The Recruitment Minute Blog

It was one of the hardest things Jeff Kallay had ever done, moderating a high-level, high-energy discussion of college marketing. He had spent two hours trying to harness the industry’s top three thought leaders and 150 sharp, opinionated and articulate admissions officers when the idea struck him.

Time to settle everyone down and send them off to the opening of the NACAC conference with a sense of where their industry is headed. So he quieted the room with a final request: “Close you eyes and look into the future. Where do you see higher ed in five years?”

Here’s what some of your colleagues predicted:

- Schools will be closing doors.
- Feds will be more involved.
- Students will be admitted at the end of their junior year.
- More proprietary institutions.
- A reversal from so much e-marketing to a more personal approach.
- Panic at some institutions leading to unsavory admissions practices.
- Discussions about whether “fit” still matters when cost is so critical.
- Not enough students to go around.
- Conversations with 8th graders and their parents.
- Back to basics — less Web 2.0.
- Greater control by students in developing their own programs.
- Yield keeps going down, melt keeps going up.
- More business leaders becoming presidents at colleges and universities.
- Not much will change. Since everything is cyclical, including downturns, this too shall pass.

To read more about the iThink event that kicked off NACAC’s annual conference, click here:
www.targetx.com/nacac/ithinkcomments.html

To see what Experience Evangelist Jeff Kallay wrote about iThink and NACAC, visit:
blogs.targetx.com/targetx/theexperienceevangelist/?p=176

Some 150 leaders in college recruiting heard a sobering account of their industry last week, and much of it came from their own lips.

In a wide-ranging discussion, admissions professionals from all over the country met in Seattle’s Central Public Library to help kick off the 2008 NACAC Conference. They were there to explore a simple question, “What is the future of admissions marketing?”

There were almost as many opinions as attendees. Led by three of the top thought leaders in higher education, those in the packed room touched on everything from the increasing importance of the campus visit, to the growing dilemma of stealth applicants, to the damaging effects of an amenities arms race.

TargetX CEO Brian Niles (who headlined the event along with Bob Sevier of Stamats and Bill Royall of Royall & Company) set the tone for the discussion when he reminded attendees that they are salespeople in competition with each other for customers, even if it feels better to think of themselves as counselors trying to assist students in finding the best-fit school.

“Once you realize that you’re actually a business and your recruiters are actually salespeople, you’ll be able to hire, train and execute a more efficient recruiting effort,” said Niles.

That set off a mini storm of debate, but there was general agreement that recruiting attitudes and tactics have to change. Too many schools, for example, are unable to break the cycle of heavy discounting. And others lament the “Club-Medding” of higher ed while continuing to build indoor ski slopes to attract students.

Hanging over the proceedings was a sense of foreboding that the economic crisis unfolding around them last week would mean greater challenges for their schools and perhaps greater involvement by the federal government in higher education.

Next week: What your peers are predicting for five years from now.

To see what the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote about the discussion, click below:
www.targetx.com/aboutus/pr/ithink2.html

As an expert on email infrastructure, Dave Lewis is often asked how to improve delivery of email messages. His answer surprises people who expect to hear about the quirky demands of Internet service providers and the vagaries of filters.

“Good email deliverability starts by sending relevant content to your recipients that is consistent with their needs and preferences,” he told BtoB magazine. “Irrelevant messages are associated with spam and are treated as such.”

It’s tempting to include larger groups of students in an email broadcast because the cost is so low and the logistics so easy. But that means prospects may be getting messages that have no relevance to their interests. English majors do not appreciate emails about events organized for the business school.

“There’s a value exchange going on between you and your prospects,” says Lewis, a vice president with Bizanga Ltd. in California. “As you serve up value, they’ll reciprocate by sharing more information with you. As you build out your profiles, your aim should be to understand who they are.”

Start by capturing key information about inquiries and using information that comes with Search names. Target your messages based on those interests and demographics.

Remember, Lewis says, “Relevancy is the key driver of customer satisfaction. It requires keen attention to what your customers are saying and an even keener ability to act on what they’ve said. What we’re talking about here are the practices associated with good relationship marketing.”

To see more of Lewis’ interview, click below and download BtoB’s Interactive Marketing Guide:
www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=img2008

Regardless of your politics, say a number of marketing experts, the insertion of Sarah Palin into the presidential campaign offers a fascinating case study on branding, product introduction and buzz.

More specifically, the Palin phenomenon is a lesson in the ability to move people through personal stories, says marketer Karen Gedney in a recent ClickZ column.

“It’s a testament to the power of storytelling that this previously unknown governor sliced through the ‘blah, blah, blah’ and turned the world of politics on its head in about 30 minutes,” writes Gedney. “The lesson for the rest of us who communicate for a living? It’s time to get your own stories polished up.”

The time for boring stats, meaningless jargon and pedestrian description is over, she says. “From now on, you need to tell stories that quickly capture people’s attention, telegraph what you can do for them, and gain their trust.”

Which is good news for college marketers and recruiters, because campuses are teeming with great stories. Current students, prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni, coaches — all serve as sources of potentially compelling stories that can be powerful recruiting devices.

Storytelling is deeply rooted in human nature, which helps explain how it can build emotional bonds with prospective students and their families.

Remember, says TargetX Experience Evangelist Jeff Kallay, people love stories. They pay attention to them, they learn from them, they believe them.

To read Gedney’s article on “The Power of Story,” click below:
www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630868

To see more on the marketing impact of Sarah Palin, visit:
www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/mccain.palin.marketing/

When the first Email Minute was broadcast 302 weeks ago, its name made perfect sense. Not only was it an email that took only a minute to read, but the company behind it was rooted in email marketing.

Things changed, and in May 2004 readers of the EM were told that it would now cover “all aspects of interactive student recruiting — the use of email, chat sessions, website marketing and other online tools to attract and recruit students.” That’s because the company had broadened its offerings to keep ahead of an industry that was becoming more and more attuned to the communication preferences of a tech-savvy generation.

Which brings us to today, when Millennials and their parents are making student recruiting even more challenging. Not only are students almost always online, but they are resistant to traditional marketing speak, enamored of authenticity, spellbound by stories rather than statistics, and incredibly social. Above all, they are attracted to institutions that take the time to get to know them.

All this means that colleges have to work harder than ever to know as much as possible about a prospect, and to use that knowledge to develop a strong relationship. That relationship is built through online and offline communications and through effective in-person encounters such as campus visits and open houses.

Relationship recruiting is the future, and it does not seem adequately represented by something called an Email Minute. So starting next Friday, this weekly offering of tips, trends and newsworthy items will be known as the Recruitment Minute. As always, we welcome your reactions, criticisms and suggestions for future topics.

The old standbys — sound bites and elevator pitches — have become too long and ponderous for people whose attention spans are now measured in milliseconds. So some businesses are turning to the Twitpitch, named for the microblogging site that restricts posts to no longer than 140 characters.

The elevator pitch was supposed to force organizations to strip away all the unnecessary details and get to the essence of who they are in just 30 seconds, approximately the time you might share an elevator ride with your intended audience. But that’s still too much time for many listeners and readers, so some marketers are adopting a new shorthand inspired by the increasingly popular Twitter site.

The beauty of such an approach, they contend, is that it makes you focus on aspects of your institution or product that define its personality and help differentiate it from competitors.

“It forces you to tell your company’s story in 140 characters (about 20 words),” says blogger Mike Kraus. “A Twitpitch needs to be engaging, succinct and dynamic.”

An example of a Twitpitch for Philadelphia-based, state-related Temple University might read:

A proudly urban and richly diverse public research university bursting with the energy generated by 34,000 talented and motivated students.

Another example, for the University of Scranton, a Catholic liberal arts institution, might be:

Northeastern PA’s Jesuit university pairs rigorous scholarship and an impassioned community with an insatiable desire to better the world.

Compose your own Twitpitch based on the defining characteristics of the school where you work or your alma mater and submit it to emailminute@targetx.com. The best entry will win a TargetX prize package.

To read more about the Twitpitch, visit:
www.allbusiness.com/travel-hospitality-tourism/meetings-incentives-travel/10204386-1.html

Further proof that the virtual world is becoming as important as the real thing comes from an Associated Press story lamenting the costs of today’s college search.

“Never mind four years of tuition,” writes AP reporter Dave Carpenter. “The college-selection process alone has gotten so expensive that parents need a budget just to deal with campus visits and other costs.”

That doesn’t mean abandoning the visitation process, he adds. “After all, there is nothing like setting foot on a campus for a prospective student to get sense of a school. But you need to be smart about controlling the costs.”

Start reducing costs by reducing the number of campuses you set foot on, Carpenter advises his readers. He then offers 10 tips for eliminating some schools from the list and for saving money when visiting the survivors.

Tip number 1 is Take Virtual Tours. “Many college websites provide virtual tours of campus and residence halls or more,” he writes.

Tip number 2 is Attend Online Fairs. “High school students and their parents can ask admissions counselors questions, visit with current students via Webcam, and stop in online booths linking them to other information.”

So as you continue to make your in-person events the best they can be, don’t forget the online world. In news media around the country, millions of readers are being advised to look for you and your campus online.

To read the AP story, visit:
biz.yahoo.com/ap/080813/on_the_money.html?.v=1

It’s time for the annual reminder that you’re getting older. More accurately, it’s Beloit College’s August poke at college professors so they don’t make fools of themselves by mentioning people, places and things that have no meaning to their freshman students.

This is the 11th year that Beloit has put together its “Mindset List” to help orient educators to what their students know — and what references will go right over their heads.

“Hardening of the references” is what the list’s creators call it when teachers and administrators forget that events and personalities that are second nature to them are totally unknown or viewed through a different prism by teenagers.

So as you prepare copy for your website, printed pieces, blog posts and other forms of communication where you’re tempted to make allusions to what you consider immediately recognizable icons, remember this:

- Jim Henson has always been dead.
- Jay Leno has always been host of The Tonight Show.
- IBM has never made typewriters.
- Caller ID has always been available.
- Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of an issue.
- Off-shore oil drilling in U.S. waters has always been banned.
- Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
- Big Macs have always been available in Moscow.
- Universal Studios has always competed with Mickey in Orlando, Fla.
- Students have always had their temperature taken in the ear.
- They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.
- They have never known life without Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer.

To view the 2008 Mindset List, visit:
www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

Barack Obama’s appeal to young voters has not gone unnoticed by the advertising industry. Long identified as a generation sensitive to hype and resistant to marketing-speak, Millennials have nonetheless responded enthusiastically to the Obama brand.

“Mr. Obama’s brand management, unprecedented in presidential politics, shows pitch-perfect understanding of the keys to appealing to the youngest voters,” writes Peter Feld in the current issue of Advertising Age.

One of the best examples of the Obama campaign’s success with Millennials is its “mastery of cutting-edge social media,” according to Feld. In a passage that may hold lessons for college recruiters, Feld quotes Allison Mooney, who tracks youth trends for Fleishman-Hillard, a strategic communications agency.

Mooney points to the social network set up by the campaign at my.barackobama.com. “It’s optimized for Millennial appeal,” she says. “For this generation, the new pronoun is me, my. Using my-dot brings it to a personal level.”

The site also shows “that the campaign has made a leap from CRM (customer relationship management) to CMR (customer-managed relationship) better than many commercial marketers,” she says. “Young people want to be in control of their relationship with a brand. They want to customize and personalize….The campaign’s site allows this with its use of discussion boards, photo uploads and other interactive elements.”

And now Obama has even offered to share his vice presidential pick with members of his social network. Some cynics are already calling it a shameless gimmick, but don’t be surprised if millions of young people sign up to be among the first to know.

Millennials like to participate in the conversation, feel they belong to something bigger than themselves, build a relationship over time. That’s true whether they’re choosing a college or a president.

To read the Ad Age article click below:
adage.com/article?article_id=130254

To visit the Obama social network, click:
my.barackobama.com

Canadian colleges have already experienced the demographic dip in high school students now facing their U.S. counterparts, so Ken Steele has become a popular speaker at higher education conferences throughout North America.

The researcher has led his company’s efforts over the years to survey tens of thousands of applicants to Canadian institutions before those students decided where to enroll. The result is a treasure chest of information that Canadian schools have used to shape their marketing and enrollment strategies.

Steele, who is Senior VP at the Academica Group, a Canadian-based consulting firm, most recently shared his research findings and insights at the annual conference of the Society for College and University Planning in Montreal.

Among his observations:

- Canadian colleges have surged ahead of their American peers in using social networking and word-of-mouth marketing, especially those schools in eastern Canada where the competition for fewer students has been particularly intense.

- Half of all college-bound students decided on their first-choice school during their senior year. Thirty-one percent decided prior to the 12th grade, including nearly five percent who made their decision before they started high school.

- The college visit — and particularly the campus tour — is absolutely critical for most students as they decide where to attend. The leading factors in determining a successful tour, according to respondents 18-years-old and younger, were “friendly and personable guide,” followed by a “knowledgeable guide,” followed by an “attractive campus.”

“To convert an applicant to a registrant,” concludes Steele, “hinges on personal attention, customer service, financial aid and personal impressions made in email, phone and campus visit contacts.”

To view the slides from Steele’s presentation, click below:
www.academicagroup.com/node/5269

To read about Steele in the Chronicle of Higher Education, visit:
chronicle.com/free/2008/07/3939n.htm