Jason Buzzell is Director of Digital Communications at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. We met up with Jason at the 2019 eduWeb conference to reflect on some of the most interesting ideas and themes we encountered at this year’s conference, including:

• How to humanize digital experiences (which was the topic of a talk Jason delivered).
• We talked about why today’s students place such a high priority on authenticity and how schools are attempting to provide it.
• Some of the more interesting findings from RNL’s 2019 E-Expectations report, which was presented at the conference.

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The campus visit remains one of the most impactful moments in the college decision process, and there’s probably no one who knows more about the campus visit experience than Jeff Kallay, Principal of Render Experiences.

His work on campus visits has been featured in numerous publications including the Chronicle of Higher Education, University Business Magazine, and the New York Times, and we were lucky enough to have him join us on the Higher Ed Marketing Lab podcast to share some of his best insights.

We cover:

• why our complex digital world makes the campus visit more important, not less
• how Gen Z and their Gen X parents present new and interesting challenges to recruiters
• why rock star students don’t always make rock star ambassadors, and
• why your guides should never, ever walk backwards and talk.

http://www.renderexperiences.com/

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In this episode, we diverge a bit from our usual discussion around higher ed marketing to talk about leadership, which is a topic relevant to anyone who has to work with and through others.

Joining us in that conversation is retired Air Force Major General, H. D. “Jake” Polumbo. Over his 34 year career in the Air Force, General Polumbo acquired a great deal of wisdom around how to lead and manage others, even under the most challenging circumstances.

Among many other things, we discuss why leaders need to demonstrate compassion for their team, the importance of leaders publicly owning up to mistakes, tips for making decisions with limited information, and why character and integrity are essential for any leader.

Get a signed copy of General Polumbo’s book, Leadership at 30,000 Feet in Two Easy Steps:

1. Visit us on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes) and leave a review (good, bad, or indifferent, it doesn’t matter).
2. Email us at podcast@echodelta.co with your shipping details. Your book will arrive in a few days!

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We’ll be talking with Dr. Jennifer Sumner about people, process, and technology, within the University of Central Florida‘s online program. In this wide ranging conversation, we hear about UCF Connect, the university’s success coaching program for online students. We hear how the university is leveraging SalesForce and other technologies to improve the student experience. We talk about ways they’ve helped build a sense of belonging for online students and how, despite the enormous size of the university, the UCF online team has fostered productive collaboration among dozens of stakeholders and departments.

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If you’ve ever felt that public relations was a mysterious black box, then this episode is for you. We discuss public relations for higher ed with Barbara Pierce, president of Tipping Point Communications. Barbara has over 25 years experience leading global, national, and regional public relations initiatives, and she’s worked extensively in higher education.

We start by hearing Barbara’s favorite definition of public relations, and then we jump into the major shifts that have drastically changed how PR is practiced in recent years. Barbara shares her insights into how marketing and PR teams can become better aligned, and she gives actionable advice on how schools can increase the odds of getting their stories picked up by media outlets. Towards the end of our discussion, we talk about how schools can better prepare for crisis communication scenarios before they happen.

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This is part two of a two-part episode in which we explore how the University of the Ozarks, a small, private, liberal arts university in rural Arkansas, has managed to consistently grow enrollment despite the challenges facing small private schools.

In this episode, Reggie Hill, Vice President of Marketing and enrollment at the University of the Ozarks and Amy Lloyd, Ozarks’ Director of Marketing, continue to dig into the key factors that have allowed their institution to thrive; and in one case, generate a 30 percent year-over-year increase in enrollment. We hear what Amy learned when she started attending recruitment events, and how Ozarks has focused the recruitment and marketing activities for maximum impact, which included foregoing a traditional view book and replacing it with something else designed to generate even more impact. We wrap up by hearing how Amy and Reggie, productively, approach internal resistance to new ideas and how they focused on the long game.

This was an incredible conversation that, I hope, will both inspire and challenge you as you think about your own marketing and enrollment efforts.

Show Notes & Transcript

Small, private liberal arts colleges face significant headwinds as they try to grow enrollment. Despite these challenges, University of the Ozarks, Arkansas’ oldest private liberal arts university, has managed to buck this trend. In part one of this two-part episode, we talk with Reggie Hill, Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment at Ozarks, and Amy Lloyd, Director of Marketing. We touch on how Ozarks has better aligned marketing and enrollment, how they’ve taken smart, calculated risks in promoting the university, and we dive deep into the specific strategies they use to stay connected to the younger generation they hope to reach.

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Marketers and enrollment managers are swimming in data, but making it digestible and actionable is easier said than done. In this episode, we talk with Ken Reaves, Director of Research and Strategic Projects at Southeastern University. Ken is an expert when it comes to combining hardcore data and research with creative storytelling, and he’s got tons of advice for anybody looking to make their data more compelling and actionable.

We discuss:

• synergies between marketing and institutional research
• the specific techniques and thought processes he follows to create compelling, story-driven narratives that bring numbers to life
• potential pitfalls associated with data-driven decision making
• how to nurture a more data-driven culture.

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Historically, CRMs have been seen as a tool for Admissions, but today’s CRMs are capable of so much more. In this episode, Kris Hardy, Director of Web and Digital Marketing at Messiah College, stops by to share how the school’s CRM has transformed their digital marketing efforts.

We discuss:

• How the CRM has changed the way the marketing team interacts with their colleagues in other departments
• Specific challenges the Messiah team encountered as they began rolling out larger volumes of personalized, automated communication
• Smart tactics they’ve implemented on their website around personalization and how they gather leads.

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Research suggests roughly 75% of students use word of mouth to help determine what school to attend, yet few schools have an intentional strategy for generating positive word of mouth.

In this episode, we talk with Daniel Lemin, co-author along with Jay Baer of a new book on the topic called Talk Triggers. Daniel lays out an actionable framework higher ed marketers can use to create the kinds of unique and memorable talk triggers students can’t help sharing.

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