer-friendly environment in their wildly popular, 326 Apple stores.

In a Wall Street Journal article, the Apple “steps of service” were identified, revealing that the acronym “APPLE” is used to provide a roadmap for successful customer service:

Approach customers with a personalized warm welcome.
Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs.
Present a solution for the customer to take home today.
Listen for and resolve ...

Continue Reading

Take a moment to remember what it's all about

Posted by:


I love to read.

But it wasn’t always that way.

As a kid I loved car magazines, newspapers and biography/history books. Fiction and literature eluded me. During my first semester at Lee College, I was lucky enough to have Dr. Janet Rahamut for several courses.  She taught me to read with not only my mind, but my heart and soul. She changed my life.

What can you say about your favorite professor? Did they inspire you to think? To justify your thoughts? Did they make you a better student and a better person? That’s what Janet Rahamut did for me. Each time I pick up a book, I say a word of thanks for having been her student.

One book I never would have ...

Continue Reading

Where the Sunset met the Cloud

Posted by:


Last week, I had the opportunity to attend two conferences, each anchored at opposite ends of the CRM product lifecycle spectrum.

On Wednesday, I drove down to Washington, D.C. for Cloudforce, a regional Salesforce.com conference; on Thursday and Friday, I exhibited and presented at the College Board’s Recruitment PLUS User Group.

Both conferences relied heavily on “environmental” metaphors: Cloudforce, as its name suggests, promoted the future of “cloud” computing, while the College Board conference focused on the “sun-setting” of the Recruitment PLUS CRM.

The tone of Cloudforce could best be described as buoyant.  With projectors illuminating the Salesforce cloud logo on every wall, there was an almost tangible sense of floating among the clouds as participants flitted from room to room: Social networking. ...

Continue Reading

A CRM Under the Hood

Posted by:


A few weeks ago, I learned that my Saturn Vue runs on a Honda engine.

Not being a “Car Guy,” I sort of twisted my head and said, “Huh?  Whattya mean it has a Honda Engine?  Doesn’t it have a Saturn engine?”

Nope.  No Saturn engine.  Just a Honda engine.  And actually, a really good one to boot.

It took me a few minutes, however, to get my head around that:  so all this time I’ve been driving a Honda?

Well, sort of.  I mean, most of what I love about my car is very Saturn-y — the interior, the stereo, the controls, the design, the roominess.

But the Honda engine gives my car its power.  It’s what allows me to make those road trips ...

Continue Reading

The Treadmill Trap

Posted by:


[With apologies to the Corrs...]

When I was in High School, my parents bought a treadmill.

It was sleek and black and had a big important-looking console on it.

It felt powerful.  Like you could lose weight just by being near it.  My parents had big plans for it and bigger dreams for themselves.

My father said, “It’ll be great.  I can watch Seinfeld and lose weight at the same time.”  And my mother: “I don’t have to worry about the cold winter weather, because I can exercise in comfort right here in the basement!”

Just like in a million other homes across America, however, it wasn’t too long before the treadmill was forgotten — relegated to a second life as a glorified laundry rack.  ...

Continue Reading
Page 1 of 6 12345...»