Should Universities Create Mobile Applications Solely for Prospects?

Disclaimer: I do realize everyone doesn’t use an iPhone, Android-enabled phone, or a BlackBerry, but I also realize the percentage of college-bound students who do is rising. Moving forward, it will become more and more important to offer something in this space.

I’ve been thinking and researching hard but as far as I can see into the mobile higher education horizon I can’t envision a way to design a Web application solely for prospective students and have it provide an adequate ROI… or in other words, be worth your institution’s time investment. If you’ve seen something that’s been successful in the marketplace that’s specifically catered towards prospects, please let me know in the comments.

The major thought I do have on this is using an application in conjunction with an on-campus tour, which I touched on in a blog post in July. Research suggests designing with current students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community in mind would be the best way to go. Your app can (and should) still be marketed to prospective students in an indirect way, but in more of an “experience what happens here” type of way. I’d say this could be done through an acknowledgement of it and its core features in the prospective student section of your website, and this information could also be relayed to high school guidance counselors.

Downloading and experiencing the application is obviously a great way for students to truly get a feel of the university since they’ll be using the exact same software/platform if they enroll. If you give them enough reason to, they’ll download your app free (make sure it’s free!) to see what the fuss is about and put themselves in the shoes of a current student. According to the 2009 Voice of the Student Report, it’s something they’re looking for.

If you’re reading this you might be aware of many of the applications already out there. I’ve downloaded and tried over 20 university applications (see screenshot for a sampling). In my humble opinion, the most useful and well executed applications use a platform developed by Blackboard (formerly TerriblyClever). iStanford was the first app ever developed and remains excellent, arguably cream of the crop. DukeMobile is another popular application from a large university, noted more recently for its inclusion of their libraries’ digital collections within the app, which is a super awesome and useful feature for students. Duke has also done an excellent job creating an overview page of what’s available for interested mobile users and another page under the information technology portion of their site detailing features and updates.

Other institutions that use the Blackboard platform that I’m aware of are University of Washington, Texas A&M University, Kean University, TCU, University of San Diego, Seton Hall Univesrity, and Stetson University. The biggest drawback to creating an iPhone app is plain and simple: cost.

The new kid on the block is a platform by Mobile Educator. They appear to only have contracted with one University at this time, and it’s actually a school: Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. Not fully knowing The University of Rochester’s brand architecture, I can’t say for sure whether this is the correct way to be branding the school, but some might find it unusual that the overall university does not have an application while the school does (for the record, I don’t believe it’s an issue).

I won’t get into the specifics of the software itself too deeply, as there is already a fantastic review online courtesy of Michael Fienen of Pittsburg State University. And I have to quote an amazing factoid from his write-up, which is essentially from the Mobile Educator site directly: 28% of iPhone users and 69% of iPod Touch users are between the ages of 13 and 24.  That amounts to approximately 20 million users.

To end this post back at the beginning, should your University offer a mobile application to attract prospective students? Not necessarily. Should you create one to keep your current students, faculty, staff, administrators, and even alumni happy and engaged? Definitely. There’s little evidence that developing an app solely for prospects yields better results than developing a really useful app for other audiences. However, do make sure that prospective students are aware of your app’s existence and allow them to try it out. For a short amount of time they’ll receive the same experience as your current students who use the application.

A direct approach you can and should take for prospects is to create a mobile-optimized website for incoming students. Whether that means browsing from certain phones automatically redirects to the mobile version of the site or users must visit a specific URL on their own, it’s an advantage for prospects. I can see leading them to a site containing all your key messages via mobile advertising. Tactics such as mobile campaigns involving texting, etc. are still very viable, but creating an application solely for your prospective audience is in most cases, not.

Don’t Wait: Brainstorm Twitter Lists and Use Them Now

If you follow what’s new with Twitter, you’re certainly aware of their latest and most significant announcement in some time: lists. It’s safe to say that the new feature has already been a huge hit and is one of the  most requested features (along with integrated retweeting). Via 3^rd party tools such as TweetDeck and Seesmic, you’ve been able to create groups and break out those you follow.  This was a great way to solve the common issue of too much noise in your Twitter stream, especially when following a large number of people. I also used this for categorizing.

Thankfully for us tweeters, this functionality is now integrated into twitter.com and in my opinion, Twitter hit the ball out of the park, as the implementation is extremely well done.

When you create a list, you’re able to add people you’re following and edit out those you’re not. Following/follower status is irrelevant. Anytime you are on anyone’s profile page, you have the ability to add them to a list. The result is your created list(s) contain the Twitter streams of those who have been added to the list.  Simple enough, right?

Examples of lists in action are the six lists (as of this writing) Techcrunch has created: @TechCrunch/microsoft. It looks like they’ve collected all of Microsoft’s official Twitter entities, along with a few other Microsoft-related accounts. The cool thing is that this list will be accessible from my profile page, hence anyone who visits my page can see that I follow it. I love that the ability to follow lists exists without having to individually follow each member of a list (Hope I didn’t lose you there). The Twitter users in the Microsoft list will not show up in my timeline.

Since lists act like their own person and are accessible to anyone, I imagine there will soon be a directory ranking of the most popular Twitter lists  (Kevin Rose of WeFollow just announced WeFollow’s lists of top influential users. No rankings of lists just yet). This assumes the list is not private as Twitter offers the option of making lists private, too.

The most creative example I’ve seen so far (I have to admit I’m a tad biased here, is what the NHL has done. They’re using lists as a method to categorize NHL fans by favorite team. They’re methodology is simple: ask users to send an @message to them including their favorite team and the hashtag #myfavoriteNHLteam. Presto, like-minded fans join their team’s “official Twitter fan club”.

Here at EMG, we’ve brainstormed how lists can be used in higher education. There’s real opportunity to get in on this Twitter feature. Let’s say we use an NHL-like approach. Your institution can assemble current and prospective students by academic interest/major. By tweeting, “Please tweet @XYZuniversity your desired/current major and include the hashtag #mymajor,” you create a public forum for students interested in their major.

Another possibility is to create lists for alumni by graduating class. Or you might organize your faculties by college, providing students the ability to gain insights from every professor in their area of study. You could run contests and as prospective or current students achieve a challenge set out by your institution, they are added to a list. The idea of creating a “prestigious” list in which you had to earn your way on to sounds kind of nifty to me.

To wrap up this post, it’s important to follow pertinent lists yourself. Lists are still in their infancy, but well-populated lists are popping up fast, and of course doing more following will increase your chances of both your account or your lists being followed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gong to see if an EMG developer can help me create a site that categorizes and ranks Twitter lists!

All kidding aside, is there one out there currently? If so, please let me know in the comments!

Fresh Perspective

For the past month, we’ve been slowly packing up our office in preparation for a move to our new space.  At first, the slowly emptying walls and filing cabinets made me uneasy. I felt as if the world around me was becoming ever more unsettled and uncertain.

As we went through the house-cleaning process, I sought to find reason to cling to every piece we’d ever done.  Surely one day we’d need to pull those pieces out and revisit them in all their glory, even though we’d found no such reason in the past three years!

But as I grew accustomed to this shifting landscape, a feeling of possibility, opportunity, and optimism replaced my unease.  I realized that removing the daily reminders of previous accomplishments had also had the effect of opening and redirecting my perspective, releasing my mind’s grip on all that past clutter and freeing it to look at what lay ahead.

As part of my job, I reach for new perspective on a regular basis.  I’m supposed to be stretching my vision forward to the next five years and on.  I didn’t realize how much being surrounded by what’s been done, in effect, kept me from seeing what could be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we all move…or empty out our offices!  In effect, that could be the easy way to do it.  But the idea of carving out an area in our offices, where we simulate a sort of sensory deprivation tank, where we can allow new thoughts and perspectives to occupy our minds is not be a bad idea.  Why?  Well that’s what’s at the crux of this blog.

The next five years for everyone, will be one giant shifting landscape.  I’m not necessarily talking about the economic climate in the country and on our campuses…although, these days, we are all being asked to do more with less.  I’m talking about the escalating change in communications.  And that doesn’t mean the move from print to online.  That train has already left the station.  If you don’t have a strategy for this, you are already well behind.  I’m not even talking about the social media space, which is already overwhelming many of us.

I’m talking about another shift in digital communications.  Just when many of us are sort of waking up to the idea that our website is an important communications tool, we have this to prepare for.  There is growing movement away from single-source environments on the Web.  Yes that means the care and feeding of your website, soon will not be enough, if we haven’t already started to reach that point.

Witness the explosion of applications for devices like the iPhone and popular programs like Facebook and Twitter.  What do these applications have in common?  They draw from various web tools to create a richer experience for the user.  For example, augmented reality technology allows your phone or your computer to not only see a map of the real world, but to also grab additional information such as the location of subway entrances, the price of houses in that area, or Twitter messages that have been posted nearby.  Wired had a nice piece on this recently.

There are apps that allow students on campus to locate one another, like the app developed by Stanford University. Or Princeton’s reunions mobile site that allows alumni to download an app to their phone with all the reunion information, saving the planet a few trees, the University a few dollars, and putting information at alumni fingertips without having to carry around bulky paper packets.

Needless to say, the potential with these types of apps is limitless.  More importantly this trend of aggregating various types of data into customized efficient packets for users is here to stay and only gaining in potential and popularity.  That means getting a grip on the data you already collect on campus and understanding what it is and how it might be used.  Identifying gaps in your data collection and new data you may want to collect.  Once you’ve done that, the next step is to imagine how to package this data in meaningful ways for your audiences.

Overwhelmed?  I think most of us are.  This whole notion of ones and zeros is a foreign language to most communicators and one I bet none of us thought we’d have to learn on at least a basic level.

I go back to my earlier statement about creating a space in your offices devoid of the past, where you can start to imagine tomorrow and the next day without the past surrounding you.  You’ll need all that white space to map out a plan for how all these new communications tactics will interconnect with each other and how you’ll manage them.  Then empty a drawer in the office where you can dump all the things you used to do.  One day, when you really move, you’ll be ready to let go of them for good!

Tiny Turtles and Those Darn Sponsors

Within 10 minutes I came across two topics I couldn’t pass on discussing especially since I touched on both of the subjects recently. The first is about Terp pride at the University of Maryland and the second is about another sponsorship debate at the University of Kentucky’s Sex Week.

First, I came across a recent blog post on The Old College Try: Marketing Higher Ed, about one of my favorite subjects, guerrilla marketing, as mentioned in one of my previous blogs. The University of Maryland is currently implementing an internal marketing tactic to boost Terp pride and calm fears that the popular “Fear the Turtle” calling was going to be retired.  The University hid 570 tiny plastic turtles for students to find throughout the campus. Once a student finds a turtle, they can enter a code found on the plastic figure at the companion Fear the Turtle ‘09 website. Based on the code, a “tile” is flipped on the campus map on the Fear the Turtle website and the student has a chance to win a prize. According to an article in University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper, “prizes range from ice cream cones, Starbucks and Applebee’s gift cards to iPods, T-shirts and tote bags.” There is also a “grand daddy” prize that has yet to be revealed. It was mentioned in the article that posters were placed around the campus to explain the tactic. As of writing this, 461 turtles have been found.

This is an excellent example of using guerrilla marketing that brings in many people in a non-traditional manner. It is fun. It coincides with the university brand. It uses a web-centric approach and also has the ability to share news on social networks. It brings the campus community together. Kudos to the University of Maryland team!

Moving on… last week I wrote about an odd sponsorship of a university athletic program and concerns about how that sponsorship was being portrayed. Before going on, I want to mention that the rest of this post talks about sex and may be uncomfortable to some.

This week, we find yet another odd sponsor of an educational event called Sex Week at the University of Kentucky. The Sex Week says that the week long event is to “increase sexual literacy by initiating an informed, open, and sustained dialog about human sexuality throughout the campus community.” As we all know, this is a great topic for a campus community that has been making the news recently as some universities are taking steps to regulate sexual activity in dorms, according to an article in U.S. News and World Report.

However, I heard in the local news, that one of the sponsors of the event is Pure Romance. The company is an “in-home party company which offers an exclusive line of heighteners, lubricants and bedroom accessories for relationship enhancement.” According to the event website, on Monday October 5, “Pure Romance will tackle myths and misconceptions surrounding bedroon accessories. Discover the truth before getting naked.”  While the sponsorship itself is a bit odd, the session itself may sound a bit more like a sales pitch than an learning opportunity. Also, according to news article published in Kentucky, it was suggested that some of the sponsor’s products promote violence against women.

Both the previous blog post about the athletic sponsor and the sponsor in this blog seem to suggest that there may be a concerning growing fad of allowing any sponsors in without worrying about whether or not the sponsor is actually appropriate to the audience, setting, brands, etc. As long as they have the cash, then it is okay to let them sponsor.

Could it really be possible that the NFL has more standards regarding advertising/sponsorships than some higher ed institutions? Below are NFL advertising guidelines found in their media kit,

The NFL will NOT accept advertising promoting the offering of or making reference to any of the following products or services (partial list)

• Distilled Spirits
• Tobacco Products (including cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff)
• Contraceptives
• Feminine Hygiene Products
• Fireworks
• Firearms and Ammunition
• Lotteries
• Gambling (including Horse or Dog Racing and products or services relating in any way to gambling)

The Power of Following

Having just wrapped up an EMG KnowledgeBuilder on the topic of Twitter with my colleagues @sbiernacki and @tbrock111, my brain is still aflutter with all things Twitter. In particular, the power of being a good follower.

As Twitter newbies, most of us focus on ourselves and what we have to say. Even more seasoned users can make this mistake. Here’s the rub, if we want others to listen to us, we ourselves have to be good listeners. There might be some exceptions…if you’re a celebrity, for example, or a news magazine, more people would likely be interested in following those entities than those entities would be in following those same masses.

Nevertheless, a number of celebrity uber-users like @THE_REAL_SHAQ with 2.2+ million followers, are still following hundreds of people. And our local news station @DenverChannel follows almost all those who follow it; because it understands that its followers are a great source of potential news.

For most of us as individuals or institutions (or units thereof), being listened to (gaining followers) means doing some listening (following) ourselves. Why is it important? Growing your follower base is at the heart of any Twitter strategy you might lay out…whether that is growing readership for your University’s news, increasing alumni participation, engaging prospective students, alerting your campus to emergencies, increasing the number of donors or applications. The goals for a Twitter site can be many; at the heart of each is the need to build a following.

There are three keys to the art of strategic following to grow followers on Twitter:

1. Follow highly ranked voices related to your subject matter – these are Twitter users with lots of followers. Twinfluentials. In general, many will follow you back.  For example, in the marketing business, one of the big power users is @joelcomm, author of Twitter Power. I follow him. He followed me back. He interests me in buying his book. I get the ears and eyes of some of his 76,000+ followers who in turn follow me.  As an aside, how do you know how “twinfluential” individuals are? Number of followers will give you an idea. Apps like Twitterrank and Twitterholic, among others, have developed a bit more of a sophisticated formula to determine ranking based on followers and ability to drive the conversation. You can also find were you rank by the way. Finally, Twitter directories like WeFollow have listings Tweeters in a variety of major categories. Check out who’s there, and make sure to add your Twitter page to the site. A bit of wefollow trivia > at the top of the list under the tag “#highered” is @northcentralcol in Naperville, IL with over 10,000 followers…and following over 10,000.
2. Use Twitter’s search function to identify potential followers and voices to follow. By searching key topics pertinent to your Twitter site, you will find others who share a similar interest or point of view. For example, if you have an alumni site, search on people who use your institution’s name in their posts, follow them and invite them to follow you. If you you’re responsible for your institution’s Twitter news page, invite people to follow you through the institution’s email service or via your newsletters or website. When they follow you, follow them back. You’ll mutually benefit.
3. Don’t just post updates. Engage in conversation. @reply people when you can. RT (retweet) posts that are interesting. Follow Twitter trending topics and commentaries and, either post an @reply to a specific Twitterer, or post to the trending hashtag(#). Talk to those who follow you as those conversations show up in their Twitter streams and are seen by their followers, and also talk to those who show up in searches and are commenting on trending topics. An important caveat here, make your comment relevant to the individual you’re addressing, the subject matter in the post…and relevant to your unit’s or your institution’s point of view. The more interesting and interested you come across, the more following and “twinfluence” you gain.

How Tweet It Was

EMG’s KnowledgeBuilder on (almost) all things Twitter is over. I’ve got to say that I’m somewhat sad because I really enjoy talking about Twitter and especially hearing success stories about colleges and universities seeing tangible, even in-person results from their usage. It’s worth mentioning up front that yesterday’s participation among attendees was particularly great. Among the topics of questions my colleague Ineke Caycedo and I fielded were about measurement and analysis, integration with Facebook and other services, and, a key one for many, how do you find followers.

We started the KnowledgeBuilder by covering a little bit of recent news and research, principally the growing 12-17 and 18-24 age groups. Though we realize this announcement makes for a great headline, we do take this research with a grain of salt. The ‘teens don’t tweet’ mantra has dominated social media discourse for a while, but recent research leads me to believe that it’s safe to say the age groups institutions are typically most interested in reaching, are in fact tweeting (and so are an awful lot of people).

Beginning with the most basic of functions to be sure we didn’t leave anyone behind, we looked at everything from setting up a correctly branded avatar (profile picture) to tried and tested tactics to finding relevant followers, who are likely to follow you back and find value in your tweets. We spent a lot of time discussing search, as it’s clearly the most powerful part of Twitter. More used than Google? Of course not… at least not yet. Better for real-time information? Yes, though Google has something up its sleeve, as always, to answer the popularity of Twitter’s real-time engine.

I’d say the most important keys to Twitter for us are the following:

1. Be focused in your tweets. Have a specific voice and purpose for your posts. That means thatfor most institutions, you’ll need to think about multiple accounts that focus on different audiences with different needs and expectations. Use the profile section of your Twitter account to outline what followers can expect from your posts.
2. Set a goal with specific outcomes for your Twitter presence. The goals can be numerous. And with each you should define metrics for success:
   • Are you trying to build more inquiries and apps for your admissions process?
   • Engaging more alumni with the intent of greater participation in events and giving?
   • Using Twitter to drive followers to your news feeds?
   • Creating a place for discussion and sharing of specific academic areas of interest?
3. Don’t be self-centered. Focus on finding other posters to follow who share an interest in your subject matter. The advantage to this is that those who follow you see that you’re paying attention to others out there – that you’re an active Twitter participant, not a Twitter narcissist – additionally; through following others you can draw those individuals to following you. An added warning, (a big no no in the Twittersphere) don’t over-tweet. A continuous stream of posts from you, in particular if they are not seen as relevant, will annoy followers and you are likely to be dumped from their follow list.
4. Build followers in Twitter by using Twitter search. By looking for people who are talking about your institution or subject matter you can identify those posters who might be interested in what you have to say. Talk to them by commenting on their posts. Follow them. In turn, they are likely to follow you.
5. Put faces to your tweeter or tweeters. Give your followers a sense of who the voice or voices are behind those Twitter posts. Tools like CoTweet or Hootsuite allow the owner of a Twitter account to allow others to post to that account. You can choose whether they are identified by a marker, i.e. mine for the emgonline Twitter account is ^SB, or stay anonymous. We’d recommend that you give them an identity. Customize your Twitter page background to show those people’s images, like this example on Bing’s Twitter page.
6. Use Twitter to lead followers to your other digital spaces like Facebook or your website. Likewise, use your other digital spaces to drive people to your Twitter site.
7. Finally, as the central communication unit, create an inventory of all the organizational Twitter sites on your campus. Monitor them, help them to interconnect with each other, create guidelines for Twitter and other social media usage, help the campus develop a nomenclature for its Twitter presences, and set up a resource site for individuals. This is a pretty good example from Washington State University.

Our favorite Twitter tools:

1. Create a custom background using one of these tools.
   • Twitbacks
   • Free Twitter Designer
   • TweetStyle
   • MyTweetSpace
   • Twitterbacks
2. URL shorteners (this space is overpopulated; there are many!)
   • Bit.ly
   • Tinyurl
   • Is.gd
   • Tr-im (now open source)
   • Ow.ly
   • Create your own URL shortener (i.e. Awe.sm, Yourls)
3. Twitter directories
   • WeFollow – Add yourself to the directory by location and 5 interests. We might suggest ‘highered’ and ‘university’ (or college), ‘research’ (if applicable), etc.
   • TwitterCounter
   • Twitterholic
4. Photo sharing:
   • Twitpic
5. Facebook/Twitter Integration
   • Selective Twitter Status – update your Facebook status from Twitter, only the posts you want.
   • TwitterUpdater – post your Facebook status to Twitter
6. Advanced tools
   • CoTweet – Can handle multiple profiles and users. The profile aspect means an individual can have one login to CoTweet, and be able to update multiple accounts. The user aspect enables multiple users to update one account, and it is common to use CoTags to distinguish different updaters. Other advanced features include scheduling tweets and assigning @messages to different users of the account.
   • Hootsuite – Not as efficient in regards to workflow as CoTweet, but provides detailed analysis of posted links. A better measurement tool than CoTweet.
   • Seesmic Desktop – Adobe AIR application that has the ability to combine Twitter and Facebook. Notable features include multiple accounts, creating groups, and column customization. Very effective way to follow searches in real time. Also available is a Web-based, in-browser version, but this iteration contains less features.
   • TweetDeck – Similar to Seesmic Desktop with minor differences. Try both applications and using whatever you prefer.
7. Other tools worth exploring
   • Twitter Grader – It looks at a variety of factors including the number of followers, power of those followers and the level to which you are engaging the community.
   • Twitalyzer – tool to evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media.
   • Twazzup – search Twitter topics and stay current on Twitter trends
   • Twitterly InView (in Beta) – solution for monitoring, receiving instant notifications, and responding to anything that matters to you on Twitter.
   • Mr. Tweet – look through your relationships and tweets to: 1) show the influencers and followers you should follow and 2) suggest you to users relevant to you
   • Who Should I Follow? – Offers recommendations based on username.
   • Twitoaster – Allows for conversation threading, great for tracking the long conversations.
   • Retweetist – Site that tracks who has been retweeted and other popular Twitter trends.
   • Retweetradar – Another site that tracks retweets.

There are also a boatload of mobile apps that allow you to manage and post on the go depending on your mobile platform and a growing number of Twitter applications.  Bookmark Twitter’s “Goodies” link to stay on top of all the cool stuff that developers are putting out there.

Summit Cancellation

This has been a trying year for many of us, what with the economic uncertainty and budget cuts that have been endured on virtually every college and university in the country.

It’s because of these unprecedented challenges that we’ve recently made a very tough call to cancel this year’s Brand Manager’s Summit, which had been scheduled for October 19-21 in Denver.

It was a difficult decision.  But the truth is that over the past few weeks we’ve fielded many serious concerns from Summit registrants over deepening budget cutbacks, freezes on travel, and an increasing number of incidents of the H1N1 virus across the country.

Since we are committed to maintaining the Summit’s premier quality and highly interactive nature, we believe that it’s in the best interest of all of our registrants to cancel this year’s event.

We do so only reluctantly, since we know the decision will disappoint many marketing professionals who were looking forward to this year’s Summit.  We were, too.

It really is the only venue of its kind where marketing practitioners can truly focus on discussing and creating real-world branding strategies and tactics for their institutions.  And we’re absolutely committed to bringing the extraordinary Summit event back next year, bigger and better than ever.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to provide a full calendar of interactive online workshops through the Online KnowledgeBuilders program.   We’ll try to migrate some of the Summit sessions to these online seminars, too.  Check out the KnowledgeBuilder schedule for a list of topics.

We certainly hope that you are not being affected by some of the same issues, and we appreciate your understanding.

Allow Students to Tell Your Story

My colleague Ineke Caycedo and I just returned from a 2-day campus consultation for a client. We conducted a series of interviews with senior-level administrators and key communications staff to better understand the institution’s goals, current strategies, available resources (primarily related to Web), and overall vibe of the campus and community. From now until spring, we’ll be working collaboratively with the institution to develop a new website, and more importantly, helping to determine what message we’ll be sending on that website. This isn’t the easiest task given the truly unique position of this institution, but it’s an exciting one and we certainly made significant progress on that front during our visit. The sky really is the limit here.

A Free International Trip!?
As a result of our interviews, one important nugget of information we learned was that the institution has a healthy amount of ‘student-voiced’ marketing ammo that has yet to see the light of day. For example, this college offers one of the best international opportunities of any institution we’ve ever seen. During their second year of study, students are offered a free week-long trip overseas with their classmates. To no surprise, almost all students end up going. As part of the academic component (there is a large one, of course!), students are asked to write a journal documenting their experience. These entries are thoroughly looked over by faculty and the students are given feedback, but they never end up becoming public in any way.

A Huge Opportunity
Truth be told, there might not be a better way to present this unique international experience to prospective students than making these students’ journals easily accessible online! Promoting this type of content is a huge opportunity for colleges and universities. We know from our own and others’ research this is the exact type of approach prospects are looking for and resonate with.

What the Research Tells Us
We know from Edelman’s Trust Barometer that young people most trust people like themselves. This idea was further confirmed on our trip in the Web usability testing we conducted. We were straight up told by the students in several instances that they’re looking to hear from current students. It’s the best way for many of them to learn about different aspects of the college or university, as they can best relate to what they’re hearing.

The bottom line is, if you have any appropriate student-driven media (text, blogs, photos, videos, etc.) sitting around in the depths of your offices and computers, there may very well be an effective way to make that material work for you. And because the production cost is zero since the work has already been done, you’ll only have to spend time doing a little strategizing, editing, and uploading. So if you decide to do a little detective work, good luck! Here’s to hoping you are surprised with what you find.

Interactive Email – eMarketing Workhorse

Throughout the social networking fluff and flurry, a number of marketers I know have relegated interactive email tactics to the “old-and-worn-out” bin. “Nobody emails anymore…it’s sooo yesterday!”

If you’re in that category, it’s time you take a second pass at this tried and true tactic, which has re-emerged as the real workhorse of eMarketing. Don’t get me wrong, social networking in some form is here to stay. No argument that it needs to be a staple in the marketer’s toolbox to help create and support audience engagement.

But email is the real ROI generator, and new interactive and integration capabilities make it more versatile than ever. It is the engine that makes your social networking efforts work harder and pay bigger dividends.

Upside

1. Unlike social networking, which can be a black hole for staff, you can directly link bottom-line results to the effort needed to produce them
2. Like its old-school cousin – direct mail – interactive email directly reaches bona fide prospects
3. Integrating email with your website and social network presence enhances the productivity of all of these channels
4. Interactive email is cost-efficient
5. It is eminently trackable and refinable

Downside

1. Email – even interactive versions – is limited by relatively low open rates
2. It is easy – and probably always will be – for prospects to unsubscribe or identify your email as spam

Six Solutions

1. New, innovative design formats for interactive emails improve open rates – wide-screen format and bold branding ideas, for example
2. Solid database analytics and firm opt-in policies allow you to minimize spam problems, track individual audience behaviors, distinguish between hard and soft bounces, (a discussion here) and hone in on motivational design/copy choices
3. Strategic scheduling and database segmentation give you an incredible ability to manage touch points with critical audiences – by segment
4. Interactivity: Well-designed email campaigns offer stepping-stone interactivity that engages audiences (good discussion here)
5. Multimedia: While video still can’t be reliably embedded in email (Here is a good synopsis of why), the alternative – video GIFS (good example here) and links to your website videos – are effective options
6. Integration with web presence: integrating opt-in email campaign is a great way link your social networking platforms and website promotions

As always, one of the keys is to keep “run-and-gun” unit-driven tactics from taking over. By developing a clear, coordinated approach (here’s an award-winning example) to eMarketing, you’ll find a significant uptick in ROI.

Opportunities Galore

I am sure most of you out there feel that time flies by and many are extremely busy day in and day out. Also with a world that is as connected as ours is today, news and opinions seem to change almost instantaneously. With each change comes new opportunities for marketers to draw in new some new eyes or bring back some old eyes on their products/services.

Everyone has heard the “Cash for Clunkers” phrase over and over and over again these last couple of weeks. That is no accident. But the cheer is not coming from the government as much as it is coming from the dealerships that can take advantage of the opportunity. It seems everytime I hear or see an ad for a local car dealership it incorporates “Cash for Clunkers” or some similar saying.  As we have all figured out, the dealerships are making sure everyone will bring their clunker and buy a car from them using the extra cash.

Not only are the car dealerships taking advantage, but so it Conan O’ Brien and Lexus with his “Conan, Please Blow up my Car” contest. I will let the video do the explaining, check it out (click here). The contest is based around tv viewers sending in videos of their clunkers, the clunkiest car will get blown up and while the owner will receive a new Lexus hybrid.

Recently, I read an article about a hotel in downtown Minneapolis that is taking advantage of Brett Favre’s arrival as a Minnesota Viking.  The hotel created the Brett Favre package where guests stay a couple nights and donate, to the hotel, an old Brett Favre Packer’s jersey and the guest will get a special rate for their third night. The jerseys are then donated to the Boys and Girls Club.

The video below EMG produced for the  Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University when the movie Good Night, and Good Luck came out in 2005. The video below was seen in theaters right before the movie played and was also played at the movies debut in several local cities.

Here are some helpful hints that may help you and your staff catch some opportunites:

1. Eye on the news – keep an eye out for possible upcoming opportunities that may make sense
2. External connections – local business leaders and influencers tend to have some good insights into local news.
3. Internal connections – connect with campus leaders who may have an opportunity that may have “legs”
4. Social networks – watch Facebook, Twitter, and other networks for chatter and buzz about upcoming events or big things that your stakeholders may be putting together or may feel is important to them.
5. Discuss amongst yourselves – make it a point talk with your staff to make the mental connections between the external and internal opportunities. One staff member may have the external opp while another may have the internal opp. Keep the lines open for discussions.
6. Pen to paper – write down several favorite opportunities so that you don’t forget. It may take a awhile before the entire opportunity comes into view, so be sure to take notes on your thoughts and possibilities.
7. Reserves – we all know budgets are tight, but you never know when the big golden opportunity may come available. Keep a little budget for the one opportunity you just can’t pass up.

With some much going on in today’s world, it seems like there are endless possibilites out there.