Our Most Recent Higher Education Minute
June 30, 2008
If a Marketing Minute is valuable, what about 60?
Summer's in full bloom and for most of you, students have left for the summer, allowing you a few precious months to finalize your fall enrollment, perhaps fit in a vacation and attend professional events for staff enrichment and networking purposes.
For administrators with ever tightening budgets, it may seem to make financial sense to limit attendance at industry conferences, seminars and expos. However, real value can be derived from attending these events which allow us all to step back, take a fresh look at our internal processes and see how other institutions have been effective in student recruitment.
Getting face to face with new technology, emerging prospecting techniques and evolving trends in the marketplace is important in keeping an organization operating at peak efficiency. Some of these benefits include:
- Meeting one-on-one with industry peers promotes the exchange of ideas and the sharing of tried and true strategies. Your presence at industry events offers outstanding networking opportunities that position you for future resource assistance. It can also help promote your college as one that is committed to being a progressive, proactive admissions industry leader.
- Investigate new, emerging technologies firsthand for the greatest benefit. Although reading about helpful tips and tricks of the trade can be informative, often people learn more by doing. Personal instruction and product demonstrations provided at seminars and exhibits are very useful in determining whether or not a product or service is truly a good fit.
- Direct communication between admissions personnel and vendors improves the industry as a whole. While it's true that many vendors attend these events to make sales contacts, they also attend industry events because they rely on feedback from event attendees to help fine tune their product offerings. For the industry to move ahead, product users and vendors must come together to address current needs in the market and to further advance the efforts of the industry as a whole.
For the faithful readers of the Monday Marketing Minute, I thought you might appreciate knowing where we will be this summer and what conferences we will be speaking at, in case you would like to attend one of our upcoming sessions or visit us on the trade show floor in order to say hi or make an appointment!
Noel Levitz "National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention": July 15-17thThe Noel Levitz conference is the most comprehensive conference on enrollment management held in the United States. This year's conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois. More information is available at www.noellevitz.com/conference. Darren Wacker and I will both be speaking at this year's event.
eduWEB: July 21st-23rdThis year's eduWEB conference promises to be the largest event yet, with more attendees and more vendors than any previous year. You can find out more on the eduWEB web site. James Tower will be co-hosting a social event at eduWEB, providing a pre-conference session on web-based video in admissions marketing and leading a round table discussion.
We hope to see you at one of these upcoming events and share with you valuable admissions marketing information for more than just "one minute".
Here's to another great Monday!
Cathy
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Our Most Recent Internet Marketing Minute
May 12, 2008The Buzz Around Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s)
Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) are just that, a rich, engaging experience that allows for a new form of client browsing, task management and online purchasing experience. With more and more consumers going online to make purchasing decisions, companies need to find new and interesting ways to reach out to their customers and make their shopping experience unique and effortless for tasks that demand interactivity, responsiveness, and richness.
Some technologies being deployed today such as Adobe® Flex, Flash and AIR offer organizations a proven, cost-effective way to deliver modern applications with real business benefits. Some of those benefits include:
In a recent Forrester report, The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications, Ron Rogowski stated that "Forrester's research and conservative models show that well-designed RIA's can produce eye-popping results that can help prove the value of current investments and make the case for future RIA projects."
If you are contemplating using RIA’s for your applications you should first have a solid understanding of users' needs. You should then make sure you have structured testing techniques in place to understand and validate the appropriate use and design of RIA's for your consumers.
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