The Intellitimes

At times, higher education professionals need to look outside their institutions to seek inspiration and professional growth. Usually, they find those development opportunities at annual conferences. But what's a higher ed professional to do when conference season ends?

This month's featured client found her inspiration on Twitter, and has quickly built a community of passionate enrollment management professionals that meet every week to discuss the latest trends in the world of higher education recruitment, admissions and enrollment. We're proud to feature Jennielle Stother (@HigherEdGirl), Executive Director of Enrollment at Seminary of the Southwest. Jennielle is a long-time Intelliworks customer and one of the founders of #EMchat, which was recently featured by InsideHigherEd.

We spoke with Jennielle recently about her motivation for starting #EMchat, and how professionals at niche institutions can benefit from participating in discussions with their counterparts at larger institutions (and vice versa).

INTELLIWORKS: Can you give us some background on your career and how you got involved in enrollment management?

STROTHER: I spent the first part of my career coaching collegiate volleyball, and when I was ready to hang up the whistle I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do next.  However, I realized that through coaching, I actually had a lot of experience in recruiting students and understanding what motivates students to choose one school over another. 

When I moved to Austin, Texas, I had an opportunity to work in the graduate department at Concordia University Texas.  Eventually, I became Director of Admissions at Concordia.

Three years ago, Seminary of the Southwest contacted me and asked if I’d be willing to join them to help them with their enrollment. 

INTELLIWORKS: How did you start #EMchat and what motivated you to get involved? 

STROTHER: Let me start by saying that Twitter has literally changed my life professionally over the last few months.  I have found a network of people in the higher education community that I’m able to connect with on a regular basis.

However, several weeks ago, I began to realize that there were very few organized discussions on Twitter around the topic of enrollment management.  There were regularly scheduled chats on topics such as student affairs (#SAchat) and higher education web development, but nothing for folks working in admissions or enrollment management. 

So I began to talk about this with Alex Williams (@AlexMWilliams_) who also had been asking about it.  And finally, after weeks of looking, he and I just decided to start something on our own.  The next week we started and just a few weeks later we had close to 40 participants on our last chat.

INTELLIWORKS: So what exactly is #EMchat? 

STROTHER: As higher education professionals, we go to conferences like Noel-Levitz and Stamats and we come back so inspired because you’re in an environment with other people that are experiencing what you’re experiencing and you’re able to learn from each other.  However, what happens when you leave those conferences?  Sometimes the burdens of professional life start to weigh on you and you need a jolt of inspiration, but that next conference is still several months away. 

#EMchat is an attempt to bring some of that motivation back to the admissions and enrollment management community by providing a regular forum to share questions and best practices about the profession.  For me at least, this fills that need to hear from other people in higher education that are experiencing the same challenges and successes.

The list of #EMchat topics has included:

- Expanding the admissions role

- Motivating your staff, including admissions "road warriors"

- Tele-counseling

- CRM

- First-Generation student recruitment

-  First-Generation student retention

INTELLIWORKS: You work for a rather niche institution.  How are you able to bridge the gap between your experience and that of more traditional undergraduate enrollment professionals?

STROTHER: That’s an interesting question, because I actually have a graduate degree in enrollment management and when I first graduated I thought that I had to work in traditional undergraduate or my skills would be lost.  However, what I’ve found is that I’m able to apply quite a bit of what I learned about traditional enrollment management to the work I’ve done in graduate and seminary enrollment.

Last year, I sat in at a session at the Noel-Levitz conference conducted by Gary Fretwell, Senior Vice President and Principal at Noel-Levitz.  Somebody asked him, “What are the benchmarks for graduate institutions?” And he said, “There are none.” 

That’s one of the most frustrating things about working in graduate admissions, and especially for a small graduate seminary.  It’s very hard to compare how you’re doing to other institutions because we’re all so different. 

However, that’s what makes #EMchat so unique.  We don’t try to limit it to traditional or non-traditional because we think that there are things from both that can be beneficial to anyone working in higher education enrollment and admissions.

There tend to be more undergraduate professionals on Twitter.  However, with the growing importance and financial impact that graduate and non-traditional enrollments are having at many campuses, you’re going to have to see a lot more graduate and non-traditional enrollment professionals getting involved and sharing their stories.  It’s critical to their success as professionals, but also the long-term success of their organizations.

At the end of the day, you all have an enrollment funnel and your goal is to get prospects through that funnel.  While stages and challenges are unique for each institution, there are certain things that can be shared across institutions to help them move students down the path towards enrollment.

INTELLIWORKS:  As an Intelliworks client, how are you connecting with prospects and what can other institutions learn from you?

STROTHER: At my institution, I’m not only dealing with the prospect, but often times with the prospect’s spouse and children so we become much more than just enrollment managers, we become (in some cases) realtors, counselors, mentors, etc. 

We’re a small institution and one of the benefits that we pitch to prospects is that they’ll be part of a small community, so if I can’t remember their kid’s names or their spouse’s name then I’m not fulfilling that promise.  We’re fortunate to have a system like Intelliworks to help us keep track of all these conversations with students and their families.  But that’s something that a lot of graduate professionals need to take into account when they’re talking to their students, there are often other decision-influencers involved that need to be cared for as well.

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of participating at the UPCEA Marketing Seminar in Las Vegas.  We got to party like rockstars, but we also were able to share a few best practices. In this session, we set out to determine whether your system is underrealized and why, and how to optimize so it really sings! Many institutions approach CRM with an urgency to meet a specific business challenge, but then find they don’t have the luxury to spend time evaluating and optimizing other processes that may be considered secondary or not mission critical.

Organizations may not even realize that they have inefficient lead qualification or followup approaches, or perhaps they are struggling with user adoption, or maybe they are using the system but not responding and optimizing their relationship practices based on the actionable data being provided?

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Hope College previously used a home-grown Microsoft Access solution with limited functionality. The web-based Intelliworks system encourages better communication and captures notes about prospects to directly affect correspondence with them. Folks with their finger in the recruiting process (admissions, athletics, and faculty) are all using the solution. Prospect data is housed in Intelliworks and later moved to Banner once a student has moved to applicant stage.

Although Hopkins realizes a lot of factors go into an institution’s success, since moving to Intelliworks in 2009, Hope College has had the highest number of applicants in history and full classes, as a school with capped enrollment.

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For many clients newly transitioned or in the process of transitioning to a new CRM platform, October is a terrifying month for reasons having nothing to do with Halloween. Enrollment and recruitment divisions are operating in high-gear, admissions counselors and representatives are in the throes of the recruitment fair circuits, and all manner of higher educational institutions are peacocking at sundry open houses and interest-generating events trying to court potential students. The transfer of data between the prospective student market and the educational institution is frequent, voluminous and consequently overwhelming without the right tools and processes to manage the flow of information.

Luckily, you formulated an airtight strategy and have painstakingly selected a relationship management engine that relieves the discomfort and self-sabotage of drinking inquiry and application data from the fire hose.

Unfortunately, the implementation process is inevitably disrupted by the seasonal events in your business cycle and vice versa, so when the fall madness begins, many CRM projects are not deployed, which means reverting back to another few months of old habits and systems. OR, the CRM configuration is complete, but one or more ancillary systems needs to be synchronized with what is in the CRM, and integrating is the only sensible route to go. If not approached correctly, the system integration can make the work involved for a CRM configuration pale in comparison (there’s a vampire reference in there somewhere).  

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Is your CRM performing like a rockstar?  That's the question we'll be asking later this month at the UPCEA Marketing Conference, where we'll be co-presenting with this month's featured client, Michele Hamer, Assistant Director at SUNY Oswego Graduate Admissions.  At last year's conference, Michele presented alongside Intelliworks on best practices for "Building a Business Case for CRM" where she helped provide guidance on identifying the key business challenges that lead to the CRM initiative at SUNY Oswego Graduate Admissions.  This year, she's back with Emily Meehan, Intelliworks Project Manager, to talk about optimization.  This year the two aim to determine whether institutions are realizing the full potential of your CRM efforts, and how they can identify a few simple things to help get them back on the right track.  

We spoke to Michele recently about her upcoming session, and some of the efficiency that they've witnessed at SUNY Oswego since revamping their CRM efforts.

INTELLIWORKS: Last year, you presented at the UPCEA Marketing Seminar along with Emily Meehan from the Intelliworks project management team.  You’re coming back this year to present.  What can we expect you two to cover during this year’s presentation in Las Vegas?

HAMER: The focus of our presentation next month is based on the underutilization of a CRM and how higher education institutions can and should re-visit their internal business processes, evaluate the productivity of their CRM and create a blueprint to get back on track to engage their customers in relevant conversation. We’ll also look at how the proper use of technology can facilitate those processes, but not replace them. 

We want to provide a methodology for other institutions to review their relationship management strategy in order to see where there are gaps, and provide tips on how they can fill those gaps.  It’s been a work in progress at SUNY Oswego, but hopefully we’ve learned a few lessons over the last year or so that can help other institutions as they look to revamp their CRM practices.

INTELLIWORKS:Based on your experience, where were the areas that you identified as working well and where did you feel you needed improvement?

HAMER:Where we felt we were operating well was in the general area of “customer service.”  We thought we were doing a very good job of being responsive to inquiries when they came in and providing prospects the information they were looking for. Unfortunately, when we conducted a secret shopping exercise of our admissions office, we found that there was a bit of a disconnect between our perception and the student’s reality.

We were in fact doing a great job of providing expert advice to students as they called in.  However, our follow up was not always as strong.  Oftentimes, we were not being as proactive as we could have been when following up with students after their initial inquiry.  Part of that was due to the small staff we have working at graduate admissions, but a big part was streamlining our process so that we could automate communications with students more efficiently, and provide staff with a painless way of capturing student inquiries so that we could follow up with them accordingly.

Prior to Intelliworks, we never had a mechanism in place to track prospects and then create touch points along the way to make sure we stayed connected   with them throughout the enrollment process.  Now that we understand where we were coming up short from a customer service perspective, we are able to build out a system so that we can build relationships with prospects beyond their initial inquiry and help guide them through the admissions process, as well as assist them with the additional support they require once they have become a student.

INTELLIWORKS:  So what are some of the ways that you’ve created efficiency for your department?

HAMER:First we created on online information request form for prospective students on our main graduate admissions site.  Then we also created an internal form on our network so that student workers and other people that have frontline contact with prospects through phone calls or walk-ins can put their data into the Intelliworks system through this data entry form.

We’ve also made this form available to all of our graduate program directors and their secretaries because we’ll often have students who will talk directly to the department of the program they are interested in.  Previously, those interactions were not being captured, but now these contacts will be entered into the contact management system and be put into a communication plan where we can now connect with them and guide them through the decision making process and hopefully convert them to an applicant

INTELLIWORKS:What are you planning now to take things to the next level?

HAMER:Now that we’re able to capture quality data on prospects, the next phase is leveraging that information so that we can communicate with students more effectively. Prospects who complete the inquire form  receive an automated and now that we are able to keep accurate case records of conversations we have with them, we are now developing a strategic communications plan to continue delivering a consistent stream of relevant content to  them.  It’s exciting for us to be able to now send communications to students that are based specifically on what their needs are.

For example, we have already launched two online applications, and we’re getting ready to launch the full online graduate admissions application that will allow students to apply to close to 30 programs. Once the application is   available, we’ll contact prospects that have expressed interest in our programs and let them know that they’ll be able to apply online.  And since we’ll have analytics behind the communications plans, we’ll be able to determine with more accuracy exactly which prospects are most interested in our programs and engage them in a meaningful conversation.

Finally, since we’re able to keep records of our interactions with students there’s some accountability for how we’re doing.  We can now look at what we’ve done previously and figure out ways to improve our dialogue with students in the future. This is what relationship management is all about—defining a need, engaging a conversation and enabling next steps to create an ongoing relationship. The perfect marketing/recruitment strategy for increasing enrollment!

What's your economic outlook? It's a question that's been on the top of most people's minds over the last couple of years, and one that's becoming increasingly important to teens as they weigh their higher education options.

While the U.S. reported job gains in the month of September, the growth has been slower than desired, and, as you might expect, there are quite a few that remain skeptical. This is why this New York Times interactive poll recently caught my attention. The poll asks participants, "How do you feel about your job status, the future of the economy and the prospects for the next generation?" Across the board, the answers vary ranging from disgust to confidence, but what's particularly interesting is dissecting the responses by generation.

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This month we’re proud to name Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide as the first two-time recipient of the Intelliworks Client of the Month Award. Embry-Riddle is rated number one in aviation and aerospace higher education offering a wide variety of air and space related degrees.Embry-Riddle Worldwide offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree and certificate programs through online learning and more than 150 campuses located around the world.  They have recently completed their first full year of having their entire prospecting and enrollment management process run through the Intelliworks CRM.

Additionally, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University also has two residential campuses, one in Daytona Beach, Florida, and the other in Prescott, Arizona, that are just getting started with Intelliworks.

We spoke with Becky Vasquez, Chief Technology Officer, Worldwide Campus and Bill Hampton, Associate Vice President, Marketing and Enrollment Management, Worldwide Campus to learn more about Embry-Riddle Worldwide’s progress with Intelliworks.

INTELLIWORKS: For many of our clients, the last exposure they had to Embry-Riddle Worldwide and its work with Intelliworks was from our users’ conference in 2010.  How have things progressed since then?

HAMPTON: When we were all gathered at Personify Education in Washington, D.C., we were just starting to use the Intelliworks system for prospecting and supporting enrollment management processes. Since then we’ve integrated all of our prospecting and admissions into the system and we’ve had a great year.  We used the system distributed across more than 150 campuses to admit nearly 20,000 students.  The fact that Intelliworks has been able to scale to that volume is a testament to the system. 

VASQUEZ:  Our prospecting has definitely matured since using Intelliworks in concert with Blackboard Student Services, whose agents handle much of our inbound inquiry activity using the Intelliworks CRM.  It allows us to keep our agents in our operations center on task and talking to the right people at the right time to help push them through that initial inquiry phase through to the application phase.

INTELLIWORKS: Can you talk to us a bit more about your collaboration with Blackboard Student Services and what the hand off looks like between their agents using Intelliworks and Embry-Riddle Worldwide’s admissions team?

HAMPTON: At this point, every prospect that completes an online request for information or calls our operations center is going directly into the Intelliworks system.  Agents at the operations center can help address basic questions or create cases where more detailed follow up is required from someone on our enrollment team.  Once candidates have entered our funnel, the Worldwide team handles all the outbound and ongoing communications, such as email campaigns, automated communication plans and event invitations.

VASQUEZ: Our biggest lead driver continues to be word of mouth, so this has allowed us to increase the emphasis on responding to interested prospects and recording those conversations so that they can get the information they need in a timely manner.

INTELLIWORKS: What are some of the major challenges you face when recruiting students to Embry-Riddle Worldwide?

HAMPTON: We don’t have to stress too much about brand recognition, as we’re fortunate to be well known in our field.  However, because we deal with a continuous (non-traditional) recruitment cycle, we need to enhance the variety of communications so that we can keep prospects engaged whether they’re looking to make a decision in the near term or the long-term.  This is particularly important since we work with a large number of military prospects, whose life demands and therefore decision-making process differ from that of other adult students. 

INTELLIWORKS: What are the next steps with your implementation? Where do you want to go from here?

VASQUEZ: One of our top goals, as I’m sure is common with other institutions, is improving conversion rates.  While we have some growth goals, we’re not looking to grow enrollment that aggressively.  For us it’s more about connecting with people that are interested in Embry-Riddle Worldwide and making sure they get the information they need.  Intelliworks has helped us deliver on that promise.  We’ve really beefed up our recruitment and admissions processes.  The next step is exploring ways to use the system to help enhance our relationships with industry and corporate contacts as well as leveraging event management.

Bill and Becky were kind enough to also share a couple of examples of some of the work their teams have done using the Intelliworks CRM. The first is an email campaign to help introduce Embry-Riddle Worldwide’s Mobile application for iOS and Android.  The campaign was launched to nearly 100,000 recipients and saw a click through rate of nearly 25% with close to 2,000 people downloading the app in just two weeks following the campaign.

Embry-Riddle Worldwide is also an active user of Intelliworks Chat, an instant messaging solution that allows the institution to connect live with prospects while they’re visiting their website and record those conversations instantly in the Intelliworks CRM.  A chat agent is available on 24/7 basis 365 days a year.  Currently the institution averages nearly 140 active chats per month. 

According to J. Michael Williams, Associate Director, Enrollment Operations, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide, “Intelliworks Chat is another means for our globally distributed prospective student base to get answers to important questions.  The chats are recorded and the information noted in an individual’s Intelliworks’ record to ensure future conversations are comprehensive and provide a customized experience during each interaction.”

Well done.  Congratulations once again to the entire Embry-Riddle Worldwide team for its success.  

Any institution that has endured even a day’s worth of due diligence on CRM systems and research will inevitably come to understand that a successful CRM deployment is dependent on much more than the technology itself. At Intelliworks, we emphasize the importance of bringing together people, process and technology before during and after the CRM implementation.  

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It's that time of year again.  Following last month's NACAC Conference in New Orleans, the Intelliworks team continues to hit the pavement and travel around the globe to attend some of our favorite conferences.  We're even happy to be speaking at a few, so please stop by and visit if you get the chance.  

Here's where we'll be this Fall:

October 13-15 - ACHE 2011 Annual Conference & Meeting, Orlando, Florida  (Todd Gibby will be presenting along with our partners DS Graphics on "How to Increase Registrations and Revenues by Turning Data Into Action").

October 16-18 - UPCEA South Regional Conference, Destin, Florida (Todd Gibby will be presenting along with Guy Felder of University of Houston)

October 17-19 - EMBAC Conference, Key Biscayne, Florida 

October 26-28 - UPCEA New England Regional Conference, Providence, Rhode Island (Todd Gibby will be presenting)

November 16-18 - UPCEA Marketing Seminar, Las Vegas, Nevada (Intelliworks will be conducting a workshop with SUNY Oswego and presenting a concurrent session with University of Houston)

We look forward to seeing you at one of these events.  Also, we don't normally do this, but we've included a preview of some of the slides we'll be presenting at two of the UPCEA Regional Conferences this month.  We suspect much of this content will change prior to the live events but hopefully you'll get the general idea.

While this month's featured client has been "feature worthy" for quite some time, it's taken us some time to finally connect and share their story. That is why we're very happy to share Hope College's story with you this month. Located in Holland, Michigan, Hope College is a relatively small school with a big presence. And to prove it, they recently shattered the Intelliworks World Record for largest banner displayed in our corporate headquarters.  We were lucky enough to catch up with Adam Hopkins, Associate Director of Admissions and International Recruitment at Hope College to discuss their CRM initiative.

INTELLIWORKS: What prompted Hope College’s search for a CRM provider?

HOPKINS: We had outgrown our homegrown solutions that we had been using for several years, and our faculty and admissions staff were each using different systems, so the idea of a web-based solution was very appealing to us.  We started out by building our requirements internally and evaluating several vendors.  It was our hope to have a single platform  that would not only create consistency in how we were tracking student interactions, but also allow us to leverage some additional features beyond just a standard contact management system.

INTELLIWORKS: What are your goals with using a unified CRM platform like Intelliworks?

HOPKINS: Being a tuition-driven institution with capped enrollment, it is critical for us to have insight into the entire institutional recruitment effort so that we can see throughout the process just how we’re doing.  Not hitting our numbers could have a real financial impact on the institution.  Fortunately, we’ve had tremendous success over the last few years, but it always helps to increase applications so that we can avoid the likelihood of hitting our enrollment goal.  This year we were able to exceed our goals, enrolling the largest class in our institutional history.

INTELLIWORKS: How are you using Intelliworks to communicate with prospective students?

HOPKINS: We have always prided ourselves on being very personal with our approach to the admissions process, but we couldn’t be as personal as we wanted to be prior to using Intelliworks.  The biggest advantage to using Intelliworks was having insight into what conversations had taken place previously with the student.  Now our admissions team is able to see every interaction with a student regardless of where that initial contact took place.  So if we have a student inquire about one of our athletics programs, we’ll know the next time they come back to ask about the chemistry department.

I’ve been in higher education recruitment for about ten years now and every year it gets more and more competitive.  Whatever we can do to differentiate ourselves gives us an added advantage.  Having a personal touch helps set us apart.

Prior to Intelliworks, we used to get our inquiries and then enter them manually into our SIS, so to do it all electronically via Intelliworks has created tremendous efficiencies for us.

INTELLIWORKS: What are some of the other benefits of working with a centralized CRM platform, and how are you using it with other systems on campus?

HOPKINS: We have just recently moved exclusively to the Common Application, so we’re dealing with a much higher volume of applications than ever before.  Being able to collect the data in real-time, in a way that’s well organized and shared across our team makes it far easier to deliver the kind of service we strive for. 

Additionally, we are a Banner school and we are in the final steps in having this integrated with Intelliworks. Once a student applies for admission that application will trigger them moving to the Banner system so that the information can go to the relevant departments throughout the campus, but then we’ll also have information like financial aid coming back into the Intelliworks system so that we can see it all in one location.

In the future, we’re looking forward to becoming a paperless office.  We are exploring ways to leverage Intelliworks in the application review process.

INTELLIWORKS: Is there anything at Intelliworks that surprised you once you became a customer?

HOPKINS: It seems like all the folks at Intelliworks are always looking forward and looking to innovate.  As a very vocal client, I have seen firsthand just how seriously our feedback is taken and I have even seen some of our suggestions implemented into the core platform.  To be able to collaborate with a vendor at that level has truly been a breath of fresh air.

Additionally, the support we’ve received has also been phenomenal at every level.  It seems like everyone on that team is always willing to pitch in and help whenever we have a question.

As I was visiting MarketingCharts this morning (one of my favorite sites), the following headline caught my eye: 2 in 3 Americans Think Higher Ed Does a Good Job. Not bad, right? But what about the other third that aren't as confident?

The article, which is based on a Harris Poll conducted in July, notes, "Despite generally high ratings of the academic and career programs offered by higher educational institutions, Americans’ overall opinions of colleges and universities are not that high. In total, 52% of Americans have a very or somewhat positive opinion of public colleges and universities. That figure drops to 48% for private, non-profit institutions and more significantly to 35% for private, for-profit institutions."

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Are you going to NACAC in New Orleans this year? Guess what, so are we! Want to catch up with Intelliworks while in the Big Easy (a.k.a. Crescent City, a.k.a. N'awlins)?

We'll be at booth 905 ready to answer any questions you may have. And, if you're so inclined, we'd love to explore the birth place of jazz with you, so let us know your plans.

If you'd like to schedule some time with an Intelliworks' representative while at NACAC, please call Jack Dilanian at 240.238.3254 or email us to schedule an appointment.

We look forward to seeing you!

This month, we're proud to feature an announcement for a partnership where Intelliworks will be working closely with Blackboard Student Services to support recruitment and retention efforts at the Kentucky Community & Technical College System (see story below).  As such, we felt it would be appropriate to highlight one of our earlier success stories in partnering with Blackboard for The University of Southern Mississippi - Learning Enhancement Center and Eagle Learning Online.

The institution had a provost-level mandate to dramatically alter its marketing and communications efforts to drive enrollment for USM's distance learning programs.  We were fortunate enough to speak with Amy Thornton, Project Manager at The University of Southern Mississippi – Learning Enhancement Center and Eagle Learning Online, to learn more about the initiative and the results that they've seen so far since working with Blackboard and Intelliworks to manage the strategy around the delivery and marketing of its programs.

INTELLIWORKS: How did The University of Southern Mississippi begin working with Intelliworks?

THORNTON: Our relationship with Intelliworks came about through our partnership with Blackboard.  Blackboard worked with us as a consultant to help devise a strategic approach to delivering our online programs, which included a re-launch and promotion of online offerings. During that engagement, they introduced the concept of CRM and Intelliworks to us to better track the effectiveness of our efforts. 

This initiative was actually encouraged by our provost who wanted the institution to improve its marketing efforts of online programs to increase enrollment and reach a market of students we otherwise may not have recruited to Southern Miss.

While our department had administered online learning for some time, and we rely on program marketability as the major criteria when creating programs, we had traditionally done very little in terms of proactive marketing and recruitment so we were really excited to build something from the ground up.  We’ve been able to hire a marketing and recruitment specialist to help manage these efforts, but as a department we’re really learning as we go.  

Prior to working with Intelliworks and Blackboard, individual programs were on their own when it came to getting students interested in their offerings.

INTELLIWORKS: What are some of your biggest challenges in attracting students to your online programs?

THORNTON: One of the promises we made when we started this initiative was that we would not pull from our on-campus student population.  We wanted to be very careful about cannibalization so we had to build programs that would attract brand new students that are better served by online education. 

Because the majority of our programs are graduate programs, our target audience tends to be nontraditional students that work full-time, often have families, and are not able to be on campus very often.  We have some programs where we can recruit internationally, while others are restricted to the state of Mississippi.  We have to be flexible in how we structure our services and reach out to prospects.

Since we have a lot of different programs that operate independently, it was really important that we standardized our branding across multiple communication channels.  Working with Blackboard and Intelliworks, we were able to create program microsites and inquiry forms for every unique program while creating a consistent look and feel that portrayed the image we were looking for in Eagle Learning Online. 

Now we have the additional challenge of having grown this initiative so quickly that we need to find new ways to keep up with the demand and respond to inquiries in a timely manner.  

INTELLIWORKS: How quickly has the program grown?

THORNTON: We currently have about 30 programs, and we’re growing constantly.  We just received approval for three more programs to go online.  Our initial projections from Blackboard were that we would grow enrollments by 17% in one year.  We’ve grown more than 17% in just one semester so we have far exceeded our initial goals.

As a result, we are really looking at ways to scale our efforts and continue to manage this growth.  We’ve started using communication plans to automate some of our outreach to prospects, but we’ve only just scratched the surface of what we could/should do. We’re working with Carol and Gonzalo at Intelliworks to spend more time on optimizing our use of the CRM to manage our growth more effectively.

Additionally, we were able to engage with the folks at Embry-Riddle through last year’s Intelliworks conference to get some advice and best practices on how a larger organization like theirs rolled out communication plans and got people on board.

INTELLIWORKS: What are you seeing in terms of adoption of Intelliworks?

THORNTON: Some of our programs are using the CRM on their own, while others are using us to support their efforts.  Initially it requires a lot of education to explain to programs the benefits of using the CRM and what they’re going to get out of it. 

We’ve learned that getting faculty on board often requires the help of another faculty member who’s already on board.  One of our champions, a faculty member in the School of Construction, now uses it not just for marketing and recruitment, but also for communicating to current students and sending out advising appointments.  Before Intelliworks, she had “manufactured” her own CRM using a color coded spreadsheet.  She’s much happier now and says it saves her a lot of time.

The learning curve for some of our other online programs was a little steeper.  Some programs weren’t even using spreadsheets for tracking student information and inquiries would often fall through the cracks because the information was not being captured appropriately.  Now we encourage people to set up a laptop at recruitment events so students can fill out an inquiry form right on the spot and the inquiry will be captured in the CRM for future follow-up.

Once they realize that this will make their lives easier and bring them more students, they’re much more eager to start using the system.

In a major effort to increase student retention and success at college campuses across the state, the Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS) has selected Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) to redesign its process for delivering services and support to students.

The effort will provide integrated services, support and technology across the college system including service desk operations for recruitment and admissions, financial aid and student accounts, retention services and identity management. Students and faculty will gain access to on-demand phone, Web, chat and mobile support and will receive proactive voice and e-mail communications that anticipate their needs in key areas. Across the system, the changes will enable KCTCS officials to better measure outcomes and – through an integration with technology partners Intelliworks and Starfish Retention Solutions – provide a holistic approach to student lifecycle management including strategic enrollment management and proactive retention solutions.

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We hear a lot these days about the world being flat.  Due largely to advancements in technology, the playing field has been leveled for many organizations looking to compete on a global scale.  This "flattening" is what has led many in higher education to look beyond the walls of their classrooms and engage students across the globe.  Most recently, UNC's Keenan-Flagler Business School has received a lot of attention for its decision to be the first top-20 business program to offer a fully online MBA.  

The decision does not come without its share of risks.  Can the quality of the program be sustained online? How will current students and alumni feel about the move?  Will faculty be willing to participate?

However, while seemingly risky, Kenan-Flagler Dean James W. Dean Jr. has said that online class delivery is "radically different" and will help the school "define the direction of global business education.”

UNC and Dean recognize that even for state institutions, today's world is one without borders...or at least conventional borders.  This line of thinking is certainly relevant to online institutions and programs, but what about traditional brick and mortar institutions?

What if current thinking of geography were altered based on how people actually interact with one another?

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This month featured client is the University of Richmond's School of Continuing Studies. Handling everything from adult degree completion and non-credit courses to a growing lifelong learning institute, the School has had to manage relationships with a diverse population of students that often don't overlap. To add to the mix, the School was recently tasked with managing the marketing efforts of its summer programs to traditional-aged students. We spoke with James Campbell, Director of Marketing at University of Richmond's School of Continuing Studies, to learn how they're leveraging CRM to manage their outreach and marketing.

Seneca College in Ontario, Canada is launching a pilot program withIntelliworks and Starfish Retention Solutions to increase graduation rates.

The new system, focused initially at Seneca's King Campus, will bringIntelliworks Recruit together with Starfish's Early Alert and Connect.

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Does it ever seem like your life's cluttered?  Laundry piling up?  Dishes in the sink?  Papers scattered across your desk?  

While I try to keep a tidy house (can't say the same about my desk), the main source of my clutter lately has been digital.  Whether it's a new app for my phone, a new web site to bookmark or a new service to sign up for...I just can't seem to keep pace. 

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This month we're proud to feature Emory University's Goizueta Business School as our featured client. Goizueta was no stranger to CRM when they first contracted with Intelliworks. However, the institution came to the realization that in order to meet the demand for today's competitive business school market they needed to optimize their recruitment marketing efforts. Part of that effort involved evaluating their CRM technology and processes in order to scale their efforts without taxing their limited resources.  We spoke with Lauren Whipple, Director of Marketing at Emory University, Goizueta School of Business, to see what prompted them to make their decision and what were some of the lessons they've learned in evaluating their CRM process.

INTELLIWORKS: What motivated you to look into CRM practices at Goizueta?

WHIPPLE: My primary responsibilities are focused on prospective student marketing here at Goizueta Business School where I’m tasked with driving new prospects and converting them into applicants.  Prior to working in higher education I had extensive direct marketing experience and since arriving at Emory five years ago I have tried to instill some of best practices from the corporate world into how we manage our enrollment marketing efforts here at Goizueta.

While there are some things that make higher ed unique, there are many areas where applying traditional business practices can benefit higher ed marketers.  This was a key driver behind evaluating our CRM technology and processes.  Prior to implementing a CRM the organization had tried to manage much of their enrollment marketing efforts via the Student Information System which was not really built for marketing purposes.

INTELLIWORKS: How did the school come to decide on Intelliworks?

WHIPPLE: We had a legacy CRM solution in place prior to working with Intelliworks.  However, while the system was an improvement from where we’d been prior, adoption by our admissions team was low.  It’s impossible to make a CRM initiative work if the tool isn’t being used by the people that are supposed to use it every day.

Part of the issue was involving the team in the change management process, but we also wanted to look at other barriers that were preventing them from benefiting from a CRM.  So we undertook an evaluation of CRM systems last year that was centered not only on functionality but ease of use for the end-user.

The timing was critical because the market for business education is becoming much more competitive and we have to work much harder to attract qualified applicants.  As a selective school, we needed to maximize marketing efforts knowing that we were likely looking at a smaller pool of candidates than in previous years.

Additionally, our old CRM provider was not software-as-a-service and was hosted in our facility.  As a result, we were not receiving new updates to the product’s functionality.  In order to receive those updates we would have had to invest additional resources to purchase them.  With Intelliworks and its SaaS delivery model, we were able to inherit new functionality as part of our subscription.

Another advantage was that Intelliworks is web-based so anybody could use it from any place.  Lastly, we felt that the training and services resources provided by Intelliworks could facilitate adoption.

INTELLIWORKS: How do you plan on rolling out the system to your users?

WHIPPLE: In December 2010, we launched our executive and evening programs and next month we’re bringing on our full-time team.  Based on some of the lessons that we’ve learned over the last few months with our executive and evening programs, we know what things we’ll need to change for our full-time users.  For example, due to the volume of inquiries we receive for our full-time program it’s much more difficult to have a one-to-one approach like we do in our executive and evening programs, so we’re hoping that the CRM will provide our team with some efficiencies in how they manage prospects.

Over time we’ve figured out ways to track interactions and lead sources.  We started advertising our events via banner ads and print ads, which we didn’t do last year, so we can track the success of those events.  Now we’re able to see who comes from the Wall Street Journal versus other media outlets. 

One of the initial challenges was trying to map our previous processes to the new system.  The Intelliworks team was helpful in looking at the way we were doing things and guiding us to adapt our business processes to work within the construct of the new CRM solution.

We’ve been impressed at how open Intelliworks has been to product suggestions, so even if functionality does not exist today, we know whether or not we can expect to see it in the future by having direct interactions with your team.

INTELLIWORKS:  Where have you seen the most benefit and where is there room for improvement?

WHIPPLE: Where we can improve is in the manual process of tracking interactions.  I think it’s a matter of getting people used to putting notes in the contact record whenever they have a phone conversation with a prospect.   However, as far as the automated functions are concerned we’ve made tremendous strides. 

We now have all our events in Intelliworks.  We do all our email campaigns out of Intelliworks now, and all of our online forms now come directly into Intelliworks.  As such, we’re able to see a lot more information than we ever did before, which has really helped us with our budgeting process.  For example, I’ve been able to pull success rates of all our events so that we can make strategic decisions of which fairs we’ll do in the future based on where we’re getting the most prospects.  Before Intelliworks we wouldn’t have been able to use that data in a meaningful way.

In general, we’re able to keep much better tabs on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts whether it’s events and fairs, online marketing, purchased lists, or print and radio advertisements.  Previously, we didn’t really have a great way to track individual people back to their lead source.  We had to rely on our agency to provide general numbers, but with Intelliworks we can see which individuals were delivered by specific marketing campaigns.

The big surprise news for me last week was Cisco’s announcement to shut down its Flip video business and lay-off 550 employees, as reported here in TechCrunch.  Our family owns two Flip cameras and we have become avid users of these dummy-proof camcorders.  If this article by David Pogue  is any indication, I am certainly not alone in being openly disappointed and puzzled by Cisco’s announcement. 

Rather than focusing further time and energy questioning the move, however, I realized that there are a few different perspectives here and, correspondingly, some good things to keep in mind for anyone managing a product or business.

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We were excited last week to present Jane Raley of Lesley University during our "Enrollment Management Evolution" webinar.   

During the session, Raley touched on many key themes that are quite common among institutions that are considering a CRM initiative.  These include:

• - Establishing a business case for your CRM initiative
• - Encouraging change within your organization to support your CRM strategy
• - Providing guidance to end-users to ensure successful adoption of CRM tools and processes
• - Leveraging CRM data to establish benchmarks for success

For those of you who missed it, you can download a recording of the session here, or view the slides below. 

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Join us this Thursday, May 5 at 2:00 pm ET for a free Webinar entitled "Enrollment Management Evolution" where we will examine the evolving landscape of higher education recruitment business practices and technology, how institutions today are benefiting from CRM, and lessons learned from Lesley University’s implementation of a CRM to enhance its recruitment and enrollment marketing efforts.

Our expert, Jane Raley, Director of Enrollment Management Operations at Lesley University, will highlight how incremental changes to your business and technology processes can have a profound impact on your relationship management efforts.

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Intelliworks, Inc., a leading provider of relationship management solutions for higher education, and DS Graphics, Inc., one of New England’s largest communications service providers, have announced a partnership last month at the 96th Annual University Professional & Continuing Education Association National Conference in Toronto.

Together the two companies will deliver an integrated solution that will enable colleges to directly link their CRM data to a multi-tiered communications platform that will automatically create targeted, personalized communications for students via traditional print, digital media, direct mail, email or social media. The net outcome for schools will be a competitive edge, convenience, communications optimization, cost-savings, improved recruitment marketing efforts and a direct revenue driver for institutions looking to grow enrollment. 

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Transfer used to be what happened when students realized too late that they picked a college or university that wasn’t right for them. It wasn’t until recently that the valuable market of transfer students has started being studied and really tapped into.

“For a while, transfers were kind of looked at as extra,” says Bonita C. Jacobs, executive director of The National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Texas. Admissions offices began realizing they’d be left behind if they didn’t start recruiting transfers.

How common has transfer become? Results from a 2009 survey of 800 freshmen by WiseChoice, an online college search service, reveal that 35 percent had thought about transferring. If this survey is representative of the approximately 2 million students who embark on a college degree each year, admissions offices potentially have 700,000 transfers to reach for recruiting.

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CRM can provide a foundation for helping your organization achieve its future recruitment goals.  According to industry analyst Gartner Research, “Institutions must have a CRM system for recruiting in place by 2011. By 2013, an institution will be at a competitive disadvantage for recruiting without this type of relationship solution." 

Join us on Thursday, May 5 at 2:00 p.m. ET for a free Webinar.  In this webinar, we will examine the evolving landscape of higher education recruitment business practices and technology, how institutions today are benefiting from CRM, and lessons learned from Lesley University’s implementation of a CRM to enhance its recruitment and enrollment marketing efforts.   

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I'm a big fan of demographics, pyschographics and sociographics.  So much so that I made them a key part of some of the presentations we've given at various industry conferences. They provide a useful way of creating personas that help your organization connect with prospects and students in a much more meaningful way than if you were to just fly blind.

However, despite how helpful it is to develop an archetype of your ideal student, it's always important to keep in mind that each person has their own individual likes/dislikes and motivations for seeking higher education.  

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We’ve all read about how many are calling the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt “Social Media Revolutions.”  Some news analysts are attributing the sudden overthrow of political leaders of these countries to social media tools, specifically, Facebook and Twitter.  Although there’s no doubt that these tools were used, others say that the revolutions ultimately stemmed from the frustrations of the people in these countries.  

So which is it?  Were these “Twitter Revolutions” actually a result of the increasing prevelance of social media?  Or were these uprisings inevitable?  In this social media age, I believe it’s impossible to separate the two.  Whenever major social change occurs, it’s led by individuals using all of the tools available to them at the time.  Whether it’s pamphlets distributed underground, posters, or Twitter feeds, communication is vital to mass protests.  We can’t say definitively that these protests would never have happened without the help of these tools, but we also can’t say that these tools weren’t vital in spreading the message.  

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This month we’re proud to feature Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business for their work with Intelliworks.  VCU Business has been an Intelliworks customer for a few years, but they have recently begun to expand their implementation beyond recruitment for undergraduate and graduate programs to include other parts of the institution such as their external affairs department and center for corporate education.

We spoke with Jana McQuaid, Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies at VCU Business to discuss how the institution has evolved through its use of CRM.

Intelliworks: Tell us a bit about VCU Business.  What type of students do you attract? How are you different in the market?

VCU Business: Within the School of Business we house our undergraduate programs, our graduate degree programs, and center for corporate education.  VCU is a large urban campus.  Our demographics at the graduate level tend to be working professionals that attend classes in the evening.

Our urban setting lends itself to a real connection with the surrounding business community.  The School of Business has its own foundation composed of prominent local business executives and community leaders.

Intelliworks: How have you leveraged Intelliworks to meet your strategic objectives?

VCU Business: We’ve taken Intelliworks and really tried to push the envelope with what it can do.  When we think of our “customers” within the School of Business, we have multiple customers that have an intersecting relationship with one another.  When we’re dealing with students we’re often not only looking at our relationship with the individual, we are also looking at all the different people within their organization and their employers that we’ve had interactions with as well.

Because of Intelliworks we’ve been able to make connections between all of these various constituent groups.  For example, if we know that a business has attended one of our career fairs, our center for corporate education can use that information to send information to prospects, or the executive MBA program can use that information market their programs.  Additionally, our alumni office also has access to this information so they can make connections with alumni that have stayed connected with VCU through our corporate events and career fairs.

So, we’re really trying to expand the usage of Intelliworks beyond enrollment management and lead generation, and bring all of our departments together so that we can leverage relationships in a much more meaningful way than we might have otherwise.

Intelliworks: Has your use of Intelliworks evolved over time?  What are your goals for the future?

VCU Business: Our vision from the beginning was to have a lead management system that would allow us to track prospects.  So that was my initial interest in the product.  Then our associate dean for external relations saw a real need for CRM when dealing with corporate contacts.  Some of the other products we looked at were really defined in one area or the other.  Some of the big enrollment management packages were too student focused, and some of the off-the-shelf CRM systems were not configurable enough to meet the various use cases within the School of Business. 

We felt like the Intelliworks platform gave us the ability to do both.

It took some time to get all departments on board.   We began with our undergraduate and graduate programs, and now we’ve added our center for corporate education and our external affairs office.  Prior to Intelliworks, we were in the dark as to which communications were being read by our email recipients, so we were really surprised once we were able to track click through and open rates with Intelliworks which emails were getting read and which ones were not.  This will hopefully help us refine our messaging and get more effective with our communications.

Intelliworks: How has this impacted results?

VCU Business:  Having a disciplined approach to how we’re managing our constituent relationships has really enhanced the professional appearance of VCU Business.  Just by having the ability to create email templates we are now able to be much more consistent with our outreach and messaging to prospective students and the business community.  We’ve had a lot of feedback about how much more professional our emails have been since implementing the Intelliworks CRM. 

The product has also allowed us to stop operating in silos.   Now we can see all of our interactions with organizations and have a much more comprehensive understanding of how we’re working with the local community.

Additionally, it’s made it much easier for us to provide our Dean with a 360-degree view of our relationships with local businesses, so that he can have better informed discussions with those businesses and their executives about VCU’s offerings.  Now we can go in and tell him how many graduates we’ve had from that particular business, or how many of its employees have taken advantage of our continuing education offerings,  or we can see if we’ve ever had one of their executives come in to speak at our events because we’re able to capture this information in one place.

This gives us a really comprehensive view of what our relationship with a specific organization looks like, which is really important from a development stand point when you’re looking at driving contributions and company sponsored events.

Intelliworks: What advice do you have for other institutions looking to use a CRM solution?

VCU Business: I think you have to have a clear and concise understanding of your uses for the tool.  Have your goals in mind and a roadmap of how to get there before you consider the tool, and then you use the tool as a vehicle to get there.

In the beginning I think we tried to dive right into it, and we didn’t take the time that we needed to really understand what our capabilities needed to be and what we needed to do on our end to make this successful.  While we haven’t taken advantage of it yet, we see a lot of benefit in the CRM Plan and Email Marketing Services now offered in conjunction with DemandEngine.   A service like that would really give us a better understanding of our metrics and how we could report on our key performance indicators. 

Intelliworks today announced that the University of Houston Continuing Education has selected Intelliworks’ CRM platform to improve its customer service and communication with working professionals.

University of Houston Continuing Education offers a broad range of certificate programs, courses, workshops, conference, online courses, and custom-designed training to working professionals throughout the Greater Houston metropolitan area. As University of Houston Continuing Education looks to expand its career enhancement and corporate training services to a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, legal and energy, the institution views CRM as an integral component to driving student success and customer care.

According to Guy Felder, Program Director of Professional Development at University of Houston Continuing Education, “Becoming a customer-centric organization is about much more than improving yield and revenue. It truly is about customer satisfaction and hopefully one of the outcomes of that will be increased registrations. However, we see an opportunity to extend the reach of the University of Houston’s mission and brand to the larger business community by offering better, more responsive service to working professionals interested in our corporate training and professional development offerings.”

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A Texas university has begun using a constituent relationship management (CRM) application to stay on top of faculty development work. Texas Wesleyan University's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) has begun using use Intelliworks' software-as-a-service CRM platform to manage its interactions with faculty members.

CETL's mission at the university is to help the 100 full-time instructors become better teachers. At the same time, in the current budget climate, these types of operations at institutions are having to work harder to make a case for what they're doing while also increasing their effectiveness, according to Director Amy Collier: "We are very big on program assessment, making sure we're meeting the needs of our faculty.... We wanted to model for the university that assessment is not a scary thing. It's incredibly beneficial, if you do it with the serious intent of improving."

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As we head into the tail end of winter, it’s hard not be envious of the weather our February Client of the Month is experiencing.  I recently had the opportunity to speak with Michelle Garcia-Navarro, MBA admissions director at the Schidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.  The college was one of the first institutions to take advantage of Intelliworks’ partnership with DemandEngine and they recently completed our joint Email Marketing Best Practices service. 

INTELLIWORKS: How did the University of Hawaii use email marketing prior to engaging in the Email Marketing Best Practices service?

NAVARRO: We used email marketing to reach out to prospects and kept track of open and click-through rates, but didn’t have the tools to leverage this information to inform our processes. 

INTELLIWORKS: Why did you think this service was necessary for University of Hawaii, Manoa?

NAVARRO: The service was tailored specifically for our school and focused on our current strategies and tactics and how we could change them, rather than being a ‘one size fits all’ seminar.  We liked the one-on-one attention we received with your email marketing consultant.  She had us gather all of our email and print pieces so she could analyze them and make sure they were communicating our message effectively.  For us, this was the highlight of the service.

INTELLIWORKS: What other processes did you go through during this engagement?

NAVARRO: Our consultant was very deliberate and systematic in her approach.  First she helped us define what we wanted to communicate to our applicants and how we could use email to deliver this message.  Then we went through our database to define specific target groups.  Finally, we discussed what numbers we wanted to hit and the campaigns we wanted to launch.  We’re a small institution, so many times we go through these processes without thinking.  This forced us to grasp and internalize the whole processes.

INTELLIWORKS: What subset of your prospects/applicants will you focus on first?

NAVARRO: We’d like to increase our outreach to students who have been accepted but not yet enrolled.  In the past, contact with this group dropped off after acceptance, but we realize now that this is a critical time to engage with these students.  We now plan to kick off a series of email communications with these students by sending them a letter from our assistant dean upon acceptance.

INTELLIWORKS: How will you adjust your email marketing strategies going forward?

NAVARRO: We had been sending out campaigns that were very factual and deadline driven.  Our goal is to provide content-rich emails and newsletters that communicate specialized messages based on the target population.  For example, we’d like to reach out to our international population using student videos recorded in their native language.

Intelliworks, a leading provider of relationship management solutions for higher education, today announced thatTexas Wesleyan University’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) plans to use Intelliworks’ software-as-a-service CRM platform to help design better faculty development programs, and improve faculty engagement.

The mission of CETL is to support Texas Wesleyan faculty by providing them with the resources and training they need to create an effective learning environment.  Intelliworks will allow the staff at CETL to track faculty interactions like event attendance, program and course enrollment, as well as teaching consultations.

“Faculty development programs are under constant pressure to make a case for their effectiveness,” said Dr. Amy Collier, director of CETL at Texas Wesleyan.  “Intelliworks will help us communicate with faculty and track their interactions with CETL so that we can generate reports on our activities at a very granular level, which will ultimately result in better programs.”

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Recipients of our monthly newsletter received an invitation last month to participate in an ongoing survey we conduct on higher education recruitment marketing goals.  While our methodology is far from scientific, we do think the results are interesting and worth sharing (if anything to help spark some dialogue on your campus).   

This year's survey was sent to more than 400 people.  Respondents represented a broad spectrum of the higher education industry.

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In this month's featured client article, we interview the folks at Simmons College.  Located in the heart of Boston, Simmons is a small institution with big goals in 2011 for its nationally distinguished graduate and undergraduate programs. We spoke with Nephellie Bellos, Director of Business Analysis and Solutions Consulting; Jake Berry, Assistant Vice President of Enrollment and Online Marketing; and Catherine Capolupo, Director of Undergraduate Admissions, about some of the trends in online recruitment and marketing that have impacted their institution over the years. 

 

Intelliworks: What are some expectations with regards to how students expect to hear from you?

 

Simmons: Since most students research schools online, we’ve been getting more and more applications from students that aren’t even in our database yet. Although these students have spent a lot of time on our website, they don’t necessarily submit an inquiry.

Intelliworks:  Can you explain what types of information students are requesting through text messages?  I’ve heard that the popularity of this medium is increasing, but I would think that many students would find it intrusive.

Simmons:  We allow students to sign up for our text messaging services; and many students have opted in.  I think the appeal to students is the brevity of the message.  We use text messaging to send quick reminders to students about missing pieces of their application or upcoming events and deadlines.  Text  messaging forces us to give them only the information they need as they need it.

Intelliworks:  What are some other expectations with regards to how students expect you to communicate with them?

Simmons:  Since most students research schools online, we’ve been getting more and more applications from students that aren’t even in our database yet.  Although these students have spent a lot of time on our website, they don’t necessarily submit an inquiry. 

Intelliworks:  How has this affected how you think about your website and other online presence?

Simmons: We’ve been much more attentive to the website.  We realized we had to make sure we’re meeting the students where they are and make sure our content is updated and engaging.  We’ve also taken efforts to integrate our social media presence into all aspects of our communications.  We’re on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and several other sites.  Many students discover our social sites through the web, but we also make sure to tie them in through our official correspondence.

Intelliworks:  You mentioned that at first all correspondence was done through mail, then came email and then texting.  So what’s next?

Simmons:  Social media outlets and technology will go in and out of vogue.  For example, we were one of the first institutions to have a blog and now that’s pretty standard and people are on to Twitter.  So we have to make sure whatever we do is fresh, while remembering that not all students have access to the same level of technology.  While we’re adopting the latest communications methods, we also have to be ready to do the next best thing. 

In terms of the future, we’re starting to look into FourSquare and mobile applications which we think can improve the student experience once they’re on campus.  

I've been working on Intelliworks' holiday card and have been looking at other companies' and institutions' holiday cards for inspiration. It seems like many institutions have been making the move to a video or e-holiday card. I particularly enjoyed the video from my alma mater, American University.

What makes a holiday card stand out?

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If the last couple of months are any indication, the higher education battle lines in 2011 will be drawn along cost and affordability. The College Board's report on Trends in College Pricing notes that tuition at public institutions has gone up on average nearly 8 percent last year. Eventhough most students don't pay the full sticker price due to loans, grants and scholarships, it's the initial sticker price that could make a really bad first impression for students and thus hurt a school's chances of attracting otherwise qualified students. 

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To wind up 2010, we wanted to bring back our featured client article to our newsletter.  This month, we had the pleasure of interviewing Florida Atlantic University's (FAU) Graduate College.  FAU has been an Intelliworks' customer since 2007 and currently has deployed across 11 different graduate programs. 

Etina Qirjo, coordinator for computer applications and Greg Gayle, former assistant director for graduate recruitment (Gayle recently moved to a position within FAU’s College of Business), were kind enough to speak with me about how the graduate school has dealt with the economic changes over the past few years and how those changes have impacted recruitment for FAU's graduate programs.

INTELLIWORKS: Many graduate schools have experienced surges in inquiries since the economic downturn.  What has been the experience at FAU?

FAU: FAU has also seen increased interest in graduate programs, as evidenced by higher numbers of applicants at the graduate level.  To illustrate this point, FAU’s Graduate College received a total of 5,745 applications to its graduate programs during the 2009-2010 academic year, representing a 15% increase over the 2007-2008 academic year.

Specific programs at the university saw substantial increases in the number of prospective students who submitted applications.  The College of Business saw a surge of interest, namely in the Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program and the Master of Accounting (MAC) program.  MBA applicants increased from 398 to 552, or 38.7%, while the MAC program’s application numbers jumped from 461 to 635, representing an increase of 37.7%.  The Family Nurse Practitioner Master of Science program had an increase in applications of 226.5% (from 49 applications to 160). 

INTELLIWORKS: Has there also been an increase in the number of students who enroll?

FAU: Of the larger pool of applicants, the number of newly enrolled graduate students jumped 11.5 % over the past two academic years.

INTELLIWORKS: And how has the Graduate School been coping with the increased demand?

FAU: There has been an almost universal increase in demand for the graduate programs offered at FAU; however, this increase has not been uniform across all disciplines. In graduate programs with the capacity to admit more students, enrollments have grown. Conversely, where there is limited room for growth, the percentage of students accepted has decreased, because these programs cannot accommodate new students.

INTELLIWORKS: How are you working towards achieving the Graduate School’s goal of geographic diversity?

FAU: Ideally, we’d like to be able to travel more both nationally and internationally to meet prospective students face-to-face.  During tougher economic times, we naturally scaled back these types of travel, enabling us to think creatively and find other effective strategies to connect with prospective students.  Right now we’re concentrating on sending targeted Intelliworks campaigns for recruitment events like our university-wide graduate programs open house and our monthly information sessions.

The Graduate College uses the product to disseminate information university-wide (and to prospective students across all disciplines).  We have also made a concerted effort to spread the use of Intelliworks to other areas of the university.  For two years now, Intelliworks was featured prominently at the annual recruitment workshop held by the Graduate College.  Individual departments and programs were given the opportunity to apply for grant monies that could then be used to purchase an Intelliworks license.  The Graduate College coordinated periodic training sessions for graduate programs that did purchase licenses for Intelliworks.    

Managing relationships with prospective and current students and their influencers is the new core competency requirement for today’s enrollment marketer. In this webinar, learn why relationship management is a strategy-first proposition, enabled by powerful CRM technology.

Download this recent webinar hosted by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association where Todd Gibby, CEO of Intelliworks, shares best practices for planning and expanding your CRM initiatives.

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Many institutions take a “technology first” approach to CRM and in so doing confuse enterprise technology with enterprise strategy with downstream effects that limit the institution’s ability to deploy a CRM that will meet the needs of the entire organization.

Download this free white paper co-written by Intelliworks and DemandEngine. Learn why a successful enterprise CRM strategy depends on putting together the right people, processes and technology to meet the needs of every department within a college or university.

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Colorado Northwestern Community College and the Acton School of Business have both decided to bolster their recruitment efforts with technology. The two schools will be using Intelliworks' constituent relationship management (CRM) software for managing contacts and increasing enrollment.   

The Colorado college is located in Rangely and Craig and has service centers in three other locations. "One of our goals in implementing a [relationship management system] is to allow more people on campus to help in our recruiting efforts," said Tresa England, dean of student services and registrar. "Once more programs have access to prospect data; they'll be able to customize their outreach to be specific to that student."

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I was privileged to have the opportunity to speak at last month's UPCEA South Regional Conference in Austin, Texas. See slides from this presentation here.

This year's event was full of lively discussion, both in my session and in other concurrent sessions (particularly those conducted by JMH, Guy Felder of University of Houston, Lesley Snyder of UNC-Charlotte and Demand Engine, and keynote speaker Gary Hoover) about the evolution of continuing education and recruitment marketing for continuing education. 

This got us very excited about February's UPCEA Marketing Conference in San Antonio (this organization must really love Texas) where we'll be conducting a pre-conference workshop on "Building a Business Case for CRM."

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I wrote a blog a couple weeks ago after reading an article about “visual thinking” by Clive Thompson in the October 2010 Wired Magazine. The article highlighted the work of Dan Roam; and I indicated a desire to get more familiar with his writings (and pictures). I’ve since bought and enjoyed Dan Roam’s book “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures”; so I thought I would do a quick follow-up post on that topic.

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It’s rare that I am able to make it through a meeting without having to pick up a marker and draw on the white-board to adequately communicate an idea. I suppose this is to be expected, since my father could hardly sit through a family dinner without busting out his handy note-pad or a paper napkin to explain some concept. My siblings and I still tease him about it. 

Similarly, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by my own communications crutch, frequently accompanying any drawing with an excuse such as, “Sorry, I’m a visual learner.”

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By most accounts, this has not been a good week for Justin Bieber’s brand. The former YouTube sensation and current teen heart throb quickly became the butt of several internet jokes when he allegedly compared himself to Kurt Cobain, the angst-ridden ’90s alternative rock icon. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out the similarities between Bieber and Cobain are few, if any. But it does raise a good point about branding and authenticity.

The Bieber Report’s fabrication of this quote is meant to show there’s clearly a disconnect between Bieber’s perception of himself and that of the public. The analogy to Kurt Cobain only highlighted that disconnect.

In the case of higher education, branding campaigns at two institutions have come under a lot of scrutiny for the analogies they make (one intentional, one not).

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One of the themes that Intelliworks often focuses on in our conference presentations is signal versus noise— how do we reach our constituents amid the noise of the internet? 

The factors involved in sending a meaningful message that attracts attention are one part art and one part science. The art involves things like copy writing, selecting content and branding, while the science involves things like channel and audience selection.

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Intelliworks today announced that the Acton School of Business will be leveraging the Intelliworks CRM platform to enhance its recruitment marketing and admissions efforts. The Acton School of Business, founded in 2003, offers an accelerated one-year MBA in Entrepreneurship.

Although the school is relatively new, it has already begun to make a name for itself; Acton was recently ranked by The Princeton Review as having some of the top classes, professors and students, placing the school in the company of well-established Ivy League programs.

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I've worked my fair share of customer service jobs-- mostly folding clothes and appeasing cranky hungry people. I know I'm not alone when I say I silently cheered at my desk when I read about the epic way in which Steven Slater quit his flight attendant job with Jet Blue. Who hasn't thought about leaving in a blaze of glory after an encounter with a rude customer? Slater lived the dream for all of us when he grabbed that beer and jumped down the inflatable slide.

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Chances are if your email recipient is using a Compuserve email address there may be some challenges in getting your message read. It could have something to do with the ISP or it could be that their email address is telling you something about them as an individual.

Not long ago, I spotted this illustration on The Oatmeal which jokingly analyzed "What your email address says about your computer skills..." In summary, anyone not using their own domain or at least a Gmail address is a luddite while those that do possess either their own domain or Gmail address at least know their way around the internet.

This made me wonder...is there any truth to these statements?"  

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In lieu of our regular Client of the Month article featuring a single Intelliworks customer, we'd like to take this opportunity to dedicate this month's newsletter to all of our customers.  Last week, we had to pleasure of gathering close to 150 individuals from institutions all over the country for our annual users' conference, Personify Education, in Washington D.C.  

As always, it was a chance for us to reflect on some of the successes we've had as a company over the last year, but more importantly the event has really come to serve as a showcase for many of the innovative ways that colleges and universities are leveraging CRM to enhance communications with students, prospects and alumni.  

The line up of speakers this year was perhaps our most impressive ever with partners from DemandEngine, Stamats and Starfish Retention Solutions, as well as Intelliworks customers, such as: 

 - Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
 - FIU Business 
 - American Public University System
 - University of St. Thomas Houston
 - Integrated Science Program  

Thanks to all who were able to attend and make it such a great event.  We can't wait to see you at next year's conference.

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Today's Campus: Is there such a thing as too much automation of college admissions applications? 

Intelliworks: Yes. Automation is good when it eliminates unnecessary manual processes. It's not good if it sacrifices the human element in the very important and complex process of matching the right student and the right institution. According to the College Board, many automation-assisted applicants are applying to 20 or more schools. The administrative burden on those schools can outweigh the benefits. 

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By now, you've no doubt seen the latest internet meme to take the world by storm...the Old Spice Man and his personalized responses to just about anyone asking for his advice. As reported by PC Magazine, "Old Spice this week capitalized on the popularity of its recent TV advertisements with a series of YouTube videos in which "Old Spice guy" Isaiah Mustafa answered questions from the Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit communities." The response has been wildly popular and blogs ranging from Techcrunch and Mashable to the Huffington Post have picked up the action.

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Intelliworks, Inc., a leading provider of relationship management solutions for higher education, today announced that University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS) has adopted Intelliworks to gain better insight into their student and prospect management efforts.

“We wanted the intelligence to track our current applicants, find opportunities to expand our mission and serve the church in new ways,” said Peggy Sell, director of admissions.  “We’ve always been excellent at responding to people who have expressed interest in our programs, but lately also been focusing on ways to reach out to new constituencies.”

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Each year, institutions spend A LOT of money on buying lists of prospective students built around desirable traits (such as test scores, geography, demographics, etc.).  However, when it comes to email marketing tactics, it's become pretty clear that in-house lists yield better results than these rented lists.  The reason?

Quite simply, with an in-house list that you build on your own you're marketing to people that have already expressed an interest in your institution.  

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We’re pleased to announce that July’s Client of the Month is University of St. Thomas.  UST is a Catholic, liberal arts university, located in Houston, Texas.  With 31 undergraduate majors, nine master’s programs, and limited resources, the admissions team at UST needed to find a way to streamline their marketing and enrollment processes. 

“Our focus at UST is growth.  We adopted Intelliworks so our admissions team could dedicate more time to increasing inquiries, applications and enrollment.” said Vickie Alleman, vice president of marketing communications & enrollment management. 

Intelliworks has allowed recruitment and marketing staff to create communications tracks for prospects based on their interests and target them for marketing campaigns.  By increasing the relevancy and automation of campaigns, UST has been able to achieve their goals for growth while allowing admissions counselors to spend more time with prospects rather than data entry.

“In a world of instant communication, schools need to provide immediate responses that are applicable to each individual, or risk losing them to another institution,” said Alleman.

UST plans to translate their success in enrollment to retention.  The university aims to increase retention among graduate students by staying in the forefront of student’s minds through marketing campaigns.  Since many graduate students take time off in between courses for work and family reasons, UST is able to stay engaged by providing relevant updates.  Making sure that students feel a part of the UST community even when they are not on campus is vital to the university’s communication strategy.

The university is also exploring multichannel communications by implementing Intelliworks’ Facebook application, which allows them to more effectively market to small subsets of their target population.

What advice does Vickie offer to other Intelliworks clients?  Know and understand your goals and provide a comprehensive and strategic plan to all the stakeholders within your institution.  Additionally, while Vickie encourages clients to take advantage of Intelliworks professional and stadium trainings she thinks that just as important is the ability to get your internal users of the system together on a regular basis to provide training and best practices advice. 

Allemanwill be presenting at Intelliworks’ Personify Education 2010Conference in Washington DC July 28-30. 

Much ink has been spilled over recent weeks regarding Facebook’s new features. One of the recent changes- the addition of Community Pages- has taken a backseat to more pressing issues regarding privacy. But upon further inspection, it seem that Community Pages have wide-reaching implications when it comes to organizations and their social media marketing.

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Intelliworks today announced that Lesley University will adopt Intelliworks to capture inquiries and generate reports. Lesley University, located in Cambridge, Mass., is comprised of a number of academic offerings, including undergraduate, graduate, degree completion and online programs. As such, Lesley’s admissions department must be equipped to manage several enrollment cycles simultaneously. “Our goal with Intelliworks is to increase the level of control over our admissions funnel,” said Jeff Handler, vice president of enrollment management. “The old system of capturing leads required the student to register for a username and password to browse the website which many students prefer not to do so early in their search process."

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The youth of today sure do love to multitask. Forrester Research recently asked a group of U.S.-based 18-24 year-olds which activities they're typically doing while surfing the Internet. As the graphic below demonstrates, this generation is full of multitaskers who do anything from talk on the phone to read a newspaper while on the Web. Oh, but Forrester adds, "...consumers don’t just multitask across different channels; they also do many different things on the PC at the same time." 

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The Division of Continuing Education at Colorado State University (CSU) has selected Intelliworks to help connect with prospective students in order to better address their higher education needs. 

“In higher education institutions it’s easy for prospects to drop down a black hole once they’ve inquired about admission.  If they don’t get the information they need right away, they often slip away,” said Jenny Hannifin, student engagement coordinator at CSU’s Division of Continuing Education.  “We want to make sure we responded to the needs of each student to help them find and complete the program that best suits their goals.”

Since many of Continuing Education’s students are working professionals looking for specific programs, it’s critical that the school be able to easily track prospects through the admissions funnel and identify returning students. 

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The Pew Internet and American Life Project released some interesting data today which might have you whipping out your cell phones to text your incoming class.  Or maybe not. As you probably have guessed that report finds that teens like their mobile phones...a lot.  In fact, Pew finds that mobile phones are now the centerpiece of communications for most teens.   According to a summary of the report's findings, "Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens² – or 88% of teen cell phone users — are text-messagers."  At this point, many college marketers are probably salivating at the possibilities. However, before you start thinking of pithy, 160 character messages that you can start broadcasting via SMS to your database, here's what others have found with respect to SMS advertising and teen preferences.

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I am pleased to announce that the May Client of the Month is Florida International University for the innovative and award winning use of social media in marketing and recruiting.  FIU recently won the NAGAP Promotional Excellence Award 2010 in Social Media.

FIU’s strategy is to use social media to reach constituents where they already spend their time specifically by -

• Branding: by engaging them with stories, activities, news and articles that deliver our brand attributes.

• Customer service: by monitoring what they are saying on social media sites and responding accordingly

• Recruiting: by placing ads inviting prospective students to sign up for upcoming information sessions

FIU engages through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging to name a few.

One of the unique ways FIU is using Facebook is not only through a fan page but also through their Uncommon Thinkers branding campaign. The Uncommon Thinkers campaign includes a test to determine what kind of uncommon thinker you are, information on the FIU Business School and the ability to sign up for graduate business information sessions.

FIU then went on to create a Facebook Fan Page for FIU Business. This fan page allows them to share students success stories, pictures about events related to the college, trending-topic articles, and news in general about the college of business. The page incorporates questions so that communication is encouraged. The page is also used to answer questions from inquiries.

“On our Facebook Page we were able to incorporate a feature for people to contact us privately through a tool developed by our Intelliworks system and establish a direct two-way communication without leaving Facebook, and in a manner that is transparent to the user. An additional feature of our Facebook Page is the ability to RSVP for Information Sessions without leaving Facebook.”

In addition to the great ways FIU is actively using Facebook they have also created Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.  Twitter allows them to engage their community by sharing information about the college, providing customer service, events updates, and announcements. Some of these updates are fed automatically from their blogging platform. LinkedIn is used to connect current students with alumni in a professional and social environment.  LinkedIn is one of the top sources of updating alumni contact information for the school.  “We have also been using LinkedIn to place pay-per-click ads for our Executive MBA information sessions that targets working professionals 35 years and older in South Florida.”

Additionally, here are some other social media outlets that FIU is currently exploring -

• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiubusiness

• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/fiubusiness

• Issuu: http://www.issuu.com/fiubusiness

We asked the team at FIU to tell us how the use of social media has helped them to be successful and here is what they shared

“Our various social media initiatives have been instrumental in increasing our brand awareness and reaching out in larger numbers to our various constituents.

For example:

• Uncommon Thinkers Test: During the two years that we had the Uncommon Thinkers website, 3,000 people took the test to find out what type of uncommon thinker they were. In April 2009, during the NAGAP Annual Conference in New York, we announced the launch of a Facebook Application and, in less than ten months there have already been more than 38,000 test takers!

• Facebook Fan Pages: In one year since we established our Facebook Fan Pages, we already have 3,200 fans of FIU Business, and 3,500 fans of Uncommon Thinkers.

• Twitter account: To date we have more than 760 followers on Twitter and have posted more than 460 tweets.

• LinkedIn group: To date the group has more than 1,100 members.

• Wordpress blogging platform: The number of unique visits to our news articles has increased by 135% since we launched BizNews.fiu.edu on Wordpress in 2009!”

Social media serves as a key buzzword in higher education today and most recruiting departments are busily trying to implement their own social media tools.  FIU has shown that with some planning, forethought, goals and initiative that this new platform can deliver real results.

Congratulations the team at FIU for being the Intelliworks Client of the Month!

Originally published by Campus Technology

Simmons College will be introducing a new constituent relationship management (CRM) service into its operations. The Boston-based college will be adopting Intelliworks to automate tracking of prospective students, manage marketing campaigns, gain better reporting, and improve its recruitment efforts for both undergraduate and graduate programs.

"By using Intelliworks, we now have the tool set necessary to operate more efficiently across the institution," said Jake Berry, assistant vice president of enrollment and online marketing. "We hope this increased efficiency will lead to more students and more tuition revenue."

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Email is dead. Long live email.

It’s been a common refrain since the marketers first jumped on the social media bandwagon.  But does all the hype around social media really spell the end for email as a marketing channel?  We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, “Of course not.”  

And this week, two separate reports seem to confirm that email is indeed alive and well in this age of social media.  

First, Brendan Regan reports on the FutureNow blog on a MarketingSherpa survey that finds buyers still want the basics when it comes to email marketing.  He writes, “[I]f you are executing well on “the basics,” you’re in a much safer place and can confidently experiment with all the new “bells and whistles” that you could put in your marketing emails (e.g. video, social networking, fancy graphics, etc.).”

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The new Client of the Month series will highlight an individual or institution that we feel is utilizing the Intelliworks system in new, challenging and exciting ways. Our Client of the Month for April is Andrew Richards, Director of Recruitment at Washington University in St. Louis School of Biology and Biomedical Sciences.  Richards has been operating as a one man show for several months since his recruitment coordinator has been out on maternity leave.

The Biology and Biomedical Sciences department is currently using Intelliworks as a recruiting, tracking and communication tool for prospective applicants to fourteen different bioscience training programs.

We asked Andrew to tell us how he is using the Intelliworks system to help streamline his workflow. 

“With only a 2 person recruiting shop and a host of other job responsibilities to boot adding the Intelliworks system to our arsenal of tools has greatly increased the breadth of our reach, the speed our contact and the efficiency of our tracking.”

What are some of the ways that you are currently using the system?

“We upload contact information into the system via:

Direct link from web form created in the Intelliworks system and linked to our website.  The graphics interface allows us to use our web site banners to maintain the look and feel of one site.

Imported excel files with data gathered from recruiting fairs, conferences, talks and seminars; linking a prospect to a specific source.

As these prospects turn into applicants we use the system to personalize individual communications as they move through the process to hopefully an interview and offer of acceptance.

This allows us to easily track applicants back after the season is complete to see if we are spending our time and money wisely on traveling to certain venues.

During the application season we also run weekly reports to our 14 different program director’s with new contact info for those hitting the system that are presently applying.  The directors can either respond directly or using the system we have created a number of templates with differing looks dependent on the program to respond for them.”

Additionally, Andrew has set up the system to auto-generate email replies, run weekly reports, create e-mail campaigns for every recruiting trip and allow for system registration for recruiting events and on-campus seminars.

Going forward Andrew and his team are planning on implementing Intelliworks social media and chat functionality to further expand their outreach. 

Andrew has proven to us what we knew all along – making the most use of the Intelliworks system can and does make your job easier and allow you to better streamline your workflow.

Thank you to Andrew for being such a loyal customer and for showing us how it is done!

If you would like additional information on the functionality mentioned above or on how you can better utilize the Intelliworks system please contact Account Manager Melissa Terrio at melissa.terrio@intelliworks.com

Intelliworks today announced that Simmons College in Boston will be adopting Intelliworks to automate tracking of prospective students, manage marketing campaigns and increase the efficiency of their recruitment efforts for both its undergraduate and graduate programs.  

"By using Intelliworks, we now have the tool set necessary to operate more efficiently across the institution," said Jake Berry, assistant vice president of enrollment and online marketing."  " We hope this increased efficiency will lead to more students and more tuition revenue." 

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Ever since the first customer relationship management (CRM) tools found their way onto North American campuses around 2002, higher ed administrators have cringed at the mention of the word “customer,” preferring to substitute “constituent” for the more sales-driven term. Yet, with competition for qualified candidates heating up over the past decade and the recent economic downturn decimating recruiting budgets, nomenclature has come to matter a good deal less than fresh intelligence and the ability to attract top-level prospects.

The same has been true as student services professionals more recently turned to CRM systems to help them with student lifecycle management—the art of monitoring and retaining students as they progress through their college years. With timely data and feedback, administrators are better able to deliver the type of campus experience that holds onto their students, keeps them engaged with their college, and sends them out into the world championing their alma mater.

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This month we chose to highlight Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as our client of the month because of the smooth implementation process they have almost completed despite needing to train over 300 users on not only the newly purchased Intelliworks system but also some new business processes and workflows designed to streamline their enrollment processes.  Not a small job!

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Becky Vasquez, Executive Director, Student and Technology Services and Bill Hampton, Executive Director of Enrollment Services whose departments were the champions of this project.

The decision to purchase a SaaS-based CRM solution to help with recruiting and enrollment started at Embry-Riddle about two years ago.  The project was a joint effort between the Office of Enrollment Management and Student and Technology Services.  The roll out would eventually impact over three hundred employees across 170 locations and three campuses. Because of the sheer size of this implementation Becky and Bill knew that it would require buy in at all levels and the biggest key to that was being assured that senior management understood and supported the project.

The two teams worked together to define the scope of the project and to paint the big picture of how the system needed to work and be configured in order to not only meet their needs but to make the lives of those utilizing the system easier.  Bill feels that this collaborative effort on the part of the two teams allowed them to really look at the project on a much bigger level and determine 120% of their needs.  He also feels that it allowed the two teams to develop a stronger relationship and better understanding of the individual roles within their respective departments.

The implementation of the Intelliworks system prompted the Enrollment Services staff to look closely at their daily routines and determine what changes could be made, with the help of the system, to allow for better prospecting, communication and marketing.  They needed a way to personally communicate with prospects and applicants without impacting the resources within the enrollment office.  By utilizing the marketing and communications functionality they were able to do just that while also changing their work flows.  Embry-Riddle feels that they now have a better process and overall experience in place for their prospects and applicants not only because of the Intelliworks CRM but primarily because of the team work and intense look into their processes that they had to face to make the implementation successful.

Making changes to daily routines is hard for any office, department or institution.  To change daily routines at an institution of this size took a lot of forethought, top down support and a real understanding of why the changes were necessary and how the new processes would improve the job at hand.  Embry-Riddle was able to successfully accomplish this task and allow for the Intelliworks system to work with them and for them in implementing these changes.

So, what advice would the Embry-Riddle team give to other clients that are newly implementing Intelliworks or any large system?  Bill and Becky recommend really digging in and learning the system as much as possible and to find ways to make the system work for you and your team.  They also suggest that no matter the size of your project, celebrate your successes and recognize how far you have come!  Bill and Becky both feel that documenting and reviewing your processes, insisting on quality control and making changes where necessary maybe hard but it is crucial to the success of the project and recommend it for anyone implementing a new system. 

Their final piece of advice?  Train, train, train!

Becky Vasquez and Bill Hampton will be presenting “Taking off with Intelliworks” at Personify Education, our annual users' conference, July 28-29 in Washington DC.

We hope you can join us to learn more about how to be the architects of a successful implementation. For more information on Personify Education, please click here.

Intelliworks and Starfish Retention Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of student success systems, announced today a partnership that will provide higher education institutions with access to Intelliworks' CRM, admissions and marketing functionality and Starfish's early alert, online scheduling and student tracking capabilities.  

The combined offering will enable institutions to extend their enrollment management strategies from initial marketing outreach through to graduation - ensuring that the institution attracts their ideal kind of student and then supports that student throughout the entire student lifecycle.

"Both Starfish and Intelliworks are committed to helping higher education institutions connect with students," said Todd Gibby, CEO of Intelliworks. "Our customers have seen how investing in the right strategy and technology can not only help them market their programs more efficiently, but deliver a far greater student experience."

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It's no secret that powerful economic forces are having a profound impact on colleges, on families, and on the process of students gaining admission to institutions of higher education.

Recently, a number of news stories have examined issues around college quality, accessibility, and affordability. According to Inside Higher Education, the advocacy group Education Trust has issued a follow-up report to its "stinging 2006 report that underscored the underrepresentation of low income and minority students at flagship universities and contributed to the pressure on institutions to alter their financial aid and other policies to reach out more to such students." According to the authors of the study, the results are not promising.

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In a recent blog post, Tim Copeland of Demand Engine highlights one student's preferences when it comes to receiving marketing materials from colleges. Coincidentally, the student's observations are consistent with the results we've seen from a recent poll we conducted regarding channel preferences amongst college-aged students.

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It still surprises me to hear that some institutions have yet to embrace social media tools for recruitment and retention, despite the success that many schools have had.  The obstacles to adoption seem to be related predominantly to the attitudes of the institution, rather than difficulty of implementation or expense. 

So when I read this blog post by Scott Monty, the social media head of Ford on the five stages of social media grief, I laughed because it’s something that rings true for many new initiatives anywhere, but especially for social media in higher education.

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In just about every discussion I’ve had with fellow marketers in recent months the topic of strategy vs. tactics has come up. All too often, people think that there’s one tactic that will help them win the marketing war. That line of thinking is not only unrealistic, but dangerous. When it comes to marketing, there’s rarely a panacea that will solve all your market share problems or a silver bullet that will slay the competition.

However, a sound strategy will give you a fighting chance. Unfortunately, people often dismiss strategy because, unlike tactics, it can take time to have demonstrable returns.

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We’re all familiar with the image of an enrollment funnel.  Many individuals enter as “leads” and hopefully a few make it all the way through to become enrolled students.  Traditionally, you’d want as many leads at the top of your funnel so that you can have your pick of hot prospects to convert into enrolled students.  Ideally, you’d want your funnel to look something like this.

But in today’s recruitment environment, more leads may not necessarily be such a good thing.  In fact, too many leads (especially bad leads) could turn your enrollment funnel into an enrollment bottleneck.

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Most people who follow social networks know the latest demographic trends: more older people are adopting Facebook, Twitter attracts mostly Gen Xers, and mySpace is quickly becoming a graveyard of neglected profiles.  And now another shift is starting to occur- Twitter users are becoming younger, attracting more Gen Yers.  As someone who would be considered Gen Y, I’ve definitely noticed a slew of my friends and acquaintances moving some of their social networking activity to Twitter.  During one conversation, someone commented on how cluttered looking Facebook had become and a Twitter friend replied that clutter was the reason she started using Twitter more.  

This isn’t to say that people are going off Facebook- I think there’s just a redistribution of efforts what’s balanced among networks.  A “Gen Y expert” confirms that younger people are expanding their networks through more channels because they want to “build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing." 

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Intelliworks today announced that the University of California, Riverside (UCR) has selected Intelliworks Chat to enable prospective students to connect with the university in real-time directly through its website.   

Intelliworks Chat will allow UCR’s admissions representatives to engage in a live chat with prospects and capture those interactions in the Intelliworks CRM.  UCR has been an Intelliworks CRM client since the Fall of 2008.

“We chose Intelliworks Chat as a way to improve our students’ satisfaction by decreasing response time and cutting down on email backlog,” said Emily Engelschall, director of recruitment at UCR.  “We launched Chat during a busy time of year, when students are working to get their applications in on time.  In just the past few weeks, more and more prospects are using this as a way to get their questions answered quickly.” 

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Just because some colleges fear social media doesn't mean they are not wildly curious about it.  Accordingly, software and consulting firms have come out of the woodwork to advise colleges on how to wield social Web tools to meet the expectations of students and strengthen their brands.

The relationship-management firm Intelliworks, meanwhile, has created an app that allows prospective students to submit questions, along with information about themselves, through a college’s Facebook fan page. The system logs the personal information the prospective students volunteer and analyzes it in order to help the college develop targeted recruitment campaigns. 

Intelliworks has supplied this particular function at 15 institutions, including New England College, Florida International University, and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Similar query systems have existed on college Web sites for some time, but adapting the service to Facebook “is going to where the audience is,” says Todd Gibby, the company’s CEO.

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The  Chart of the Week today on MarketingSherpa reveals some interesting information about some of the challenges facing email marketers in the year to come.  Perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that relevance remains at the top of the list.  Thankfully, many marketers are on board with the idea of relevance, and recognize its importance, but many also recognize that it's an ongoing battle to stay relevant with their subscribers.  In fact, a recent eMarketer report showed that about 2/3 of all unsubscribers do so because they viewed the content they were receiving to be irrelevant.  

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Intelliworks today announced that Chemeketa Community College of Salem, Oregon, has chosen Intelliworks' CRM to expand their marketing and recruitment efforts.  

Chemeketa chose the Intelliworks solution because of its flexibility, user-friendly interface, and software-as-a-service delivery model which does not tax IT resources to implement and maintain.  

"Our enrollment numbers are rising," said James McNicholas, student recruitment coordinator for Chemeketa.  "We want to help students and keep lines of communication open during the enrollment process.  We understand choosing a college can be tricky, Intelliworks will help us serve our customers." 

+ Read the full story

Congratulations to New England College (NEC) for being featured recently in an article published by the New Hampshire Union Leader that included mention of NEC's use of the Intelliworks Social Marketing application to reach out to and communicate with prospects on Facebook.  

According to the article,  "To streamline its Facebook conversations with prospective students, New England College in Henniker installed an application on its admissions fan page that allows prospective students to submit private questions to admissions counselors."  

The article adds, "In addition to facilitating appropriate responses to student inquiries, the application allows NEC to track interactions and build upon them with subsequent communications, said Diane Raymond, the school's director of admissions."

+ Read the full story

It still surprises me to hear that some institutions have yet to embrace social media tools for recruitment and retention, despite the success that many schools have had.  The obstacles to adoption seem to be related predominantly to attitudes of the institution, rather than difficulty of implementation or expense.  

So when I read this blog post by Scott Monty, the social media head of Ford, on the five stages of social media grief, I laughed because it's something that rings true for many new initiatives, but especially for social media in higher education.  

+ Read the full story

Intelliworks today announced that Wheaton College's graduate admissions department has selected Intelliworks' CRM to manage relationships and marketing campaigns to prospective students.  

Wheaton College, located in Wheaton, IL, will use the Intelliworks solution to create automated communications plans to help guide prospective students through the enrollment lifecycle.  They selected Intelliworks because it allowed the institution to consolidate several point systems into one comprehensive solution.

"Before we chose Intelliworks, we had been using several different systems for our email and contact management needs," said Julie Huebner, director of graduate admissions at Wheaton College.  "We had a good process in place for following up with prospects, but we wanted to optimize our inquiry response and be able to leverage information we collect across other marketing channels, such as email."  

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It’s back to school time again and I was excited to see that Beloit College’s Mindset list is out. The list is intended to give professors a better idea of where their students are coming from and it’s a fun read; but I can’t help but read it and think it’s a bit of a cynical portrayal of incoming college freshmen. 

In a USA Today article, one of the creators of the list, Ron Nief says these students associate Watergate with Monica Lewinsky rather than Nixon- a claim that I have trouble believing. I also scanned through some of the comments to the article which were filled with comments like “they think history starts from the day they were born” and “they don’t read books anymore because they’re too busy on Facebook.”

I’m pretty sure old people have been saying these types of things about young people since the beginning of time but one recurring theme that I find interesting is the perception that this generation has a shortened attention span. I don’t know if this claim can be substantiated through actual studies, but several behavioral experiments show that the young and old may not be so different.

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Want to more effectively manage all stages of your recruitment funnel? 

See how you can boost results with segmented messaging and learning centered marketing. See how institutions like yours have made purposeful connections with students through "Learning Centered Marketing".

Join us on Thursday, September 24th at 1 P.M. ET for a Webinar on higher education admissions, enrollment and recruitment best practices.

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Intelliworks today announced that The Division of Extended Learning & Outreach (DELO) at Western Kentucky University has selected Intelliworks’ SaaS-based CRM platform to administer both credit and non-credit programs and events at the institution.

The organization plans to leverage Intelliworks to send email campaigns and track outreach to constituents, as well as manage contact with individuals and organizations within the community.

"Previously, we just didn’t have an efficient way to send email campaigns, gather online inquiries and event registrations, and tie those interactions back to our contact database,” said Stacey Biggs, Marketing Manager at DELO. “Intelliworks offered a comprehensive and user-friendly system that empowers our staff to accomplish all those tasks without having to spend a lot of time learning how to use the solution." 

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While social media companies struggle to find a way to turn a profit off their technologies, at least the rest of us can be at ease knowing our efforts ultimately lead to a fattening of the bottom line.

A joint study by social media platform Wetpaint and Altimeter Group found that organizations with high levels of engagement in the social media sphere saw an increase in revenue, while organizations with low levels actually saw a dip.  Not surprisingly, researchers found that depth of engagement increased exponentially as companies expanded to more channels.

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Last month, representatives from colleges and universities ranging from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to Barcelona, Spain, gathered in Philadelphia for Personify Education 2009, the annual Intelliworks users conference. 

This year's attendees got a sneak peek at the Intelliworks roadmap and learned best practices from peer institutions and industry experts, such as Brenda Harms from Stamats and Christian Campagnuolo, former director of marketing at Valencia Community College and current president of Knight, a creative marketing firm based in Orlando, Florida, that works with a wide array of higher education institutions. 

Intelliworks customers were also introduced to the new IDEAS THAT WORK online users forum where they can share best practices and ideas with other members of the Intelliworks community.  
VIEW HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS YEAR'S EVENT

To access select presentations from this year's Personify Education conference,  visit our Slideshare page here. 

To view photos of the event, including our customer appreciation dinner on the deck of the Moshulu, visit our Facebook Page here.

Intelliworks today announced a partnership with Graduate! Philadelphia to provide its CRM technology to higher education institutions across the Greater Philadelphia region to enable better prospect management, communications and outreach to adult learners.  Graduate! Philadelphia connects students to accelerated programs that are designed especially for adults with some college experience, and supports them through graduation. 

To provide optimal services and increase retention and completion rates, advisors at Graduate! Philadelphia's 15 partner colleges and universities will use Intelliworks to manage day-to-day communications and report off all their interactions with both prospective and enrolled students. 

We rely heavily on intensive data tracking to determine why the people we're working with are going back to college and what qualities they're looking for in a college," said Hadass Sheffer, executive director, Graduate! Philadelphia.  "Intelliworks has allowed us to consolidate a number of spreadsheets and homegrown solutions that we had used previously to track this information. 

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Today we're proud to announce the launch of Intelliworks Chat, a new Web-based tool designed to optimize student service and inquiry management on college and university Web sites. Intelliworks Chat enables higher education admissions and enrollment departments to offer real-time responses to prospective student questions directly from their institution’s Web site. 

According to a recent presentation by Datamonitor, “Getting to the Good Stuff: A New Vision for CRM,” next generation constituent relationship management (CRM) requires specific features and capabilities. They add that multichannel CRM capabilities, like online chat, empower interactions to occur in multiple locations. 

Additionally, a report published by the enrollment management consulting firm Noel-Levitz noted the importance of multichannel communication in e-recruitment stating that tools such as instant messaging and online chats can greatly enhance the overall effectiveness of e-recruitment.” (Source: Noel-Levitz, James Tower, and the National Research Center for College and University Admissions) 

Intelliworks Chat delivers an intuitive administrative interface, plus a number of robust features and capabilities to help deliver a better online experience for prospective students, including the ability to respond to prospect inquiries in real-time, integrate chats with Intelliworks CRM for a 360-degree view of your interactions with students, collect visitor information via pre- and post-chat surveys, and much more.

“In working with colleges and universities across the country we identified the need for better communications with prospective students across multiple channels. However, admissions and enrollment departments rarely have the resources to dedicate a full-time staff member to this kind of online communication,” said Todd Gibby, CEO, Intelliworks. 

Gibby adds, “We found that existing chat solutions, while feature rich, offered difficult to use interfaces that made adoption amongst part-time chat agents difficult. We believe Intelliworks Chat will lower the barrier for many colleges and universities looking to engage students on their Web sites by providing higher education professionals with an intuitive interface for chatting and tracking interactions with prospects.” 

While most of my friends are pretty technology savvy, they’ve been slow to jump onto the Twitter bandwagon. There may be several reasons why, but the overarching reason is that Twitter isn’t as popular with Millennials/Gen Y as it is with Gen X. Over the last few weeks, I have noticed more and more of my friends signing up for the services, and I wonder how long they’ll last on it.

Apparently, the “orphan tweet” is rampant throughout Twitter. It’s not uncommon for someone to sign up, post one Tweet (my favorite: This technology is awesome. If you haven’t signed up already, do it now so we can all stay connected. Its much easier than email or phone.) and then forget about it. But we’ve been hearing for a while that Twitter has low retention rates- it’s not new news. We’ve seen from Forrester’s Social Technographics ladder that although many people don’t participate, they’re still involved by consuming blogs and other media.

One blogger at .edustir sites the 90-9-1 rule which states that 90% of online communities are non-contributors, 9% contribute some, and 1% contributes most, which he calls the “free rider problem.” While the precision of the 90-9-1 rule is obviously up for debate, the bigger point is that most people don’t participate. This can be especially tricky for marketers trying to decide what information is most relevant for their audience.

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As the higher education sector finds itself struggling under a heavy course load — short-term admissions problems made worse by a systemic financial crisis—leading-edge universities are studying up on CRM. 

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We're thrilled with the response we've seen this year from customers on presenting at the Personify Education conference this July in Philadelphia. This year we had a number of proposals submitted.  

One of the proposals, "Moving from a Monologue to a Dialogue in Marketing" was submitted by Matt Gehrett, Executive Director of Continuing Education at Fresno Pacific University. In an effort to make the most of its limited marketing budget, Gehrett looked towards building a strategy that would help the organization shift away from traditional marketing tactics, which focused on one-way flow of information, into a conversation centered around student input. 

Gehrett was kind enough to chat with us about the inspiration for his upcoming presentation and the challenges he's seeing in higher education marketing:  

INTELLIWORKS: Your presentation at this year’s Personify Education conference is titled “Moving from a Monologue to a Dialogue in Marketing.” How did you come up with this topic and what are some examples of what you’re doing at Fresno Pacific University to transform your marketing conversations with students from a monologue to a dialogue?

MATT GEHRETT: I actually came up with the topic for this presentation from last year’s Personify Education conference. One of the speakers described the differences in the way President Obama (at that time, candidate Obama) used Twitter compared to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He said that the Obama campaign was listening to more people on Twitter than people were listening to the campaign. In comparison, Clinton and McCain were just using Twitter as a one way broadcast. In other words, Obama was having a dialogue with his supporters and not a monologue. This made me think about our marketing and how it was very traditional in nature and mostly focused on one way communication. Since that time, we have tried to use electronic tools (Intelliworks, Survey Monkey, Facebook, etc.) to make our marketing more of a dialogue instead of a monologue.

INTELLIWORKS: You presented a version of this speech at the last UCEA Marketing Seminar in Scottsdale, Arizona. How well would you say continuing education programs are using tools such as email, surveys, landing pages and social media to enhance their marketing efforts? 

MATT GEHRETT: It seemed that many of the schools in attendance at the conference are moving in this direction. I believe most of us are pioneers right now but it seems that this is what the future holds for us. As older individuals continue to populate social networks, we will need to dialogue with them using these tools to meet their continuing education needs. Also, schools that are not doing this are going to be quickly left behind. The competition is just too great out there. 

INTELLIWORKS: What are some of the main challenges facing Fresno Pacific University when it comes to attracting and retaining adult learners and non-traditional students? 

MATT GEHRETT: Shrinking budgets and growing competition are the main challenges for Fresno Pacific University. We need to be smarter and do more with less, while our competitors seem to have unlimited budgets. With tools like Intelliworks, we are finding ways to stretch our dollars and compete in an effective way. 

INTELLIWORKS: To date, how would you rank the effectiveness of each of your various marketing tactics? Is there any one that stands out or exceeded your expectations? 

MATT GEHRETT: At this time, in Continuing Education, we are holding our own on enrollment. When you think of what is happening in the world, I would have to say that this is not too bad. We have cut our marketing/program budget by almost 25% and we are still hanging in there. I would say our marketing tactics are working. I wish enrollment would have doubled or tripled but we are not there yet. One tactic that has worked quite well is having current students and prospective students request course listings via the web. I know this is not revolutionary but since we now have Intelliworks fully integrated into our enrollment processes, we can facilitate this in a very easy manner. We are now only printing course listings on demand and saving money. And, we have a better chance that the course listing does not end up in the trash and will lead to more enrollments. We are also using something called ‘triggermail’ that is making a difference in enrollments. To find out more about this, you will have to attend my session at the conference. 

INTELLIWORKS: You recently opened a satellite location off-site from the main campus at Fresno Pacific University. What were the school’s motivations in seeking this new space, and what reaction have you seen from the community? 

MATT GEHRETT: Our satellite locations house our degree completion and graduate programs. We had to open new locations because they were busting at the seams. We did not have enough classroom space to run all of our various programs. The communities have appreciated our bringing services to them. The closer we get to the students, the more they like it. Just recently, we approved a Center for Online Learning (a virtual center) to house the operations needed to move programs even closer to the student. At Fresno Pacific University, we strive to bring flexibility and convenience for the student without sacrificing academic excellence. 

INTELLIWORKS: What did you enjoy most about the conference? What do you hope to accomplish at this year’s event?

MATT GEHRETT: Each of the speakers engaged my brain and made me think deeply. The sessions were practical and allowed me time to network with individuals just like myself. My marketing specialist and I have put many of the ideas into place that we captured at the conference. Also, I enjoyed learning more about Intelliworks and the plans for the future of this software service. This year, I plan to learn and network but also share ideas through my presentation. I really enjoy learning with and from my peers. I expect it to be another great event! 

During an email exchange about social media the other day, a client asked me a seemingly simple question, "I now have the Facebook Fan page, we have a Twitter account, we have the old Facebook Group, we have two LinkedIn Groups (one for grad, one for undergrad), we have RSS and we have the electronic newsletter campaigns, SO HOW DO I KNOW WHAT TO SEND WHERE?";

My general thinking here is that content trumps channel. In other words, regardless of the social network, you want to make sure the content you're sending out is relevant to your specific audience. Some content may be more relevant to alumni, other content may be more relevant to current students and prospects.

Social networking tools let you get very segmented since members can self-select when, where and how they want to interact with your institution. However, with content that's relevant to all your constituents...why not broadcast that across all your web properties?

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Florida International University (FIU) College of Business Administration is one of the first schools to use the Intelliworks Social Marketing application as part of its student recruitment strategy.  

Intelliworks' new tool connects the CRM systems of university admissions departments with the schools' social networking platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. The goal is to help schools better mange their multiple online identities while logging data about prospective students and tracking their interactions with the school online. Intelliworks Social Marketing allows schools to proactively contact prospects once they become Facebook fans and run personalized campaigns.

"The world has changed in the sense that all these social networking sites and tools have come of age, and we've found that more and more of our prospective students - which are young professionals aged 25-30 - have grown up not knowing a world without computers," explained Luis Casas, director of marketing, communications and recruiting for FUI College of Business Administration. " Social networking has become very popular and just a natural place for us to communicate with them. We had been doing it on our own and had very successful campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn and have a Twitter account, but when Intelliworks told us they were coming out with a new tool whereby students could communicate with us directly through Facebook, we were interested."

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Are you looking to connect with students on today's most popular social networks?  If so, you're not alone.  

A recent study conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 90% of admissions departments feel that social media is "somewhat to very important" to their future recruitment strategy.

However, while most institutions recognize the potential of social media to help recruit students and market their programs, few have figured out ways to integrate these interactions into their broader relationship management initiatives.  

INTRODUCING INTELLIWORKS SOCIAL MARKETING 

Colleges and universities face a number of challenges in communicating with prospects on social networks, including:

• Managing multiple identities/logins;

• Having limited insight into previous interactions with students;

• Responding securely and privately to urgent student questions; 

• Integrating their social networking activity with other marketing and relationship management activity.

Intelliworks Social Marketing offers a central platform to help you manage day-to-day with relationships with prospects and students on Facebook.  

By embedding the Intelliworks Social Marketing application on your institution's Facebook page, you are able to publish content to your entire community on Facebook, deliver personalized communications to individual members and track every interaction with your constituents. 

What can Intelliworks Social Marketing do for you?

"Intelliworks Social Marketing offers us the ability to leverage social networks in a profound way," says one user.

"This tool helps us build community and relationships with our constituencies.  It facilitates our integrated marketing approach by putting an exclamation point on our ability to connect social networking to CRM capability.  By connecting with our students and alumni around the world, we are able now to sustain a learning community with them well beyond their years as students.  Now we can connect, interact, track and follow our alumni and prospects where they are on the web."

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"Support-Staff Jobs Double in 20 Years, Outpacing Enrollment." 

With that eye-catching headline on April 24th, the Chronicle of Higher Education kicked off its latest installment of an occasional series exploring college  costs.  What follows is a comprehensive look at the findings of a study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, as well as "The Chron's" own research.  This development is generally portrayed as a problematic one; and Richard K. Vetter, director of the center that conducted the study, asserts that "It's time for higher education to go on a diet."

I found this to be an informative and fascinating read that touched on all of the bases of what is clearly an important topic.  But one thing nagged at me throughout as missing from the discussion:

If institutions are so fat, then why do so many of them appear to be starving?!

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The CollegeBound Network (CBN) is partnering with Intelliworks, a provider of relationship management solutions for higher education, to provide schools with a lead generation platform designed to improve student conversions.  CBN specializes in recruitment lead generation solutions for 900 educational institutions and 3,500 campuses through portals that include CollegeSurfing.com and TopCareerSchools.com. 

In addition to CBN's marketing and lead generation services, CBN college, university, and career school partners will now have the option to leverage Intelliworks' Web-based constituent relationship management (CRM) solutions for higher education.  This system helps schools nurture and cultivate relationships with leads delivered through CBN's portals and Web destinations.

"Schools are tasked with educating prospective students about their institutions in a way that transcends the clutter of the Internet and helps drive informed enrollment decisions," added Intelliworks CEO Todd Gibby.  "The combined CBN-Intelliworks offering will be instrumental not only in driving valuable leads, but also converting those prospects into enrolled students."

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Have a secret you're dying to get out?  Submit your speaking proposal for Personify Education 09, the Intelliworks Users' Conference.  We're currently accepting submissions to speak at this year's event in Philadelphia, and we hope you'll throw your hat in the ring.  Do you have to be an Intelliworks customer to participate?  Not necessarily.  All you need is a passion for sharing your recruitment, admissions and enrollment success stories with an audience of your peers.  

DOWNLOAD YOUR PROPOSAL FORM...

Not sure what to talk about?
Here are some ideas:

• Are your email campaigns driving a crazy amount of traffic to your web site?

• Do students compliment you on your school's customer service?

• Have you figured out how to incorporate social media into your relationship management strategy?

• Are you growing enrollment, creating operational efficiency or driving revenue for your institution?

Still not sure what to talk about?
Check out some of our expert presentations from last year's conference here.

The deadline for this year's proposals is May 16th, so submit early and submit often (if you have more than one session idea...we'd love to hear them all)!

Those who submit a proposal by the May 16th deadline will be entered automatically into a raffle to win a free iPod Touch! The winner will be announced at this year's client appreciation event during the conference.

As in all courtships, if a person you’ve shown an interest in doesn’t reciprocate that interest it’s probably because (s)he’s just not that in to you. For this reason, many colleges are paying extra attention to those students who show early on that they’re ready to commit. 

According to a recent report in the Boston Globe, “In the increasingly tense courtship of college admissions, more selective schools are smiling upon high school students who show sincere interest in attending, closely tracking such things as whether they visited campus, responded to recruiting messages, or even joined an online chat with an admissions officer.

Makes perfect sense doesn’t it? Why show some love to someone if you know your love will go unrequited?

Many schools waste precious time going after students simply because they meet a set of demographics or academic criteria that the school is targeting. It’s assumed that the prospect’s a good fit. 

Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. In today’s economic climate where students and families are evaluating their financial options closer than ever before, predicting yield is becoming an even bigger challenge for many colleges. This is one reason why many have opted to focus on interest first.

How are you identifying those with the most interest in your school?

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In the last decade, the explosion of technology has resulted in a host of new options for Executive MBA Programs to market and strengthen relationships with students, alumni, and business leaders. 

Executive MBA Council corporate member Intelliworks was born from the desire to apply the latest technology tools in helping educational institutions enhance their relationships and improve their efficiency. “Our mission is to make it possible for departments, colleges, and universities to connect with their customers,” says Todd Gibby, president and CEO of Intelliworks.

Building on the foundation of customer relationship management (CRM) techniques, the firm develops and implements technology-driven solutions for the higher education market, including Executive MBA Programs. CRM involves taking a comprehensive approach to managing relationships between an organization and its stakeholders. “That really is deep in our DNA,” says Gibby.

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A recent study by the internet measurement firm ComScore found that more people with low incomes connect to Facebook through their mobile phones than those with high incomes - the reason being that their phones are often their sole source of internet connectivity. 

In fact, many are finding that socioeconomic status is the most important variable in determining how people interact on the social web. The presentation below outlines 5 social media myths identified by the marketing firm RTCRM.

After looking over some of the slides from their presentation, I was inspired to think about the social media myths I’ve encountered. The following are myths that impact higher education and ways to overcome them. 

Myth #1: Social media is JUST a direct marketing tool
Social media should not be seen as simply a means to an end or in the same category as a direct mail piece. When you send out postcards to students and they respond by requesting to be on the mailing list, the postcard has done its job. 

With social media, the end goal for any interactions will always be to form lifelong relationships with your constituents. Relationships aren’t built overnight and your social media efforts should reflect that. All social media initiatives should be strategic decisions with long-term goals in mind. 
Learn more about this myth.

Myth #2: Social media tools are an inexpensive and easy way to reach my constituents
Although tools like blogs, Facebook and Twitter may be free and easy to join, you can’t just sign into Facebook and then never maintain your school’s site. Not only do you have to work to keep in contact with any constituents you interact with on these sites, but you have to make sure that any content you put up is relevant and will keep them coming back. 

Although tools like blogs, Facebook and Twitter may be free and easy to join, you can’t just sign into Facebook and then never maintain your school’s site. Not only do you have to work to keep in contact with any constituents you interact with on these sites, but you have to make sure that any content you put up is relevant and will keep them coming back. So although it may look cheap to sign up for these free services, it’s important to keep labor costs in mind. 
Learn more about this myth.

Myth #3: I cannot measure ROI for my social media tools 
Social media is difficult to measure in terms of traditional ROI, but there are some metrics you can use to track your success:

• Number of new page views for old posts- means your content is coming up in organic search results 

• Returning visitors- showing a building of a community, establishes expertise 

• Trend in comments/feedback- shows engagement with community 

• Trackbacks in other blogs- speaks to expertise

Learn more about this myth.

Myth #4: Social media is optional
Now that almost everyone you know is on at least one social media site, your institution no longer has the option to “opt out.” True, you don’t have to build a Facebook page, but if you don’t, someone else will. Rather than deciding whether or not to join the conversation, you should consider how you can contribute to the conversation that’s already occurring among your constituents.
Learn more about this myth.

Myth #5 Social media is a niche activity
The popularity of social media tools like Facebook has recently exploded, but many of the Web 2.0 tenants like sharing and collaboration have been around for a while, permeating many of the most popular websites. Amazon.com, the New York Times and photo sharing sites have been around for a while and they let us comment, review and collaborate. 

These ideas are starting to seep into the classroom- online universities are starting to use social media tools to allow students who may be physically far away to share and interact.
Learn more about this myth.

Myth #6: My success in social media is determined by the number of friends/followers I attract
Just like in the admissions process, quality always trumps quantity. Worrying about quality over quantity applies to both followers and content. Rather than trying to cast as wide of a net as possible and bringing in anyone and everyone to your website/blog/forum it’s important to send out a targeted message to students who are likely to engage with your institution. 

Throwing out lots of useless information or talking ‘at’ your constituents will also have you returning with an empty net. Your goal is not just to collect lists of names, but to start relationships and dialog with your constituents.
Learn more about this myth.

Myth #7: Social Media is Just for Teenagers
The definition of a “traditional” college student is changing quickly- no longer is this student 20 and going to a four-year college. The over 30 demographic is the new majority on campus. But before you think you have to develop new strategies for reaching this student, consider the following:

•The boomer demographic, especially women, is the fastest growing group of social networkers 
•41% of boomers have visited social networking sites and 61% had visited sites with streaming or downloadable video
•75% of our college crowd, young adults aged 18-24 have a profile, 57% of online adults 25-34, 30% of online adults 35-44

Did you know there are over 250 articles in the Intelliworks Library, a wiki-based tool intended to provide detailed instructions on each aspect of the Intelliworks product, all meant to help you adopt and use Intelliworks?

We’ve been trying to find ways to help customers leverage the resources found in the library, and rather than force you to come to the library, we’ve brought the library to you. 

As of this month, you can now search the product documentations and tutorials found in the Intelliworks Library directly from the sidebar of your Intelliworks product. Simply enter a word or phrase and push Enter. 

 

You can expect to find How To articles, Best Practices, and videos of our previously held Events.

So go ahead - enter a word or phrase and browse the results from the Intelliworks Library.