Insights on Admissions Marketing

From the James Tower Marketing Minute

James Tower has released the newest report in their E-Expectations series. “Scrolling Toward Enrollment: Web Site Content and the E-Expectations of College Bound Seniors,” examines the online preferences, behaviors and expectations of more than 1,000 college-bound students in relation to higher education Web sites.

This national study provides extensive insight into the role of a college’s Web site in a prospective student’s decision-making process.  In this report, you'll learn:

• How the accuracy and relevance of a Web site influences students' enrollment decisions
• What students are willing to read completely, even if it means scrolling  
• What students think about campuses that recruit via social networking
• How students prefer to be contacted during various points in the enrollment funnel

The study reaffirms that the Web site plays a vital role in a higher education institution’s recruitment effort and that a negative online experience could reduce a student’s interest in a school. To download this E-Expectations report and check out other reports from our E-Expectations series, visit: http://www.jamestower.com/e-expectations.html. 

Here’s to another great Monday!

A new direction for “Insights on Admissions Marketing”

I hope all of you are having a fantastic summer and that your enrollments are ahead of goal for the year!

 

Changes are a foot here at James Tower.  We have been busy with a number of important initiatives:

AdmissionsGenie 7.0 is better than ever, with the ability to send students SMS messages, enhancements to the social networking capabilities and making forms even easier to use.  We even launched the AdmissionsGenie Select initiative as a cost savings for smaller institutions.  If you haven’t checked out AdmissionsGenie for a while, we have a lot of new information available at the AdmissionsGenie web page.

New Web Site:  The new James Tower web site is about to be released.  Stay tuned for more information soon.  We cannot wait to share with you a new look, feel and enhanced web site experience.  It will be, as always at www.jamestower.com.  

New Faces for “Insights on Admissions Marketing”:  To assure this resource is more valuable to you as a user and posts are provided more regularly, we are adding two new voices to “Insights on Admissions Marketing”.  Cathy Willette-President of James Tower and Josh Paul-Higher Education Consultant will be frequent contributors over the coming months, along with me.  By taking more of a team approach, we hope to bring you a wider variety of opinions, information and valuable insights to help you in your outreach to prospects and institutional marketing.

Stay tuned for all of the changes and excitement in the coming weeks.  Take care and have a great summer!

Darren Wacker

eduWeb Conference 2008: Conference Social

The 2008 eduWEB Conference has come to an end.  Tuesday evening, as the conference began to wind down, James Tower along with Noel-Levitz and OmniUpdate, had the honor of hosting conference attendees at an evening social.  The event, held on the harbor at the Trump Marina, was a great opportunity for attendees and vendors to relax, unwind and visit at the end of another great day at eduWEB.  Here are just a few pictures.  For those that could not join us this year, we missed you and we hope to see you at the conference next year.

James Tower Reception at eduWEB

Recruiting 2.1 by Brian Niles

So, I decided to pop into Brian Niles presentation at eduWeb this morning.  (Sure, they are a competitor to our solution Blue Ox Mailbox and other James Tower offerings, but I figure it is always good to see what others are up to and Brian is a good speaker.)

First of all, kudos on Target X's philanthropic efforts via their Power of X program.  We have always done similar things at James Tower in targeting support of United Way, American Red Cross and others.  I appreciate the  attempts at increasing awareness regarding the importance of these issues as an organization.

Information highlighted by Brian's presentation:

• 96% of Teens use social networking tools
• 22% of teens have uploaded content they have created to social networking sites.

Consumer Attitudes:

• 64% of consumers believe advertising is "dishonest" or unrealistic".

The new Communications Plan

• 71% of students started their college search before their junior year.
• 50% of PSAT takers were in the 10th grade or earlier
• Over 25% of first point of contact was the Admissions application for many institutions.  (I find this number to be low, compared to what I am finding with many of my clients.)
• 75% of time spent in researching a college is done on-line.  While assuring that your house may be in order relative to the Admissions web site, you must assure that your main .EDU homepage is effective as well, if not more effective in engaging prospective students.

Much of the information in the presentation in this section keyed off of findings from the Noel Levitz/James Tower/NRCCUA E-Expectations research.  If you haven't read this information, you can download the white papers from the James Tower website in order to see the full information and data available.

Stories not Stat.  People not Programs.

What is truly authentic about your institution?  How are you telling these stories effectively.  Are you allowing individuals on your campus to blog and share these stories in an unfiltered way?
Relative to the parents of prospective students, Biola University does a very nice job of engaging at all levels per Brian.  Their web site is www.biola.edu. 

"You must design the customer experience or the customer will design it for you."-Tom Peters

Brian's Bookshelf-Recommended books from Brian

• How to Drive Your Competition Crazy
• X Saves the Day
• Don't Make Me Think
• Re-imagining
• The Business of Changing the World
• Fast Company Magazine
• I missed a few.  Sorry I am not providing authors, as I couldn't read them from where I was sitting.

 

I know I have missed a number of points from the presentation as I attempt to keep up while typing, so my apologies for my inadequate typing speed.  I hope I hit this up adequately and fairly.  If you need more information, I would encourage you to contact Brian directly for the full power point presentation.

The E-Expectations of Parents at eduWeb

Greetings from Day Two of eduWeb.

In the first session of the day, Stephanie Geyer of Noel-Levitz provided a very informative overview of the latest E-Expectations Research.  E-Expectations is a joint effort between Noel-Levitz, James Tower and NRCCUA.  While this round of research focused on the E-Expectations of Transfers and Parents, Stephanie's presentation focused on the parent focused findings.  Some of the information shared includes:

80% prefer to go to the web for information
10% indicated, if the school doesn't have an effective website, I won't recommend it to my student.

Actions parents have completed on university/college websites:

• 48% have participated in on line IM chat with a counselor, 42% would like to.
• 32% completed a tuition cost calculator form.  51% would like to
• 48% completed an online campus visit request, 40% would like to do so.
• 11% have completed an on line application for their student, 47% indicated they would likely do so.
• 35% have emailed current students or faculty directly, 37% indicated they would if they could.
• 48% have viewed a campus virtual tour, 30% would like to do so
• 20% had opted in for campus text message alerts, 38% indicated they would like to have that sort of access
• 21% had read campus blogs, 31% indicated that they would like to do so.

In addition, parents also shared their priorities for content/information on college web sites.  On a 5 point scale, the most important of these priorities included:

• Academic Programs:  4.85
• Scholarships:  4.78
• Admissions requirements:  4.78
• Tuition and fees:  4.77
• Campus Safety:  4.76

Financial aid information was in the sixth position at 4.64

Email was indicated as a preferred means of contacting parents, versus calling them directly.  85% said they would prefer email versus 49% that would prefer a phone call.

This is only a small amount of the wonderful information this research initiative has provided.  If you would like to be provided a full copy of the parents research (or the transfer research also completed this year), once released, please leave me a comment or email me directly at drwacker@jamestower.com and I will make sure to get that to you when available.

 

 

2008 eduWeb Conference-Atlantic City, NJ

Greetings from Atlantic City!

I had the honor of presenting, along with Craig Schanbacher of James Tower, a pre-conference session at this year's eduWeb.  The session, an expanded version of the AdmissionsVideo 101 presentation I have provided at other conferences, provided attendees additional thoughts and insights on how to successfully utililzing video in recruiting prospective students and engaging various audiences via the web.  We were able to review a number of different approaches, as well as provide practical tools and suggestions for managing all aspects of the production process.

I promised to provide both my powerpoint and Craig's before the end of the day, so here you go.

Download admissions_video_101_eduwebdarren.zip

I will have Craig's presentation available for download later, but now...off to the eduWeb Keynote presentation.

Darren

So, what kind of conference do you want?

Greetings!

So, I am catching up on a little lite reading and reviewing blogs I follow.  One caught my attention this afternoon.  Karylyn Morissette shared her views on what she feels is wrong with most Higher Education Marketing or Technology conferences.  (too bad she didn't attend this year's James Tower "Technology in Student Recruitment" conference.  Maybe she would have felt differently!!)

However, she raises many good points and it got me to thinking.  For our James Tower conference, we have always been very deliberate in ensuring the conference is NOT about just selling James Tower products and services.  We try very hard to provide presentations, actionable information, ideas, collaboration opportunities and strategies that attendees can use regardless of whether they work on their own, with others or with James Tower.  (obviously, we want you to work with us.  I would be lying is I said otherwise, but it isn't a "James Tower this...James Tower that...." environment.  Just ask attendees or anyone that has attended one of my presentations.)

The one thing we don't necessarily ask though-which is central to Karylyn's post-is what do YOU want?  In this era of user-generated content, we sometimes loose the "user" in that discussion.  So, I want to dig into my journalism background and pose the following questions:

If you go to just ONE professional conference next year:

• What "specific" topics would you want discussed to help you do your job better or learn something new?
• Where would you want your conference to be, if it could be anywhere in the 48 contiguous United States?
• Why do you specifically attend a conference?
• How many days should a conference be?
• To what extent should a conference discuss solutions versus theory/concepts?
• Who do you feel has something interesting to say about technology/marketing/higher education?

For purely selfish reasons-and to assure the best conference possible next year for attendees-I would be very interested in any thoughts you might have.  Any and all thoughts are welcome in this blog or to my email, drwacker@jamestower.com

Ma halo

James Tower "Technology in Student Recruitment" conference

The James Tower "Technology in Student Recruitment" conference just wrapped up yesterday in Chicago, Illinois.  This year's conference was a wonderful success.  Here are just some of the comments that were shared with me:

"I have gotten a number of great ideas I can take back to my office right now."

"This is the best conference I have ever attended.  The interaction between presenters and attendees was amazing."

We would like to thank all speakers and attendees for your time and fantastic feedback during this year's event.  The quality of our speakers, participation by everyone and number of attendees was, without a doubt, the best we have ever had.  Thank you everyone.

For those that are interested in accessing the various presentations from the last two days, they will be available for download on the James Tower web site shortly.  However, I am also including links to my presentations below.

Darren

Download Admissions_Video_101_jt_conference.pdf

Download Email_Marketing_The_rules_have_changed.pdf

2008 NYSACAC-Manhattanville College

Another New York State ACAC has come to an end.  Kudos to the organizers of this year's event and the wonderful team from Manhattanville College.  New York provides one of the best state ACAC events in the nation and always does a great job of providing attendees a wealth of information.

I had the pleasure of presenting Admissions Video 101 at this year's conference.  It was well attended and well received.  I look forward to following up with many of you.  However, in the mean time and as promised, you can download a copy of my presentation by clicking here. .

I converted it to PDF, but it is still a sizeable file.  If you need a powerpoint copy, please feel free to email me at drwacker@jamestower.com and I will be happy to help you out.

And finally, for those that attended the presentation, if you have questions that were not covered during our time together, please feel free to ask them here on my blog.  I will be happy to answer anything and everything.

Regards,
Darren

Wrapping up Tri-State 2008

Thank you to everyone that I met and spoke with at this year's Tri-State conference.  I appreciate your positive feedback and information.

During this year's Tri-State, I had the pleasure of providing an overview of E-Expectations 2006-'07.  E-Expectations is the joint research project conducted by James Tower, Noel-Levitz and NRCCUA.  In this project, we discuss with students their expectations for electronic communications as it relates to the college admissions process.

For those that are interested, you can download a PDF of my presentation by accessing it here.  If, for some reason, you need a Powerpoint version instead, please just let me know.

Also, I indicated at both this presentation and my presentation Admissions Video 101 that I wanted to ensure everyone's questions were answered.  I also welcome any comments or suggestions for expanding either presentation so that future audiences receive the maximum impact possible.  As such, any and all questions are welcome in this forum.  I will answer them in future posts.

I hope all of you enjoyed this year's conference and found the information, resources and networking opportunities to be invaluable.  I wish you the best and look forward to seeing you at future events, which I hope will include the 2008 James Tower Technology in Student Recruitment Conference.

Have a great day.