Marketing Strategy

Have you heard about the news yet?

The Higher Ed Analytics Revolution has officially started! In the session I presented today at the eduWeb conference, I’ve finally got a chance to explain my plans for this revolution.

I want to help you change the way marketing decisions are made at your institution – most of the time they are based on hunches, guesses or opinions while it’s now possible to adopt a more data-driven approach with the help of Online Analytics.

Earlier today I shared my 7-step plan to develop a web analytics process. Technology wasn’t very cooperative this afternoon in Chicago as the AV guy had some trouble connecting my laptop to the projector and then forgot to plug back in my laptop with a dying battery, but I think I managed to get my message across.

I’ve uploaded my slide deck to Slideshare, so you can have a look at it.

In this presentation, I explain that we are going to start to collect data about 12 basic metrics along with some info about the size and type of your institution every month.

Our goal is to create and share some useful benchmarking data to help you inform your marketing decisions and develop a data-driven culture in your web, marketing or communication office.

If you’re interested and want to join the revolution, just register to receive updates and invitations to fill out the monthly benchmarking survey at www.higheredanalytics.com.

We will start on August 11, 2010 and you will have to submit your data to receive the monthly benchmarking report.

We want to start now and fine tune the segmentation options as we go, so your feedback, comments and suggestions are more than welcome at that stage.

We know it’s not going to be the perfect at the beginning but revolution aren’t done overnight, so let’s start now and aim for good enough, shall we?

I started to write about the mobile web in higher education about a year ago (The ABC of Mobile Marketing for my University Business column), but I know I’ll be writing more and more about it in the coming months (and not because of the August 4 “Going Mobile” webinar series by Higher Ed Experts).

You might have noticed yourself that several sessions and workshops about the topic have been popping up this year at higher ed conferences. So, it sounds like we have finally passed the very-early-adopter phase with more and more institutions starting to cater to their mobile web users.

If you still need to sell the mobile web to your boss, I’ve gathered some fresh data from two different surveys to help you build your case.

I’ve already shared some of the data included in the E-Expectations Report published last week, but I’d like to bring to your attention a single data point from this survey:

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report about Mobile Access two weeks ago (July 7, 2010) with really up-to-date results as the survey was done by phone (landlines and cell phones) between April 29 and May 30, 2010.

You can download the 25-page PDF report for free, but here are the most useful data points for marketers and web professionals in higher education.

• 9 in 10 young adults aged 18-29 own a cell phone (compared to 82% for all adults)
• 19% use a cell phone only to go mobile, 84% use a laptop AND a cell phone
• 55% of all cell phone owners go online at least every day
• 52% of 18-29 year olds and 52% of college grads of any age go online with their phone several times a day
• 65% of 18-29 year old cell phone owners access the internet with their phone
• 19% of 18-29 year old cell phone owners have made a charitable donation by text (compared to 10% for 30-49 year old users) – Could it be the solution to get young alums in the habit of giving to their alma mater?
• Young adults are more likely than older users to engage in mobile data applications as shown in the chart from the Pew Internet and American Life Project below.

As you can see, the mobile web channel is definitely getting a fair share of attention and action from students and young alums.

While several institutions have chosen to outsource the development of their mobile websites, you don’t have to go this route thank to the higher ed open source platform based on MIT Mobile and further developed by Dave Olsen from West Virginia University.

If you want to get started more smoothly, you should definitely register for Going Mobile: How to develop the mobile website of your institution with Mobile OSP.

In my previous post, Chris Garcia from BYU Library Multimedia Team answered a few questions about the YouTube hit his team created, but if you want to see how they did this million-view video (1,357,775 at the time of this writing including 126,150 on mobile devices), just watch this short making of:

You can also learn more about the team on the blog they created:

New Spice

Mike Richwalksy from HighEdWebTech has been keeping track of interesting videos produced by institutions for some time now. So, when I saw he posted about a higher ed parody of the big social media hit video campaign, Old Spice, I checked out the video right away.

Believe it or not, but I had been so busy those past few days with work, danah boyd’s master class and a zillion other things that I hadn’t had chance yet to watch the Old Spice video before this morning. I knew it was a hit because of all the chatter on Twitter, but I didn’t feel compel to watch it until this morning.

In case you’ve been living on an island located in an ocean of work and were not in the know, here’s the original:

And, here’s the parody the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Team created.

Wow. Very nice job and an instant success with more than 169, 000 views at the time of this writing.

I knew you would all want to know more about how a higher ed team managed to produce and promote this viral success, so I interviewed via email Chris Garcia, HBL Library Multimedia Project Manager.

1) First, can you tell us a bit more about the team behind this video?
We are the Harold B. Lee Library’s Multimedia Production Unit. We handle all the video and media needs of the library. We record lectures, make video materials for exhibits, promote the library (exhibits, general promos, collections, services), and occasionally branch out to do something for other BYU entities. We consist of 2 full-time employees (Mike Hill, unit manager, and me, project manager) and 10-12 awesomely talented student employees, depending on the time of year. We also get a lot of support from the library itself.

2) How did you come up with the idea of this parody? What were your goals for this video?
As our job is to promote the library in anyway we had a break in between projects and we thought we’d make another “fun” promo video (some of our other ones are on youtube.com/hbllproduction). We sat down as a unit and talked about possible ideas. Our meetings and projects, for that matter, are very student driven. We wanted something that would catch on and be seen. As far as our specific goals once the project was decided upon, we really wanted to do the whole thing as smooth as possible by making sure to give our pre-production the time it needed (which really wasn’t all that much time but it worked).

3) How did you manage to write, shoot and produce this video so quickly?
We had that initial meeting on May 27th and then we were shooting it on June 12th. We worked completely as a team to write the script and even had Stephen Jones, the actor, come in and contribute to the script. We were two full-timers and 10 students. Our team is a smorgasbord of talent. Mike and I have backgrounds in media and film and we have students in BYU’s film program, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, animation, IT. We did the whole thing under $500, however, we have all our own equipment so that was not a cost specific to this project. We have really tried to setup a mentored environment here with most if not all aspects of projects being done by students. For the shoot we also called on a lot of friends to assist with the stunts on the day of the shoot as well as a lot of BYU volunteers to be extras at the three different locations. We spent hours trying to get the shirt rip-off and the backpack drop just right. We even had a practice shoot two days before the real one to make sure we knew what we were doing.

4) The video has gone viral with more than 50,000 views this morning (when I asked the questions – about 6 hours before writing this post). How did you promote it?
We started by just showing it to full-time library employees at a meeting and then two days later it went up on the web. Promotion was a library effort I think and a real example of the power of social networking. I posted the video on YouTube yesterday (July 15th) at about 11:30am. A few of us here in the unit posted it on Facebook. I send out a library wide e-mail with a link to the video and from there it exploded. After 3 hours of being up we were getting e-mails from Canada, New York, and even Sweden about the video. YouTube stops instantly updating views after about 300 (which we hit after about 45 minutes) so we were unsure of the growth after that. We had to wait until this morning to see the real response to the video.

5) Can you share a few examples of the feedback you got on campus and elsewhere?
Some of the funniest responses we’ve gotten have been our personal friends, who didn’t know we made this, sending links to us to watch it. We’ve gotten e-mails from New York Public library, the University of Alberta (who told us that some friends in the UK were all a buzz over the video), the University of Rochester, an advertising blog in Sweden (at least the person who contacted us had a Swedish phone number), and several other libraries all over the country. The comments on YouTube have been a real joy to read as well. I’ve been checking our actor’s, Stephen Jones, Facebook page and he even got a wall post from someone studying in Egypt.

The good folks of Noel-Levitz have just released their E-Expectations 2010 Report presenting the results of their latest survey of 1,005 college-bound high school students.

This 12-page report is full of really great findings that should help you fine tune your student recruitment strategy. So, make sure you download the PDF file who is made available to the public for free.

Here are a few things of interest (there are more, so make sure you read the report):

• While many (including yours truly) have been announcing the death of print marketing, this report seems to indicate that paper isn’t dead for high school students: 89% indicate that the information received in the mail is one of the ways they learn about schools.
• Email is more alive than ever and used by 79% to learn more about schools. 91% say they will give their email address (70% will even give their primary email address) to colleges to receive more relevant information.
• 75% look for the school’s website and 65% enroll search engines to help them.
• However, only 35% learn about schools via TV or Radio advertising. Time to say bye, bye to the costly traditional media advertising campaigns?
• Facebook is used by 76% of high school students and 80% of them welcome both official and unofficial information about colleges on social media websites.
• Twitter – used by only 8% of students – is definitely not the tool to reach the masses. I think it should only be used as a “customer relations” tool by admissions offices (news and institutional Twitter accounts have different goals and target audiences).

E-Expectations 2010 (PDF file)

What’s great about flying across the country to attend a conference is the quality time I can get with my laptop.

I meant to post about this great initiative for more than a month now, but I couldn’t find enough quiet time to write it. My apologies.

Back in April, Nicole Sweeney Etter from Marquette University’s magazine brought to my attention a great online video that had been produced by a group of current students. Marquette Magazine published an article about this group, The Spanish O’Donnells, as it had “developed quite a campus following for their pop parodies and YouTube music videos.”

When he read this magazine profile, Dave Murphy, senior director of brand marketing at Marquette University contacted the students and asked them to create a music video for scholarship aid. The Spanish O’Donnells were given a fact sheet about financial aid as a starting point and just ran with it. “The guys were jotting down lyrics before they even left the office. At the guys’ request, we also provided some historical photos and video footage to mix with their own footage,” wrote Etter in her email.

The students recorded the music in a mini-recording booth set up in a dorm room closet. It took them about a month to write, record and edit.

The resulting video has been very successful. At the time of this writing, it has been viewed 9184 times.

Because it includes a very clear and specific call to action – i.e. donate money to support student scholarships, it was possible to measure its results.

The video was promoted to Marquette’s Alums via the university Facebook page and Twitter account as well as on the Give Marquette website. It was also used for an email campaign delivered to close to 38,000 alums and individuals including all donors and non-donors. The email signed by the University President, Father Wild, was sent on March 25 and invited alums to watch the video. The subject line of the email was “A clever video from our students.”

Thanks to Sara Harvey from University Advancement I can actually share with you some very interesting data about the results of this campaign:

• Email open rate: 31%
• Click-trough rate: 18.4% (only 6% in March 2009)
• Open to click-through rate: 59% (only 17% in March 2009)
• Unsubscribe rate: less than 1%
• 34 donations* for a total of $7615 three weeks after delivery (15 donations for a total of $3,832 in March 2009)

* The donations were determined by counting those constituents who clicked on a link to view the video and who also made a gift via the on-line giving form through 4/14/2010.

Sara Harvey also shared with me many replies made via Twitter, Facebook and email. I’m just including a couple below to give you an idea of the feedback the video and the email got from Marquette University alums:

I just wanted you to know that although I had stopped donating a few years ago (putting my own kids through college took most of the discretionary spending), a friend forwarded a link to the Spanish Odonnells’ video. I was immediately moved to donate. I’m happy to help support the education of such clever and talented students. I don’t know how you plan to disseminate this video, but I hope you will do so. This was so much more effective than the telephone call in the middle of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

If this is the kind of energy, communication creativity, and innovation that MU is developing in its students, and if this is how MU students are making efforts to understand generational differences connect with them in a diverse and inclusive message, and if is how they are astute enough to recognize past tradition and memories to connect with alumni to make a meaningful appeal for finanical aid… Then as an former MU student, I need to step up and match the that MU student enthusiasm, their skill,and demonstrate my support this kind of fantastic “reach-out” attitude at Marquette. I will be donating to the scholarship fund for the second time in five days, following an excellent call from an MU student on Sunday who also demonstrated that attitude through her telephone manner. We certainly need more of this “MU Creative Connectivity” in our business environments.

Marquette University also posted another video on YouTube including some of the comments made by alums about the song.

Wow. Amazing how a student-produced video can reach the hearts (and pockets ;-) of alums.

Has your institution used online videos in an original way? Let me know at karine@collegewebeditor.com or by posting a comment below.

As you’ve probably noticed, online videos are used more and more by universities and colleges trying to reach (and entertain) prospective students and their parents.
According to a report released last Thursday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, The State of Online Video, 69% of online adults now watch videos online.

The use of musical videos is more recent and seems to have been inspired by a few very successful lipdubs as well as the phenomenal success of the TV show Glee. Yale’s video comes to mind, but it hasn’t been the only one.

I posted about Delaware, The Musical when it was still a project. Since my last post the video has been produced, published and very well received.
Delaware: The MUSICAL

Karlyn Morrissette gave more details on Eduguru about the video as she worked on the larger project with her company, Fire Engine RED.

A few weeks ago I interviewed via email Avi Amon, an admissions counselor at UD and the producer of the video about the kind of return the video had for the University of Delaware. His boss, Amy Greenwald-Foley, also helped address some of my questions. Since this interview was done, Avi published another video, the Making of Delaware, the Musical, that gives an idea of what happened behind the scene.

1) According to YouTube Insights for this video, it is more with young and less young female viewers? Do you know why?

My guess is simply because of the genre, and at the risk of sounding vain, the fact that Drew and I are younger, male professionals. I mean, look at his smile! Those stats also only cover registered YouTube visitors, so it doesn’t paint a complete picture.

2) Why have you close the comments?

I turned off the comments for a number of reasons. First, our Inbox was flooded and we simply could handle the load. The second reason (and this is something I picked up from Yale’s video) is to avoid abuse by Internet “trolls” just looking to be negative without a purpose. Yes, that’s a risk you take by putting something on the Internet, but we didn’t want this project, something that so many students/etc worked on for so long, to be tainted with that negative energy. We tracked “comments” through other venues, such as Facebook and Twitter. The response from students, alumni, etc, has been overwhelmingly positive.

3) In the first phase of this project, prospective students were asked to tell you what they wanted to see in this video? Can you give us a few examples of their suggestions that ended up in the video?

We were thrilled by the response from HS sophomores & juniors in our search tapes. Since no one had done this sort of thing before, we weren’t quite sure if anyone would respond and, if so, what they might suggest. Most wanted to see or hear something about traditions. Since so many of UD’s revolve around The Green, we knew that’s where the story would need finish. We also answered questions about the names of our colleges and the number of majors offered. Of course, every student who submitted a photograph of him- or herself, got a screen credit at the end of the video. And we have plans to produce a summer short on discovering UD, with Drew and myself answering many of the questions submitted by our search respondents. We won’t be able to show all requests — such as a man on the moon with a monkey — but we’ll try to honor many.

4) Now that this is done, do you have an idea of the return on investment of this video? Are the results worth the time and budget spent on this project?

Since we produced the entire video in-house, we were able to work with a more modest budget. It’s great when you have so much talent at your disposal! It’s simply not possible to quantify an exact return on investment but I can say this:

• We garnered press in the The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Philadelphia NPR station, WHY, and several other news outlets and have surpassed 35,000 hits (Note from Karine: 41 029 at the time of this writing) on YouTube, so our circulation has been tremendous.
• We purchased 50,000 fewer search names this year but have the same number of search respondents as last year.
• Our visit numbers among prospective students and their families are now at a record high.
• We brought together an entire University community — current students, administrators, faculty, alumni, and prospective students — in a way that has never been done before.
• And, we learned many things producing this video. Lessons that we hope to carry forward with more videos and experiments in social media.

“Delaware the Musical” was absolutely worth our time and money.

The only things we had to pay for was camera and studio time with our own University Media Services — run by many of our own Alumni.

All the students (graphic design, actors, musicians, dancers, camera crews, etc), the choreographer (an alumna), my own orchestration and planning, the physical spaces we filmed in, were all volunteered or donated. If you include the time outside of work that was needed, the “cost” would be much higher, but this is something we wanted to do so I’m discounting it.

My latest UB column is now available in the June issue as well as online: “Embracing Web Analytics: Why and how to get a web analytics revolution started at your institution”

In this column, I’m trying to make the case for the Higher Ed Online Analytics Revolution I mentioned last month on this blog.

Among other things I share a few examples of how some institutions used insights provided by Web Analytics to improve their websites or their online videos.

If you’re trying to convince your boss or your team that using Web Analytics should be at the top of your priority list (and you are probably since 76% of the 399 higher ed folks who filled out my survey said they spend less than 2 hours per week on Analytics), this University Business column should help.

Embracing Web Analytics

If you’re going to the EduComm conference in Las Vegas next week, feel free to stop by my presentation on Tuesday morning. I’m scheduled to present on the topic – not about hardcore analytics – but about the strategy to get this Online Analytics Revolution started at your institution as well as in higher ed.

Co-conspirators or passionate revolutionaries are welcome to join online (just watch for my upcoming call) or in Las Vegas!

I’m really excited to announce that Dave Olsen from WVU has finally decided to blog at Mobile in Higher Ed.

Dave did a tour-de-force last summer by developing in 19 days WVU mobile website. Last year he used the MIT Mobile platform. He has kept modifying the platform ever since to make it easier to adapt.

Mobile in Higher Ed – for when i need more than 140 characters

On August 4, Dave will present an updated and improved version of the 2-webinar series he gave last October for Higher Ed Experts, Going Mobile: How to Develop your Higher Ed Mobile Website. The series includes a demo where Dave will walk you through the different steps necessary to use the Mobile Open Source Platform, Mobile OSP. The demo will be available for registered participants as soon as June 28, so you can get started on your summer projects.

Going Mobile | Higher Ed Experts

With all the current buzz around the professional use of Twitter, Facebook or YouTube in admissions, alum offices or institutions at large, it’s hard to believe that social media has been around in higher ed for 5 years or so.

While MySpace isn’t the talk of the (campus) town anymore, it played an important role – a few years ago – in this social media tsunami. At that time, danah boyd was already studying and researching these websites — and her work made me think about the possibilities for admissions marketing practices back in February 2006. More recently, I shared on this blog my comments about a paper she co-authored about retweeting practices.

Fast forward to 2010. Social media isn’t optional anymore to engage our constituents and Dr. boyd is one of the most sought-after experts on the social media practices of young adults – presenting around the world about the topic.

That’s why I’ve been on Cloud 9 (haven’t you noticed? ;-) since she accepted last December my invitation to present this summer a Master Class about her latest research. While danah boyd is scheduled to speak at several conferences in the next few months (including CASE Summit for Advancement in New York), this online lecture followed by a Q&A is a unique opportunity to get ALL your team members and colleagues on campus to learn how young adults truly use social media and how higher ed institutions should engage them.

Scheduled on July 15, 2010 at 1PM ET (with the recording available for a full-year as part of the registration fee), this 1-hour online event is the perfect occasion to help your team (and all the other offices on campus) understand how younger constituents (prospective and current students as well as young alumni) use social media and make sure no time is wasted with social marketing tactics missing the mark.

Master Class: Social Media Practices | Higher Ed Experts

Gather a large group in front of a screen with an LCD projector in a big conference room and make this Master Class a professional development event on campus!

Register at www.higheredexperts.com/socialmedia by July 5, 2010, but hurry up as only 80 virtual seats are available for this event and they are expected to fill up very quickly.