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Keeping Your Marketing Straight When the World Goes Sideways
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Understanding and being empathetic toyour audienceas needs, regardless of what the situation is, will help youachieve your marketing coals, you're, listening to enrolment growth,university from helics education, the best professional development podcastfor higher education leaders looking to grow in Roman at their college oruniversity, whether you're looking for fresh and Roman growth techniques andstrategies or tools and resources. You've come to the right place. Let'sget into the show alone. Welcome to the latest instalmentand helicks enduducations Webin Aur series Cobid, nineteen, the road map tofall, two thousand and twenty today we're talking about student parentexpectation management under the theme of Keeping Your Marketing Straight whenthe world goes, sideway saynk everybody for joining us today. My name is BarkyMortimer, I'm the associate director of crate strategy here at Hilocks, and I'mgoing to be moderating our discussion today, just a couple of quickhousekeeping items before we get into things. This is the Twelvth weaponarthat we've presented in this series and that's pretty incredible, and so, ifyou've been with us for one or more of our revenaurs in the past, you'll knowthat there are a couple of things to be aware of, were recording this sessionright now and we will post this on our healits education youtube channel. Inthe past, we've used otter, ai for a live transcript, as the meeting isgoing on, it's being a Lita Glitchi forus today the wonders of TechnologyRight, and so unfortunately, we aren't able to provide that life right now, sowe apoldise for any inconvenience with that. We will still make a transcriptavailable once we have posted this on Youtube. We are creative problemsolversof nothing else at helixs education. So if you' like a transcript, well be ableto provide that a little bit later on, the Qa function is still working,though, and slack or in Zoom. So if you look at the bottom of your screen,there's and I comments his QNA at any time during the discussion today.You're welcome to click on that and submit a question. We've got a coupleof questions ahead of times, so thanks for those, we will have a largeer QNAsection at the and but they're also going to be times in between sectionstoday. That will have questions as well, so don't feel like you have to wait.Befor the end of the meeting to ask You ar question if you've got one so againas reminder, we've been on this journey to fallow two thousand and twentyaltogether. This is the twelfth Wevenar that we've had so far we're going tocontinue through the month of August and perhaps longer as we continue toanswer your questions about this online transition as we get closer and closerto fall. Two Thousand and twenty thinking of short term and long termplans to deliver quality online instruction, as well as quality, online,enrolment marketing, and that's going to be our topic today, and so ourpresentery today are both fabulous and not just because one's my boss and oneI work with pretty much every day. Our first presenter is Andy Nelsity's. VicePresident Marketing TAT helocks education, Two plus decades of amarketing experience in leadership, including he last several of thoseyears at helocks, feeling various roles prior to his current role as we bmanagement he as reponsible for the Innovation Implementation team at Helex,and so that involved looking at internal and external processes andprocedures and projects and all sorts of things and finding ways to optimizeand improve them, not just for helick benefit, but for the benefit of ourpartner college universities as well, and he's not only a marketingprofessional when it comes hireed he's also worked on the institutional sideat Hir at prior to Helix and so andy. We are glad to have you be one to lookaut for perhaps some folk aphorisms statements of belief as we go and he'squite one of hom for those, so no pressure, Andy our other presenter.Today, besides Andy Is Katy Ban Hazlen. She is a senior content strategist forus at his iducation. I've worked closely with Katy the entire time thatshe's been. He looks she's one of my favorite people here really well versedin marketing communication audience igmentation market research has reallyproved transformative for us at helicks, in the way that we communicate withprostective students and keep them engaged all the way throughout theirstudent journey. Those efforts culminated in Hilic, situcation,winning and award from Marquetto. It's an adobe company that deals withMarketing Automation thanks to Katy and our collective teams. Efforts in thatMane Acelic was wore o the thousand and Ninn orchestrater raward from Marqetto,and so Katie has proved en valuable in many ways for us here a he looks, soI'm so excited for all of you to hear the kinds of insights and expertisethat I get to hear every day, working alongside Indian Kati. So Anni, I'mgoing to turn the time to you to get US started on what we're talking abouttoday, so hand you take it away, thaks pore there. That's that's a lot to liveup to so hopefully, hopefully we can. We can fulfill some of that. Our Dolesfor the brief trime that we have here together are really pretty simple. Wewant to talk about some of the things that we have come to rely on Buteheaveily during the last few months to...
...better understand and manage ourandmoment marketing, and we'll do that, of course, through the lands of covidnineteen. It's a little difficult in a form like this to know exactly whatwhat the audience is. Looking for, what the audionce needs, but hopefully we'llgive you a few things to think about some ideas of ways. You can improvesome things that you might want to consider shoring up or even some someproposals that you might want to take to the broader team. So ourconversation is going to go. Something like like this. Of course, if you haveany questions on along the way, please send them to us is park. You mentione,there is a Qand a feature here in zoom and we'll do our best to cover all ofthe questions before our time here together is through so to get astarting. Our working hyppoteses for this Webanar is quite simply this thatthe basics still apply. So I'm sure that you have heard this quote or onesimilar to it, startd now exactly who said it first, it was probably aPrussian general and somewhere in the mid eighteen. Hundreds, many of expressfimilar sentiments Mike Pason, even wait in the great philosopher MikeTyson, wait in on this and put his spin on things commenting on an UPCAN, wefight with Vandi avander holyfields when Te porer asking him about fullyfil plan for the fight, and he reminded US than everybody has a plan until weget punched in the mouth. But so, however, you want to look at it. Thekey is to start with the solid plan and a good foundation, but us expect thatthings are going to chape. So, even even when things are more ideal, thingswill change, but the key is to have a good foundation and a good place tostart. So whether you subscribe to the four pes the Sevenpis, the two sees theforseas or even the six seeds of marketing. The important thing toremember is that even when things get little nuts, the basics still apply, sodon't throw away everything. You know when the crisis come. However, you wantto slice about snate focus on your audiences, your messages and themotives of communication when the full impact of povid nineteen really startedto be felt, and we started really as a world to shut things down and and inspecifically in the online or in the education space. We started to movethings to online horses. There were a lot of people kind of of Lusanadministrators wrestle what to do and when to do it and the more con folkswere trying to sort out what all of these decisions meant to their variousaudiences and how best to communicate to those audiences. The advent of acrisis just simply isn't the time to develop systems an protocol. So acrisis like this will test those systems and put pressure on thoseprocesses that are already in placed in highlight Areis, large and small, theneeds of showing up- and I won't believor this point, although I could,there are a few things that we've had in place for quite a while for yearsmost of them, they were absolutely essential. A this during this time. Thefirst thing that is critical is a well defined, funnel so understanding thestudent journey and knowing exactly where the students are along the way,just absolutely critical for your communication strategies and yourperformance measurements. The use of this funnel and the Noman claturethroughout your entire organization facilitates that eternal communicationand helps to eliminate confusion, one of the things that we tis absolutelyrely on, or the definitions along the student journey, so that when I speakwith somebody in finance, or I speak with somebody in enroment or anybody inthe marketing team, when we use those definitions in terms, everybodyunderstands exactly what we're talking about and the funnel is fairly welldefined. There is a great dear it deal wit Manutia in the funnel, so we cancut things up and slice things up and get very granular which is critical, nomatter how well and how hard you work to define that bundle. If you don'thave good data, if you're not feeding and tracking everything, you're reallygoing to be handstrung. Similarly, no matter how good your data is, if youdon't have easy access to that data, timely management. Just simply not anObton, this is one of the most common issues that I've run across in mycareer. Most companies are far better at collecting the data than they areaccessing. It analyzing it and putting it to work so often to get to theinformation it ould. You've got to find people in it who can building buildreports, con Cret the database and pull stuff out, and then you got to figureout how to manipulate it and share it and visualize it. So this is a real, areal bust. Here you got to figure out...
...how to access that data, and not justone or two people, but everybody in the company needs to be able to see thisstuff and to analyze. It react to it in their own in their own sphere andfinally, you're going to be asked to provide Fort Passion Projections.That's one of the inevitable things about life. Is a marketer we'll talkmore about this in a minute, but the bottom line here is to make sure thatyou understand the assumptions in your marketing plane. Plans are full of allsorts of variales. You got to know how all those varables work together inthat original plan, so you can make proper assessments moving forward. Whathappens when I full this lever or that lever or when this mestrure changes?What's going to happen down spring understanding? All of that that theoutset is absolutely critical, because when things start moving fast, you needto know what you can rely on and what what moves in relation to other things.So if covid nineteen is highlighted, some deficiencies in any of the areasabove now the time to start tightning them up and working with the broaderteams and your organization to get the resources you need. These basics areimportant all the time. So there's plenty of justification for putting theeffort in based on the lessons that we're learning from this this currentcrisis, so Katie's going to talk through some of the basic o exteralcommunication, specifically how we aproach marketing and communication,thus for in conineteen right thanks Andy. So I am going to talk to youabout our marketing strategies and how we approach messaging. But I'm alsogoing to talk to you a little bit about how those tactics and understanding thebasics have helped us market during the last few months as we plan our futureefforts. But before I do that, I wont to share a little bit of an experiencewith you tbut. I think we've all probably had at one point in time. Soif you'll just transport yourself to the yesterday years of early twothousand and twenty, when we all were still cruising around on planes, let'spretend we're back on that plane. You just got cosy and your ten or fifteenminutes into your inflight entertainment and then your screenpauses and your audio cuts out, because the pilot is making an announcement. HeGoes powty folks, it's Captain Steve Coming in from the COCPPIT, and hetalks to you about a couple of things. It's usually something like where theflight cruis from and how his airline, whether it's Delta or united, skywes orsouthwest they all care about your comfort and your safety. And then hetalks about my personal favorite. Your current cruising altitude. Well, that'sall well and good, but what I really want to know from Captain Steve aretotally different things. I want to know when we're going to land. I wantto know if the flights can be bumpy. I want to know when I'm going to get mydiet, coke and my cheeseets right and there's no disrespect to Captain SteveHe's doing his best, but the message that he's delivering at that momentdoesn't feel relevant to my needs so the next time he makes an announcement.I won't pay attention I'LL, probably learn to start kind of paying less andless attention to poor captains teme up there. Now I don't bring this up to dogon Captain Seef because he's doing his best and it probably gets a littlelonely up there in the cockpit. But I dust think this can be related to yourmarketing strategy, because at its core, good marketing is good. Messaging andgood messaging is good experiences, and if you don't speak to your audience ina way that they can understand it and at times where they're receptive to it,then they're not going to pay attention. And ultimately, unless a message isrelevant to the recipient, then it simply won't resume. So how do youcraft a message that will resonate, especially when you're up against theclock? That is the question of the hour now before you dive into creating a newfacebook ad campaign or before you start creating that letter from thepresident, you really ought to take a step back and understand the basics ofa good strategy becauses, regardless of whether you're marketing a new programor a covid update, the basics will still apply and there are really threethings you ought to be considering whenever you're crafting mess trategy.So the first question you should ask yourself is: what is your message andwhat? What are you even trying to say? But, more importantly, why are yousharing it and also what actions do you want? That specific message to driveand ultimately the most important thing that you should be considering, iswhat's in it for your user, so go back to the plane analogy. What is relevantto me is that this plane is safe and that my ride won't be bumpy. I don'tspeak altitude, but if Captain Stene is trying to tell me that thirty twothousand feet is the autimof cruising altitude, because it's safe and itwin't be pumpy, then that's your message. The second thing you reallyneed to understand is who you're speaking to I mean when we speak inHigher Ed. We know that we have three kind of main audience segments. You'vegot your parents of students, you've got your students and then you've gotyour stateholders, but if you drill down you'll start to find that thereare many more layers to that. So of course you have your current students,but you also have your first term...
...students, your first generationstudents, you have your students who are on academic probation. You've gotyour students who are about to drop, and then you can just in this exercise,go on and on and on, and I don't bring this up to overwhelm you with options,but simply to point out that each of those audience members are unique fromeach other and each segment of your audience needs something different fromyou. So it's worth spending to some time to look at your audiencesedmentations and try to understand their mindsets. What are the barriersin their way? What are the emotions that they're feeling because ultimatelyyou'll understand what you want them to do? But you also need to understandwhat's preventing them from taking the action that you want and when youunderstand that- and you understand this barriers, you can create marketingthat alleviates those barriers and ultimately leads to a good studentexperience. So the last tenant that you really ought to be paying attention tois eager channels. Now there are many channels that a marketer has ut theirdisposal. We can send an email, we can send a text. You can shoot off a letterfrom the president, our stick of a billboard. Now the great thing and afantastic thing about having so many options is that each of those channelswore to best for something, but not each of those channels works best foreverything. So as a very very basic example, if I need a pespective studentto call admissions, I'm not going to write them a letter, I'm going to sendthem a text. So that may seem really obvious. But it's worth taking sometime to consider how your audience interacts with and responds with thechannels that you use and then once you consider all of this, regardless ofwhat you're up against, then you can move forward with an action plan tocreate a very impactable marketing strategy that will speak to youraudience that will serve them to meet their needs and will ultimately providethem with a good experience and ally them to your institution. So let's talka little bit about what this looks like in the real world and talk about howwe've implemented this with our covid marketing. So with our COVID marketing,we've kind of broken it up into a three stage approach, the phase, one beingthe Nady gredate. Do you think back to early March campuses all over thecountry were closing and there was a little bit of panic, a little bit ofconfusion and, I think, a whole lot of Huh. Is this really happening, and sowhat we needed to do was communicate exactly the situation and the immediateimpact that this has to everyone in our funnel and when you thoughtfullyapproach your message by going through the exercise that we just look at onthe previous like you can then thoughtfully tackle the challenge athand, even if it's an unprecedented one, so pace one in communicating thisneeded to be quick, we needed to make it snappy because things were movingpretty quickly, but because we have a matricy, because we've created thesenutricies in the past. We can then easily dicect thoir audiences andapproach them strategically see what you see on the deck here are threeexamples of audience segments. Obviously we could go a deeper diet. Wecan go into deeper audiences from here, but for the purpose of brevity willjust cover these three and ill as an example, kind of talk through how wewould approach something like this for current students and their parents. Sowe know exactly what we need. We need to let our current students know what we're doing and the impact that ithas on their education, even if there is noimpact, even if you're an onlineinstitution who is going to consider as or continue business as usual, studentsneed to know that. We also know that there's going to be a fair amount ofconcern and worry going into this to, we need to get ahead of the problem andbe available to address the concerns. Now we know, or at least can take aneducated guess hut. These current students are probably pretty worriedabout their progress. They or their children have just spent the last sixmonths, two years three years, whatever it is working on a degree and noweverything is up the Merr and they have questions like. How am I going to takemy finals? Do I do my clinical experiences? So the way that we willcounteract that is cracking a strategic message that says this: Is Ourinstitutions response to this event, and these are the ways that were goingto help you now because we're in a crunch and because we know the channelsthat work for this audience segment. We will tackle this through text and email,and one unique way that we went about this at Helix is by crafting a crisiscommunication strategy call chain. If you want to call it something like that,whereas we looked at our audience secmentation and we broken intodifferent populations, sent each of those populations a text. That saidsomething like we know, you're worried your education is still in track, butwe're going to call you so that we can...
...talk about it. So those students wereprimed and ready to receive a call which they did within an hour, and itwas from somebody from the institution who was able to talk through theirconcerns and address it head on. By doing this, we were able to get aheadof the message and deliver the message that we really wanted to our clo carryhad a hosted a Webbonar several weeks ago about crisis communication, and shesaid something along the lines of. If you don't tell the story, then studentswill start to tell their own and something like this really comes inhandy when you need to alleviate concerns and and worry so obviouslywe're talking about something. That's happened in the past, but again thisdoesn't have to be. We don't have to only look at this matrices when, whenwe're worried about something big, something like this might happen, worormight be helpful for another big ticket. I for EEXAMPLE, if you're going back tot o campus. What's your mask policy? What about when you wanch a new programor have a change in leadership, understanding and being empathetic toyour audience's needs, regardless of what the situation is, will help youachieve your marking goals, so we'll move on to face to and talk about thesecond phase that we went through, which was kind of the near future. Thisis about two to four weeks after campus as started. Closing what we needed todo was coommunicate, where we're going from here, we know what's happening,but what does it mean to our audience? And so for this particular side? Let'stake a look at perspective, students who have submitted their application,but they haven't finished it or they've been admitted, but they haven't quiteregistered again. What we need them to do is understand the impact, but, moreimportantly, brass haps. We need them to finish their application or we needthem to finish their admission process, so we're going to craft a message thatanswers the concerns in the mindset that they have at that time, we'regoing to tell them exactly how we help you finish and we're going to use thechannels at our disposal that we have the time to work with, because we havetwo to four weeks and we know that audience responds to so one way thatyou could look at this at your institution is by taking a look at thewire frame that you already have in place. Do you send a letter at point ofapplication? Du you start an email cavens do you have so many reach outand Calla tuten whatever it is, take a look at what you're already doing andthen just twank the messaging weak, the copy to make sure that it's addressingthings to head on like U coming starts, modality changes again, covid's impacton an application, even if there isn't an impact by doing something like this, youragain getting ahead of the problem, but, more importantly, all of the marketingchannels that you're using are starting to tell the same story whether yourapplicate is looking at the text. They just got or they're reading the emailsomebody set them if they're looking on facebook and they see an ad or if theygot a postcard in the mail. It's all about the same thing. It's all abouthow we can help them finish, despite covid nineteen. So let's go ahead and move on todiscuss what we're diving now and kind of how we're moving into the new future,which is the long game right. We know that this isn't shortly temporary. Imean we hope it's not forever, but we need to communicate now. How ourinstitutions are poised exactly to meet the needs of this moment, and so we'lltake a look at kind of perspective students for this and when we sayperspective students, we mean anybody who has whos preinquiry, who hasn't yetraised their had, or maybe people and their parents who have inquired, butthey haven't moved to that next step of applying. Obviously, we need them tosubmit their application, but there's a lot of big fish to pry. At the moment,people are very concerned about a lot of things know mostly the economy, I'mthey're worried about their jobs and they're. Also questioning can I reallygo to a school online so the way that we will change our marketing is bydiscussing just those things how job education will lead to job security andalso for us in the institutions that we work with. We can discuss quite a bitabout how online is in the DNA, but if that's not the case, you know you candiscuss how we put measures in place to ensure that you're, interacting withyour peers, to make sure that you have time with your professor that you're,using zoom or spipe or whatever it is to emulate a real inclass experience.So they can feel confident that they're going to get the education that theyneed and, of course, we're going to do this through all of the channels thatwe have available because similar to face to wherever a student orperspective student is looking and wherever their parent is looking. Wewant to make sure that that same message resonates why this is importantand why this is kind of a big strategic move for us is because right now, atthis moment in time, everything needs to be topical if you're a marketer. Youknow that Pre March two thousand and...
...twenty it was tough to get somebody'sattention. Well now it's July thsand and twenty, and it's even harder to getsomebody's attention. So everything we say needs to be exact, relevant to theexact situation that people are in and by addressing the concerns of ourcurrent and potential students, regardless of where we are indmarketing techniques. We can deliver marketing that speaks directly to themand also helps us achieve our goals. So hopefully that gives you a little bitof insight into how wehe looks are working toward our goals. Parky. Iguess I'll turn the time over to you to see if we've had any questions thatcome have that have come in that we can help at dress right now we have we'vehad a couple. One comes from Jena, you know you ended really emphasizing thisIda of messaging to perspective. Students and Jennet ask what are themost common problems you see in higher end messaging to prospects. Can yougive examples or themes that you see in the market, and so what would you sayto Gen in that case Kati and Andi? If you want to Wai as well sure so I thinkone thing that W we need to be commisant of is creating messaging,that's very much about the institution and not about the student, and so Ithink that you know, I think of messaging is kind of a Vandiagram. Youhave the institution rignt here and then you have a student rigt here andsomewhere in the middle, is where your message belines with them and servesthem, and so I think, when we look at things like in our messages we've been doing onlinefor twenty years, then we need to be really cognisid of how that applies tothe perspective student and what they can gain from it, because otherwiseit's very much an us. Not You message. If that makes sense and di you haveanything to add to that, but I would add only that t a that's really whereunderstanding your audience and having good data to be able to segment andunderstand you know if they visited your web properties. What pages, whatthings were they interested were they interested in? And what else can yougreen from them based on their behavior, so that you can provide relevantmessages to them? It's the information, the insights we have on any giveninquiry are pretty scarce and obviously you move further up to the top of theflannel. We know very little so to the extent you can understand who you'respeaking to Antaylor that vessage, so that Kati said not only is it relevantto them, but it's also not just this. The Shot Gon approach, because thereare things, are going to matter to different people at different times, sothat that the ability to Segmet your audience is is crucial right from theoutset, right from the the beginning, interaction with with your prospect,yeah excellent. So thank you Janir for that question, thanks Katy and Andy foryour answers, and we had a question that came in ahead at time that I thinkwe could Bigu back up to some really well and it was what guidance did yougive your teams about messaging and okayt? I think he touched on this a bit,but is any any other insights from Kati or Andy about the guidance that we hadhelex received about messaging, an both. I you know across these differentmatriseason segments, like you were talking about Kity, yeah and I'll touchon a couple and Kati can bring up some points to because I know this was aconversation fairly growing on and one of the things that happened early wasour enrolment. Marketing manager sent ouna an email just to everybody, justkind of a general reminder to understand that covid nineteen is nowthe backrup for everything that we say and do and people will be viewing itTou that moon so be sensitive to that ther make sure you kind of read thecopy and look at the images in that light. Also, there's some remindersabout understanding that when we have a lot of messages out in the market forcampus based learning well, all of a sudden that's going to be somethingthat we need to make sure that we are revising to focus on the onlinemovality, because that's what that's what's going to be available, but therewere a few other tips and tips that came hay from that Kating Wat. Whatwould you have? I would add that again we want to be sensitive and tacful in areprach. I think that you know being careful in this moment about what'sgoing on in the world is important. I think that you can easily do that byensuring you know you can easily make sure you're not being predatory by kindspeaking truth to advertising and speaking about what we what we know tobe true. We do know that there's people, regardless of what's happening in theworld education, will help you with job prospects. I think that you can alsofrave in in a way that people can understand. I M An, I think you canalso call upon people within your institution who can help deliver themessage in a sensitive way. So I think that's around about answer, but interms of messaging, that, I think was. The guidance that we took is ensurethat we're sensitive and taxable, while still addressing the common concernsthat people have yeah and to reiterate...
...some of things that Katy brought upearlier understanding the different messages for your different audiences,its pretty important. If I'M A if I'm a student that is beginning theinvolvement process, what I need to know is what's going to happen becausethe campus ias going to go though his close, but if I have yet to reallybegin that process, but to sort of looking around, I just want to knowthat you know how to handle online learning and that you can provide andyour setup to continue so so really again. Understanding who you're talkingto is a big piece of that and being ableto reassure them or encourage them, as the case may be, or there consideration an maybe theirinfluencing committee to make sure that we're. We understand- and we knowwhat's going on- is pretty important, but it varies significantly where you,depending on where you are on the Po, all right, excellent, great insights,Katy and Andy. Thank you Ryanas a question. What is an enrollment coachon the screen? There we say the message call Ouren, rolmant coach, so on Romancoach is a a tern that we at helics an our park. instritutions used to referto admissions, repressentative and Roman represented the Rolofan anromancoach is to take that perspective student from the time that they firstinquire till the time they are registered for classes and start theirfirst day and that a Roman coaches with that perspective student all the waythrough that period and so helping them to complete their application. Securingany transcripts that are needed help giving a direction on financial aidcompleting a fast, according with the with the institution on matter such asthose and basically kind of whatever else that perspective student needs toget ready for that first day at class and so other stitutions, maybesomething like admissions, rap or enrolment, rap but yeah. That's that'show we define what an enrolment coach is. So thanks foring for that question,we've had a couple more questions that I think hey're going to be addressedpretty well in our next section. As we talk about internal communication andexpectation management. So Anne has a question of how can we effectivelycommunicate the need for this type of communication strategy toadministration and Katie asked not you Katy van Hazlen, but Kati O'hare askedane talked about data collection throughout the funnel. Does he have arecommended template of data points to measure also in terms of planning? Isthere a marketing counter templat that you recommend to share your plan withothers? I think it's a great segue into our next section on internalcommunication, expectation management. So, and I will let you run with it fromhere sure and and sparky. There was there's a lot there and some of them. Iknow we cover, but we may need a reminder to make sure we touch on allof all of those points. Haf, you would kind of help keep score. I wouldappreciate it. I got you so at the same time that you tryg to manage all the the external communications. There areinternal petituents that are looking to you for guidance, not only regardingthe execution of the strategies, noe Te Bom, but also things like spin and topof funnal performance. So we'll talk a little bit about all of that bet, quick,not on some of the numbers you're about to see I've removed any of our partneridentification, and I don't really even use the same partners in every example,but they are real datapoint. So you a kind of do with that, what you will,but, but these refer to no specific partner. So one of the first things thefirst pieces of internal communication, you have to worry about es to the teamsthat are handling the message. Creation and the message. Dissemination, havinga clear, documented plan- and you follow regularly- is critical at a timelike this, because you don't want to skip any steps taking the shortcutsthat are going to lead to problems down the line. He can really get tripped upby the anxiety to get things done quickly. Like I said earlier, thecrisis isn't the time to develop a process. However, there are things youcan learn from your time. In the crucible, for instance, we refined ourprocess so that at the discretion of we countmentage or subject matter expertand in specific situations, we can waive the initial kickoff meeting andlet the written speck be the guy. It seems like a small thing, but it canshave hours off of the project. Now I didn't take the time thoe going to layout or inter our entire internal creative process, but it is a detail ine, thorough process that is managed by our account management team, and thereare we use a work of Agig, a tool to help kind of process and keep thingsmoving, but it's all very clearly defined and we use it all the time, notjust an an emergency so that when something like this happens, everybodyknows exactly what to do, and in this case we created a little little out tospeed things along a little bit. We also made some process changes aroundWevinar. Surprise, surprise: We'V had a process for doing webanars, but thisaccelerated pacte has encouraged us to make some changes and what we did if weseparated out some of the elements and...
...put them on parallel path rather thanon a linear track, thereby decreasing the overall time from start to launchor start to to Lebanar. So if you have't already defined a Ri and useregularly a process for greative messaging, take the lessons that youlearn from Cov nineteen and grait. If you do have one now's a good time for alesson to learn, he brief to identify ways you might want to improve theother important line of putation is all around performance and the marketingthing everybody from Enroman, the Financeis, anxious and looking forguidance, so the best guy that the we can generally give comes from some formof Comparativei. So taking a look at your year of year month, ofe month andeven day to day, trends can provide some pretty valuable insights. So thisis a basic here. Here's where the basics of a well defined funnel andclean data really pay off. When we're looking at the data and try not to board everybody with Wetolvithe number that we get to play with we're looking at it in either either interms of when the inquiry was generated or received, or when the student movedinto a particular status like simmitted appicat completed out, so we're talkingabout coming from the the received data or when they change their status.Looking through the receive date Lins, we can see critical topicpal activityand give the sense of how consumers are behaving based on the day. They arrivedin our system, because we wanted to share the SIMPO with a lot of the otherpeople around the organization. So they cansee it so they could help interpret it. We created a quick Google dock and whatyou're Seeng here are just some scrin grabs from a few of the of the graphsthat we put in the Scoogle dock and we added the little slicers at the top andorange so that we could control better for things like changesin the media mix and we could also alter the day ring. So this you canlook at several months at a times owir days at t e time, Ouca, look at allchannels, some channels- and this view also gives us the year of year andmonth month and then they kind of Paris. So we created a separate graph eachfrom the top of the PO steps to make for a quicker assessment of how thingsare moving through the phone. We focus on these step raw to submittid abricant.Those are the ones that are we most commonly look at from a marketingperspective. Although we look at the entire Fundel, but we tend to look atfor everything from ro to submit it to. We won't get through the whole full onthing. We've already done that, but that's things like raw and contactedoraw and scrubing contacted and qualified up to Somein outmit, becauseall of those things tend to happen fairly quickly and they provideed agood early indication of power. Our marketing dollar is performing. So ifyou take a look at these numbers, you can see at the beginning of the monthwe're really down year over a year, and this is Beck in March, we're down inqualified anqors year every year. But if you look at submitted applicants,you see a different story, so you have to watch the entire funnel. You can'tjust focus on either end of the funnel, because you're going ta you're going tomiss important trends, D and You're, going to miss opportunities to react towhat you're, seeing as I mentioned, the other way that we look at thingstypically ISD by the status start date, so on any given day how many studentsmoved into a specific status like qualified ingreat were submitted. APPI.This perspective is valuable insights as it speaks to the quality and theperformance. So how engaged are the inquiries and how are we doing it?Moving them along? This is a bew. It bar enrollment of poks Byn pertcularly,useful as they evaluate in forecast future starts so they're less concernedabout when and inquiry was received and much more concerned with the volume ofgiven status relative to the next start. So, if we're a hundred and twenty daysout from the start, we need to have x number of subminted, apts and Wi numberof completed apts. If we're going to to reach our our new stort goal, we alsoput together some onther bar graphs and things like that and show toward theagwe get by month as another quick way to see how these things are comingtogether. Of course, not all this stuff is happening in a vacuum, and the useof he ratios is also pretty important, and the one that I wanted to touch on alittle bit here today is the cost per ratio and typically folks like to thinkof Crosper only in terms of posperinquory, sometimes cost for start,but by extending that all the way through to each of the steps, you canreally start to see some things that are important, it's impossible, becauseyou can't. You can't really judge performance just on volume or just oncost, so this cost for ratio is a good way to get a gauged overall and at apretty gradular level. You can look at...
...things by at cost for by channel by AdGroup and even keyword when we're talking about serch and use that toGuid your marketing decisions. Of course, this is one set of ration. Thewhole conversion rate is another set of ratios that are obviously criticallyimportant, but I think cosper tends to get igmored a lot, especially all theway through the funnel, and we this became critical for us in this, thecovid nineteen Lin or Utecoen it mans. When we saw big advertisers andverticals like travel, were dramatically reducing their spit. Imean they were just pulling out of all kinds of stuff and a quick check of ourcost purs from those channels help us evaluate how we wereceiving the impactof that. So are we in fact you're getting out? Does that mean there'smore inventorie for us? Does that mean we can spend more money and if we dospend more money? How is that going to equate into new inquiries andultimately EW starts, so we can. We can use that cost Bir ratio to see what'sgoing on and see if we should put more money, inthe specific channel similar.Similarly cost pear was a really good way to gain the impact of thedramatically increased activity that we saw around search terms like onlineschool and learning online. So I forget the statistics, but it was hundreds oftimes more search terms, orar queries to the search engines for those kindsof terms, the big surgeon. All that note was largely from parents and Kqelv teachers who were frantically trying to find resources figure howwhat to do with their kids. So it was important for us to understand how thiswas impacting our campaigns and sure enough. We saw our Osperroy Weri, sotiptop of the funnel we saw our cusper rightgre start going up on those moregeneric terms as more generic campaigns, so we needed Tebeinin to make someadjustments. Where else we would just be spending money on things that werereally going to never head out forus, so that early warning signal. Promtetthis to reduce that spin. That's how things so bound so so understandingthese ratios, looking at them all through the futtle. It's prettyimportant and again I think hosper is one that, especially at the granularlevel and all through the funnel tends to kind of get overlooked. So it'simpossible to say we are truly in the newnormal or, if we're just kind of ata slower portion of the transition to the new normal. Only time going to fillthat, but things do seem to have settled down just a little bit and weare looking at this and he like as a good time to short things up. I thinkin the the crush of the every day and the Tedesire to get things done. We oftenforget that taking time to charp in your saw is also part of thework so par get op that counts, Fetto, the Foxy aporism, but taking time tomake sure that you're working effectively and to tighten up the toolsthat you're using is really critical, and so we're looking at this and we'redoing a lot of lessons learned in a lot of inprospection to kind of figure outhow we can be better always, but especially the next time. Somethinglike some kind of prices happens. We testing new messages and looking fordifferent and new ways and da or audiences, both internally andexternally, on the matters that are important, tor them right now and thatthat whole marketing mantra of the right message for the people and it'simportant internally and externally as well Ospartyo remind me of the broaderquestions that we want to touch on yeah. So so the first half of Katie o'harr'squestion I recommended Templa to data points to measure. I feel, like we'vecovered, that the second half of Katie's question and then Anne'squestion are kind of two sides of the same coin. Just in terms of Kati asked,is there marketting counter temp that you recommend to share your plan withothers a and talk about? How can we effectively communicate the need forthis type of communication strategy to administration and so what ways toshare this with other decision makers an and other folks like that sure? Solet me let me touch quickly on th, the daythat one, although I know we'vefevered it. I think the key to this is working within your internal teams andwithin your internal systems, to figure out how Grangal or you can force thingsto be. We kind of several years ago, sort of unpacked everything took it ona part and put it back together and a lot of what was there was usable, butwe just kind of reordered. We ordered it or we con figured it. So we couldsee that entire funnel. So I would recommend that you figure out what arethe steps and we, when you get this light neck you'll seea the list of those of those steps and those are the the big milestones andthere are lots of subsets inthe that but take that time, and it is apressive to define the entire student...
Journein and make sure you understandthe INS and outs of it once you have that, then you get into the you can getbetter into the whole idea of a marketing calendar and and lobbying forthose internal mechanisms. Broadly speaking, CA, geu ready to jump in onthis but, broadly speaking, arm are the way we look at our marketing calendaris based on when the start day is and because we have lots of good data. Weknow the average time the average distance from the start that inquiriescome in to contribute to that start. So if the start is on September font, weknow that really, because it takes forty five to sixty days to get theentire process done, that that the cutoff point for contributing FTOR.That September, one start es going to come sometime. Forty five sixty daysprior to September, one so that area before that is the recruiting time andthe calendar is really driven by that startday and then the each inquiry haskind of its own calendar. So you come in and you this happens to you on dayone sometimes well Katy can. If you really get time, we can go in Tog whathappens like at minute one, and then you know our one, but it goes all theway through each so each individual follows their own process and their owncommunication and that again is based on behavior. So if you do this, then wewill respond thusly. If you don't give anything we'll do this. So really it'sall about timing from the start. But then, once you come into the system,everybody kind of has their unique and individualized calendar and messagingbased on kind of what they're doing in where they are hetty yeah. I wouldagree- and I think that you know that's the way- that we secment our audienceesis to ensure that the messaging for somebody who is in their final stage ofthe application process, it's a very different message and approach thansomebody who's in the kind of perspective portion into to anys pointYep. We do make sure that we're taking a look at our data and look at thefunnel and if we know you know if we notice that last year people took sixtytwo days to get from Atz and now they're taking forty five days. That'sdata that we can use to kind of craft things and create proactive strategiesto address those yeah. I just can't say enough about how important having the data and collecting the dataand en having access O it S. everything in this conversation all right. I seemultiple thank yous from Katie, so I think we're feeling good and she'sfeeling good too so hetty thanks for that question, we're into the broaderQNA, and so we've got time for a couple more questions. We have a couple in theQNA already. If you draw is a little bit late, the you and II kind of hereat the bottom of your screen and you can use that Jena had a followengquestion talking about the importance of the fil she says, but it feels likethe funnel is changing with the shift to virtual effent, the vans prospects,caniattend college fairs etce, and so how do you recommend that institutionsthink about adjusting their funnel and their mettriks? As we see these kind ofchanges in the funnal happen, so any katy? What would you say to Jenna? Inthat case, I guess I would challenge that a little bit in that I don't knowthat the funnel necessarily is changing, but the behaviors, maybe changing,especially when you look at channels like I would say you know: ECREATBairor student affair, that is a particular channel and that behavior noquestion is going to change so but the basics of the bottle, the backone ofthe Funbel, all pretty much stays the same. But when I look at channelperformance, that's going to change over time. So then the question becomesokay. If we used to have a lot of Suncess from events, we've got toreplace that somehow that's one thing to discuss the other thing to discussis you know these event providers. They are also trying to figure out how toreplace live events. So what are they doing? How do we get in on that? How dowe make that affective and then it's a process of testing, prying measuringand seeing what happens so, but that's that's true, anytime you're talkingabout branching into a new channel or a new sunset of a channel and that thatroutine, the rigor around testing as another one saying we didn't really getinto a whole lot today, but that is a an absolutely critical piece of thepuzzle to there always has to be some prospecting going on what what aboutthis? We tried this. What happens we go into this channel or massage or currentefforts in a given channel. So I do agree. There are things that thelandscape is changing and has changed. So now it's question of trying thingsto recover and to react in thenew world, but think when I think of the Fuliing,a very very define students move from...
...brawing Greek to scrub, O contact, ith,qualify and all the way down to clearing senseis first day of Class Ay.Anything you want to for with her. I agree. I think that your milestandmarker, still probably aren't going to change it hit, seems like alot of Tim. The modality in which we kind of push people through the funnelmight change right, but I do think tangentially it's a good opportunityfor us to revisit the strategies that we were doing six months ago and seehow we might modernize and make them again relevant. I noice said that term,four, four or five times already, and I think maybe if I say I one more timethan ad appears, I don't know but F, if you're focusing on what's relevant. Ifpeople really are hungry for lebenars, then serving te Levenor. If they reallywant to have a one on one zoom session with anadmissions Ra, then that's something that we could consider as well. So Imean I don't know if that's necessarily an answer, but I think that things arechanging and- and I think that there are going to be some things that comeout of it, because it will some good things to come out of it, because itwill kind of force us to all modernize and raking things through differentlines, yeah, and that you know therere. There have been pretty significantshifts in the education landscape from a marking perspective. You know beforethis is this: is the things happen for lots of different reasons? I meanfifteen years ago the the adult education space, especially APHILIAmarketing, was huge. Now that is almost in irrelevant channel, so the quest formarketers is always to be on the lookout for new different, better laysand the only way to get there is to test. But I think we we, as marketerson Wat to our institutions, to not be trapped by history, and you know thisalway used to work. So we assume that it's always going to work. I thinkthat's a that's a danger, and so I would hope that some portion of everybudget was carved out for testing some portion of the human effort. The humantime is also carved out for s scouting things out and testing things out,because that's that's the only way to really stay in the courtfrot and stayrevelanvt, because you can bet our consumers are changing and the are thepeople were trying to communicate with their changing and they're moving fast,so we got TA. We owe it to everybody to keep up all right. That sounds great. We haveabout five minutes left and so just really quickly, we'd like to just kindof rap up by sharing a lot of the resource that are Baable to folks thathelotedications making available to college universities as theytransitioned to aquality online experience, and so again, if you'vebeen with this before you've heard these sorts thingport. If this is yourfirst web inar with us. First of all, welcome, second of all, as we approachFal, two thousand and twenty, we help our colleges and university partners tomake this transition we've coucheted. Within these four pillars, I side ofinstitutional online readiness, beyondline teaching and learningexperience, onlines, sdudent experience and engagement, and then the pillarthat we've talked about today' student and parent expectation management, andso how Pulic etucation can help across these different ways is that we haveassembled a collection of professional development resources, templates, KPIdocuments, all sorts of things to help aid you in this transition, they'reabeable Wright there helics Educationcom new dash future. I willput that URL in the chat as well. She ca get a chance to click that you alsofind well nars like this one, as well as the PASSH povenors, that we've doneas well as podcast other professional development opportunities, as I talkedabout within those four pillars, and so anything that you'd like to get alittle bit more emphasis on your welcome to to to the website and dothat. We also have an email address, set up and so anyboddy, who is lookingfor more information about your specific situation, fel free to shootus an email at new future info at helic. EDUCATIONCOM. We've also put that emailaddress in the chat free to copy and Pastin, and let us know like we said atthe beginning. We are continuing on the road to Faul two thousand and twenty,and so we have more webonars coming up in the weeks ahead. The plan now is togo through August, but will continue these for as long as you out therefield that it's necessary and that we can help you out and so just a quickpreview of other topics that we have coming up. The topics all relate weekby week to those four pillars that we mentioned earlier and so each week willfocus on a different pillar. So, like I said this week fell under the studentparent expectation, management, Peller and then next week is institutional,online readiness, and so you see that those are weekly areas of focus inthemes as we progress through the month...
...of audust and so just one last time,we're going to put that url up there on the screen, as well as e email addressand so feel, free to use and download those resources available at helics,Educationcom newdash future and set us an email. If there's anything more that,we can dig into new future infot at helocs educationcom thanks to everybodyfor attending. Thanks for your questions, and especially thank you toKatie and Andy for your inside and expertise that you shared with us todayfor everyone out there who joined us have a great rest of your day and weekstay safe and we hope to see you at more webenars in the future, so takecare and have a biggost tfor your Dan Week attracting today's new post,traditional learners means adopting new enrolmant strategies. Keelikseducations data driven enterprise, wide approach to enrolment growth isuniquely helping colleges and universities thrive in this neweducation, landscape and Helex has just published the second edition of theirenrolment growth playbook, with fifty percent brand new content on howinstitutions can solve today's most pressing enromant growth challengesdownload it today for free at Helocks, Educationcom playbook you've been listening to enromantgrowth university from helics education to ensure that you never miss anepisode subscribe to the show in hitunes or your favorite podcast player.Thank you so much for listening until next time.
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