Recently in Mobile Marketing Category

Web Analytics: Bounce Rate and Mobile Access

Yesterday and today I've been updating a fall 2008 presentation on web analytics for higher education for a new webinar with Magna Communications in April.

The presentation is based on Google Analytics and uses examples from that system. Much of what's available from GA is of course available from other analytics programs as well.

Two different elements that stand out from the updating process:

• The "bounce" rate. In checking to possible update the source for an analytics glossary recommendation, I noticed that some glossary pages don't even include a definition of the bounce rate. For the record, the bounce rate is the percent of visitors to a website page who leave that page without continuing on to another.
• It is especially important for higher education marketers to track the bounce rate for new visitors from whatever entry page they start at.
• The entry page will most often be the home page, but it might also be the admissions page or the page for a favorite academic program. If more than 35 percent of new visitors are leaving their first page without continuing, you likely have a problem.
• You can also use the bounce rate to compare what happens at the entry pages for various academic programs. Note the highest and lowest and compare the strong points of the best performing pages with those that don't do as well. (We are assuming, as you probably are, that potential students who start at the MBA or Nursing or Political Science entry page should continue to other pages in the same area rather than flee the site.)
• Mobile access. Pay attention to the percent of new visitors who access the website from a mobile device. If that figure gets near 10 percent, check and see how your website works for people who enter that way. Since 2008, Google has made that report stand out under on the dashboard with a new "mobile devices" heading under "Visitors."
• Expect access from mobile devices to increase. The real question is how quickly that will happen (some say rapidly, others say slowly) and how much time web developers on your campus should spend in creating a mobile-friendly version of your website.
• Use the "mobile" report in GA and you'll be able to see just how quickly a change is taking place and you'll know whether access is from an iPhone, an Android or a Blackberry.

Register for "Web Analytics for Recruitment Success"

Check the webinar outline and register at Magna Communications.

That's all for now 

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E-Readers: Market Growth from Barnes & Noble, AT&T, and Plastic Logic

Back from a very fine eduWeb2009 conference this afternoon... 12 presentations are online now, including my pre-conference workshop: "Student Recruitment in an Online World: Creating a Marketing Communications Plan in a World without Paper." Thanks to Matt Herzberger for taking the time to add mine and several others to the collection.

College Viewbooks and Magazine on E-Readers

Early in my presentation you'll see slides to prime a discussion of e-readers and just how soon it might be before people are downloading college viewbooks , alumni magazines, and other publications to an e-reader rather than receiving them in the mail.

This presentation first debuted in July 2008 at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference. One 2008 topic was how soon it would be before e-readers were available in color. Way back then nobody seemed sure when the technology would advance to market. For the update this year, we had new news... Fujitsu, well ahead of any schudule predicted last year, put a color e-reader on the market in Japan earlier this year. The price (near $1,000) is well beyond most people's willingness to pay but we all know that is likely to move lower rather quickly.

E-readers are advancing. No doubt about that.

Plastic Logic, AT&T, and Barnes & Noble

And so let's highlight this news first seen in USA Today while traveling back from eduWeb today. AT&T is about to join Amazon in the e-reader competition in combination with Barnes & Noble to offer a wider array of books than Amazon is doing now. Schduled start is early in 2010.

A NewsFactor Business Report article says the primary audience for the new device from Plastic Logic and AT&T service is the business community. Barnes & Noble already has 700,000 titles ready to go, a powerful amount for the business market. The article includes a prediction that by 2012 prices will fall to $99, a critical point for mass adoption.

Watch the online Plastic Logic demo of their new device.

That's today's story.

AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education 2009 

And that's continuing info to update the next presentation of my 3-hour workshop at the AMA's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in November in Boston. More details on that later in the summer. Plan to attend. And if you do, join me for the Sunday workshop to explore student recruitment communications in a world without paper. It really is getting closer.

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
• Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/ 

ACT Enrollment Planners Conference: Another Successful Year

About done at this year's ACT Enrollment Planners Conference. In a tough year for conferences, this was the second highest regisration number in 24 years... a bit lower than last year, but quite strong overall, with more than 40 states represented. More nice work by Mike Hoveland and everyone else at ACT responsible for what has always been the best value-for-money enrollment-focused conference in higher education.

My updated 2009 workshop version of  "Student Recruitment in an Online World: Creating a Marketing Communications Plan in a World without Paper" drew 40+ people on Wednesday who were alive with questions and comments.

Points of special interest:

• Two schools present have indeed ended their printed viewbooks: Indiana University and Suffolk University. I'll be following up for more information on what's happening at each place.
• Just after showing a new website at Asuza Pacific University especially designed for access from mobile devices (the iPhone in this case), another person in the audience reported that Texas A&M has developed a similar site.

What strikes me in both cases is the very different types of universities leading the way in making these important moves. That reinforces the conviction I've had for years now that smart, innovative marketing moves are not related to any particular type of institution. What's most important are the people at a particular school who have the insight and determination to change.

Sunday night I'll turn around and fly back from Michigan to do the same workshop at eduWeb2009 on Monday. Will be interesting to see if any similar information surfaces then.

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
• Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/ 

Simmons College steps on the mobile marketing path

At long last, some people really do feel that 2009 is the year of mobile marketing. Of course, this isn't the first year that people have said that. But with the continuing spread of smartphones, this year the prediction just might be coming true.

Julie Batten has a good review of the latest use of mobile devices to access websites in her recent ClickZ column. Right now about 35 percent of people with mobile phones access the web each day. That number will only grow.

And so that makes the effort by Simmons College noteworthy. Chad Mazzola is asking "members of the Simmons community" to "Help us design the Simmons mobile site" by completing an online survey. Questions are few... Simmons is asking whether people access the web from their phones at all, about iPhone vs. Blackberry for access (or any similar device), the frequency of access, and a few other elements.

Details are online now.

If you have an iPhone, a Blackberry or anything like them, access your website now. What's the experience like?

Are you getting ready for a mobile version of your website?

If you're interested in mobile marketing in general, visit Dave Marshall's blog on that topic. Dave's recently started a new company to provide mobile marketing software to higher education. Once you have a site prepared for mobile access, you'll want to consider expanding recruitment communications to take advantage of mobile possibilities.

That's all for now.

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• Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/ to receive my monthly newsletter and Link of the Week selections.

The news came first on the radio driving to Marshall last night on my trip back from CASE V in Chicago... ironic perhaps that I'd just that morning done a "Writing Right for the Web" workshop that holds up direct marketing and journalism as two precursors of an effective web writing style.

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News (two parts of the same corporate conglomerate) will end most home delivery of the newspapers next year, citing increased costs for fuel, ink, and news print. And, no doubt, continued shrinking of the advertising income.

Just a symbol of the economy in Michigan? Hardly. The news report quoted a high level person whose name escapes me now that it was time to get heads out of the sand and take a major step in recognition of the changing ways that people get news.

Then came an email from David Anger, editor of the Free Press, to home subscribers, citing two major reasons for the change:

• "First, the newspaper industry must completely transform its way of doing business in order to survive. With generations of readers and advertisers using digital media more and more, we simply cannot continue to bear the cost of delivering the ink-on-paper newspaper every day.
  
  "Second, we need to invest in new ways to deliver information digitally, whether on our Web site or on the mobile devices so many people carry now. The changes we're announcing will enable us to do that. We need to move even more rapidly into the digital age."

And so the transformation of how we get our information continues, away from print and toward the online world. These newspapers may be leading the way on the home delivery front, but others certainly will follow.

For college and university marketing, the change highlights the ongoing shift away from newspaper advertising and toward organic search optimization and online advertising.

I've read the Free Press since arriving in Michigan in 1973. Always, right after the front page headline, the comics were the first attraction. But that's changed within the last few years, as the size of most strips was reduced to tiny print matching shrinkage of the page size of the paper itself.

Life will go on. Major news headlines will appear each morning as the laptop comes to life. And there's Yahoo2Go on the smartphone for headlines anytime, anywhere when the connection works.

The Free Press editor's message to subscribers is 
here. 

A long flight yesterday from Detroit to Santa Barbara for today's "Writing Right for the Web" workshop at Fielding Graduate University was more than enough time to read Wall Street Journal and USA Today articles about the new iPhone coming in July.

No, the new iPhone by itself doesn't herald the much anticipated break out of mobile marketing on smartphones throughout the land. But it certainly moves things in the right direction, starting with a much lower entry price point of $199. That's a critical change.

Mobile Marketing Barriers

What's been holding back mobile marketing? The price of the phone, the price of the data plan needed to take advantage of the capabilities, and the learning curve for the new capabilities. And, of course, the limited ability of relatively small smartphone screens to display most types of online advertising. The iPhone doesn't remove all those barriers, but it keeps things moving in the right direction.

Change is coming. And the first step is just getting smartphones in the hands of more people. Today, something like 20 percent of people in the U.S. have them. That's not nearly enough for a significant advance in mobile marketing. But that market penetration percent will continue to climb.

Details about the new iPhone capabilities are at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2008-06-09-iphone_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

New Challenge for Google

And for an interesting article on the new challenges facing Google from smartphone expansion, see "Are Google, Yahoo the next dinosaurs" at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-06-09-mobile-search_N.htm 

One thing we can count on. Web marketing 5 years from now will be a much different game.

The marvelous research folks at the Pew Internet Project are working with Elon University on a new survey of "Internet stakeholders" to see whether or not people agree with "recent statements by leaders in science, technology, business and politics" that Pew feels are "provacative." The Pew email arrived yesterday.

In the survey, "Each scenario or set of scenarios is prefaced by an extremely brief explanation of the status in 2007 regarding the issues involved." I've copied each of those for future reading.

For now, this seemed a good opportunity to report what these "leaders" believe are the trends most important to study as we move toward the target date of 2020.

• The mobile phone is the internet connection tool for most people in the world.
• Social tolerance has advanced significantly due in great part to the internet.
• Content control through copyright-protection technology dominates.
• Transparency heightens individual integrity and forgiveness.
• Many lives are touched by the use of augmented reality or spent interacting in artificial spaces.
• Talk and touch are common technology interfaces.
• Next-generation research will be used to improve the current internet; it won't replace it.
• Few lines divide professional from personal time, and that's OK.

What do you think?

I expect to be well retired by 2020. Many readers, on the other hand, will be at mid-career or a bit later and will have a more active interest in how these changes might impact their higher education marketing efforts. You may already be incorporating some of them into your long-range marketing plans. Or at least your occasional long-range thoughts.

The research report is promised in a few months. I'll include that note in a blog posting or newsletter when it happens.

Until then, take advantage of the valuable information already available from Pew Internet research. The 5 latest research reports are at http://www.pewinternet.org/

A fine New Year's greeting to everyone reading this.

As I write from Marshall, Michigan, the sun shines on a deep snow that will disappear soon as the temperature heads for 50 degrees by Sunday. Similar dramatic changes in trends aren't likely in the world of online marketing, but new things are happening all the time. Let's take a moment and ponder some points raised at ClickZ.

Heidi Cohen does a nice job in "Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2008" at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628001 to outline important expectations in online marketing.

Email Marketing, Social Networking, Mobile Marketing

Three things she writes about seem most relevant for the higher education marketing world:

• Yes, people continue to grow tired of "promotional" email designed to sell them things that don't already interest them. That doesn't bode well for "search" marketing email efforts in 2008 unless the messages are very carefully targeted indeed to well-defined groups. On the other hand, I agree with Heidi that email (especially email newsletters) will continue to have a strong role to play with people who have expressed interest in particular colleges and universities. But one email "blast" (does anyone else hate that term as much as I do?) won't do nearly as well as email that takes into account where people are in the college selection process and matches content to special interests of the readers.
• Growth in social networking online will come from "more targeted offerings that attract users  based on interest." This might provide opportunity for recruitment engagement based on careful matches with the interests of people in a particular group. For Heidi, this aspect of social networking will grow more rapidly than the larger Facebook and MySpace efforts.
• Mobile marketing won't take off this year. Two reasons for this. First, many people just don't like the complexity of the devices used for mobile marketing communications. Second, there's no agreement yet on a common platform to use for communicating. For sure, many marketing people continue to believe that mobile marketing has a future. But if Heidi is right, don't fret if you don't develop a strong program in this area in 2008.

Overall, expect marketing resources to continue to shift toward online efforts. That's the one constant that almost everyone seems to agree on. No, print and broadcast media still isn't about to disappear. But in 2008, higher education marketing resources should continue to shift in the online direction. Onless you are an alchemist, that likely means less resources for print and traditional advertising and more for online efforts. For many colleges, that's still a difficult transition.

2008 New Year's Resolution

To better keep up with what's happening, make a 2008 resolution to subscribe to the ClickZ newsletters and research reports that are of most interest to you. Visit the home page at http://www.clickz.com/ and explore to find the most valuable content for your own marketing activities.

Exciting and important things will happen in 2008. I'm looking forward to sharing many of those with you and to hearing about the innovations you are making in your own online marketing efforts.