Insights on Admissions Marketing

Which Web Site Features do Prospective Students Find Valuable?

2009-08-25T09:03:13-05:00

Many colleges and universities will slide directly into full-time recruiting mode in the next few weeks. As a result, so will their Web sites. Online admissions event calendars will be filled up. Personalized emails will be hurled into the inboxes of excited seniors. And your online features and functionality will see a strong spike in usage.

As you may know, James Tower, along with several partners, produce an annual research initiative designed to help schools understand the expectations that prospective students and parents have of their Web site. To help institutions prioritize where to put their online enrollment strategy time and budget, the following lays out the features in which prospective student find the most value. Over 1000 high school seniors were asked how valuable they find each of the following features (5=extreme value - 1=no value at all).

Rank	Feature	Value
1	An online application	4.11
2	A form that lets you request a campus visit	3.92
3	RSS feeds to help keep you up to date with admission information and campus activities	3.62
4	A calculator to help you understand the cost to attend that school	3.55
5	Online Course Catalog	3.44
6	A calendar of events on campus	3.41
7	Videos showing campus, students, classes or activities	3.38
8	Virtual tours	3.37
9	A form that personalizes the site to suit your particular interests	3.33
10	A request form to have information sent through the mail	3.32
11	A request form to have information sent in an e-mail	3.29
12	Brochures and other printed materials available as PDFs on the site	3.14
13	A portal site for admitted students	3.11
14	Photo galleries	3.11
15	Live chat or instant messaging with someone from admissions through the site	3.05
16	Faculty profiles	2.92
17	A way to connect with the school through instant messaging or live chat	2.82
18	Information about and access to school's private social networks	2.82
19	Online chat events with people from campus	2.62
20	Student or faculty blogs	2.56
21	A connection to my Facebook or other social network	2.33
22	A way to have information sent in a text message	2.27
23	Podcasts	2.27

The full white paper covering this year's results can be found on the James Tower Web site.

Questions or ideas? Email me at drwacker@jamestower.com or visit JamesTower.com.

Kudos to our clients!

2009-08-21T12:01:52-05:00

At James Tower, we like to think that we work with the best colleges and universities around. Now, U.S. News and World Reports confirms it.

Congratulations to Dakota State University in Madison, SD. Once again this year, DSU has been named the highest ranked baccalaureate college in the Midwest. This is the fourth year in a row DSU has received this honor. Check out the story here

Shorter College, in Rome GA, has been rated the #7 best value institution in the Southern region and Champlain College was named the # 1 Up and Coming Liberal Arts institution in the North region. Many other clients also made the top 100 list for institutions nationwide.

Congratulations to each and every one. For a full listing of this year's results, go to the U.S. News website.

Teens Don't Tweet? The latest from Nielson

2009-08-05T10:59:06-05:00

Just last week, Nielson posted a summary of their findings on teens use of the social network Twitter.

You can get the full information here

I find this interesting, especially given the scramble by many institutions to "get their Twitter presence online". What does this mean for Twitter? Are teens going to use a platform where-on a percentage basis-they are WAY outnumbered by their parents (and even their grandparents, according to Nielsen.) And most importantly, what does this mean relative to using Twitter in your admissions process and outreach?

While I would not discourage anyone from looking at Twitter as yet another tool in your social media tool box, maybe you should consider how you prioritize it on your office "to-do" list?

James Tower has launched a new web site!

2009-07-24T10:25:56-05:00

James Tower has relaunched our web site with a new look and feel, as well as updated content and user experience. We hope that you will find http://www.jamestower.com/ to be a useful resource for you and enjoy our "new look".

Please let us know what you think of the new design, both good and bad!! We want to know what you think and what we can do to serve you the best way possible!

http://www.jamestower.com/

Back from the NCSRMR in San Antonio

2009-07-23T22:48:43-05:00

Just got back into town from the Noel Levitz National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing and Retention. The event was held this year in San Antonio, TX. For those friends and new friends that we were able to see in San Antonio, it was great spending time with you. As usual, big kudos to the entire team at Noel Levitz for the outstanding sessions, speakers and events provided to your attendees. This event is always the highlight of the conference season for me and this year the presentations and information were as phenomenal as ever.

For those that missed this year's event, a few resources that you might be interested in and how you can check out aspects of the event for yourself.

If you are a Twitter user, please search for the many attendees providing updates using the #NCSRMR09 tag. There is a lot of very good information for you in 140 characters or less!

If you would like to be provided the powerpoints from either of the E-Expectations Class of 2009 presentation or "Recruiting Big on a Small Budget", please simply email Darren at drwacker@jamestower.com and we will get that to you immediately.

Finally, Noel Levitz has a number of FREE events coming up in the next few months that you may want to check out. A full schedule is available on their website.

It was great to see you all at the conference and we look forward to connecting again in September in Baltimore at NACAC!

James Tower's Schedule at Noel Levitz Conference

2009-07-17T12:09:06-05:00

For those of you attending this year's National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention in San Antonio, Texas next week, I want to let you know where and when the team from James Tower will be speaking so that you don't miss these highly informative sessions.

Cathy Willette, President of James Tower, will be presenting this year's findings and recomendations from the Class of 2009 annual E-Exectation research project along with Stephanie Geyer (Noel-Levitz), Larry Erenberger (NRCCUA), and Lance Merker (OmniUpdate).

Official program description:
Wednesday, 7/22, 3:30-5 PM
E-expectations Update: Class of 2009 - Salon J
The most recent view of our prospective student markets will be explored as we consider the responses of high school seniors to the E-expectations study facilitated earlier this year. Participants will learn what interactive tools, social networking tactics, Web content, and ecommunications trategies are most likely to keep prospective students interested in your school. Data summaries and ecommendations will be paired with dialogue to ensure that participants leave with new ideas for their web and e-communications programs.

Get there early. This room is usually packed. You can also read the full report before the conference.

On Thursday, Darren Wacker will be be discussing tangible strategies for engaging and building relationships with prospective students during an economic downturn.

Official program description:
Thursday, 7/23, 11:15 AM -12:15 PM
Recruiting Big With a Small Budget: Strategies for Engaging Prospective Students in an Economic Downturn - Salon M
With the recent economic downturn, colleges and universities all across the United States are tightening up the purse strings and cutting spending. In a climate of cost-cutting, how can admissions departments continue to ensure they are reaching out to prospective students and helping them connect with their schools, while also keeping an eye on expenditures? This session will share some strategies and solutions for helping today’s admissions departments do more with their budget dollars, while still meeting enrollment goals. The session will provide practical ideas and opportunities for attendees to share their own institutional success stories.

If you can't make these great sessions, you can always come by and introduce yourself at the James Tower booth. Safe travels and hope to see you there!

Questions or ideas? Email or Tweet Josh Paul or visit JamesTower.com.

Drive Enrollment Through Realignment, Not More Investment

2009-07-16T10:58:43-05:00

In times when budgets freeze or shrink and you are asked to do more with less, there is a split in the enrollment community regarding whether colleges and universities should always be open to learning about best practices, ideas and solutions in the marketplace OR circle the wagons, fire up the team and hold tight to what they have until the current financial storm passes.

Many administrators at colleges and universities have a fear of learning about innovative solutions and services designed to help them meet their enrollment goals. Admissions and enrollment officers have a lot on their plates today and fear that asking to learn more about a new solution will:

Divert their focus from their existing workload, which already commands time from their nights and weekends
Result in an awkward sales pitch where a “salesperson” claims to know more about their job than they do and spouts the need to make an investment in their systems
Result in a prolonged project with ballooning add-ons that comes in at 40% over budget in order to work correctly

A Forgotten Approach to Learning About New Strategies and Solutions
In contrast, many of the institutions we work with bring us in to help them analyze and realign their enrollment communication mix (in person, print, phone, Web, email, social media, etc.) to get better results under their current or a lower budget, rather than talk to them about the benefits of making additional investments in their admissions marketing strategy.

This article outlines strategic approaches to help you maintain a top-down view of your enrollment strategy while controlling costs up front and incrementally improving your target enrollment metrics.

Three Approaches to Improving Your Results
The question of how to approach this fall’s enrollment cycle largely depends on your perception of your institution’s last enrollment cycle. Did you receive your target number of inquiries and apps? Was your yield and start rate where you wanted it to be? Did the timing of inquiries, apps and deposits fall under your strategic time line? Was the quality and diversity of your incoming class in line with your goals?

The following are three approaches to maximizing your results and return on your investment going into your next enrollment cycle:

1) “Last cycle’s results were good.”
Questions to ask:

How can I lower my costs?
How can I improve my results even more without increasing my budget?

The most effective enrollment strategies continuously make changes and vigorously look for ways to improve. Outside of higher ed, we can look at Amazon as a model. Amazon.com has been known to change their homepage multiple times a day or week based on feedback and data collected, regarding how well they are hitting certain conversion metrics with a specific layout. On-campus thought leaders are always learning more about how they are performing, what other schools are doing and the new ideas in the marketplace.

Learning does not involve a commitment of any kind. However, if you find a solution that can improve your metrics or lower your cost, be prepared to make that change. Instilling this culture in your team, current solution providers and future partners lays the ground work for continuous innovation.

2) “Last cycle’s results were ok, but I suspect they could be better.”
Questions to ask:

How can I improve my results under my current budget?
How much am I spending on each touch (communication) throughout the enrollment process, from first contact through start?
What percentage of those touches result in the prospective student completing the call to action?
If I shift resources from one channel to another, or from earlier in the process to later, can I impact my results?

Click on the image below to see a simple example of how you might analyze post-inquiry communication and make changes that impact next cycle's results:

3) “Last cycle’s results were unsatisfactory.”
Questions to ask:

Which components of my enrolment communication process are effective and which are not?
If I shift resources in underperforming steps in the communication flow from one communication channel to another, can I impact my results?

Identify the Weakness: Prioritize your challenges by analyzing the individual components of your enrollment communication flow.

Is the top of my funnel large enough?
Am I getting enough inquiries and responses to my search campaigns?
Am I moving enough of those interested students to apply?
What percentage of my accepted students are enrolling at my institution?
Am I starting all, or almost all, of my enrolled students?

Once you have identified the weakest phases of your enrollment funnel, assign a cost to each touch in that phase. Then identify which communication channel and messaging results in the prospective students completing the call to action. As I laid out in option #2 above, think about decreasing resources and funding from non-performing communication and shift it to new solutions or existing touches that are getting results.

Questions or ideas? Email or Tweet Josh Paul or visit JamesTower.com.

From the James Tower Marketing Minute

2009-06-22T20:14:02-05:00

James Tower has released the newest report in their E-Expectations series. "Scrolling Toward Enrollment: Web Site Content and the E-Expectations of College Bound Seniors," examines the online preferences, behaviors and expectations of more than 1,000 college-bound students in relation to higher education Web sites.

This national study provides extensive insight into the role of a college’s Web site in a prospective student’s decision-making process. In this report, you'll learn:

How the accuracy and relevance of a Web site influences students' enrollment decisions
What students are willing to read completely, even if it means scrolling
What students think about campuses that recruit via social networking
How students prefer to be contacted during various points in the enrollment funnel

The study reaffirms that the Web site plays a vital role in a higher education institution’s recruitment effort and that a negative online experience could reduce a student’s interest in a school. To download this E-Expectations report and check out other reports from our E-Expectations series, visit: http://www.jamestower.com/e-expectations.html.

Here’s to another great Monday!

A new direction for “Insights on Admissions Marketing”

2009-06-22T19:51:26-05:00

I hope all of you are having a fantastic summer and that your enrollments are ahead of goal for the year!

Changes are a foot here at James Tower. We have been busy with a number of important initiatives:

AdmissionsGenie 7.0 is better than ever, with the ability to send students SMS messages, enhancements to the social networking capabilities and making forms even easier to use. We even launched the AdmissionsGenie Select initiative as a cost savings for smaller institutions. If you haven’t checked out AdmissionsGenie for a while, we have a lot of new information available at the AdmissionsGenie web page.

New Web Site: The new James Tower web site is about to be released. Stay tuned for more information soon. We cannot wait to share with you a new look, feel and enhanced web site experience. It will be, as always at www.jamestower.com.

New Faces for “Insights on Admissions Marketing”: To assure this resource is more valuable to you as a user and posts are provided more regularly, we are adding two new voices to “Insights on Admissions Marketing”. Cathy Willette-President of James Tower and Josh Paul-Higher Education Consultant will be frequent contributors over the coming months, along with me. By taking more of a team approach, we hope to bring you a wider variety of opinions, information and valuable insights to help you in your outreach to prospects and institutional marketing.

Stay tuned for all of the changes and excitement in the coming weeks. Take care and have a great summer!

Darren Wacker

eduWeb Conference 2008: Conference Social

2008-07-23T15:31:44-05:00

The 2008 eduWEB Conference has come to an end. Tuesday evening, as the conference began to wind down, James Tower along with Noel-Levitz and OmniUpdate, had the honor of hosting conference attendees at an evening social. The event, held on the harbor at the Trump Marina, was a great opportunity for attendees and vendors to relax, unwind and visit at the end of another great day at eduWEB. Here are just a few pictures. For those that could not join us this year, we missed you and we hope to see you at the conference next year.

James Tower Reception at eduWEB