Converge Consulting

Massachusetts Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to an April 2, 2012 Deutsche Bank report on online education, diversification of marketing channels in terms of recruiting new students reduces financial risk. Maintaining a balance among referrals, corporate channels, community colleges, military, traditional media, inbound organic search, and purchased leads was cited in the report as essential to reducing volatility. Analysts perceived 10% to 25% exposure to purchased leads as a safe percentage while they viewed exposure of 50% or more as risky. The higher the exposure to purchased leads,  the more difficult it becomes for a university to control its destiny.

Traditional schools need to pay close attention to these analyses and spend wisely so that recent improvements in market share versus online schools continue. These brick-and-mortar institutions need to take control of their recruiting processes in a way that minimizes overexposure and maximizes brand recognition. Many analysts feel that brand recognition is one of the key drivers behind recent gains in market share for traditional colleges and universities.

One of the keys to effective marketing is the ability to track and measure expenditures across channels at the campaign level and in real time. The web should serve as the hub of a school’s marketing efforts. Creating segmented campaigns with unique landing pages and inserting QR codes on mailed pieces that are intended to drive recipients to the web are two methods that can help institutions start to track and measure marketing expenditures more effectively and efficiently. Similarly, utilizing email applications to track clickthrough and open rates as well as driving people to an institutional web site via social media channels enable more robust campaigns in terms of channel utilization, management, and analysis.

Diversifying the marketing mix, leveraging brand recognition, understanding ROI per channel and per campaign, these are the ways to:

• Attract more visitors
• Attract the right visitors
• Control user experience once prospects land on your site
• Measure your marketing across campaigns and channels
• Continue what is working
• Discontinue what isn’t working

In the midst of summer, you are working hard to ensure that your yield strategy is producing results. Nonetheless, there are a number of students who did not enroll despite the fact that they applied, liked your Facebook page, and visited campus. The question is: Why? It is crucial to gain a deeper understanding of why these students didn’t enroll.

Like their Millennial generation peers, your prospective students live online. Online marketing and social media supply them with information about every type of product and service under the sun. If they are interested in your institution, the odds are that they have gone to your web site and/or social media sites to learn more about the school and, hopefully, to request more information, schedule a visit, or download/submit an application. It is crucial that your marketing team understands what web pages and/or sites lead these prospective students to act in desired ways. It is equally important to understand what areas of your web site and social media applications see prospects dropping out of the funnel.

What are you measuring? Do you know how to set up analytics goals? Are you examining pageviews, time on site, bounce rate, and other key metrics that can help you understand your prospective students’ web behavior?

As one of our analytics clients stated, “Our website is one of the most important marketing channels we have as an institution and the analytics provides us with a plethora of data. However, we realized that we were only starting to scratch the surface of what we could learn about our website from all this data we were collecting.”

The following infographic provides some great information related to what you should be measuring and analyzing:

This is part two of a two-part blog post.

sushi white bkgd © by Mike Tex

To help you achieve and master the basics, it is helpful to utilize Web Analytics. Typically, this means having Google Analytics installed on your website. Once you have Google Analytics installed, you are able to start tracking your web traffic.

Next, set up Goals in Google Analytics. Once you set up Goals, you are able to determine how many individuals are completing the website tasks that you want them to complete. For Admissions, these Goals might include someone submitting an inquiry form for more information about the school, scheduling a campus visit, or submitting an online application. These are each actions that someone can perform when visiting the website. Defining these actions as Goals, it becomes much easier to determine how effective your website is at encouraging users to complete desired actions.

Finally, utilize Campaign Tracking. Campaign Tracking allows you to learn more about your audience and how they respond to specific marketing channels or messages. The power is not in the tactic itself, but rather in how the tactic is strategically employed. This leads to segmentation.

If you have purchased a list of names of prospective students, you have the ability to segment that list based on multiple levels. For instance, you may want to compare how effective a particular postcard is at encouraging prospective students with an ACT score of 30 and an interest in engineering to schedule a campus visit with how effective the same postcard is at encouraging prospective students with an ACT score of 30 and an interest in nursing to schedule a campus visit. Utilizing campaign tracking and segmenting your list, you can compare response rate.

This determination was made possible by implementing the “web as the hub of your marketing efforts strategy,” which encouraged each group of prospective students to visit a landing page. Next, Google Analytics can assess the effectiveness of your efforts. This might mean that the postcard was particularly effective for only one of your target segments. You could then act on that information and decide to use the postcard only for the group that found it compelling.

You will often need to continue testing and refining your efforts, being mindful of what variables (those that you can control and those which you cannot) that affect the behaviors of your target segments.

If you practice these “basics” of higher education marketing (and marketing strategy, in general), then you will have a solid foundation upon which you can use the most effective marketing practices to reach your target audience. Furthermore, this can save money by eliminating the components that are clearly not working.

Once you master the rice, delicious sushi will soon follow.

This is the first part of a two-part blog post.

Sushi © by ZoeShuttleworth

I recently gave a presentation to admissions counselors at the joint SACAC/PCACAC Conference in Arlington, VA. The presentation focused on the importance of beginning with the basics of marketing and building on that foundation.

When new sushi chefs begin to learn their craft, they spend months, or even years, solely cooking rice. The rationale: if one can’t properly cook the rice, then the rest of the sushi will not taste very good. The rice seems like such a simple element, but it dictates whether the sushi tastes great or terrible. Sushi chefs who are able to make rice correctly are revered for mastering the skill.

So, how does sushi preparation relate to higher education marketing?

Often, we get a great idea and implement it. Or, we are in such a frenzy that we forget to cover all of our bases. We have time and resource limitations as well as many competing tasks. However, if we learn and practice the basics, our criteria will be solid when it is time to evaluate and reassess our efforts.

There are many aspects of marketing that can be considered “basic.” Here are a few key tenets:

• Start with your end Goal
• Gather the relevant information
• Segment your marketing efforts
• Utilize the web as a hub method so that you can track your efforts
• Measure and assess the effectiveness of your efforts
• Do something with it

Clearly, there are many items that can be added to this list. However, it is really a basic list of components that can make or break your efforts.

Watch out for part two of this blog post next week.

Analytics 3scapism 1 png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Analytics” is a hot term these days. While many confuse the “analytics” that is typically associated with “business analytics” and the “analytics” associated with “web analytics,” there are many who don’t really understand the term in either contexts. Don’t be embarrassed. It is not one of those user-friendly, universally loved words like “giggle.” So, let’s lay out a few definitions.

Merriam-Webster defines analytics as “the method of logical analysis.”

According to Wikipedia, “Business analytics (BA) refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning.” Furthermore, business analytics utilizes statistics, data mining procedures, predictive modeling, etc. For example, banks leverage business analytics to determine which products should be offerred to which customers based on variables such as credit rating, past product usage, etc.

Web analytics has been defined with slight variations by a number of experts. Avinash Kaushik defined web analytics 2.0 as:

(1) the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition,
(2) to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and potential customers have,
(3) which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline).

This definition does a good job of explaining what web analytics is.

The next question that we will explore in a series of related posts is “why is web analytics important?”

Google Analytics Hacks © by Search Engine People Blog

It is very important that you track your campaigns with Google Analytics campaign tracking. However, an issue that many higher education marketing professionals face is that it can be very difficult to create trackable URLs in Google Analytics and then be able to organize them. Take a look at the following article in Smashing Magazine in which I explain how you can create a WordPress plugin to create and organize Google Analytics campaign tracking URLs, shortened versions of the URLs, and trackable QR codes.

How To Use Custom Post Types To Organize Online Marketing Campaigns

When working with Google Analytics data, it is important to ensure that you are applying the appropriate context to it. It is much simpler to do this than it may at first appear.

When you are analyzing your web traffic for the number of inquiries or applications, it is essential to exclude internal (on-campus) web traffic from your results. Including traffic from visitors that were on-campus can skew your numbers and present an inaccurate conversion rate.

It is very easy to fix this by applying a quick Advanced Segment on-the-fly.

Create a new Advanced Segment where you Exclude the Service Provider Containing your school name. Note that several options will probably drop down as you begin typing the school name. You can select the correct service provider name for your campus, save it, and then apply the proper context to your report.

It is very easy to create powerful Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. This will help your higher ed marketing analysis maintain consistency and accuracy.

In a recent Google Analytics Blog post, A Look Ahead at Measurement in 2012, Google predicts five major trends related to what is on the horizon for the analytics industry in the new year. While these trends are predicted for businesses in a general sense, the predictions serve as a barometer for college and university marketing teams to gauge their level of analytics knowledge, skills, and practices.

• Mobile will be a major player. According to Google, “marketers should expect improved tools to measure engagement on mobile-optimized sites and effectiveness of mobile ads that will help them determine what platforms and formats help them catch consumers on the go.”
• It will become possible to measure the ROI of social media. Despite the fact that the vast majority of CMOs feel that social media produces no measurable return on investment, Google feels that 2012 will be the year when “better measurement tools will help marketers make smarter decisions about their investments in social. Vanity counters, such as friend counts and reshares, will be augmented with bottom line metrics like conversions and purchases, allowing marketers to measure true social ROI of each campaign and compare the effectiveness with other channels.”
• Marketers will gain a more cohesive view of customers that goes beyond a focus on conversions. Google maintains that 2012 will be the time when “the analytics industry will move towards bringing the disparate pieces of customer insight together into one cohesive view of the customer.”
• Analytics will be applied in real time via behavioral targeting. Google believes that “With real time data feeding into remarketing, ad content optimization, and real time bidding systems, advertisers are closer than ever to finding the right customer with the right ad at the right time. As these real time systems converge, there’s huge potential to integrate analytics to pull in deeper and richer information about user intent.”
• Data will become more actionable. Moving away from a narrow focus on reporting, 2012 will be the year of action. Google asserts that “we’ve only scratched the surface in helping marketers better measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, and as marketing continues to evolve, so will our efforts to make it more measurable and actionable.”

 
So, college and university marketers, a few questions:

• Is your site optimized for the mobile experience? Can site visitors complete desired actions when viewing your site on iphones, droids, and blackberries?
• Have you been wondering whether your institution’s Facebook and Twitter efforts have been paying off? Do you know the measurement procedures that can help evaluate the effectiveness of your social media campaigns?
• Do you have a strong sense of who visits your web site? What separates a casual visitor from a hot prospect?
• Does your web site serve up content that is customized to specific site visitors? Does your web site generate content dynamically?
• If you are using analytics now, are you solely reporting on it? Or, are you acting on it?

 
2012 is the year to begin to use data to drive your marketing decisions and strategies. The tools are making it increasingly possible to use data more effectively. The key is having the right people to help you implement the tools to their potential. Enter Joshua Dodson, a web analytics expert and Google Analytics certified professional who can help you discover and analyze your data so that you ultimately uncover the mysteries of what has been hiding in plain sight.

From .eduGuru CMS study findings

Michael Fienen discussed the findings of .eduGuru’s national study on content management system usage in higher education during the Friday After Class (#FAC) session on December 16.

The following are some noteworthy study findings:

•  Last year, TERMINALFOUR was barely a blip on the radar. This year, their CMS had the highest score in terms of usability.
• OmniUpdate was another CMS that scored well, largely due to the perception that the company provides outstanding customer service.
• Although closed source systems dominate the higher education market, Wordpress and Drupal both saw large gains in usage. WordPress was above average in both usability and satisfaction. Drupal was also rated highly in terms of user satisfaction.
• Another open source and little-known CMS, Reason, received the highest satisfaction score, overall.
• Only 19% of respondents had a truly organized strategy regarding trying to leverage content reuse tools in their CMS. Michael pointed out that forging a content reuse strategy is critical because so much content gets repurposed on college and university web sites: degree descriptions, course listings, faculty contact info, cost breakdowns, etc.
• Sharepoint was rated poorly in terms of usability. Michael suggested that the best strategy for those using Sharepoint was to begin planning how to move away from the system.
• In the near future, we can expect to see CMS vendors focusing on data portability, standards like CMIS, more robust social integration, and mobile implementation.

 
A key take-away from the study is that, when evaluating the myriad of CMS options available for colleges and universities, there is no magic bullet. The various systems all have strengths and weaknesses. Deciding which CMS to use requires a thorough analysis of technological and user-based needs.

We appreciate Michael and the .eduGuru team’s great work, their commitment to the higher education marketplace, and their willingness to discuss the results of their study during Converge Consulting’s Friday After Class session last week.

The full summary of results can be found at this link on the .edGuru site.

Tomorrow (12/16/11), Converge Consulting will be hosting a #FAC Friday After Class live chat session on the Converge web siteat http://www.convergeconsulting.org/fac/ in which .eduGuru’s Michael Fienen will be releasing the findings of .eduGuru’s nationwide survey regarding content management system usage in higher education. .eduGuru’s survey of more than 500 institutions examined which schools are using what content management systems and also gathered feedback from users about the systems that are supporting the web presences of our colleges and universities. In an effort to provide resources for institutions that need a new CMS to design, redesign, or realign their university’s site, the findings will cover current trends regarding CMS usage at colleges and universities in the United States. Particular emphasis will be placed on discussing levels of customer satisfaction with specific content management systems as well as the features that specific systems offer.

Michael has been working in web development for more than a decade. He currently wears many hats, functioning as the Director of Web Marketing at Pittsburg State University, CTO at the interactive map firm nuCloud, and working as a consultant with organizations around the country. He is a respected speaker at conferences on subjects ranging from video, to mobile, accessibility, and content strategy, and also writes for the award winning higher ed web development blog .eduGuru.

Audience members can participate in #FAC Friday After Class either through the comment feature onhttp://www.convergeconsulting.org/fac/, or by using the Twitter hashtag #FAC during the event. The session will last for approximately 30 minutes.