Recently in Student Recruitment Category

Online Inquiry Forms... Long Forms = Fewer Completions

Visiting several higher education websites the last few days inspired this mini-rant.

In the "stealth age" when potential students of all ages explore college and university websites as the first step in picking a school, concern has grown about how to get people to reveal their identities as early as possible. After all, if we don't know who a potential student is how can we put our carefully crafted recruitment commuications plan into action?

Not enough time is spent on removing barriers to getting an online inquiry. That remedial works starts with using the shortest possible online inquiry form. The evidence is clear: few schools pay attention to that, especially in the not-for-profit sector.

Direct Marketing Maxim: Shorter Forms = More Completions

One marketing maxim known to direct marketers for decades is still true today: the longer you make the form you want people to complete, the fewer people will complete it. Period.

With that in mind, visit your online inquiry page for potential new students now. Look at all the information that is "nice" for the organization to have, but not needed to respond to a simple request for more information about your school. Remove it. 

Here are a few of my special favorites to consider eliminating:

• High school attended or attending
• High school code (maybe my all-time favorite)
• "Where did you hear about us" lists (another favorite)
• GPA
• SAT or ACT score
• Phone number unless it is an integral part of your follow-up plan
• Athletics interest
• Other student activity interest areas
• Year of graduation
• Ethnic identity, however optional 

All of this information might be nice or necessary for your data files between the time of inquiry and enrollment, but you have plenty of time to collect it later. Don't put anything on the inquiry form that isn't needed to respond to the inquiry. Usually, that's name, email and street address, and program area of interest (if you're going to address that in the first response.)

Make it Fit "Above the Fold"

This last note: design your form so that a visitor can see the entire form when they first arrive at your web page. That sends the important initial message: "This won't take long to complete."

Creighton University Gets It Right

Creighton University knows how to do this right. Visit the Creighton online inquiry form and see a form that would make direct marketers proud.

If you have an online inquiry form as good or better than Creighton's, let me know with an email to bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com.

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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Recruiting Adults: Email is More Important than Social Media

Sitting at Carol Aslanian's conference on adult student recruitment listing to Jennifer Copeland at Demand Engine report on initial results of a survey of 50,000 adults (drawn from files of 10 universities that volunteered to participate with about 10% response so far) on their preferences for finding or receiving information at three points in the recruitment cycle:

• Researching schools before making an inquiry ("stealth" mode is increasing)
• After making an inquiry
• After sending an application

90% Start with Search, 90% Prefer Iniitial Email and Mail Follow-up

Key findings so far:

• Before making an inquiry, 90 percent report using a search engine (Google, for the most part) to start their search. At this stage, phone use ranks quite low.
• After making an inquiry, 90 percent prefer email and direct mail for ongoing contact. Social media (including FaceBook and Twitter) rank low. Phone is now acceptable is just under 50 percent.
• Preferences don't change much after a person sends an application:  Email and regular mail remain clear preferences, while phone rises to just over 50 percent and social media remain relatively low.

The research is winding down soon. Detailed results will be available in one or two months.

The preliminary results are strong: email is alive and well as a tool for enrollment conversion, the telephone is important (as immediate follow-up for people after an inquiry and later throughout the cycle on a selective basis).

Social Media Impact Grows Near End of Recruitment Cycle

When does social media become important? Pretty deep into the recruitment cycle when people are close to a final decision and want to connect with other people who are also close to enrollment.

The clear lesson: if you don't have recruitment time for everything online, invest resources in your website (critical for first visits) and email follow-up. When you're sure that's well covered, branch out into what Jennifer is calling "bleeding edge" social media like FaceBook and Twitter.

That's all for now.

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E-readers and Student Recruitment: Rapid Viewbook Delivery Right from the Web

Soon I'll be updating a popular presentation for my Sunday afternoon tutorial at this year's AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in November. 

The first version of "Student Recruitment in an Online World: Creating a Marketing Communications Plan in a World without Paper" seemed like a crazy idea when created for ACT's Enrollment Planners Conference in 2008. Until more than 40 people signed for the pre-conference session.

We updated and repeated it at the ACT meeting in 2009 and again at eduWeb2009 as pre-conference workshops this summer. The eduWeb session is online now at SlideShare and so far 1,396 people have viewed it and 13 have said it was a "favorite."

A key element right at the start is a review and discussion of e-readers. For most people, that means Amazon's Kindle or Sony's competitors.

Way back in 2008 we agreed on one thing: since e-readers were only available to read "black & white" text, they were not yet a viable alternative for things like viewbooks (or alumni magazines or annual reports). And in 2008, we could only speculate about when color e-readers would be available.

E-readers Soon in Color

Since then, the pace of change has been rapid. If you haven't yet started to think about how many people will want to download your viewbook from your website to an e-reader in the next 12 to 24 months, you'd best starting thinking now.

• In the 2009 summer events, we were able to talk about the first commercial e-reader in color from Fujitsu. It was (and is) available only in Japan and it cost about $1,000. Far from a mass-market device but remarkable progress in less than a year.
• Now Barnes & Noble has announced that in spring 2010 it will market a color e-reader. The potential manufacturer has denied this, but you can watch a Barnes & Noble rep announce it on YouTube.

No price was mentioned in the YouTube interview but I'd look for something substantially under $1,000. At first, it will be for early adopters rather than the general public. But you can sure feel which way the wind is blowing. And it is blowing much harder than it was in 2008.

Sony Invests Major $$$ in TV Ad Campaign

• Sony debuted a new TV ad campaign for an e-reader priced at $199 during this year's Emmy Awards TV show. People who missed that might have caught it last Sunday during an NFL game or perhaps on an episode of "Good Wife." Big $$$ behind this. 
• Amazon has cut the price of the least expensive Kindle to $259 (second time this year) and introduced a new "international version" at $279. Perfect for international student recruitment?
• Barnes & Noble has e-reader software you can download for your PC or Mac or smartphone. Ideal for the fast growing netbook sector. I'm reading my free copy of Dracula on my netbook right now each time my plane leaves the ground.

Viewbooks and Alumni Magazine for E-readers in 2011?

So what about your viewbook and your alumni magazine?

Isn't it time now to get ready for 2011, if not 2010? If you want people to know your college or university really is a tech-savvy place, will you have full-color publications ready for people to download to an e-reader direct from your website or Facebook page? 

Pressures will only grow to reduce print publication costs. Every download to an e-reader is one less copy you'll have to print and mail. Not to mention the rapid delivery advantage. Time to get started now. Out there in higher education land, somebody already has. Maybe your chief competitor.

Join me at the AMA marketing symposium for a new version of "Student Recruitment in an Online World: Creating a Marketing Communications Plan in a World without Paper." Register for Tutorial D after you review the session outline. 

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
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Branding: Traditional Campaigns are Dead.

"Branding is dead" is one of the subheads used by Augustine Fou in a recent ClickZ article, "A New Definition of Digital."

For traditional marketers, that's pretty scary stuff. Many still don't accept it.

For more than 15 years, colleges and universities throughout the land have been spending major dollars on efforts to establish or change brand identities. Some have had success. More have not.

Here's Fou's point:

• "Most people's first impressions of a brand are what they find in search results or what they read from other people in reviews. Hence, branding as we know it is dead." 
• And first impressions, like the "curb appeal" impact when searching for a home, are hard to change. 

Yes, Everyone has a Brand

Just about every institution, of course, has a brand identity with someone. And it isn't all that hard to learn what it is. Just tap people on the shoulder and ask them to tell you what you are. Record the answers. Smile or cringe at the results.

If you enroll traditional students and take the ACT or SAT, checking brand image is even easier. Check the quantity and quality of self-reported test scores.

Why Brand Campaigns Fail in Higher Education: Old Reasons 

Most brand campaigns over the years suffered from two problems:

• Not enough resources to run the campaign long enough.
• An impatient, unrealistic expectation that what people think of their "brand" will change significantly with a few months of concentrated advertising.

Before the advent of the digital world, presidents and trustees might at least dream that a stream of one-way messages about the wonders of their university might indeed result in more applications of higher quality, more alumni donations, and more favorable press stories.

Why Brand Campaigns Fail in Higher Education: New Reason

Today, in the digital world, the impact of one-way messages is dead.

People have too many ways to check on any organization or product that might interest them. The online world is filled with RateMyProfessors websites where people can get first-hand information about professors at a university. Yes, some professors are arrogant and selfish, concerned more with their own careers than helping students. 

Fortunately, if you pay close attention to RateMyProfessors, you'll see that good and great professors outnumber the wicked ones. But you won't find that in many admissions viewbooks or at many college websites. Bad for the brand image.

We've been in the "reality marketing" era for about 10 years. A few places in higher education were early adopters.

• One of the pioneers in student blogs, Lewis and Clark, names their blog spot "Real Life" and has never feared entries that might not be PR perfect. 
• Muhlenberg College for at least 12 years has had a web page explaining "The Real Deal on Financial Aid." If Muhlenberg wants someone special to enroll, that person gets a "preferential" finanacial aid package. Must be true. Says so on the website.

My friend Brian Niles at TargetX campaigns relentlessly for "authenticity" marketing, another way of talking about "reality marketing." How do you convey authenticity? Trust students to speak about the real experiences of attending their college or university.

Brand in the Digital Era

Let's get back to Fou:

• "Start with a true understanding of consumer habits and expectations -- digital -- and you will quickly find yourself cutting or placing a lower priority on marketing tactics that are one-way, or shout messages at consumers disrespectfully, or hit a ton of people many times (reach and frequency).
• "Instead, you will gravitate toward techniques that cultivate genuine and open dialogue with customers, where brands humbly listen and learn, and then respond with new features and innovations continuously to better match the needs of the customer."

In the digital era, your brand depends on your abililty to "match the needs of the customer" and "continuously" change. As Brian says, doing that requires a "revolution" in higher education. It will be interesting to see how quickly that revolution moves along.

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
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Web Analytics: What's the "bounce rate" from your admissions entry page?

Mark Greenfield from University of Buffalo (a SUNY university for those who otherwise might not know) is down at the Noel-Levitz recruitment and retention conference in Texas. He sent two tweets of interest to everyone in student recruitment:

• A person from Google reported that a good range for a bounce rate was 20 to 35 percent. What's a "bounce rate"? That's how many people visit a web page and leave without going anywhere else on the website from that page. Bad thing when that happens overly much from your admissions page. The Google person said anything less than 20 percent was an unrealistic expectation.
• Mark checked on the bounce rate from the UB "admissions site" and reported a stellar 25 percent. I'll have to ask Mark which page he was referring to. Why? If you do a Google search for "University of Buffalo," a link is returned to this page for undergraduate admissions. If you go direct to the university home page and follow the first link to "admissions undergraduate" you start at this page.
• I'm betting the low bounce rate was from the page entered from the home page.

Results from a Google search might be defeating your expectations for where a potential future student will start on your website. Google is the first place that most students who begin the college exploration process start their journey. 

Find your admissions entry page on Google

Enter the name of your college or university in the Google search box and watch the entry points that come back in addition to your home page URL. Imagine you were a person starting a visit from one of these home page alternatives.

Check to see where "new' or "first time" visitors to the site are starting. Is each page getting the low bounce rate that tells you that each is making a favorable first impression and engaging people?

If you're on Twitter and are not following Mark's updates, start doing that soon.

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
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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.

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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.

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Viewbooks and e-readers: Exploring the Possibilities

Yesterday I put the final polish on upcoming workshops for two July Conferences, ACT's Enrollment Planners Conference and eduWeb 09.

Both workshops will expand the topic of a shorter presentation at SUNYCAP earlier in June: Can you imagine crafting a recruitment communication plan without using paper?

This presentation first ran last summer at the ACT conference. Wild. Crazy. Silly. Foolish. But many people paid extra dollars to attend and speculate about the future.

This year's is revised and updated to include what's been happening since then. Two areas are especially important: unexpected pressure to reduce costs by moving print publications online and continuing technology advances.

Clinging to Print  

Everyone seems to agree that the most difficult piece to relinquish is the printed admissions viewbook. People cling to that with the same fear of loss that small children have about their favorite teddy bear before they fall asleep at night. If we don't have a printed viewbook, what demons and dragons will come from under the bed and devour us?

But there are signs that a fine life without a printed viewbook might be possible.

Electronic Publication Plans

Earlier this year, Karine Joly at HigherEdExperts took a survey of online readers and reported on "The State of Print and Electronic Publications in Higher Education." She had responses from 198 people, with a good division between public and private sector schools.

• Two years ago, in an earlier version, nobody reported that they had moved their viewbooks to "online only" status.
• This year, 5% reported already making that move. 
• And 23% reported that they had started creating an electronic version of their viewbook. (That doesn't automatically lead to dropping the print version, but it puts people in a better place to do that. And let's hope that not many of these folk plan to just take the print version and put it online as a PDF.)

Last year's ACT workshop included discussion of e-readers, with special attention to Amazon's Kindle. The Kindle had elevated the visibility of e-readers past what Sony had been able to accomplish a few years earlier. The Kindle, however, had a major limitation: it was only available in black and white format. And nobody seemed to know when a color version would debut. Without a color version, it was hard to imagine that people might read admissions viewbooks on e-readers.

Fujitsu E-reader with color display

But a color e-reader debuted in Japan earlier this year, from Fujitsu. And early reviews have been positive, like this one in FastCompany magazine. Right now the cost at about $900 is prohibitive for most people. Even the Kindle's current cost puts it outside mass market adoption. But that, of course, isn't the point. The color technology has arrived and the cost will fall. In 2009 it isn't quite as silly to imagine a time when people will download and read an admissions viewbook on an e-reader as it was in 2008.

Preferences for Online Information

Put this together with what's being reported in the Noel-Levitz E-Expectations research series each year. Many future students and their parents prefer online information gathering about colleges and universities. Will that continue to grow in 5 years? In 10 years? Is it impossible to imagine that people will fill out an online inquiry form to download your viewbook to their e-reader? I wouldn't bet my life savings against it.

Before long, we might not need printed viewbooks the way small children will still need teddy bears and other stuffed animals. Really.

That's all for now.

• Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
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RateMyProfessors.com: blending social media and reality marketing

RateMyProfessors.com is a place that most, if not all, colleges and universites appear to wish simply didn't exist.

• Yes, it is a form of social media where college students can share their experiences about their faculty with anyone who wants to read them. The site makes it easy to add new faculty evaluations and to share content with friends.
• And yes, it helps define the world of "reality marketing" by noting that not every professor at every college is a super-star dedicated to student success in the classroom.

At two recent conference presentations, I've asked the audience if any of their schools link from the official website to RateMyProfessors. I get the sense that people are shocked that the question is even asked. That's no surprise. One response summed up the feeling: "I'd get fired for doing that!"

Few Faculty Rated as "Poor Quality"

Here's what's funny about the prevailing attitude. In every case where I've visited RateMyProfessors, there have been very few faculty who receive "poor quality" ratings. Most have either "average quality" or "good quality" ratings.

Consider my most recent venture to Boston University as an example to use in an upcoming webinar. The site makes it easy find faculty from an academic area of special interest. In this case, I checked the political science faculty at BU. Here's what I found for 48 faculty members listed:

• 33 had "good quality" ratings
• 11 had "average quality" ratings
• 3 were listed as "below average"
• 1 had no ratings at all

That seems a pretty good peformance to me, maybe even higher than expected. All in all, these are professors held in high esteem by their students.

Students, especially those with high academic profiles, are keenly interested in academic majors. Imagine that the BU admissions page included a link to RateMyProfessors.com so that visitors could easily see the overall ratings as well as the comments available on individual faculty. That, it seems, would buy credibility in a world skeptical of the usual marketing language used in higher education and elsewhere.

The reality, of course, is that not all faculty are great. Personally, I'd be quite comfortable enrolling as a political science major at BU based on the RateMyProfessors reviews.

And yes, I understand that linking to RateMyProfessors.com from official websites isn't going to sweep the land. But take some time today to check how your faculty are viewed at this site by your students. You just might find people that you'd like to highlight in some other way in your marketing efforts.

If by any chance your college or university indeed links to RateMyProfessor, let me know. That would make a great Link of the Week selection.

That's all for now.

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