The Intellitimes

There seems to be a lot of buzz these days about the changing role of technology at colleges and universities and of the people who manage it.  This often comes up when speaking with people on campus; and recently a number of articles in the higher education trade press offered a range of perspectives on this topic.  Three particular pieces caught my eye over the last month or so. Each of these articles raises important points about the evolving landscape of technology at academic institutions and the future role of technology administrators.  

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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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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.

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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I spent a few great days at the UCEA Annual Conference last week in San Francisco.  The highlight for me was listening to Tina Seelig’s keynote “Entrepreneurship is an Extreme Sport.”  Tina is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering.  In addition to having built an amazing program and achieved many professional successes, for which she has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, Tina is also a dynamic and motivating speaker.  During her presentation, she shared great stories about her students at Stanford, lessons to be learned from entrepreneurship, and opportunities to make your place in the world. 

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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!

We're proud to announce the featured speakers for this year's Personify Education, Intelliworks Users' Conference, this July in Washington, D.C.  Already we've had a good response from a number of clients also looking to present at this year's conference.  This year's featured speakers bring several decades worth of industry expertise to the conference ranging from student services and enrollment management to technology services and fundraising.

CLIENT KEYNOTE

This year's client keynote presentation will be conducted by Becky Vasquez and Bill Hampton of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  During their session, Becky and Bill will discuss the steps their institution took in evaluating their CRM initiatives across their entire worldwide campus, including strategy and planning, CRM vendor selection and technology implementation and training for more than 300 users.

FEATURED PARTNERS

As many of you know, earlier in the year Intelliworks announced a partnership with DemandEngine a leading provide of strategic consulting and interactive enrollment marketing services for higher education.  We're excited to have two representatives from DemandEngine present this year during both our general and break-out sessions.  First, Jennifer Copeland, General Manager at DemandEngine, will present on "Changing Your Relationships in the Age of Relevance" where she will highlight how the potential of CRM lies not just in technology itself, but in the process of using technology along with an in-depth understanding of your audience to drive unique, valuable student interactions and respond at the right time to their needs.  Second, Stephanie Platterer, Director of Marketing at the University of Minnesota School of Continuing Education and DemandEngine Consultant, will present on "How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Strategy."

Lastly, back by popular demand, we have last year's keynote presenter, Brenda Harms, Ph.D. from Stamats returning to lead two hands on break-out sessions on some of the latest research conducted by her organization.  Last year, Brenda touched briefly on the results of Stamats’ annual TALK® study.  The TALK® study is one of the higher education industry’s benchmark research resources, offering insight into the Trends, Attitudes, Lifestyles, and Knowledge (T.A.L.K.) of traditional-aged, college-bound students and, in a separate study, their parents.  Due to the overwhelming interest we had last year on this topic, this year Dr. Harms will host one session focused on their TeensTALK®  study results, and another session on their Adult Students TALK® study.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

There's still plenty of time to submit your proposal and share your knowledge.  The deadline for proposals this year is May 28.  Feel free to contact us with any questions.

DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER

Not quite ready to present, but still want to benefit from all the wonderful content at this year's event?  Don't forget to register at our conference Web site.  We look forward to seeing you this year in Washington, D.C.

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

We're very pleased to welcome Melissa T. Terrio to Intelliworks as our new Client Success Account Manager.

As Account Manager Melissa will serve as a liaison for our clients and the Intelliworks team.  She will be your advocate, cheerleader, point of escalation and point of contact for health checks, additional service needs or questions beyond your day-to-day use of Intelliworks. 

Melissa joins us after thirteen years working in higher education.  Her experience ranges from alumni relations to undergraduate, graduate, MBA and international admissions.  Melissa's higher education experience will serve to not only help our clients with developing their business processes, but also applying best practices to their use of Intelliworks' products.  In addition to serving our customers, she will play a big role in helping our staff understand the unique work flow of our clients.  Melissa is looking forward to working with you and helping you to be successful in all your interactions with Intelliworks.  

Please join me in welcoming her to our team.  You can reach Melissa here. 

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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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's hard to believe that another year has come and gone.  While the world certainly saw its ups and downs in 2009, we were fortunate here at Intelliworks to have another tremendous year of expansion and growth.  For those of you who missed it, last year we rounded out our solutions in a big way by introducing major enhancements to our program admissions module, as well as launching our new multi-channel marketing capabilities, which include integration with Facebook and Live Chat.  

Additionally, we were able to attend and present at a number of industry events, including conferences like UCEA, CCA and Stamats.  However, the highlight of our year (as always) was our annual users' conference, Personify Education, in Philadelphia.  We can't tell you how happy we were to connect face-to-face with customers and have everyone share their ideas.  Your enthusiasm and creative use of our products was truly energizing.  

As a result of our customers' feedback, we also introduced our Ideas That Work online forum where Intelliworks customers can share their best practices with one another on an ongoing basis.

It's fair to say that 2009 was a great year for Intelliworks and we owe it all to you.  Thank you.  

As we gear up for the New Year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of our thoughts from 2009.  In this month's newsletter you'll find three of our most popular blog posts from last year.  We hope you'll keep reading and sharing your ideas for future stories.

What's in store for 2010?  Stay tuned for some exciting new developments that we'll announce in the first part of the year, as well as a call for speakers for this year's conference, which will be held near our hometown in Washington, D.C.

Thanks again for a great year.  We look forward to an incredible 2010.

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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Recently, Intelliworks had the pleasure of sponsoring the Stamats Integrated Marketing: Graduate Student Marketing Conference in Boston.  Among the attendees were deans and directors of marketing, admissions and enrollment from graduate programs around the country.  For many, the challenge was clear, there’s a lot of noise out there with respect to recruiting graduate students in today’environment.

Todd Gibby, CEO of Intelliworks, shared his thoughts on the matter during his presentation on Day 2 of the conference.

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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." 

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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."

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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 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.

The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, which has used Intelliworks in its admissions process since July 2007 reports a marked increase in electronic recruitment efforts. 

In the past, according to the school, inquiries that came in would be responded to and thrown out, without any follow-up. Admissions representatives would attend college fairs, but no tracking was being done to see if these initiatives were effective. 

Additionally, due to an influx of applications resulting from the recent economic downturn, the school needed to balance the quantity of applicants with the quality the program expects. 

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I'll be blunt: email marketing works.

There’s no doubt that it can be one of the most powerful (and cost-effective) eMarketing Techniques in your toolkit.

But one of the problems we’ve seen with email marketing has always been the fact that on average, marketers should only expect an open rate between 20-40%.

Relatively speaking, this could be viewed as a high amount of people viewing your message. And if they’re not viewing it, it’s most likely because of the following three reasons:

1. The spam filter got to it

2. They were so inundated, they simply didn’t open it

3. They accidentally deleted it

My concern is with reason #1...spam filters.

Thanks to CAN-SPAM compliance laws put into place by Congress in 2003, we have to be very careful who we send email to: only those who ‘opted-in.'

If I’m at a trade show and I receive 20 business cards from interested prospects, I want to make sure that as many of those individuals as possible get my email. Yet, my open rate is still only 20-40%!

Increasing the click-through rate is a huge part of it too (and moreover, increasing the conversion rate), but what can I do to increase that open rate?

Personally, I believe the best way to improve open-rates is through follow-up.

Think about these types of individuals:

• They want your stuff, but it goes straight to the spam filter and they don’t even know it

• They’re incredibly busy, and only check the email that they know is important

You have an opportunity during each email campaign to improve open-rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. We highly recommend segmenting your list (the smaller and more personal the segments are, the better). Also, split testing can be very informative to help you determine stronger subject lines, email layouts, and more.

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Intelliworks may be coming to a city near you! Be sure to visit us at one of the following locations for a free half-day seminar on admissions and recruitment best practices, and a complimentary networking luncheon.

We're pleased to announce the launch of the “Intelliworks Days” road show, a two-city tour that will take place on Thursday, February 26 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Fresno, California.

Seminar attendees will have the opportunity to network with peers from other institutions in their region, and learn practical advice on how Intelliworks can help them with:

• Turning prospective students into enrolled students

• Leveraging social networking to enhance recruitment 

• Managing more applicants with fewer resources

• Creating operational efficiencies in managing enrollment

• Enhancing reporting and analytics 

For more information, please register at for the event in your region.

INTELLIWORKS DAY EAST @ THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26 FROM 9AM TO 1PM

INTELLIWORKS DAY WEST @ FRESNO PACIFIC UNIVERSITY - 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26 FROM 10AM TO 2PM

THE CHALLENGE. The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania stands at the forefront of education, research and policy studies on the processes, nature and consequences of existing and emerging media. However, the school had relied on traditional communications, graduate fairs and word-of-mouth to attract students. However, with a small staff dedicated to admissions, they needed to find a more efficient way to market to prospects and maintain relationships with alumni. 

Additionally, due to an influx of applications resulting from the recent economic downturn, the school needed to balance the quantity of applicants with the quality the program expects. 

THE SOLUTION? Learn how Intelliworks helped the Annenberg School for Communication manage its entire student enrollment lifecycle - from initial inquiry management and program marketing to application review and admissions processing. 

WATCH THE CASE STUDY

Learn how the Annenberg School for Communication was able to leverage the Intelliworks system to: 

• Increase inbound prospect inquiries

• Streamline day-to-day communications with prospects

• Enhance marketing outreach to prospects and alumni

• Manage an increase in inquiries and applications

In their last issue, University Business recognized the "50 Best Branding Ideas" of 2008. The article looked at some of the innovative new ways that colleges and universities across the country were communicating their brands to prospects, current students and alumni. Among those recognized was Intelliworks customer University of Connecticut for its "Always Part of U" campaign, an integrated campaign that featured a unique Web destination and a national television commercial used to promote school loyalty.

Recently, we spoke to Dave Martel, Director of Marketing Communications at the University of Connecticut, to discuss the school's motivation behind the campaign and some of the results they've seen to date.


INTELLIWORKS: This fall, UCONN debuted its “Always Part of U” marketing campaign. Why did you feel the need for this new direction, and what sparked the idea behind the campaign?

MARTEL: In previous University commercials, we were underutilizing a great opportunity to strengthen the emotional connection we have with our alumni.

As such, we headed in a new creative direction informed by research. We did an evaluation of best practices, we examined themes from competitors, and we assessed what worked and what didn't. Ultimately, we discovered what underlying themes added to the impact of commercials we viewed and then used that as the basis for developing our own creative approach. 

INTELLIWORKS: In addition to the TV ad, it looks like you viewed this as an opportunity to really connect the University of Connecticut community across a number of different channels. You had a unique web destination where you allowed visitors to download ringtones and screensavers, connect with peers across a number of social networking groups, and share their own photos and videos about their experiences at UCONN. 

What was the most challenging part of bringing all these pieces together? What advice do you have for other schools looking to put together an integrated, cross-channel campaign like Always Part of U? 

MARTEL: The most challenging part was having that "Ah ha!" moment with less than 30 days until the commercial was scheduled to make its national debut. 

Our team was enthused to use some more of our technical skills to advance the brand using social media and other Web 2.0 innovations. 

In terms of lessons learned and advice I'd give to others...allow for more than 30 days to move from end to end. 

INTELLIWORKS: What were some of the results you’ve seen since launching the campaign in September? 

MARTEL: Results have been impressive. We've had impressive traffic patterns in the thousands and that has stayed steady. We've given away thousands and thousands of downloads, and people are posting their own photos and videos. We've really connected with our alumni and our student body. 

INTELLIWORKS: Given this as a case study, what are your thoughts on how higher education marketing has evolved? 

MARTEL: The market for higher education has grown highly competitive. We have a product, an experience, to sell and if we aren't meeting demand and expectations we will lose valuable space in the market. 

INTELLIWORKS: What’s next for UCONN and the "Always Part of U" campaign? What are your goals for the future? Where do you see UCONN taking its marketing initiatives over the next couple of years? 

MARTEL: We're planning an "Always Part of U" remix to see how we can keep the concept fresh and innovative with the potential to extend the campaign another year. We're also looking at new ways to leverage the campaign using Intelliworks. 

We're planning to use Intelliworks to deploy communications to our admitted students introducing them to the "Always Part of U" concept and remind them that they're about to embark on a life-long journey with UCONN. 

As far as big picture, our goals are to continue to expand and grow our electronic communications programs for our audiences. The key to success is clear - personalized. We must communicate with our audience where they are, in the ways they prefer. 

Not long ago I had a conversation with a client who described to me how her department used to handle inbound inquiries from prospective students. It was a two-step process:

STEP 1: A student would request more information about the program;

STEP 2: Someone would send the information that was requested. 

That's it. No big deal. No pressure. Also, no follow up. 

While the program was certainly responsive to the inquiries it would receive, it was not capitalizing on an opportunity to build long-term relationships with prospects by following up with them after their initial inquiries. They simply relied on faith that prospects would review the materials that were sent and return if they had more questions. 

Unfortunately, in a world where competition is just a click away, prospective students may not simply return to your Web site after their initial inquiry. This is where planning a "drip marketing" strategy can have a big impact. 

Read the full story

Last year, we began our "Share Your Knowledge" initiative where we ask the Intelliworks community to share their opinions on enrollment and recruitment, and share best practices with their peers. So far, the results have been great with customers presenting webinars, writing blog posts, or participating in surveys to help inform the community. We're happy to continue this new tradition with our next Webinar featuring a case study of the Intelliworks solution. 

Join us on Thursday, January 29th at 1:00p.m. for a FREE Webinar "Graduate Admissions Best Practices from Soup to Nuts" featuring Joanne Murray, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. 

During her presentation, Murray will demonstrate how her admissions department has been able to manage its entire student enrollment lifecycle - from initial inquiry management and program marketing to application review and admissions processing - using a suite of tools from Intelliworks.

Webinar attendees will learn how the admissions department at the Annenberg School for Communication:

• Improved overall operational efficiency

• Streamlined the admissions process

• Enhanced marketing and outreach

• Managed an increase in inquiries and applications

This past year has been a rollercoaster for higher education recruitment and marketing professionals.  The global economic crisis, combined with shifting demographics, has made it tougher than ever for colleges and universities to attract the right students in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

Add on top of that the growing influence of game-changing technologies, such as micro-blogging and social networks, and you've got a confluence of events that could drive even the most mild-mannered person crazy trying to keep up.  As such, we wanted to take a moment to hear from you (the experts) to learn what you're doing to keep pace in today's rapidly changing higher education recruitment and marketing landscape.

We're inviting readers to take a brief survey on the challenges you're facing today.  We hope the results will help inform how we tackle the year ahead from a product perspective, but also provide some insight to you on what your peers are doing to stay ahead of the curve.

Results of the survey will appear in a future edition of the newsletter.

Read the full story

DM News recently published a story that outlines some of the tactics being employed at colleges across the country to boost recruitment efforts.  We're proud to say that the piece includes an interview with Intelliworks customer New England College, as well as Todd Gibby, CEO of Intelliworks.

According to the story, "NEC's heavy use of Web-based communications aligns with trends in higher education.  The Internet has become one of the primary ways that prospective students gather information and express interest in a particular school, leading to a need for CRM systems that can manage leads from print to e-mail and even social networks."

Read the full story

As competition for students increases, graduate programs are faced with the challenge of not only maintaining program quality, but meeting enrollment and yield goals.  Unfortunately, while the global economy continues to decline, many graduate admissions professionals are tasked with doing both with fewer resources than ever before.

Join us on Thursday, January 29th at 1:00p.m. for a FREE Webinar "Graduate Admissions Best Practices from Soup to Nuts" featuring Joanne Murray, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

During her presentation, Murray will demonstrate how her admissions department has been able to manage its entire student enrollment lifecycle - from initial inquiry management and program marketing to application review and admissions processing - using a suite of tools from Intelliworks.

Webinar attendees will learn how the admissions department at the Annenberg School for Communication:

• Improved overall operational efficiency

• Streamlined the admissions process

• Enhanced marketing and outreach

• Managed an increase in inquiries and applications

As the economy sours, many adult learners are turning towards online education options to enhance their jobs prospects and/or cut higher education costs.  It's no wonder why public, private and for-profit institutions are expanding their online and hybrid learning offerings.

Recently, we spoke with Terry Grant, director of enrollment at American Public University System (APUS), an emerging for-profit online learning organization comprised of American Public University and American Military University. In this interview, Terry shares her views on the changing landscape of recruitment and retention for non-traditional and adult education, and the recent success experienced at APUS. 

INTELLIWORKS: Why do you think there's been a large surge in online learning enrollment over past few years?

GRANT: Numbers of non-traditional students are increasing nationwide.  Typically, these students are juggling work, family and other obligations that make attendance at "brick and mortar" campuses challenging and inconvenient.  

Distance learning - especially at institutions like APUS that use an asynchronous delivery method - allows students to fit education into their lives with minimal impact. 

INTELLIWORKS:   What challenges do you face in recruiting adult learners and non-traditional students?

GRANT: We're in a very crowded, highly competitive marketplace.  Our greatest challenge is in getting our message - that APUS is the best choice in online education - to the right people at the right time while maintaining a very personal touch.

That's why we chose Intelliworks as our CRM solution.  It gives us the flexibility in message creation and delivery that we need to face this challenge.  

Right now, we're actually in a test phase with Intelliworks Marketing Automation.  We plan to start using it for our "drip marketing" campaigns where we'll send our prospective students periodic emails addressing issues pertaining to online learning.

We'll be able to customize these emails based on their interests and where they are in the application process.  Timing is crucial in regards to recruiting adult learners so we want to make sure we stay on their radar if and when they decide to come back to school.

INTELLIWORKS: What are some of the enrollment trends you're seeing at APUS, and how do you plan to manage your workload and increase retention rates?

GRANT: Enrollment at APUS continues to grow, exceeding our expectations.  The way we've been able to get so much efficiency out of the Intelliworks system has been fabulous.  It's changed the way our reps do their work - allowing them to manage their workload and keep us scalable.

Every admissions representative manages hundreds of inquiries and applicants that come in each month.  We push out hundreds of email campaigns and effectively manage students starting classes on a wide range of dates.

At the end of the day, it's all about building relationships.  From day one, students need to feel that the school knows them, understands their needs and cares about their success.  Managing expectations is key.  A solid communication plan and systems that support it are also vital.

We're happy to announce that Intelliworks has recently joined the blogosphere with the launch of our new EduMusings.  This site features periodic musings on the world of higher education relationship management from the team at Intelliworks (and our customers).  

The blogs are a place for us to share our thoughts on the higher education landscape, and hopefully provide some insight on our company mission, offer best practices on the use of our products and serve as a helpful marketing resource for our customers.  

Like everything we do, we value your feedback and hope you'll join the discussion by offering comments on some of our recent posts or by contributing your thoughts as a guest blogger.

Also, we're working on a client-only community forum where you'll be able to interact with other Intelliworks users in a one-on-one or group environment.  We hope to have more information on that in our next newsletter so stay tuned.

Want to contribute? Send us your ideas.

Many of you may remember Luis Casas, Director of Marketing and Recruiting at Florida International University's College of Business, from his presentation at this year's Personify Education conference. 

During his presentation, Luis highlighted the school's Uncommon Thinkerscampaign and how FIU was able to generate a lot of buzz for its programs through an integrated, multi-channel approach that included search engine marketing, social networking, email and CRM. 

Last month the FIU Business newsletter, Business Networks, profiled Luis and the work he's done to attract "millennials" to FIU.  According to Casas, “Enrollment in the past two years has gone up by about forty percent at a time when other business schools are struggling.”

Truly remarkable.  Congratulations to Luis and his team for continued recognition on a great campaign.

Read the full story

Can't get enough of your regional Intelliworks representatives?  We're taking our show on the road. We will be exhibiting (and presenting) at a number of conferences throughout October.  

Please let us know if you'll be in attendance at any of these events, or if you'd like for us to stop by while we're in your town.

UCEA Mid-Atlantic: October 1-3 - Wilmington, DE
Northeast Regional Account Executive, Darrin Schmautz, will be on a panel with Intelliworks partner Inside Track on October 1 at 3:30pm to discuss "Taking the first step toward program improvement" 

National Council on Continuing Education and Training Conference: 
October 5-7 - Cleveland, OH

UCEA West: October 15-17 - Missoula, MT

UCEA Mid-America: October 15-17 - Kansas City, MO
Todd Gibby presenting on "How to get found when lost in the recruitment wilderness" on Friday, October 17 at 10:30am

League of Innovation for Community Colleges: 
October 19-22 - Salt Lake City, UT
Todd Gibby presenting on "Best practices for relationship marketing" on October 20 at 4:30pm

UCEA South: October 26-29 - Blacksburg, VA

Executive MBA Council: October 26-29 - Chicago, IL

EDUCAUSE: October 29-31 - Orlando, FL

UCEA New England: October 29-31 - Woodstock, VT
Todd Gibby presenting on "How to get found when lost in the recruitment wilderness" on October 30 at 10:30am

Have you launched a new web site or marketing campaign that's getting great results?  Did you learn a new technique or see a great speaker at a conference?  Read any good books lately? 

Join us on Thursday, October 23 at 1:00pm EST for a FREE webinar on "E-Marketing Best Practices for Continuing Education and Workforce Development" featuring Dr. Chuck Terrell, Vice President of Workforce Development Services & Lifelong Learning at Virginia Western Community College.  

During the session, Terrell will demonstrate how Virginia Western Community College, a two-year public institution of higher education operating under a statewide system of community colleges, has leveraged Web-based relationship management and e-marketing solutions to promote campus events and program offerings.

This event is hosted by Intelliworks and will include a presentation from Brad Kleinman, Principal at Worksmart eMarketing.

Want to attend? Click here to register.

Do you remember the boat ride?  People are still buzzing about the great time at July's users conference, Personfiy Education 08.  However, for those of you that weren't able to make it, we've posted some of the presentations and pictures here. 

We've already taken some of the many suggestions we heard at the conference and are beginning to build out resources for our client community.  This re-vamped newsletter is one of them.  Stay tuned in the near future as we look to make enhancements to our Wiki, and launch an interactive users forum where you can collaborate with one another and share information with other higher education professionals.  We hope it will sort of be a year-round online version of the conference...minus the beautiful sunset cruise. 

Also, please feel free to chime in if you have any suggestions on locations for next year's conference, and DEFINITELY let us know if you're interested in presenting.  But don't worry, we'll be making a more formal call for proposals in early 2009.  

THE INTEL: We're proud to announce the launch and general availability of our latest extension, Intelliworks Marketing Automation.  Intelliworks Marketing Automation helps you target your outreach efforts by allowing you to build out detailed communications plans that enable you to have an ongoing dialogue with constituents without having to recreate the wheel each time you want them to receive information from your institution.  

Currently, the extension is comprised of two main capabilities: communications plans and conditional sections.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING: Intelliworks Marketing Automation is delivered via the Intelliworks platform, however it requires an additional fee to be turned on.  Once you're enabled with the functionality, you can create rules that will bring contacts into and out of a communication plans when they meet certain criteria that you define.  For conditional statements, you'll see the functionality embedded in our Email Editor under a link that says "Conditional Section."  You can select the object you wish to create the statement against, select the operator, and enter a value to create your conditional statements.

IN HUMAN TERMS: Communication Plans are a way to automate the communications that influence, remind, notify, and invite your constituents to take an action.  Conditional Sections give you the ability to personalize sections of content within an email campaign based on pre-defined conditions, such as a contact's area of interest or geographic region.  

When used correctly, these tools can dramatically enhance your targeting and personalization efforts by enabling you to deliver the right message based on a student's behavior.

Have you launched a new web site or marketing campaign that's getting great results?  Did you learn a new technique or see a great speaker at a conference?  Read any good books lately? 

Why not share your knowledge with the Intelliworks community?

We want this newsletter to be a resource for you and those like you.  The best way to do that is to hear what you want, so let us know what you're interested in seeing in future newsletters and please feel welcome to submit content you'd like to share with others.

Have a story to share? Let us know.