Bob Johnson Consulting

Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter

29 August 2006

Best wishes and congratulations as a new semester opens for just about all of you who read this newsletter. And may your opportunities for upcoming recruitment for 2007 be strong indeed.

Fall is a popular time to hone your marketing skills. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you over the next three months at one or more of my upcoming presentations.

Leading the “recruiting revolution” is the focus of the TargetX workshop in September. Find the details of an exciting day at www.targetx.com/workshops/index.html and join us in Philadelphia.

If you’re interested in improving the impact of your web writing, I have two opportunities in the fall. Join me at October’s CASE conference for publications professionals in San Antonio at www.case.org/conferences/chfpub/frames.cfm

If you’re interested in a three day immersion in many things marketing, plan to attend the AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in November for more than 40 presentations. The details are at www.marketingpower.com/aevent_event24813.php

At the AMA this year I’ll be offering a 3.5 hour Sunday afternoon session on Writing for the Web, with revised and expanded content based on questions from web seminars for CASE and Academic Impressions. Improving the quality of your web writing is the quickest and least expensive thing you can do to raise the impact of your website. Come to New Orleans.

Recruiting adult and graduate students with the latest Internet Marketing techniques is the focus of 8 sessions and networking time at Carol Aslanian’s www.aslaniangroup.com fall seminars. Increase your competitive power in Chicago or Orlando.

And now on to our News and Notes for August.

New College Ranking System

Not happy with your US News rankings? Want to know how you’d do if rankings were balanced to reflect Research, Community Service, and Social Mobility criteria?

If that’s the case, visit The Washington Monthly College Rankings. Rankings for 245 “National Universities” and 202 “Liberal Arts Colleges” are compared to their US News counterparts and there are major changes. In this ranking, MIT and Bryn Mawr are first in their categories. Although some school rankings don’t change much at all, you’ll also find unexpected members of the Top 25 on each list.

Visit www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.collegechart.html for the details.

George Mason Drops SAT for Almost All Top Applicants

George Mason University is one of the latest places to join the SAT revolution. From now on, most students with strong academic records won’t have to submit test scores for an admissions decision. In addition to athletes required to provide scores for NCAA guidelines, prospective engineering students, and home-schooled applicants have to continue sending test score results.

To see how the press is reporting this, visit www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14488682/

For the details of what it takes for “Score Optional Consideration,” go to admissions.gmu.edu/scoreoptional/ where you’ll also find stats on how well test scores predict performance at George Mason.

21 Colleges and Universities that IM for Students

Have you added Instant Messaging to your communication mix in student recruitment?

If you haven’t, check the 21 schools added to my blog last week after a reader asked me about colleges that were Text Messaging. You’ll see that a google search found only one place with TM (Centenary College) but nearly two dozen with IM, from small private colleges to large public universities. You can click from the list right to the IM page.

See if your competitors are at bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/student_recruitment/

If you are using either IM or TM and want to get added to the list, leave a comment at the blog.

Meet Sam Jackson

Sam’s a student at Philip Exeter Academy graduating in 2007 and he’s writing a blog about his experiences with the colleges that are recruiting him. Paying attention what Sam writes will let you focus more closely on students who will actually attend your school.

Let’s be honest. I like this because I agree with so much of what he says. If you listen to Sam, you will target your search audience very carefully indeed and when someone does respond, you’ll send them something of substance rather than a “thin letter” as a first response piece.

Sam’s college recruitment blog is at www.samjackson.org/college/

Be sure to read his thoughts about Columbia and Penn adopting the Common Application to increase applications and decrease acceptance rates. Next, he’ll say the Emperor has no clothes.

Thanks to Karine Joly for introducing me to Sam with an interview on her blog. You’ll find the interview at www.collegewebeditor.com/blog/

Enrollment Management in Wikipedia

Want to make a lasting contribution to what the world knows about Enrollment Management?

Do that at Wikipedia by signing on and adding your own elements to one of the most comprehensive terms in higher education. What you’ll find right now is just a start, a small start.

See what's already been said at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrollment_management and plan to add additional content.

New Guides for Students Who Blog at Cornell University

Cornell University is getting ready to take the plunge and start a new series of admissions blogs. And of course, they want just the right people to do that in just the right away so that “members of the senior Administration” don’t get upset. The advice to students for avoiding this is to “use those Ivy league brains.”

What you’ll find here in detail is the process Cornell is using to pick people, the compensation being offered (including a list of the stores where students can use their gift cards), and admonitions about how to write. If you’re just starting out, you will find this a useful check sheet.

web.cornell.edu/OWC/blogproject/

7 Tips for Marketing with Podcasts

Podcasts don’t yet have the marketing impact of blogs, but the number of people who listen is growing and is expected to reach 10 million by year’s end. If you already have blogs well in hand, but need ammunition to create interest in podcasts, read “Seven Ways to Use Podcasts as Marketing Tools” by the editor-in-chief of Target Marketing Magazine.

Tip #7 is the most important: design your podcasts as part of an integrated online marketing package. Read about each tip at new.targetmarketingmag.com/enews/fullStory.bsp?sid=34256&var=story#34256

Consider this: are any of your faculty members doing podcasts now for their lectures or other academic activities? If they are, create links to them from your admissions website Students with high levels of interest in, say, architecture or nursing or engineering will be visiting soon. And you’ll have another way to let someone else create new content for your website.

New Email “Initiative and Insight” for Better Results

Are you wondering if your email marketing efforts are having a positive impact on your student recruitment or fund-raising efforts?

For better email campaign results, read Al DiGuido’s thoughts about using the information in your database to build more powerful communications. A key comment: “Consumers expect marketers to understand them, to have some insight as to who they are, what they prefer, what they’re interested in, and how they interact with a company.” If you collect information about people and don’t use it when you communicate, you throw away a valuable marketing advantage.

Best Days to Send Email and More

Wednesdays and Fridays come out on top in this survey of “business to consumer” preferences.

You’ll also find information here about how often people prefer to receive an email newsletter. Monthly is highest at 36 percent but 21 percent prefer every other week and 17 percent are fine with a weekly email.

The number one reason for unsubscribing, at 65 percent: lack of relevant content. Keep that in mind when considering the value of versioning at least some of your content. Not sure what to change? If you know the academic area of interest, that’s pretty safe. Make one-third of every email newsletter’s content change by academic area of interest.

Read more, including the important value of simplicity in your email, at www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623180

Chatterbacking in Advertising

If you want to be out in front of your friends, read Peter Blackshaw’s “The Pocket Guide to Chatterbacking” to begin exploring how much advertising people will tolerate on their blogs, their social networking websites, and more.

Google has paid $900 million to own MySpace. The ads have already started. Chatterbacking is Blackshaw’s term for the efforts of ad agencies to piggyback on the conversations people are having with one another. When will your college be advertising on MySpace?

Visit www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623213

18 Steps to Improve Landing Page Conversions

Here’s a double dose of advice on one of the most important and most neglected elements of website marketing. You might not need to take all 18 steps, but some are bound to help.

Whether your call to action is in an email, a search ad, or on radio or TV, getting people to your website is only the first part of an effective marketing campaign. The critical moment comes when people arrive at your website. In a few seconds, they’ll decide whether or not to move further ahead. And that’s exactly where too many campaigns shoot themselves in the proverbial foot because little attention is given to creating a landing page that repeats and reinforces the initial call to action and makes it easy to take that action right away.

In these two articles you’ll find just about everything you need to create strong landing pages.

www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623264

Stop throwing advertising money away. Start improving your website conversions.

10 Keys to Website Redesign to Maintain Search Rankings

If you are planning a substantial redevelopment of your website, this is an article you’ll want to read to maintain any existing standing you have with search engines.

I liked the sections on flash and copy changes. And if you have a URL now that doesn’t clearly identify who you are, be sure to visit #3 on changing your domain name. In fact, those of you with “alphabet” URLs that don’t identify the name of your university might want to check this one even if you are not planning any major changes. Unless your initials are really well known, not having your name in your URL (and your email address) is a lost branding opportunity.

See them all at www.searchengineguide.com/wallace/2006/0822_dw1.html

10 Internship Lists at MySpace

If you offer internship programs and want to give your student access to hundreds of potential listings, send them to MySpace for groupings in 10 different categories that include engineering, marketing, music, and sports.

That’s All for Now

Be a marketing champion on your campus.

Bob Johnson, Ph.D. (bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com)
President and Senior Consultant
Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC

Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC

I offer consulting services personally to colleges and universities and together with the marketing experts at these partner firms:

Aslanian Group offers market research and enrollment management services to colleges and universities to increase their market share of adult students. Learn more at www.aslaniangroup.com.

Creative Communication Associates is a 22-year leader in the design and implementation of marketing communication strategies for colleges and universities. Learn more about CCA at www.ccanewyork.com.

mStoner helps colleges and universities with Internet strategies and website development to meet changing audience expectations, technologies, market pressures, and institutional positioning. For the details, visit www.mstoner.com.

TargetX brings the power of the Internet to recruit students and communicate with alumni through higher education’s only integrated suite of online tools. Explore what’s possible at www.targetx.com.

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