The Ultimate Guide to Student-First Marketing

Well, but I did the presentation a day before my wedding and had to fly back, so that's why it was very popular.

Yep.

Top mind.

Conversation piece.

All right, welcome everybody.

See, folks are coming on in here, so feel free to take your virtual seats at anytime.

And the first high is from Boulder, Hello.

Cala Rado wins the first chat of the day.

There are geniuses on there.

All are true.

Candace yeah Janice mission.

Did you see that question, yeah.

Janice

Alright, see a lot of familiar. Don't get to see your face right now, but do you see you in the chat? A lot of film familiar folks pouring in. We are excited to have you. This is a must see session as well. I think a lot of you will be interested in as a matter of fact, over 1600 of you are registered for today, so lots of great content. So let's go ahead and get started. My name is Aaron Goran I will be moderating today's session on the ultimate Guide to start.

First marketing my colleague Ken Higgins will also be in the background helping moderate the chat and answering any questions you guys might have that come up, but let's go ahead and get into some housekeeping items. Some of you that have been attending these events throughout the past several weeks or probably used to some of these bullet points here. But do you know that this webinar is being recorded? It will be a mail made available for viewing within 24 hours.

For Slate Festival passholders and will remain available through about July 31st. A few questions about that. A closed captioning can be enabled by clicking the CC button at the top right corner of the share window. Full screen viewing can also be enabled by clicking the expand button at the top right corner of the share window. Should you need to re sync audio or video at anytime, you can go ahead and refresh your browser. That usually does the trick. Questions, like I said earlier, can be posted right in that chat. We will get to those at the end of today's session.

And you know, it's one of the newer little features in the share window here is that we can turn the chat off by clicking on the chat icon that will hide the chat if you'd rather just pay attention to the presentation as opposed to chatting at the same time or watching the chat as you hear from our amazing presenters here. And Speaking of presenters, we have Ali Schreiner who's a senior marketing account manager, way better marketing rich wiki president of way better marketing, an kitchens Uber VP of Enrollment management in marketing from Wilkes.

University, so I'm going to hand it over to you guys and disappear for a bit and pop back on to help out with the questions that I'm sure will come up and we'll see you soon.

Great, well thank you very much for that intro. It's exciting to be here today. I'm back again. Part of the dynamic duo with Allie and now we've added a trio member and Kitchen Zuber as well. These two are so fantastic that they're kicking me out of the trio and they're going to make it do out so they're going to do all the heavy lifting today and I'm excited. I'm excited for them and I'm excited to hear them talk.

Let's do a quick intro. Ali wanted to start then we'll have kitchen and then I'll go. And then we'll get to work.

Sounds good, I remind Ali Schreiner obviously way better marketing than with way better over four years and my role here is pretty simple, just dedicated to helping partners make the most of their slate instance. So there's no project in your instance. You know, we obviously can't tackle. We really tried to try to touch it all prior to way better. I was with the Chronicle of Higher education for over 5 years, working in their audience development circulation department.

So we say there I was, you know, reading content and subsequently selling it for The Newsroom. You know about the challenges you'll face and now get to tackle those head on and get to do it right within years like instances. So thanks for being here today. I did talk about soon first.

Take it away kitchen.

Sure, greetings everyone. I'm kitchen Zuber vice president of enrollment management and marketing at Wilkes University, and I've been at Wilkes nearly two years. Anna Way better partner for many many years now. Just to give you some context from my perspective today. Wilkes University is a nationally ranked research institution. We are small, private liberal arts and professional studies institution in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We have approximately 2500 undergraduate students, and.

Works also though has a large online graduate student population of about 3000 students studying nursing education, creative writing, an MBA. So I'll be speaking from that smaller private institution perspective today. I'm glad to be here.

Well, we're thrilled to have you kacian, and I'm rich wiki. I am the President of way better. Marketing started way better going on. This is our 14th year now. So we're moving right along so I'm happy to be here today and I'm really. I'm really excited. Like I said, two very talented people in enrollment in marketing here talking to you today.

I'm excited for him and the here in chat so little bit about way better. I mentioned 14 years one or 14th year, now we just had a little anniversary here of year 13. So on 2 fourteen 6.8 million students in way better campaigns right now, right? And that doesn't include any of the work we're doing for schools inside of their slight instance, and who those folks are talking to. So 6.8 million kids in our campaigns now. 75 higher Ed clients, dozens and dozens of slate.

Audits in projects.

You know, over time and in the last little piece of this is the thing I like to focus everybody on when they ask us what we do. It says countless classes built. We are an enrollment driven marketing company. We think about deposits and we help our clients think about deposits. And if we're running campaigns or if you have a challenge and it involves a deposit we we want to be involved in it. That's what we like to do. We're good at marketing. We understand enrollment.

And we understand best practices and how to bring them all together, so that's a quick little a little blurb about us.

What we're going to talk about today I'm going to do one more thing, and I'm set this up is here's what we're going to talk about today, right? What is student? First marketing? Alright, we're going to define it for you. It's something that way better has always lived and breathed and always been about right student first marketing. And what does it mean? Right then? We're going to talk about data, right? And data drives this student verse student first marketing journey, right? So we're going to talk a little bit about data. How do you get it? What do you need? How do you think about it?

We're going to talk about the slate tools you can use to to accomplish it right. Slate is a great tool. You need the strategy right, and then you put the tool together with the strategy. You could accomplish great things and we're going to talk about that. And then finally, we're going to give you a real world example of how kitchen alleys team work together right to implement this right. Lot of people talk about things right? Lot of talk out there. We're going to show you how we be about it, right? How we walk the walk.

We're going to show you live, I believe Portal page is right. The portal page allocation are going to show where we incorporate all the things we just talked about. So I'm going to get out of the way. I'm going to let the stars of the show take over an I'm just going to kick back because it's awesome to meet to be me today because they have to do all the hard work. So thank you guys. Take it away.

Alright, well thanks so much rich and everyone. As you know Richard talked about in the agenda. We really need to start with what is student verse we need. We need to define it and to start. You know, even when it comes to our presentation, we're going to be student herself. Let's put our student hat on for a minute. We're going to ask you to do that repeatedly. You know, throughout the presentation, and let's look at things from their point of view. So let's see your junior. You're kind of smack dab in the middle of your high school career and all of a sudden you start getting a ton of email. A ton of print at home.

From colleges all around the country claiming to be be school for you, the perfect one they want you.

But the problem is no one is bothering to ask you what you want. No one's listening to your interests. It's like a bad first date. The colleges are there just talking about themselves. So now put your enrollment hat back on your mission tap. How do you break this cycle? How do you be a good first date and it starts with listening? You have to listen. You have to have an open mind because remember, regardless of institution size, brand awareness, location, you know everyone today see you all in the chat. Thanks so much for saying.

Where you're tuning in from, I can promise you that you all have one main challenge and that is marketing. A very diverse product offering to a very diverse audience. Because when you think about it, your product is limitless. You're matching a specific major with a specific college experience. You know it is. As an example, you have assumed that's interested in biology. They want to volunteer and they hope to join your soccer team. How can you change what you're saying and make this custom?

An individual to the student because ultimately student first what it is. It encompasses everything you do and I know kitchen lives and breathes this at Wilkes.

Application I think you're selling it.

You know, I get that wrong every time. OK, that's better. Thank Sally. Yeah definitely. I just to echo what you said, learn, learn what your students care about and try to do that as early in the process as you can. Start asking those questions, building Repor early in the recruiting process. And I know today we're going to talk about communication streams and marketing, but student 1st and personalization is really a mindset is an attitude and really a strategic initiative. It has to be incorporated in every aspect of your admissions and enrollment.

Nations and at Wilkes we created a personalization strategy across all of our channels. If we're going to be seeing that were personal institution, that gets to know you and that we provide personal attention, then we need to show it right up front with everything we do from the first time that you interact with our brand. So that means that our print pieces are dynamic and personalized. It means that our calm streams are personalized in some way customized. We have customized personalized videos.

We are now implementing. We just launched a brand new website and we're implementing things like personalization on the website so when they're visiting us, we're delivering content relevant to them that we're pulling through from slate, you know? So just the full smattering campus visits. Howard counselors are calling. It's a full personalization strategy, so as we think about this today, just kind of get in that mindset and we're going to show you some examples of how we incorporated incorporated that across many channels.

Yeah, and I think I think that's great. As Kitchen said, we're going to get to those examples. But first, we're going to how do you do this? We're going to talk about how you pull this off, and it really all starts with, you know, starting with thinking about the student again, student first, what is in it for them? Because as you mentioned, all those different channels across email, SMS efforts, digital ADS, print website content. As she mentioned, you need to keep these three guiding principles in mind first. Is is knowledge because you know whether the student knows it or not. This is, this is what they're looking for.

You need to let them know exactly what you intend to offer them, and do so in a way that specific to their interests. Again, talk to that student about biology. Talk to them about volunteering, talked about playing soccer, take what you know about the student and use it. The next is established. Trust the student needs to know that you're going to follow through on those promises through graduate outcomes. Through rankings, you can begin to start to paint this picture. You can establish trust and you can build your brand, and for this last one.

I want you to put that student hat back on again because I think we all might be so far removed from the process or own kind of college education. But never forget the magnitude of this college choice. It is scary. It's overwhelming, especially in a pandemic no less. And above all else, it's expensive. The college education. Their college education would likely be one of the biggest investments of their life outside of maybe purchasing a home Monday. So support them, be there for them. Build their relationship.

Early's kitchen said it all begins with first touch at way better. We believe yield begins with that first touch. It doesn't start in January of senior year even after it starts, you know immediately. So kitchen, I know you talked a little bit about it, but talk? What are your thoughts on this? How do you help and support students? Kind of throughout this journey?

Yeah, I think the support is really the key. They need us to help them make this decision and they'll rely on that personal contact with a counselor. But even through our marketing efforts we need to sift through the noise for them. We need to give them support that were bombarding them with things all the time. And so how do we deliver relevant information so they can make the best decision for themselves? And by doing that we're offering support. But we're also building trust 'cause they know that we're going to deliver.

And they're going to trust that we're giving them the content they really care about that matters, and it builds really good strong relationships.

For sure, and I think it's all. It's all about building relations of his likes, kitchens at it's truly encompasses everything, and it's a mindset. It's a mindset that you apply, you know, across across campus. So how do you shift this mindset? Where where do you start? Well, it all starts with data. Data is truly the single most important variable that determines the success of any marketing campaign. And I really do mean any across any industry because it's a quick example. Let's say you have the world's greatest.

Beer contain you're selling beer, but you're reaching people that don't drink. Maybe they just drink soda at this point. Truly nothing else matters. You could have the greatest content, the greatest design, but I promise you it's going to fail and it's going to fail because of data, so to not fall victim to this, you really need to ask yourself these two questions and that's what they did you have. And what data do you wish you have for the data you have? Ask yourself a secondary question an.

Is it usable or able to query and filter off of it in a meaningful way? Are you able to insert it as exports values into field merges? And for this specifically, I want you to think about major venturous. It's obviously a very important kind of data point in your instance, and it's this is something we see a lot when we do audits were in instances every day, and we oftentimes see that major of interest is multi select and this is a misstep. It's a pitfall that you're going to find because it needs to be limited to just one selection.

Because if it is multiselect, as you know the values will be returned to you in alphabetical order, comma delimited and you're left guessing what is the students first choice? What are they most interested in? If you do want to collect multiple interests, separate them out into separate fields, don't collect them all in one because not only do you use that, lose that insight, but you also lose the ability to build anything off of it. You can't get out snippets, notice content blocks. Now you can't build out that dynamic content because there's an infinite amount of combinations you know to account.

Or at the end of the day, the major of interest should be predictable. It should be confined to just one selection, because now you can use it. Now you can build it out, you know in snippet content block logic you know in subject lines.

And for the secondary question, for the data you wish you had, think about if you need it sooner history, what do you wish you knew about them? So then you could change what you're going to talk to them about. How can you build the student profile for this in your instance? Review your source formats and ensure you're collecting all the valuable information from your data set uploads. You can also calculate fields via automated rules.

And you want to take a hard look at your forms.

In kitchen, I know these two data questions. There are tough data is, you know a big thing. And so on everyones mind. How do you tackle this? It looks weird. Where do you start?

Yeah, let me try to make this relevant. You know, for the practitioners out there, you have to do a data inventory and understanding like what do you need to know and when do you need to know it. And it does tie back to your strategy. You know what are you trying to do, so I'll give you an example. I really wanted to be able to communicate with perspective student parents and we I wasn't able to do that.

We just didn't have that data. We only had that data at the admitted stage. Or maybe the application stage, but even then it was kind of spotty and so we had to make some back end fixes in terms of how we collect data and what we what we try to get from students earlier on the process. So now we can build a calm stream to perspective parents before they even apply, but that was all about the strategy. I knew I wanted to talk to parents, but I just didn't have the data to do it and this takes time. You know, we we recognize that we had a data shortfall.

And then we worked operationally to add that into our process to add that into our forms, and now we're able to communicate with inquiry parents and help move them along the admissions process.

Yeah, I think that's great advice. I think a data audit is definitely a good place to start. And as Kitchen said, you really need to understand your goals. What do you hope to accomplish because it will help you define these data needs? Because at the end of the day, a successful marketing campaign is multi channel. It's automated and it's dynamic multi channel used to be like a nice to have, but now it's it's required. You need to be available across all media sources across all channels to meet the student where they are.

So that when they're ready to pay attention, you're there. You know, providing them with that next step, providing them with with that content. Your campaign also needs to be automated in order to be relevant. The efforts need to be triggered, it needs to be dynamic, told the action the student is taking today right now.

And in order to be dynamic, you can have one campaign that serves many populations with varying content. And don't forget when it comes to data forms really need to rule your world. There are a major driver of new records to your instance.

But they're the only drivers you have integrations from other systems. Banner Hobsons, front rush, your search marketing partners. You know, even at way better. We have data feeds you know from responder smart campaign that go directly into our school CRM's you know? Obviously most of them slate, but we still do regularly inquiry checks we detect. Check to make sure our responders are getting loaded to the instance and it's key to making sure you know everything is working as expected.

But of course with integrations, everything is much more automated where you can affect the most change and drive more records to your instance is via forms.

And when we say forms, we're truly talking all forms your obscure RFI. Your request for information, your event registration forms, your counselor forms. When they're on the road, your visit forms, and a student comes to campus. Make sure they're filling out a form your alumni referral programs. Truly, you know all forms.

Because with forms where you like I said you can impact the most change is you are in the driver seat. You dictate what information is collected and you need to tow the line you need to strike that balance of asking just enough to get the information you need to deliver all this dynamic content we're talking about. But to not ask one question too many because then you'll have high abandoned rates.

You really need to take, you know, a good hard look at your forms and that is, you know you know through conditional logic.

The whole point of this, you know when we say, take a look. A hard look at your forms is to really remember what do you wish you knew about the student. You need to build that student profile. So again, remember, as you look to optimize as you look to do this. That is the key question. So through this like I said, you can use conditional logic. Make sure you're using it to only ask relevant questions based on student type based on 1st year versus transfer based on degree type undergrad versus grad based on residency and location, international versus domestic.

Based on major interest and again at the end of the day, collect not one question too many and be wary with conditional logic of too many nested questions from a UX perspective from a user experience perspective, it can get frustrating to student and really to anyone. If questions just keep on popping up, they don't know how much you're really going to ask him. Ask of them and again, it's really all about striking the balance and I think to think about this, think about in your own life. You have a handful of groceries and you're in the grocery store. What line do pick?

Well, you're going to pick the shortest one, because if you find 1 if all the lines are long, you're just going to drop them and you're going to walk out and you're going to come back another day. So when it comes to your RFI, you don't want them to be overwhelmed.

And to kind of build conditional logic into this as well into that example, you know you're in line. You have your hand full of groceries and someone in front of you. They need to do a price check and then they need to do another one and another one. Now your expectation. How long is this line? How long is this form really going to be? It's obviously totally unknown.

So obviously there's a lot to consider. Again, striking that balance, but to simplify things, we have another strategy for you, and that is don't do it all with just one form. Break it up, collect the absolute bare minimum, and on a first form name, email, phone entry, term program. Then follow up with additional messaging to get the student to complete that longer. RFI to give you that additional information, and kitchen knows this all too well because she just implemented this strategy at works.

Yeah, sure, did you know I started my career actually with an E retailer and the short form was was king there and then moving to higher Ed. All the forms were so long and we collected so much information. So this has been a struggle for me. My entire higher education karere and luckily I Wilkes. We've been able to. I think finally navigate this conundrum. So we we tried to look at our online or grad programs and say you know our goals there are to generate as many leads as we can.

And then be the first to follow up with those leaves and so do we really need a lot of information? So we had started there last year with grad programs. And then when we were launching a new website we said, you know, we can make this work for undergrad too, which is historically a whole bunch of questions were so afraid to lose students and that we have to ask them every single thing and those things drive our rules in slate and other parts of the business operation. So they are important. I'm not trying to say they aren't, but what are the key drivers?

You know we do need a phone number. We do need a an email. We've got to be able to contact them somehow and then probably entry turn. You know, that really matters. We added our shirt short forms to specific program pages so that behind the scenes we can collect that this is a biology form and then all of a sudden where or in English and English page. And so if they are submitting that short form on that page, then clearly there an English prospect and we tried to be really careful about the language we use for the labels.

On those forms. So we were very clear about what we wanted.

That didn't fit great with everybody. You know, we we still had to figure out. Well, how do we route these leads to a counselor or counsellor? Rules are based on address and now we're not collecting that. What does that mean? It just means we have to totally revamp and rethink our business operations behind the scenes. And so now those leads are being generated and pushed to one counselor who does immediate follow up and outreach to try to get more information for that student.

You know, and we also had to figure out well, how do we get more information? Like say we can't nobody answers the phone, they never respond to our calls anyway, so we tried to incorporate the longer form or them tell us more about you into other ways, like the confirmation page of when they submit the short form, but also text messages asking them to tell us more and email campaigns. Also asking them to tell us more. It's definitely a trade off, right? Are we getting everything we need?

We can't send him print materials. What does that mean? But I do think we're going to get more leads this way. We are going to be the first to follow up and connect with them, which allows us to build repor really early on when they are expressing interest is when they're really engaged. They might go on five other websites in the time it takes us to get back to them, or have visited another college. If it takes us two weeks to get back to them. So this will be a quick first to follow up and then you know we can qualify the leaks. So if they fill out.

The second form and tell us more. Now we can score those particular students higher because they are more interested and we can figure out our workflow based on that. So we'll see how it goes. We just launched at the beginning of June and will let you know we'll be tracking ROI and conversion and we'll see how it goes.

Yeah, it's it's such a smart strategy. I know someone just asked, is it for every program major in kitchen cracking up? I'm wrong. It is for every program on so it's on every program page. We better actually helped build up some of those forms. So yeah, this is it's such a smart strategy. It's one for you to really consider, because again, you can build that profile over overtime.

Yeah, yeah.

Inali, that's a lot of cop to build those forms is a lot of copying and pasting though as well, correct? I mean, it doesn't take a month to to do 50 forms, right?

No, yeah, it's definitely use the copy form feature. Yeah, you updating. We're having some hidden fields there because we know what program page it's on. You know at times and then obviously just use QA on the back end. So so yeah it's it's really manageable.

There was another question here. I want to address. They talked about how is there a rule of thumb, right? Well, how much information, how little my response was, just only what you need in the moment, right? Different audiences, different time frames in the cycle, right? There will be a different willingness for people to tell you more into inside of those cycles, right? You want to know more or less depending on where you are, so you know the rule is not so much a hard and fast, it's.

Being focused on what do I need to do to accomplish the goal of what I'm trying to accomplish now, and what can I get later, right? That's kind of. I think Kitchen is at match. Kind of a little bit of your thinking on those on this on this item.

Yeah, I would say and we think about the same thing on the application, right? I want to ask more questions but I don't want to cause friction. You know it should be hard to study here, not hard to apply here, but there are things I need to know. Like I need to know if they have community service background so I can match them with our bond or LEADER program and so we really always weigh that out like how badly do we need to know this information? How does it help our data set in the back? And if we don't use it if we don't use that information?

We don't ask it well. We're trying to stop asking it. You know, we have a lot of going back and revamping some of our forms and replication. For that reason, the less friction the better.

Exactly.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, all great questions. An obviously we've been talking a lot about personal and demographic information that we're collecting via forms, but there's another source of data in your instance, and it's from paying its website analytics data and whether you know you're not your instance has all of this, and we actually just give a presentation on this version I last Thursday, but the ping how to make the most of UTM in slate in your instance?

So check it out the recording is available now and it probably doesn't seem possible. We took a 60 minute presentation and we boiled it down to one slide, but here.

We should have done that the other day. Ali, by the way, now that you've mentioned that to me, I'm a little disappointed because that was a lot of work we put in. We did. I didn't have kitchen to carry my load. The other day I actually had to do something so.

Yeah, it doesn't seem possible. One slide for paying on, but we'll have our best best go at it here. The uses for paying and it's to use ping pong to use it to target specific pages to deliver content via dynamic forms via pop-ups via specific website content to trigger outreach. Obviously external outreach to the student. They take an action you trigger real time alert with next steps.

You can also trigger a alerts to your counselors again if the student needs some help. If they need some help to push that next step.

And finally, the thing it's probably what you use ping for first is for better insight, better reporting to home that strategy, what's working, what's not, you can use ping to build out your attribution models.

So now that you have data under control, it's you know you have a good handle on what you have and what you wish you had. Next step is how do you use this data in your instance? Because the value of it is going to be determined of course by how you use it. So we're going to talk 1st about populations and campaigns.

And publishing in campaigns in your instance or obviously dictated by different code, works different statuses in your funnel. But it's not the funnel you're thinking of, and I really want this slide. I want this image to kind of seer into your brain because it will truly change the way you work. It will change the way you think because the one on the left. This is the one everyone's used to, but it's not reality. I think if it existed in the real world, I don't know if way better what exists, because it would be easy. You wouldn't need us, the work would be done for you. The gravity would just pull students down through the funnel.

And they were just naturally deposit in all actuality, though, you have to pull them through the funnel, you have to, you know, often by the shirt collar per student and you need to suck them through all those different statuses. You can't rely on gravity to do the work. Instead, and Kitchen knows this all too well. As VP it you have to against all forces against all odds against all variables, you need to push them to take those next steps and it's hard work. I mean you met someone via email you were trying to get them to visit someone who visits. You're trying to get them to apply an admitted student. You're pushing them to deposit.

I was just trying to I can't.

OK.

Here we go.

But to push them through in order to kind of make this happen, you need to have a conversation because at the end of the day, you know marketing is a conversation and it's one that you know to deliver a marketing campaign to the masses. Rich. Can you advance the slide for me in my screens?

Marketing is a conversation to deliver it to the masses, yet specific to the individual you need to define your categories of personalization and you need to know what statuses you can use because remember that biology student who wants to volunteer in play soccer. How are you going to bucket your data so you can address each of these interests? How are you going to talk to them? Because at the end of the day you need to understand where they are in their journey. What steps did they take, and what steps are still needed to be done. And this obviously comes back to status in senior year.

Is more important than ever. That's where status is all coming to play. A senior can start a nap now there in England app they can complete an app but still owe documentation there admitted they waitlisted they deposit, but they still have to register for classes. Your work is truly never done even when a student is is on campus because you need to account for every student type every grad year, every status, every channel. Because when you get here when you account for all of these things, no student is left behind.

You're counting for all those contingencies, and you're consistently pushing them to the next step, and I wish we were in this virtual format, 'cause I'm sure this is the part of the presentation. You're either actually nodding your head, or you're thinking. Of course, I understand the value. I understand the importance, but really, where do I even start?

And first and foremost, you need to start by setting realistic goals and pushing kind of talked about this already, because if you don't as a kind of precursor as a preview ahead to the bottom of slide, you're going to fail miserably and will give an example of a way better kind of misstep and back to realistic goals is you, you know, at way better. We always talk about you need to do something and then you need to make it better. You can always optimize. You can always extend expand, but just get something live because the campaign that's going to do the worst.

Is the one that you're going to build for months and months and not get launched. And I know kitchen you have obviously talked a lot about goals. What is setting realistic goals kind of mean to you.

Yeah, I agree that you have to just get started and don't get too bogged down in the planning. But go back to that strategy and plan with a purpose. So prioritize. You know what's your issue? What problem are you trying to solve? Are you trying to improve conversion? You know? What is that strategic thing that you're trying to move the needle on? I give you an example.

You know we were losing some of our biology students to a competitor institution that was really clear through our national Clearinghouse data. And we said, we've got to do something. You know, we we have to promote our bio program specifically. So create a specific communication for that major and get that information into the in front of the student earlier and have them understand why our major makes sense an even if our biology major was the exact same as our competitor.

I don't think it is, but even if it was, we have an advantage because we've just offered up some really relevant information to that student. We've helped them see why that particular degree or that particular program or the research we're doing there matters to them and makes sense for them and their journey. So we've built that rapport in that trust. The alley was talking about before, and that personalized touch is going to help us with that student every time.

It's really great. Obviously it goes about setting realistic goals, but it's also you know when you talk about relevancy. You need to understand your bandwidth, how much automation can you pull off? Because you know discussion will talk about in a bit. It takes time to create content. You know it takes time to ensure data is configured correctly, and then of course it takes time to build it to test it in your instance, and I think the day there's a secret to marketing personalization and it's to do just enough. Again, we talk so much today about striking the balance and kind of in the line. And it this is no different.

With personalization, there is a law of diminishing returns. Think about you know this quick example. We study for 8 hours and we think we can get an A minus to get the A we have to put in another 8 hours. In this case you're putting in double the effort to get just a little bit more in return. Our partners a lot of the folks we talked to. I'm sure a ton of you today on the call on the line don't have time to get that a. You don't have time to double your effort. You have about 10 other jobs so many other things that you're focused on. And again, you need to do just enough.

To get that outcome and they promise you at the end of the day, if you do this, you're going to be really good at it. You're going to be greater, personalization and delivering relevant content, so cut yourself some slack and know this. Know that failure is almost inevitable when you build something you're going to be optimizing it. You're going to be finding things that work and that don't work, and sometimes she will just fail miserably, and I promise you the example. You know. Way better long ago we had built out an inquiry campaign for Saint Johns and we wanted to account for.

Every size, every possible major and we wanted to automate deadlines along the way and application deadlines. The problem was we obviously started with a batch of students that went through the campaign and the Drip campaign, but then there were other students that came in and all different points we were trying to automate too much. It was so hard to manage and again it comes back to setting realistic goals and remembering this simple best practice that your automated campaign should be just for nurture based messaging. Then your batch messaging via deliver.

Those should be time and date specific, you know, think events, think deadlines. That way you have two very kind of clear actions for each of those. That type of messaging.

We better obviously rebounded from the stumble. We created a great campaign, we survived, and so will you, and I just just remember, if you do try to build that mother of all campaigns, you tend to either build nothing 'cause you can't get it out, or you tend to build something that's just impossible to manage overtime.

So for this next slide I want you to take your screenshots. Don't do it covertly, go ahead, take it, print it out, put it on your whiteboard, and cross these off as you go. Because Anadir world, we want you to have a plan for each of these groups you. Once you have an automated campaign, and it might seem overwhelming to start, but start with the Co work that you can have the biggest impact right now and that's seniors. Work through all that different status based communication we've been talking about and then move on to the other groups. And the good news is that you'll be able to re purpose so much content.

You know, thinking about senior inquiries transfers you're going to be able to borrow so much of that content transfers you'll need to talk throughout the ease of transferring about credit transfer. About PTK scholarships. You know financial offerings you have for them, but transfers are a lot like senior increase. They care about your programming. They care about student life. So make sure that you like I said, kind of liberally, you know, borrow across across those campaigns.

So now it's time to see it in action. Let's see some examples here. We're looking at an undergrad pharmacy senior campaign for Wilkes across all those different senior services inquiry, incomplete app admit, I know you're thinking, hold on. We talked about all that status based communication but we didn't talk about breaking it down for programming. And this is where you need to customize it to your needs. For Wilkes, having pharmacy having its own float made sense, and they had a ton of content to support it. Kitchen can give some other background too about why this was important.

Yeah, and don't get me wrong. We started with the basics we said let's make sure we've got the senior increase taking care of. Let's make sure we can get to transfers and then we were in a place where we could start saying you know, can we move the needle on a program specific? Or you know maybe a program like the Bonner leaders where we can start identify ING people and their interests and pushing out content to them. And so we partnered with way better and said, you know, please, pharmacy applications are down as they are.

You know, nationally students are questioning whether they should be a pharmacist. They're not sure what pharmacy really looks like anymore, and so we've got to educate and put down the information about the program in front of them early in the increased age in the applicant stage an admit, so why pharmacy? But also why pharmacy at Wilkes. And we've this year stabilized our numbers. This campaign's been running, I think, almost a full year. It started early last fall, and we've done.

You know much better. Again, not not huge growth, and we're going to really take a look at what really worth some of the conversion factors here, but that's it. You know, we just needed one program to solve that particular issue where we weren't quite moving the needle where I needed. You don't have to do every single academic program all at once, just make sure it's fulfilling your their key initiatives, the key places where you need an extra boost.

For sure, and I think when kitchen when you talk about moving the needle, something else, it's obviously indicated here in the screenshot. Don't forget about texting, don't forget about SMS efforts because they are short there. Sweep there to the point and at this point you'll see we have them for the incomplete app and admit it makes sense at this point in the cycle you've built a relationship with the student. You obviously have mobile number hopefully collected. Now you can reach them and honestly reach them in a way that we know they're all paying attention to, and that's on their phone. Again, it's because you've established this relationship.

So Next up we can have this entire presentation about student 1st and not talk about content blocks and and liquid markup because it's obviously how you deliver all of this dynamic content to students. So as a quick reminder, again, do something, make it better build your content in an iterative way, and will show you how to do that through content blocks. Because if you try to run first, you'll never get anything launched again. You'll just be bogged down in the management of that, and you'll likely make some missteps along the way. So remember, set realistic goals, keep it simple.

End crawl first.

And before we get to building, don't forget these direct marketing best practices, because if you don't take anything else from this presentation, if you adopt the practices on this slide, I promise you you'll be more student first because the first goes without saying we've talked about a lot. Be relevant, a student will engage assumable pay attention if it's relevant to them. We're going to give you some examples of this in content blocks on the next couple of slides.

Next, ensure that you have a clear, focused call to action and to make sure you're not breaking this role. It's OK if you have a secondary called action here in there, but a clear focus call to action will tell the student exactly what you want them to do. An again to keep yourself honest, look at each element of your effort and ask yourself is it's doing its job. For instance, let's think about an email, the subject line, the OR the email. The subject line is only job is to get the open. The email body is to get the click and I think I need to.

Just repeat that again because it's so important. The emails only job is to get the click leave the rest. All of the other copy to the subsequent landing page. Don't pack too much information onto that into that message because leading to the next best practice, it needs to be easy to scan. You know, think about your own inbox. If you receive a long email, you're just going to put it off and you're going to read it later. A student, though I can promise you later, never happens. Don't forget most of them are teenagers. Later Will never come.

So use bolded copy, use underlines, use hyperlink text. Tell them exactly what you want them to pay attention to.

And remember above all else, remember it is about them. After this webinar, go pull an email from one of your campaigns. I want you to do a quick scan. How many times in that email do you say your institution's name? Do you say the word we start to replace this copy with information that's specific to the student?

And to do this to make information specific to the student again use content blocks when we talk about building with precision and accuracy. Content blocks are really easy to set up. You'll create your key with your default value and then overtime build out the other individual values in those books. Example, you know we're obviously showing video in an email here, and video is great. It's engaging the ask is low in this case, it's 60 seconds that they can learn more about books. Then build this out for additional programs.

You know we simply worked with the content blocks had and now we have content fergurson student, an engineering student and a double major reason art and science major. Now instead of just having a generalized video about looks, the student is now starting to picture themselves there and they're hearing it from someone they can relate to someone who might be studying with their self studying hen someone they can trust. 'cause remember when we talked before about what's in it for them, knowledge, trust and support. This is a current student. This is someone they can trust and it begins to, you know, really kind of build back.

And obviously, having all of this content is certainly ideal, but I totally get it and we work with a lot of folks I know it's not always the norm, so question. What perspective can you bring about building this out? About building out additional content?

Yeah, sure, first I'll say in academics. We'd love to talk like we have a lot of information. We like to put in front of people. So Ali's point too easily scanned is so crucial, and that's been really tough. And even for me, working with marketing, saying, you know it's gotta get that. You've got to get that click. That's really the crucial piece. And we've made our website changes for the same thing and then using different media like videos like even a testimonial and image.

And these things seem sometimes intimidating. If you don't have a big Bank of assets or a video library, or maybe you do, but you don't have access to it. Or maybe you have some of this, but it doesn't quite speak to the right audience. It's OK, you can create this yourself, and I've been at many places, including Wilkes who does have a fair good amount of assets. We grab a tour guide, we put him outside in the quad, something nice looking, and we ask him a couple questions. We do some simple editing. This is on an iPhone.

It doesn't have to be more interesting than that. There are tons of programs out there that help you be a video editor. Ann, it's enough. It's authentic. Students are used to that. I'm all about, of course, it produce video. I am in charge of marketing. I produce videos, have their place and we need him. But you don't necessarily need to produce video for every single thing you're trying to do here now. Simples fine there. This is YouTube nation. This is tiktok. They watch authentic video all day long.

I can't even pull my kid away from it, so you know, they're used to that, and they build that that builds trust with your with your students and tapping the student step in the clubs tap into certain student majors. And you know, faculty love to be interviewed. It's a great way to build repor and get your faculty on your side. If you say hello, tell me, let me interview really quick and then you can just make some snippets out of that. It's really simple. Or maybe just the testimonial you can do that.

And I would rather advice would just be don't be afraid to do the work. Take it on. Sometimes you have to make a request so a marketing team or somebody else is going to do that work for you. You might be three months later until you have it. Just be OK with doing the work. Go out there and build your own library and then what happens is that marking starts to pull from your library and then you start working Better Together and saying OK. What are some of your video initiatives? Or if your videos so bad they come to you and they say, can you please let us help you?

And so that works out perfect too. So you can do it. You can start small and build a big library and these snippets are perfect.

Yeah, I think it really does. Just start with starting Small's Kitchen said, and I promise you that once you start collecting this. When she started building content blocks, you'll be hooked. You'll want to build more and more. Here's another example for Wilkes. And again, it's building trust through outcomes. You know in this case, we're continuing to paint that picture. Where have graduates gone to work and you guessed it, there's default content. Which, by the way, you'll always have for when it comes to major of interest, 'cause they will always be undecided or undeclared. Students and students that just haven't told you yet. But they're studying so.

Always have default content and then build it out in a way that makes sense. For instance, the default content for this doesn't probably makes sense for education. For aspiring teachers they need to see what school districts have. You know both graduates have gone on to you know to work at an interest in nursing health professions, they need to have more. You know where. What hospitals and health centers are those students working at?

And the good news really, with content blocks, is that they can be re purpose. You can use them a task across your entire instance across the campaigns we talked about borrowing from senior in transfer. And of course with your portal page is your status page. Is there really the culmination of student first marketing? It's a status page completely custom to them or it should be because you obviously need the data in place. You need to have it configured correctly to pull off something like this. In the screenshot we have here and before we dive into it question, can you talk a little bit about how this portal project?

Came to be for Wilkes.

Yeah, sure, it actually was a smaller idea and then morphed into something bigger thanks to our way better partners. But I really just wanted a way to dynamically show individual scholarships and financial aid packages right out in front instead of having to upload a financial aid letter to their generic status portal, which you're not going to click on and see where they were. Just missing the mark. So we worked together and said, well, we we could show financial aid information right in a custom.

But we can also show their customized admit video that has their name in it. We can show them program specific relevancy and activities and interests right here on this landing page. And it's a place where we can always, then with our marketing or communications, drive them to this so that way they're going to one place we don't have to send him all over the place with URLs or other things, and they can get some of that content. Portals have been around a long time, but it's really nice to be able to leverage slate in this way.

And the data that we're collecting. And this is just the beginning. I think we're going to be able to do to really cool things we just launched over the winter, so we have time, and the checklist is really dynamic too. So not only are we putting out our value at all times, but we are also able to drive them to that next step in each part of the process.

For sure, and I think that's what the portal pages it's driving students to let them always know what that next step is. Obviously the screenshots here of the portal you can see from a design perspective. It's not the out of the box late portal that you might be used to it from a look and feel. It is very consistent as Christian mentioned, works just launched a brand new website. Now everything is nice and cohesive. You know, across all marketing material, but the real power here is the data behind it. All the data that's driving this personalization. You know we're introducing or hopefully just reminding the student who the staff assigned counselor is the person they've been talking to all along.

Robin, major of Interest, dynamic content related to student quotes related to video and other content. We're having dynamic calls to action that change based on student status based on what that next step is and for the mid portal we also have this yield intent form and this is great because you collect assumes intent to enroll. An ASK May 1 approach is it really helps your counselors to hone in on what students are winnable and fun fact about this form is that we've received a ton of responses and frankly we were a little surprised.

Make.

And a rich kept on asking me. He was like their test records like This Is Us testing and like no these are live students. Their life students coming through and we quickly learned that when students said yes, 50% of them deposited the same day. So we altered our follow up communication to delay it. So we delayed you know the counselor getting the alert that student getting a little the alert 'cause we wanted to get out of the way. We knew that that was the kind of intended behavior. So we followed up. You know when the nudge was needed.

So next steps you know. Obviously we talked a lot about demographic, personal information, but again, don't forget about paying go check out that other session that Rich and I did. You'll truly understand how you can make your efforts. You know hyper relevant.

And that's all, right? I think we actually have one more slide for you if you want.

Sweet, I'm back in.

You don't get off that easy.

Yeah, real quick. Funny enough to the water delivery guy, just rolled into right when I'm on right when I'm on the stage right? I'd introduce him but we don't have time. Feel free to reach out to us. Don't be shy. Lot of great questions in there. We're going to try to respond to those. If Aaron doesn't get a chance to ask him, we will respond to those chat questions. Kitchen Alley myself one of us will respond. We appreciate your time. We respect your time and we want to we want to give you good information.

So yeah, just reach out to us. Fantastic job, Ali. Kitchen as always, love you. Thank you so much. Really two very dynamic people here and it's a pleasure to be associated with them. So I will hand it over to Aaron. You're up.

Great, thanks so much. That was a lot of great content and I like the the non to alluding it to being the first date with students and maybe get into click through to get to that second day is super important so lots of great questions surrounding not just collecting information but also how to manage working on projects like this even from an operation standpoint so.

It's probably there was a couple of questions that came in the registration forms and some that came in the chat that were in alignment with. What do you do in a situation where you're trying to create all this dynamic content? Take advantage of this robust functionality and slate, but maybe with a smaller team and so especially kitchen if you wanted to kind of weigh in there and give folks advice on how to go forward, working with other people on campus. Alongside you know folks like way better marketing, but how do you mobilize staff as well, including straight?

Yeah, I think empowering whoever you can get to help first. The other thing is, even on the smallest I had, the very smallest staff at a very small school before Wilkes and I won't work without an admissions communications manager, it just has to be a crucial part of who your team is, and if that means I've gotta re purpose an admissions counselor, I'm willing actually to take the hit on the road piece so that I can build some of this out and then.

Invest in training through Communist elite summit and those kinds of things. 'cause it's so pays off. It's so valuable and until you have that and being able to tap into outside resources and actually initially worked with way better and said, build me one com stream please in Slate and then will copy it.

We ended up asking him to do a few more, but we learn through that process 'cause they're really close. They work really closely with us, so even if you can afford this one to get help, then you can build on that and any external could you know, use your it. You have any 990 who has sort of this technical abilities that you can, you know, pull in somebody in marketing anybody who has any kind of interest and use your stake holders for building content.

I mean really, we have so much fun with it. Sometimes just going out there with the camera and doing different things. You can take images and make him an animated slideshow. You don't have to be a professional to pull this together and students love it. So if you want to get a committee or Council of students together, just send him, give him a bunch of product projects and send them out and let him do it for credit. If you have a work study, budget line, do it that way. So I think there's a lot of ways to get creative. You just have to be resourceful. You don't have to have resource.

Resources so find ways.

Like that?

I think I think those videos like what you're really talking about is being real.

Right, and these students are inundated with unreal messages their their their their manufactured. So just you know itself being real speaking to something they might care about is going to give you a leg up. I always equated to every viewbook right. They show it. There's a dorm room picture in every view book. It looks nothing like a dorm room.

It's clean, everything is nice and neat, so they sense that right. And then these videos, the real they are.

You know the better and in those kind of videos are easier to find help with, right kitchen? Like you said, go out, have fun, take some video right? It's enjoyable. It's enjoyable.

Alongside that, two folks had questions about best practices for not just for cutting, but in using videos in your emails, and now you kind of covered a little bit about that. Some best practices for including videos in your in your email content.

Yeah, I think. Obviously videos Greater Alexander just give the presentation there on Slate Video, so more functionality there are utilized within your CRM. But again, video doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be this big production manufactured thing and find ways to incorporate it, especially in an inquiry campaign where your job is to really just nurture the student here. Want to give them information that's relevant to them, but you just need to. They need to. You need to always stay top of mind for them so video is a great way because it's a low ask as a preview to arping webinar. It helps with match rate. Again, you're getting that.

Like so it's multipurpose for sure.

And output I would just add that you know if if you can have it be part of the message and they see it's a video and click on it. But great, but if your skill set is I know how to hyperlink.

Fine, make the call to action like watch Video and send them to your YouTube channel again. It's really where your skill set is, but there's ways to incorporate it in.

Great in kitchen. Earlier you mentioned that you're you in your website. You have content that is dynamically changing for students by pulling data from slate. Can you go into that a little bit more? Or maybe talk a little bit about it at a higher level for folks.

Sure, I have to say that I have a really extremely talented web.

Folks and digital marketing person who found this technology as part of our web redesign. And so I honestly don't personally know a lot about it. But what I do know is that it's a. It's an add on feature into our website that helps identifies IP address it uses. It can use any identifying information we have in slate to then render information specific to that student.

On our web page, I don't exactly know how it works to be in Full disclosure, but I am happy my emails up here. I'm happy to get you the name of the vendor and kind of what that looks like, but I just can't say specific, but it's pretty. It's pretty awesome and that's our next phase, so we just launched and now they're working on implementing the personalization features of that.

You can probably also Google. Adobe has a platform that does that same sort of thing. If you want some background information on how things like that works, I would also recommend you going ahead and doing that as well. You probably get more information than you'd ever want, but I'm sure it works very similar to the add-on that kitchens teams using.

Yeah, I also suggest folks having conversations with community forms to if there's anybody has some best practices, especially leveraging ping or ping pong and so forth for dynamic content and leveraging slate with that as well. So another area to continue these conversations in the community forms, but also kitchens, email enriches, email analysis emails right up here as well, so when he goes to the initially collecting information, you gave some great tips to and people had questions about how long is too long with the form and what should we be collecting up front right away.

And a lot of that revolves around the the students. But as you know, especially with traditional undergraduate students, is a lot of communications that go out to parents. And So what types of best practices would you want to share with the broader slate community regarding collecting parent information, family information, and other folks may want to be in contact with and in messaging those different family members perhaps.

We're changing that up a little bit, right? 'cause now that's part of our longer form where we say tell us more about yourself and we still don't want to ask a bunch of questions now. Like common app where we want to know what your career is and how much money you make. You know don't go into all of that, you just need like parent one, an email address, you know an an. Then you can at least start a conversation with those parents and actually we then also take those email addresses and dump them into campus, ESP. Which is another partner we use which is kind of like a parent.

Portal, and so we communicate with perspective student parents in that way as well. Also rich. I don't know if you remember, but I said to you in our search campaigns I need parent data and so you created a parent data box where you were collecting that and I like the way you do it, 'cause it just kind of pops up and says hey, do you want your parents involved too? And you could probably speak to them but we're collecting data that way too through our search campaigns.

Yeah, I'll start it by kind of saying the same thing that we originally said about forms. Only get what you need in that form, right? Think about the goal of what you're trying to accomplish right and when you do that, you're constantly making choices.

Right, and sometimes that's choices. Like additional question, you might have to cut because it doesn't help you. Sometimes that's parents, right? Like if you're solely focused on just getting parent information all the time, you're going to miss out on a lot of other data you really need, and it would be even more valuable, right? So, Kitchen mentioned one way they don't. Ask it in the short form they go to in a long form, they just get name and email right. In our campaigns we will pop a light box at times.

For parent information, make it easy to get away from it. Still accomplish the other goals that are higher up on the wrong that we want to accomplish. There never gets solely focused on one thing, right. Focus on what are my goals here in this campaign? What am I trying to accomplish? Attack those goals? Separate. What's nice to have to need to have and then apply it right is still the fundamental rule. I don't care if it's parents or whatever it is, right.

Then you figure out other ways around it to augment and in kitchens team does a great job at that.

I'd say one final thing is that I don't know. We also collect it in the junior and sophomore inquiry campaigns for well, so in those automated campaigns, we've dedicated effort that just ask parent information too.

Great, thanks so much guys. We could probably talk for hours more. X is such a. It's a great topic and communications and communicating to different audiences throughout the college search and admissions process. But alas, we are out of time so everyone attended today. Thank you so much and allene rich fish and thank you so much as well for giving this presentation. As a reminder, this is being recorded and will be made available to Slate Festival passholders and tomorrow. Just so you guys know we will continue on. We have a double header.

Thank you.

Great thanks all.

Next up we have 1:00 PM. We have search and rescue how the University of Delaware is using cutting edge strategies to guide high school seniors to campus. Then at 2:00 PM we have using entities for graduate non degree applications with the university.