5 Steps to Navigating the Enrollment Cycle and Your Slate Instance with Waybetter Marketing

We can talk about anything.

Yeah so.

Right?

Alright, we are live an rockin and Rollin which is great.

Alright, hope everybody's doing well out there.

All right, we're just going to wait a couple more seconds to let everybody roll in.

How's the weather down in Maryland, rich?

That's fantastic actually I just took a little walk. It's probably like 70 degrees.

Yeah.

Um?

So no, no complaints here. I'm going to be honest with you. It's beautiful.

Yeah.

Indeed.

Yeah, it's pretty pretty sweet here, where I'm up in New Haven, CT and I think same same. It's about 70 degrees appear but a nice stretch over the last week or so. So fantastic cool, welcome everybody as you guys are rolling in. Welcome back for those of you that were here if you want to say hello in the chat, that's fantastic. Typically what has happened on here is hey, hello from Colorado. Hey hello from Miami. Hey hello from.

You know whatever. Lubbock, TX where it's 112 degrees, right? Last time we were here last time I hosted one of these, we had some West Coast folks on the line who were experiencing a little bit of the wildfire outbreaks. So hope everybody is safe from wherever you're tuning in from today. My name is Ken Higgins and I'm the general manager of student success here at Technician Slate, and I want to say welcome back to those of you who have joined us.

Previously and welcome and hello to those who are joining us for the first time for our slate by technicians present presents. Dive deeper with our preferred partners webinar series. Today we're going to be hearing from way better marketing and learning five steps to navigating the enrollment cycle and your slate instance.

We are going to go through a couple of the housekeeping items that we have in the past, so just quickly this webinars being recorded and will be made available for viewing at a later date. Closed captioning can be enabled by clicking the CC button at the top right corner of the share window, full screen in that same right hand corner, you can hit the expand button and it'll pop open to full screen. If you need to re sync audio or video or anything sounding a little bit funnier off, just refresh your browser.

Your share window and it should pop back in and catch you back up and then please, as always we always have some great conversations and great questions. In the chat we will have time for Q&A at the end, but feel free as always to post post in the chat as we as we roll along here.

To move along way better way better marketing is a data driven marketing agency that helps colleges and universities drive enrollment from first touch through the point of deposit. Way better uses data and analysis to understand each students unique needs in order to address them. They are experts at connecting data to marketing automation.

And now and today I have the pleasure of introducing those experts. We have one rich whipkey who is the president and founder of Way Better Marketing. And we have Allie Shriner who's the senior marketing manager for clients of way better who used Slate. They've got some great stuff to share with you today. Really really fantastic presentation. So with that I will hand it over to rich an alley.

Thank you so much Ken, and we appreciate this and we're excited to be here.

I will say as you were talking, uh, I was looking at my profile picture as I was looking at the screen and.

I don't know Allie, I I was thinking to myself whoever took that picture of way better. It's time for a big substantial raise or a bonus or something, because I don't know. I'm just like in that profile picture a lot better. Was it you that took this picture, Ali?

Yes, I'll definitely credit that was me.

Yeah, OK, so you know the first thing you're going to hear today is if you're queued up to take credit for something, go ahead and do it. 'cause I'm fairly certain Ali did not take this picture and I am somewhat disturbed at the fact that I look much older and slightly pudgier than that profile picture. But life goes on about us real quick at it for 12 years.

I've been doing for about 20 plus years different things in marketing automation, in personalization way better's been around for 12 years, 6.8 million students in campaigns today that does not include the clients. We help with their slate instance and what's in? There's 6.8 in our campaigns today, 75 higher end clients, dozens of slate audits and projects. Probably not a marketing automation platform that we have not looked at, tested or worked on in the last 12 years.

And then ultimately what we pride ourselves in is countless classes that we've helped build with our partner, schools and the people that make us successful. We're going to start here with little pole.

Uh, why did your institution by Slate, and I think that pole is up for you to see, but I'm not sure why that pole is up right? Real quick on the goals. Kind of here on what we want to do.

This this presentation and this this talk track is really about you all.

I want you to get something out of here. I want you to be in power when you leave. I want you to have things that you could go and do that are going to make use more success will make your your school more successful. If we were in a one on one setting, I would just tell you hey, just fire questions as so will customize whatever we're going to talk about around which you need to be successful. It's a little more challenging in this setting to do that but but but please feel free to fire off questions in that in that chat box or send us questions or send questions to Ken that you want us to answer. We will follow up. We can answer.

Anything you ask, we want this to be about you, right? And we want you to get the maximum out of this time that you can. So I appreciate you being here. I'm ready to go you ready to go out you fired up.

Alright.

Yeah, yeah.

Alright, well let's go then. Let's get started alright 5 keys, the marketing automation slate, right five keys. The first thing you're thinking is I hope this guys better at marketing automation than math. 'cause there's only four things on the screen. The next ones in the next slide, because it's the most important five keys are marketing automation, number one, process number, one process. You gotta build a process, right? Let's data driven so that you can build all the other components that matter on it. Right process first.

Right, you gotta understand data, you gotta understand the data you have to understand the data you wish you had. Build that process first. #2 relevance. Relevant strives, interaction relevant relevance drives, engagement with the client or a customer, right? If I'm selling line and you don't drink wine, it doesn't matter what the marketing campaign is. I'm not going to win. I'm not going to be right implementation. Once you start to understand process. How do I build my data structures? What data do I need to be successful?

Right, and I understand how am I going to use some of that with relevance in my marketing. I have to implement and I have to begin to implement campaigns and I have to do it across multiple channels. I have to do it across email, texting, print the web ads right? I have to be able to automate it at times so I can work on other things right? I have to implement accountability. I have to be accountable to my results. I have to track them. I have to report on them. I have to learn from them.

Right, I have to follow the results, not what makes me feel good or what I think is good. What works, be accountable, right? Slate is a great platform that gives you a lot of opportunity to build customized reports right for accountability. If you're building and using reports that no ones looking at their the wrong reports, be accountable, OK. And then most importantly, a big takeaway that I want you all to have today.

And many of you heard have heard me before, and you've heard me talk about this. There are two rules, right? Rule one, do something.

OK, do something if you step into a situation or you add an institution an really you're not really. You haven't been able to figure anything out. You haven't been able to do something. Build an RFI form, build a trigger off that RFI form right? Or request for information form builder, trigger off of it, do something.

Well, to make it better, make it better, right?

You get excited, so I built the RF. I've got a trigger built off of it. Well now let's use a snippet inside that trigger. From what you just learned inside that inside that form.

I made it better, OK, and that's the way you want to live your work life, right? That's the way you want to live your slate life rule one, do something to make it better. Alright, very important because you'll never get anywhere. You'll never get anywhere you want to go if you don't first start going and doing something. OK, so let's roll here. Let's talk about process.

Process is the most important thing right in the beginning of this whole structure is the most important thing for success, right? One of my key takeaways is my rules rule one. Do something to make it better. Here's another one and I want you to remember this and I want you to never forget this right? Someone graded process.

But average at marketing.

Will always be a great marketer who stinks at process. OK, so when that wine person wants to sell that wine and they come to me and say rich, I want to sell more wine, right? You know what I say to him?

What kind of data do you have?

What do you know about your perspective buyers?

What kind of system do you have that I can learn more data? What platform do you have so I know what I can build, right? I don't say that wine guy, right? Hey, I'll be back. I'm going to do some writing. I'm going to build some ads. I'm going to build you a text message for you. I'm going to. I'm going to design some print for you. I don't say that.

Right, I want to understand the data. I want to understand the process right process first. Don't do it in a vacuum.

Right, don't do it in a vacuum. If you're the lead and you're the marketing person, right?

Right, or you're the enrollment person? Are you the IT guy or the data girl? Right? Don't do it in a vacuum. ALIE ALIE does tons of audits.

Alec, and probably within 1/2 hour that audit tell.

Who in the institution is leading the process about an ally?

Very, very early on always.

Very early on, don't do it in a vacuum. Work together if your marketing you have to understand the enrollment cycle you need the enrollment people. If you the enrollment people you need, the marketing people right you need 'em. They have they have the content, the brand, the platform, to operationalize all the good stuff, y'all both need the data person, right? You need that person. If your data is not structured the right way, you cannot be relevant in anything you communicate.

Data it you need the marketing people you need to understand what's the vision. Where am I going? What do I want to do with this? Six months down the road? Ayear down the road nine months down the road 2 years down the road.

You need to understand that so you can build structures that support it.

Right, if you have a multi select form and you collect three majors at once and you put it all in one field.

You're not going to be talking about major of interest down the road.

You need to work together. Don't do it in a vacuum. Be a leader. Get people involved. Get him, invest it. Explain to them what you're trying to accomplish. You need each other right. Very important.

Alright.

Data.

Day today. Today, today, today, today today today.

Process is about data and it's about two kinds of data.

It's about the data you have today.

Right, what data do you have?

Alright, and it's about what data you wish you had.

And how do you build and how do you go out and get it?

If marketing person says I want to build a campaign that's multi channel right that touches all these things and talks about all these specific interests, will you you better build a way to gather that data? Otherwise it doesn't matter right? Data, data, data, data. So define those needs right? What is needed to accomplish an effective compliment, right? There is three things.

Multi channel.

At print.

Email text web.

One other I can't remember seems like it missed one multi channel right automated. How can I automate things inside of this structure? Not probably all of it. You can automate all that. I'll talk about little later on how I was a huge failure trying to automate everything right? You're looking at a failure right now. OK? And I'll tell you what I learned right so, but some of its needs to be automated so you can work on other things so.

I can make what's automated. Better needs to be dynamic, needs to be personalized. It needs to be relevant.

Don't sell me wine when I don't drink wine. OK, so data is the center of your world data and process. Go hand in hand, right?

Every school has a leaky funnel.

You have a leaky follow. OK, so to gather data I wish I had right to know who's kicking the tires. You don't have that many stealth apps either. By the way, right?

To gather data.

That I wish I had forms need to rule my world alright. Forms are awake into your database, so request performance For more information. For right event, forms counselors on the road forms meet you in the gym forms parent referral forms. Alumni referral forms, forms, forms, forms, forms, forms.

Their their way in.

Right, if there's data you wish you had.

You need to collect it in that form. If if, when a kid is a senior and hasn't applied yet you wish, you could text them.

Well, you probably should have thought about that along time ago and on every forum be collecting that information. If you want to build a dynamic content dynamic email flow later on using snippets around a segment or major of interest.

You gotta collected in the form. OK, so there's that data which you knew that you can gather through form. Then there's the integrations you need to do right, integrations right from Banner front Rush, Hobson's College Board. Cappex niche asked.

You need right. They need to get into sleep.

Build those integrations if you want greatness.

If you want greatness, it starts with process, right? This is a accepted student portal, right? You cannot do an impactful accepted student or portal if you haven't thought about data when we did this project, we spent the first 10 days talking about nothing but data.

Right, what data did we need? What data was there today? What integrations were happening on the back end, right? So now when we've done this and I'll talk about this later, right? If we change a kids package on the fly, it's going to change in the portal, which could change a ton of different information, right? If we know certain other things were going to change the the video, they're saying they're going to change the image Ng, right? You have to structure, right? You have to have process. You have to believe in processes marketer.

To accomplish that.

Let's talk a little bit about paying. I could spend a day talking about ping and unfortunately I have 45 minutes left with you all. But let's talk about paying. It's another way to collect data, right begin to play with it.

Begin to use a little bit if you care right? It doesn't have to be perfect. Mess around with it, right? You can dynamically deliver content to students through forms, popups, and other mechanisms. You can initiate automated internal alerts, right? And then turn automated marketing efforts across channels. You can harness better reporting, more complete reporting, less stealth apps right through? Pay so processes about all those things. Allie cleaned me up here. What did I miss? Talk to them about some common issues.

No, not so far all good stuff. So throughout the deck you'll see these common issues. You'll see the slide a few times. These are the kind of promised you know behind the curtain view of common missteps. Institutions take in their instance. These are things that we find within our audience, as Rich mentioned, so we'll get right to it again. This is all about, you know, processing data.

So with any marketing automation platform, consistency is key. You know consistent packs to build and launch an effort and consistent data collection practices in order to fulfill on your marketing automation wishes. In the future, you need to collect the right data now. So for instance Rich talked about mobile number. If you want to send SMS efforts as a part of an incomplete app series, you want to send it to as many people as possible. So you're going to want to collect mobile number. You want to collect it on all points of entry on your RFI form on your event templates. In general, you need to standardize your field collection so not only what you're asking of.

In terms of the fields, but also what's required. So in this case, make sure mobile is required. RFI form on your event templates.

And second, you know this. I would say of all this late audits. Actually, this is probably the most common issue that we find, but lucky enough, it's really easy to correct. You can start making changes today that will set you up in a great position moving forward and rich touched on it a little bit already and that is major of interest. Do not allow for multi select. So first we'll talk about why it's important you know if you allow for multi select you lose what the students first was. Major is the values are all returned back to an alphabetical order.

Left wondering when you're looking at the detail. What is the student most interested in? It's you know biology, comma, English? OK, well what's their top choice? So aside from that you lose that kind of data view. It also makes building out the snippets of the dynamic content virtually impossible. There's the limitless combination of all of those different. You know, major of interests, and at the end of the day, the value just needs to be predefined. It needs to be from a dropdown list, no freeform entry, and needs to be confined to just one selection, because then you can build out dynamic content. You can build out all that, all that.

All your snipets you can use it as a field merginae subject line rich interested in biology. You don't have to have that field translated multiple times within your database. It can be 1 field that will govern the field merge that will also govern your snippet and dynamic content. So in finally looking for a quick way to kind of boost conversion on your forms, you might be doing this already, but if not you know prefill what you already know. Use prospect ID this week. Prospect ID to you know, might as well not ask students things that you already know. They'll just look at the form.

Open timely information and then also met Aneinu Bridge has a great example about this. Working with another institution that he wanted to share.

Yeah, another one of those stories I'm going to tell you about me being a failure. Actually, no, this isn't a failure, but this is actually win.

Success story.

We actually went into the school and we were doing Salesforce integration. This is over 10 years temp out. Ten years ago an their forms were a little bit messed up and they made the student to give information in the form. That's very was very hard to get right and so the first thing we did was we fixed their data connection a little bit to the form and we we built some hidden fields it inside those hidden fields we pre filled that information was actually hard for the student to get and lo and behold.

Event attendance went up right and we were credited as marketers, right as marketers with being great marketing people. When really we didn't even do anything different. Marketing wise it was all about process. Those are the easiest improvements defined as marketers, so keep that in mind. I always thought that was really funny as we went through it all right next next segment here relevance.

Relevance drives engagement right relevance people care about what they care about. It's more about them than it is about you, right relevance? So let's talk about how do we define relevance? Where does it live? What is it right? As we think about that as we begin to go through it. I love this slide. This is Allie Schriner slide. I must give credit. This is a beautiful thing. She loves this slide. I do too right? So we always think about the funnel right? Looking like this like it would if we were pouring water through it right? But when in reality though?

That's really not how the funnel works, right? When we're pulling water through a funnel which just seeks its own level, water goes to its lowest level, right? It's just going to go down through we, right? That's not how this works, really. Your funnels the other way, right? And you have to grind and work and dig and scratch and claw to pull these people up through the funnel. It is extremely difficult work right? One way you can help yourself. There is be more relevant in your communication.

Right marketing isn't the conversation a conversation. It's not. Hey, this is our value prop. Let's repeat it 100 times and it'll work right? 'cause most of the people don't even care about your value prop. They care about themselves. What's in it for them, right? Marketing is a conversation more about them than you, right? So define what are my categories of personalization right? What are my categories? Is it major of interest? Is it? Is it segment around major ridges in state out of state? Is that.

Local non local is it athlete? Non athlete define those categories of personalization that you can define right. Build additional ones by what you ask them in a form. What's most important and going and picking a school. Things like that. What matters to them. It's not about you, it's about them, right? So define categories at personalization. When you start thinking about relevance because you're going to implement eventually and then know the status is you can use right because there's relevance through data around personalization.

And then there's relevance around where they are status wise in the communication flow, right? Senior junior software incomplete at things like that, right? So you have to understand every student type every grad year, every status, every channel.

This is why you need marketing and enrollment in the data folks, right? Understand those things as you begin to think about relevance. And as you go through it right, here's some things to think about. Set realistic goals.

Set realistic goals. Don't be like me. I'm going to talk about that at the end. Set realistic goals. What can you accomplish?

OK, if you're a team of 1 and you have nothing built, start small. Set realistic goals. Think about how much automation can you pull off.

Wait, how much automation can we realistically pull off?

Right and through what channels, right?

How much is enough?

Alright, this is where I see a lot of mistakes being made on the do too much side. OK, Ali did a audit one time and we went in and there was a there was individual con flows built for over maybe 70 or 80 majors and minors.

It was nuts, right like?

The problem was right is there was so much going on that actually next to nobody was getting anything.

OK, in the time it took in the effort it took it's too much right. Just enough. How much is enough, right? Like I went to Penn State, right? You know, so you know, I'd like to tell you, you know that I was shooting for a minus is instead of a pluses. Those grades might have been a little bit different, but don't hold that against me right? But I could study for 12 hours to get the A minus.

It would take me another 12 hours to maybe get the A plus right? The A minus is enough. There's the law of diminishing returns when you build these things right. If you're building a com flow and there's five touch points in the con flow, maybe two and maybe 4. Have a snippet that you use around a field inside your database where you want to personalize? It doesn't have to be everything all the time. OK, there's trouble. You can get into and then I'll say this. You might fail miserably. I failed miserably.

That same school where we fixed their form and I look like a really smart marketing person. I went into it like as Mr Automation. I was going to automate everything right. I was going to go crazy 'cause those are the tools that were coming in play at the time right? But reality quickly hit hard right? I was trying to automate everything in an undergraduate enrollment cycle where I had a set endpoint but entry points throughout the entire cycle.

And I didn't have tools in it, it was just a mess I built. I started to build a mess now. Luckily we stopped or like. Yeah, that's not going to work right? So we built enough automation to help ourselves to have key communications, but also leaving ourselves room right? So for those one off communication, I failed. Right? Say lobby not the last time, right? So?

I think we have a poor question coming up. Let me see your head.

Do you have? Do you believe you have a multi channel journey created for all necessary groups? There's a fun little poll question for you. Will see if you're like Ali and you fib like the like. The picture at the beginning.

So you get you need to. Ultimately though, have a plan for a bunch of different groups. Here's some software increased, transferring quick. Senior increase. Senior accepts incomplete apps, high school visits, parents right parents. To your inquiries right?

You ultimately need help plans for status based communication with dynamic content running through those communication flows right where it gets tricky. Alittle bit, I can't remember. I'm going to talk about this later, not just came to my mind. Now I'm going to talk about it now. When kids start an app, right every school I've done with all these schools will call it something different, right? But there's really only a couple of groups that matter. I started an app and I didn't complete the quote unquote paper form.

I've completed the form, but I haven't given you documentation.

I've given you everything and now I can be accepted.

You have to understand those statuses clearly in your database when you build your process right. If you want to have status based communication that triggers that triggers off as a kid moves through that journey, right? That's a big one. See, you just where it gets a little.

Little tougher if you're if you don't have anything and you want to do 1 plan or One Cup com flow, start with like a junior inquiry. Writes a little simpler.

When I first saw this slide, I gotta give shout, Lindsey Ferrara did the slide that she's our Chief Operating Officer. She's awesome. She did this slide and I thought what the heck am I supposed to do with this? And I started reading through this thing in my eyes were going across and I was like Oh my God. But then I realize that's the point. You dummy, right? That's the point.

Build right down one of these plans on paper. There's a lot of Thetford things that come into play. There's different channels, right? There's there's different statuses junior to senior to incomplete, right? There's a event for my found template. Triggered follow up, but there's a lot right one down.

Right, right one down. Pick a couple and build some relevant con flows off of them right? And lucky for me.

You know, Lindsay and Allie and Kate are all much smarter than me. It just takes me a little bit of time to catch up to that. So that's what this slides all about. It only took me practicing this about three times to figure it out, so they were kind. It didn't. Didn't put in my face, so take it away. Ali. What are we? What are we talking about here?

Yeah, so these are all you know, again, kind of common issues that we see when conducting those audits in prior to conducting an audit, we ask our clients the same question that we just asked you in the poll. What automated campaigns do you have in place today and oftentimes little client thinks they have configured and what they actually have configured are two different things and it's an easy mistake to make. For instance, you have an incomplete at flow and you know someone asks you OK common app suspects and prospects and they didn't care of you know in terms of messaging.

And yes, I have an incomplete upload. They're being taken care of, but because of the import process because of how you have your population criteria set up, they're being excluded. So to mitigate this, do an audit. Go back and find sources, find records that should you know, work within that population, and go back to the student timeline to make sure all of those campaign efforts are included in that student timeline, so it will help to mitigate that and to make sure that everyone is in the correct flow. And again as Rich talked about to, kind of.

And mitigate against that leaky funnel.

For the next, you know, Rich touched on this just a little bit. For personalization, the goal and the trick really, to personalization is to do just enough. Just enough personalization for the students taking the next step just enough for them to open the email just enough for them to click. You know, click the email to submit the form because at the end of the day you know the implementation and management of it can get really unwieldy really fast. So again, just enough. In terms of that personalized content.

And finally, you know when you saw that side of all the different bubbles and all the different populations, did you get a little overwhelmed? You know? Perhaps well, first, don't again going back first rule, always. It's simple. We say it way better all the time. Do something, make it better. So starting sorry iteratively and then second you know, don't feel like you have to reinvent the wheel when looking at those populations. Think about your transfers. How different are your transfers really? Then you first your population sure need to talk to transfer. Is that the ease of transfer about transferring?

Edit About PTK scholarships. You know where applicable, but at the end of the day transfers they care about your programming. They care about your rankings, they care about student life. So don't reinvent the wheel. You know re purpose that content you know. I always say marketers are oftentimes the best borrowers, so apply what's working across channels and across populations.

I want to talk real quick about something here. 'cause you talking bout that falls for Chef perception. Then all populations are accounted for.

Maybe think about something I was talking to you all about the other day. So if a school comes to us or working with school and they say hey, we're down in apps, let's say right.

You know we don't run off and start reinventing what we're doing right? We start looking at process. We start looking at. Hey, are all these populations getting into our system? Are all the kids that we have getting into your system? Are they getting into in the campaign flows, right? Right is everything happening like we think it should happen, right? We look to process we look to those individual things. We look to those groups and look.

Under the hood at what's going on right? There's a big a big thing in slave or at any any platform is often the mistakes happening because we think something's happening. We've been prepared, we've done a lot of work, we've built it, but something slightly off and people aren't getting the messages that we'd like him to see, right? So I think that's a big one.

Really think about overall I see any interactive poll on this on the right. Some people did say yes. So congratulations, right? 'cause now I'm going to challenge you. Make it better, right? Or I guess you could take the rest of the year off, but probably that's not going to be allowed, so make it better, right? Make it better.

OK great, let's keep moving here. Let's let's move on here. Let's talk about implementation. We've built process. We've built data structures. We built data ways for data to get in, right? We've talked about relevance where we know what, what statuses we want to. We want to build campaigns and relevant content off of. We understand what things we want to personalize. Now we gotta implement.

Right now we're going to implement talk is cheap. Now it's time to walk, right? So when we start thinking about that right, we want to think about this in an iterative way, right? Will one do something well to make it better, right? We want to crawl, walk, run.

OK, we want to be able to do this in a logical way where we're launching.

Things right and not waiting for perfection to launch. OK, so crawl walk one, remember that.

Keep in mind these best best practices as we implement alright. I need my glasses on for this, you know. Geez Louise, here we go.

Follow these best practices. Be relevant. We talked about that you snippet. Use liquid markups to personalize, right? It's all about them, not about you, right? People care about what they care about. They don't care about your one value prop, they care about you. Many value props and how you can paint a picture of how they can accomplish what they want at your school. Clear call to action right? Allow each marketing asset to do its job. You don't have to tell the whole story in an email.

You don't have to tell the whole story into that right? You don't have to tell the whole story and pray right, have it do its job and move them on to the next step where you can tell more of the story using clear call to action. You also want to have easy to scan, right? Easy to read. I mean, think about this for a second, right?

Someone sends you a very long email.

Right or very long letter.

Right, what do you do?

Right, I can tell you is exactly what I do and now I can tell you what I look like at 4:00 o'clock or 5:00 o'clock everyday when office. I go like this, I go, Oh my Lord.

Right, I look at it and I look at it.

And then I go. I'll look at that later.

Right and I move on. So at the end of the day, what little hair I have left usually looks like this, right?

Here's the thing. When you have long drawn out copy.

It's not that the people aren't just getting to the point right, or they're not finding the point. They're not reading any of it.

They're not reading any of it so easy to scan, easy to consume, simple words. Bolded copy bullets, underlines hyperlink text, right?

Keep it simple, stupid, whatever saying you want to come up with, right? Do it.

Remember finally, it's about them.

What do they need right now? This is their biggest decision, right that they've ever made in their life possibly.

This is possibly probably if they buy house someday. The second most expensive decision they're going to make it a life. Give them the courtesy of making it about them and not always just about you.

OK and Allie is going to take you through some of this stuff 'cause she's going to talk about populations and that's her. That's her big thing that she.

So when we talk about building, it's late. Obviously precision is key, and remember when I just talked about markers being the best borrowers we know. It's true of content. But it's also true platform configurations and Luckily enough Slate makes it really easy. So starting with that templates use them from a management perspective. It's so much more streamlined if you have to make an update, you make an update in one place.

In addition, it still advises that communication to the student for the prevent and the post show, you know, messaging. It's all. It's all standard and it becomes transactional. Your complications, your reminders, they become expected, and when you're messaging becomes expected and predictable to the student, engagement will be higher than the open at a higher rate. They're going to look at a higher rate and hopefully you'll see dividends for that, and you show grades as well, and your attendance rates.

Next, populations populations. The immediate thing that will come to mind is automated flows, and you're exactly right. You populations in order to have your automated flows. But in addition to that, populations have a lot of different use cases, so think of reports instead of going to report creating a new query, building out all the criterion logic. Instead go to your population, generate the query right from your population. This not only makes you more efficient and more streamlined, but it also ensures that everyone every user within slate, every sleep captain.

Is using the same predefined segment criteria in addition populations to when you know the campaign cycles change when a software becomes a junior when junior becomes a senior, it makes it really easy to manage. All you have to do is update entry term point to the correct here and then do a vector after refresh refresh the population. The new students will come into it and then your automated flows can continue running for that next cycle.

So next campaigns campaigns offering great comprehensive you when you're talking about you know SMS text efforts and email efforts. You know exactly what is going out when it's going out and who it's going out to an it makes your job isn't air traffic control operator much easier? Because that's really at the end of the day. You know what you're tasked with because it can be really easy within any marketing automation platform to start styling your work. You get really excited. I'm going to build the best trip ever for international students.

And that's great, but chances are those students are going to qualify for other campaigns, and that's OK. But you just need to understand at what cadence and frequency are those students not receiving messages? Are they being bombarded? Are they being in their inbox, being overtaken by you or or? Your campaigns may be too narrowly focused. Are they being neglected or they not being propelled? Again, think inverted. Funnel up, you know, through the funnel are they not taking that next step.

So once you have all this foundation in place, you really ready to start getting dangerous since late you're ready to start harnessing all of that data that you worked so hard to kind of gather and integrate together to make it work for you. And the best example of this and you'll see it kind of in a leader slide is a portal page. You know, you basically are serving at dynamic custom student experience with dynamic calls to action, define checklists, dynamic content specific to that student, and you're really needing them exactly where they are in the involvement cycle.

On which is key in order to get that deposit in order to get that conversion. And you know, in addition to that with Ping Ping Data Rich talked about the kind of three main buckets for paying. And again we could go on and on about paying 'cause it's virtually limitless. You know, in terms of what you can do, but when speaking about communication externally to students, again, infinite possibilities to trigger off automated communication. But then internally to staff, let's touch on, you know, maybe a notification to a counselor if you have a student that's coming back to your site time and time again on the apply page they're spending.

Enormous amount of time. It probably a personal touch. Pools needed. You know, the counselor can reach out and kind of see what that Roadblock is. And in addition to that, coming back to again meeting the student where they are in the cycle, you could have the best portal page. But if a student is not logging in, if they're not going to it, they're not seeing it. But maybe they are coming to your site, so use ping, use ping to serve dynamic intercepts and popular person dynamic content again to propel them to take that next step.

So I know I'm coming up next. We have a simple timeline here and we'll kind of showcase the multi channel journey that the student will go through.

Yeah, I think I'm taking over. OK, so sample timeline here right at this on the left we think about this as that initial interaction of some sort, right? And so think about these timelines. It gets back to that slide. That's really busy where we wanted you to start thinking about the journey, right? So what happens after this initial action? Let's say it's an RFI form. OK, well, we want immediately to build a trigger that goes back to that student via email.

Maybe using what we just learned to change the content in that email to introduce ourselves. Then we know we're going to have follow up email that's going to hit that day too. Maybe we want to have a text. We collected a text we want to have a text to go at them, inviting them something, or to introduce somebody, right? We want to we want to start advertising to them him in channels where they are today. We want to trigger some ads. Maybe we can, maybe we can version those ads depending on what we just learned about print needs to happen. How do we have some customized print?

That goes out to them, depending on what we just learned, right? Maybe we trigger a phone call from a from a counselor, right? That happens. So start thinking about a sample timeline, a sample journey right of a kid that takes an interaction, right? And what you want to do with them? This isn't also a way to start thinking about it and start filling that filling those gaps in with content right? Water back to alley.

Yeah, so these are the kind of final common issues that will go through sleeps, constantly releasing new features and it's great, but really great at listening to the needs of current users and then optimizing the platform overtime. But we built this great foundation they released in feature and then you're left to kind of adapt in to implement and populations is a good example of that. When it was released it was really meant to streamline all the individual queries that govern so many different functions of slate. So as we talked about, use populations.

Great one and you'll see the use cases. You'll see the kind of reputable, usable usability across all the different areas of slate.

And speaking about things that are kind of repeatable and usable, snippets building out by dynamic content and rich on the little bit before, but with liquid markup. You said when it's something that's really defined. Perhaps it's really simple logic. You're sending out an accepted student letter and you need a pharmacy student to schedule an interview. That's really specific and not probably usable across other assets. Use liquid markup for snippets though. Think about things that are more complex. Think about things again, that you will lose time and time again. So back to my first year kind of transfer example.

Major ventures you're going to talk to each about programming, so use a snippet, build it out once, and then drop the bit of code in each of the different campaigns. So again, you can utilize that kind of across the different campaigns.

And finally, you know when thinking about we talked about making your transactional efforts predictable, repeatable from an open house that is, student would receive, you know reminder series as a sophomore all the way to an accepted student when they're attending those events. That should be a similar standard experience. It creates consistency and expect application for the student, but also internally it's up stacks. Petition for your staff. They know exactly what's being communicated and when.

So next time we have our final section related to accountability.

Yes.

Accountability.

There we go, can you?

2nd.

Can hear you now.

OK, now you can hear me.

Yes.

Remember it was wider green on that button. OK accountability, none of this matters if you're not fixing it, changing it, making it better, right? We be accountable.

You know, I talked to the team the other day and I might have mentioned this earlier. I can't remember now, but you know when something's going wrong or something is not working right, we should always assume that it's our fault, right? This helps you to be accountable. This helps you to track. This helps you to look at what's happening right. This helps you to analyze and optimize what works today may not work tomorrow, right? And you can use slate board slate dashboard and reports right to help you with accountability, right? Generate your over your funnel comparisons, monitor accounts or performance analyze source interaction.

Right, be accountable. Just own it. Live it once you get addicted to looking at the results, it becomes part of your DNA. It becomes part of who you are, right? It? Because it becomes this. This chase for improvement, right? That makes you a better or what you do better in slate better and everything makes you the makes you the smartest person in the room at times right? Because you know these things you don't have to have these discussions on what works or not, right? Be accountable, analyze and look at the results. You some of the tools used to AB testing.

For version control, it's late, right? Just kidding, this mindset that that I'm feeling really good about what I did.

But did it work?

Right?

And work and continue to go at it and be accountable, right? Because ultimately at the end of the day, it's all about results, right? It's your journey, and we're always learning and evolving through the results. OK, now ultimately it will be worth alright. It'll be worth it. So we're going to close here with some live examples and how we lived, what we talk about, right? So let's go through this number one, right? Here's a little email, right? Process? What's needed to happen?

What did I need? I needed the right data. I needed a major of interest. I needed a staff assignment. I need to geolocate geographic location to make this email do what I wanted to do right. It's just enough personalization to get them to pay attention. It's a clear call to action, right? This was tested and tested and tested. We've been doing stuff like this for 12 years. It didn't look like this three years ago, right? So that's how we lived. What we talk about here is what I'm going to let.

Yep, so this is an incomplete app email. As for said, always comes back to process always comes back to data in order to have this email. If you need to have your app completion status, you need to be able to trigger activity off of that and in terms of relevancy timing on this effort is everything obviously occurring after an app start and helping the student driving them to take that next step for the implementation. You know, I always say direct marketing there should be no unsupervised thinking and you're really going to accomplish that.

Bullets with a clear call to action and really just being explicit about. In this case what you want the student to do and for accountability, again coming back to timing the timing of this effort is really everything and probably something that you'll need to test into overtime you know is it 3 days after an app started, four days after an app start, you know what is the perfect time to send this email. What will generate the highest response?

Here's a piece of print right. This print has dynamic content used throughout it, right? What do I need to make this work? I need a major of interest. There's some other things in here that we know about the student. Other interests that we flagged and we have in the database. We have a clear field for right. Then we need to have relevancy when we write it right. We need to have major content. A student quote that matches that kind of segment, right? We want to paint the picture. How do we paint a picture for a kid seeing themselves in your school? We use relevant content to do it.

Right, we're going to. We're going to highlight that major of interest. Maybe they're interested in, so they'll read more so their engage more imagery that would matter to them if that's what they want to do. Implementation easy to scan, easy to consume, you know, accountability. We have to keep content up-to-date. We have to see what's working right. We have to do testing as we go through it.

Yeah, in this example, so you're really seeing kind of the power of the multi channel on at work here. So this is a text effort reminding the student of an upcoming event and again comes back today to you need mobile number. Obviously to send this so collect it. You know you're going to lose out on this touch point if you don't have it for relevancy and implementation. Again, coming back to transactional emails. And in this case attacks making it predictable, making it expected. And finally I think this is a great example to about how your slate usage will evolve overtime. You know what you're using it for today?

Might not be what you're using it for tomorrow, you know, year ago you probably never expected that you probably have to send a health survey prior to an on campus visit, but given the times it's obviously required now. So usually use a slate form to accomplish this.

Up rich, we can't hear you.

Here we're looking at things out here. We're looking at some ads, right? What do we need to make these different types of ads go out for different people, right? We need the right data. We need the right process. We need parent information. We need a mission status. We need scholarship eligibility, eligibility. We major of interest to a segment. All those things are happening to make different ads show different people. We need to be which is driving the relevancy right? We need to use just enough content to get the next step right. We can't say too much. We have a big story to tell, but you gotta tell a little bit at a time, right?

We, in accountability we need to use testing through ad networks to deliver the right ads, deliver stronger ads that are going to help you drive bigger results, right?

Here's here's I'm going to go back to this portal page and talk a little bit about this portal page. How do we make this happen? What was the first 10 days talked about they were talking about data where the data lip, what data fields that we have to add to slate, what integration did we have to build into banner? Right to make this happen? We have a great partner here. There's a great slate user, right? Good ol Josh if you're on the call right? Little shout out to you, right? But what did we need, right? We need admission status. We need tuition, merit scholarship, geographic grant, name, geographic, random out.

Adjusted tuition FASA flag right. We needed that to make math look like it appear, but really this is a field we're not making math appear in this instance we're doing in the database right? Lessens the amount of errors you can have, specially when you go to do something with print and you're doing the same thing. We don't want that to happen. We want to we want to maximize our effort to minimize our risk right? All those things have to happen. And then when we package these people 234 times, this is changing on the fly, right?

This is changing on the fly because everything is built off of that database, right? Different content here. Different messaging. We're going to see for different people different videos, right? We gotta checklist here. Whoops, we gotta checklist here, right? What do we need for this checklist? Why are these in here? Everything's in here. It's deliberate. We stop through from a marketing perspective in what they want to collect. Perspective, right? So process we need the Facebook Group tag. We need the application major right? We need are.

Audition tag we need accepted Student day registration. We need verbal communicate commitment tag. We need to pause it tag right. We need to 1st ask can you get any of that? If you can't get that, I've gotta decide something different right? Let's talk about big delated ****** **** *** D data little D design right? So these things live and breathe when you when you live this journey when you start with process first data matters. Build your foundation. You build your foundation.

You can build a skyscraper. Alright, I'll leave you with two things right and I've mentioned him already and I want you to remember him. Write the rules, rule one, do something OK. Will to make it better right in the second thing, especially with Mark and automation, right success is never final and failure is never fatal. Alright Ali, thank you. You're the bomb. Lindsay Ross all the way better people right? Can appreciate you. Ken and Allie are actually from the state County. We figured out so.

Thank you everybody audience thank you appreciate you.

Cecil County records Mathiesen County, Maryland. Chesapeake City, right.

House.

Couple questions that was fantastic. First of all, by the way guys, great data. Had some great collateral pieces there. I loved all the showcasing. Thank you so much for sharing all the appropri.

Get expertise we got a little bit of time for questions here and we had we actually had some really pertinent ones pop in on the chat throughout and just recently in the last couple minutes. Good question from Libby about and it's gotten some traction there about texting. So you say, hey, look, you gotta get them to. You gotta get him to give their mobile number. But what's the deal with opt in or use it overkill to be like hey, give us your number and by the way opt in is legal counsel going to cringe as somebody said you know, well, what's quick advice for that.

Oh boy, gonna put me on the spot on that one.

Part of it is depends on who you ask. I suppose right? We would argue potentially that you don't necessarily need a full opt in like you are a Corporation, right?

Options are nice to have, though they can help you down the road, but it is somewhat of a grey area that we've seen different people describe it differently, right?

Where is email is very clear line, very clear to us, much clearer line exactly what the expectation is. I don't know, Allie. What do you think about that? We have a lot of internal battles about that.

Yeah, they definitely agree. Wine with email. There's can't stand. There's compliance. There's things that govern that. You know exactly what you're supposed to do in terms of texting. Often, if you if you want to collect it, then you know to be safe. You certainly can, but texting it's it's still kind of a Gray area. It's than you, you know, not the channel that should be neglected or ignored, but definitely kind of a newer one. That's that people are more and more taking advantage of so more of a Gray area.

Yeah yeah Ann Marlowe brought up a good point. Best bet you know, check it. There might be some local or state.

Limitations as well, plus the whole GDP. Our conversation. Yeah good good good.

Yeah.

We tend to be tend to deal with more US GDP ********* separate animal for multiple reasons. So we also have more of a control often environment where.

You don't necessarily have that when you're talking about an RFI form sometimes too, but that's a great point.

Sure, there's a good one. Suggestions on finding the right balance for required fields? You know you brought it up right? Get just as much information as you can without them bouncing right. We could get that completion rate. What I do? You guys have a Goldilocks zone where it's you know how much is the appropriate amount before they before they get tired of filling out that form?

Yeah.

I think it it changes a little bit when the initial interaction is if their net brand new to you, you probably need to not have as many fields in there. You need to make it clean just to collect what you're going to use or want to use now as they go through. You might be able to collect additional data as they go through as they engage in a higher rate, right? So I think it really is different strokes for different folks, right? You might be able to collect more on an event template.

Sign up then you do RFI right? So I think you've got a really.

Yeah.

Look at the audience where they are in the cycle right to make that determination very early on net new IT needs to be stripped down. Not a whole lot as they go through more.

Yeah yeah I agree it build upon pings coming up a lot. Actually an alley on one of your slides. You doped into a little bit more. I know this might be the last question. I could just get a couple of minutes left, but you know, ping so much. Write the questions brought up. Alright, so we did ping. Now what right? So what there's so much data, how do we truncate it? How do we get it in a digestible format? There's some been some really good comments. Yeah, and Ross chiming in as well. So do you guys want to comment on that? Maybe a little bit more?

That more appropriate for further conversation later.

Why I think?

Here's the challenge, right? And you mentioned.

Hi, when you can collect so much.

Yeah.

What matters and what do you do with it, right? It's like it's like buying a software package where you can do anything with it.

The bad side is you can do anything with it, So what the heck do you do right? And so I would say with paying right, you're right, you can collect so much you can do so many things, but I think what you need to determine is again, what do you really want to do? What do you want to learn?

Anne.

If what you want to learn doesn't lead to anything, don't focus on it.

Right, and so some key things that you probably want to learn right interaction.

Yep.

Right, how often somebody's somebody is kicking the tires right? Things of that nature. How? How are my ads working right right a little bit with paying right? Define those simple things alright early on. Focus on those and then add to that right. Ali, what do you think about that? 'cause it is tough and we haven't been in the instance.

Where anybody really has their handle around it very well at all, right? But it's coming, what do you think, Ali?

Yeah, I think exactly right. I think it goes back to again those three buckets when you think about communication. When you think about your site and serving that dynamic content and you think about reporting, you know, hone in on one, find a specific use case and using data for that and then expand again. We always come back to that run called walk, but it really is true pink as you can get overwhelmed pretty quick like so just so much data, good data, but a lot of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, good good stuff, good stuff. We are at the time we hit hit the mark on the button so I want to say thank you very very much. The rich and Allie for the fantastic content and data and sharing their expertise. They get in touch. Information is on the screen there in the final screen again for the question that came up. This webinar will be the recording will be available on technicians website after and then just a quick selfish plug. Here we are starting a new.

Webinar series next week. Community conversations happening next Tuesday and Thursday, Tuesday will be discussing influencing the Community College experience and on Thursday we're going to be learning a little bit more about international admissions with this kind of changing landscape in admissions. Both of those events are listed on the technicians website. To sign up and hope to see you there. Thank you again so much too rich an ally. It was great talking to you guys. Great learning from you and have a great day.

Thank you.

Great thanks all.

Bye.