So you want to hire an interactive admissions person...

This post is directed specifically at all the Directors of Admissions out there, who are considering the creation of an e-admissions person.  I've heard a number of titles for it: My former one was Interactive Recruitment Manager; another popular one is Electronic Communications Coordinator.  What you call it is really immaterial.  What's really important is finding the right person with the right blend of experience, and then treating the position as it should be within the context of the office.  

80% Admissions/ 20% Web: I always thought that the main reason I was successful in this type of position was the fact that I had previous experience as an admissions counselor.  I had worked directly with the students and their families and so understood their needs at all stages, done the recruiting events, and knew the cycle of the admissions process.  This type of position is primarily a marketing position and understanding the point of view of your audience is really key to developing any marketing program. This position should be pegged, at minimum, as an associate level position since you should only be putting someone with at least three years of admissions experience in it.  It's that experience that will make or break the person's success in the position. 

That being said, if you hire someone that doesn't have web experience you are doing nothing but setting them up for failure.  Typically, this position is responsible the admissions web presence and you can't maintain a proper web presence if you have no previous web experience.  Having a MySpace and a Facebook profile do not count as web experience.  The web is not magic - things don't just appear from nowhere.  They have to be built.  You wouldn't hire someone to paint your portrait if they had no painting experience and the same goes here.  If you insist on not heading this advice, be prepared to dedicate some bucks to professional development to teach the person what they need to know to be successful.  

This position is NOT a counselor position!  Yes, this person should have previous admissions experience but that does not mean that you should make them your go-to person when you need someone to do a college fair, work an open house or do prospect interviews.  Give the person in this position the respect they deserve so that they can focus on the task at hand.  Believe me, in the first two years of the position when the program is being built from scratch, there will be more than enough for the person to do without you overburdening them with "other duties as assigned." 

Pay them what they're worth: If you're lucky enough to find a person that meets these qualifications, fight for a salary that lines up with them.  When I originally started my former position, my salary was pegged at $36,000/year.  That was far too low.  I fought it and got it brought up to $42,000/year, which is still too low in my opinion given the unique skillset required.  The incredible thing is that I know others who currently have this type of position and they are making significantly less than I was.  That's not OK. I get that it's higher ed and that no one is going to get rich doing it...but I still work in higher ed now doing a very similar job and make significantly more. So yes, it is possible. 

Building a program takes time and involvement: If you are starting a position from scratch, be aware that it will take one to two years to get a program build and running efficiently.  These things take time and you have to give the person in it the latitude they need to get things in order.  One thing that will help them is to include them in all counselor-related meetings and trainings: getting them involved in the day-to-day office activities will allow the person to assess where your gaps are and how they can work to fill them. Just because they aren't a counselor doesn't mean they should be cut off from the counseling staff, a mistake I've hard of some offices making with this type of position.  It's not helpful and it just pisses the person in it off.    

Trust the person you hire: This may be the hardest part for most Directors - if you are creating this type of position you are doing it, at least partly, because you don't know how to do it.  That's ok.  Admit it.  It's OK not to know everything.  Now, hire a person that DOES understand it and trust them to do a good job.  When they give you a recommendation that you don't agree with, give them the benefit of the doubt - they are doing it for a reason.  There are nuances and best practices to this that fly directly in the face of many common admissions tactics.  Because of that, the person in the position is going to tell you that you can't do things that you want to do.  Trust them and then work with them to come up with an alternative solution. 

Key Takeaways: 

1. The person you hire should have at least three years of admissions counseling experience.  At the same time, you should never use them as a stand-in for admissions counselors - the position is completely different.
2. The person you hire should have previous experience building and working on websites. 
3. Trust the person in the position when they tell you things you don't want to hear. 
4. Pay them what they're worth. 
5. Give them the time they need to build a program. 

Using "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" for marketing

My boss got this email today...I wish more companies had the balls to be this creative: 

Fast Tip Friday: Don't Talk Geek (but talking like a pirate is OK...just for today)

Most of us can throw out every piece of computer/web jargon in book...but that doesn't mean we should.  A few years back I forced myself into the habit of explaining all but the most well-known concepts in plain English to my colleagues at all times.  When I used jargon, most of them didn't understand what I was saying and it was creating far too many channels of mis-communication.  It was my job to know the technical end and as long as my colleagues understood the concept, that was sufficient. 

If you're going to do an integrated e-marketing strategy, that inherently involves working with people who work with computers as a matter of function, but don't know them or the web like you do.  To many people, the web is still the unknown and can be a scary thing and if you talk to them in jargon they don't understand, that's just going to freak them out.  Coming down to their level in this area is an easy way to increase their comfort level so that they will be more receptive to your ideas and strategies.

On a separate note, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  In honor of it, I give you this video that was making its way around my office yesterday.  Happy Friday!

When in doubt, use hot people in your Facebook ads

Typically Facebook ads that we run get anywhere between 0.05% and 0.3% click rates, with a high water mark of about 0.5%.  So you can imagine my surprise when I logged onto our account yesterday afternoon to see that the ads we started running a few days ago to recruit currents students to our call center were getting 1% click rates and were maxxing out the ad budget daily!

The key to this success?  I believe it's threefold: 

1. The ads feature pictures of real Dartmouth students and are targeted to the same population.  In other words, they are seeing people like them.
2. The ad has the salary for the job in it up front, and as I understand it the position is one of the higher-paid student positions on campus.
3. But of course the main reason these ads are working is that the kids in them are hot: 

I rest my case.  The best 150-character marketing copy in the word doesn't have nearly the impact of a pretty, smiling girl that might sit next to you in class :-)

OmniUpdate does it right

I got my free uwebd mug yesterday from OmniUpdate and I have to say kudos!  OmniUpdate gets it!  They understand that as a human being, I am selfish and don't want/won't use a mug (even if it's free) that comes with some crappy company logo on it.  Instead they sent me (and every other member of University Web Developer Ning Network) a mug with ZERO branding on it and free chocolate/candy/other yummy goodies!  The only sales pitch in the whole package came in the form of a 25% off coupon for implementation services, exclusively for people who got the mug.

OmniUpdate, I salute you!  You gave me something not only cool but useful and, even though it doesn't have your logo on it, I'm not likely to forget where it came from.  

The Cool Kid Syndrome

I came up with the idea of the Cool Kid Syndrome when I was an admissions counselor and was required to work with faculty members to make admissions decisions on some students.  Now, anyone who has worked in higher education for any period of time will tell you that faculty members fall into three categories: 

1. The really good ones, that WANT to help
   
2. The apathetic ones who could give a damn and won't show up to meetings
   
3. The uppity, mouthy, loud, god awful ones who know more than you about every possible subject and won't hesitate to tell you such. 
   

The original Cool Kid Syndrome theory was developed to explain the last category of faculty.  I believe that a person's experience in high school is a fairly good indicator for how they will turn out later in life.  For example, most of the jocks/cool kids marry young and never leave their hometown whereas most geeks get out of dodge and go on to be really successful in what they choose to do.  Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule, but more often than not it works out like this.  

In this particular instance, I theorized that the uppity faculty were the geeks in high school and always resented it.  Now that they were the "cool kids" of the institution - basically the most powerful members of it - they were going to use their newfound status for evil instead of good, since that's the way they were probably treated by the cool kids in high school.  In reality, they're just very insecure and being uppity as a method of self-justification.  If they are louder than everyone, and can barrel through their ideas into implementation, then it only encourages that behavior in the future. 

Fast forward a few years: a friend of mine presented at Izeafest this weekend and he turned me on to the live streams they did over Ustream on Friday and Saturday (they also recorded the streams so they are still available to view).  So I'm watching all these widely-read bloggers get up and talk about their blogs...and making money with their blogs...and generally being awesome on their blogs...and having the audience fawn over them with stupid questions like "what is the coolest thing that's happened to you from being a blogger?"...and it occurs to me that the Cool Kid Syndrome is really applicable to bloggers too: Geeks in high school, now ruling their respective roosts but still typically pretty insecure and try to use their blogging success as a means of self-justification.  They're not necessarily uppity like faculty members, but many of them clearly need people to agree with them to feel justified in their opinions.  They surround themselves with like-minded people (or people that look up to them as "celebrities").   It's a constant means of self-justification: if they can only get enough people to agree with them and think they're cool and awesome, it'll all be OK.  

I see these common behaviors in so many people I read and the ones I'm lucky enough to know personally only reinforce my theory by being some of the most insecure people in the world.  I don't say it as a bad thing - I'm probably the most insecure of any of them.  But I'm also very conscious of the fact that running my mouth on a blog isn't going to fix that.  People thinking I'm awesome online doesn't amount to a hill of beans in my real life - it's not going to get me a raise or a promotion at work, its not going to gain me the respect of my off-line peers and it's certainly not going to help my love life.  When I was blogging politics, sometimes readers would send me free stuff like DVDs in the mail, but that was about the most exciting thing that happened.  I had a top 10 blog on MySpace (when MySpace was still worth logging onto), thousands of people reading me every day and in my real life, all that happened was that people thought I was a super big loser for blogging so much.

Ultimately, here's what I'm trying to say:  If you're going to do something like this, you should really sit back and think about why you're doing it.  To listen to some of the presenters talk at Izeafest, you'd think that the best reason to do it is for other people - give readers what they want so that they'll think you're awesome.  I couldn't disagree more strongly with that.  I've said it before, but a blog is a labor of love in a lot of respects and I think the really good ones out there are the ones where the author is doing it because they love doing it.  It's not to make money and its not to be a blogging "rock star" with all sorts of fans - they do it because they like writing or they like teaching people or it helps them to accomplish something in their lives.

And it's not going to fill some crazy void that you've had in your life since high school - your colleagues won't care.  Your families won't care (my parents have never even visited my page!).  Your friends won't care (unless they blog too, then they'll understand).  If there's one thing I've learned in the past nine years of blogging in one form or another, it's that it will never make you the cool kid - it's just going to make you the geek sitting behind a computer screen writing all the time.  And that's OK...but you have to be OK with it :-) 

Fast Tip Friday: Having a schedule gives you MORE flexibility

So I had a whole different topic for today's post...and then I had my quarterly job review this morning.  We were talking about creating a master email calendar and the challenges that might arise in meeting that goal, the key one being that people will think that having a schedule will inhibit flexibility.  Meg (my boss) offered that the way to go would be to argue that having a schedule actually gives you MORE flexibility.  If you need to change something, you can easily look and see if or how it would affect everything else going on.  

Flexibility is important - but when you work in an environment were multiple offices are communicating with the same audience, so is coordination.  Ultimately a coordinated effort will produce a better user experience, which will lead to you meeting more of your marketing goals. 

The revised Commandments of Email Marketing

I did a presentation today at work where I used my Five Commandments of Email Marketing.  When I originally did them, I geared them specifically towards admissions email marketing.  I decided it was time to revise them slightly to be more broadly applicable.  Without further ado...

A bit of commentary: 

1. Thou shall send using an external service provider: Outsource, baby, outsource.  There is little to no reason to send your own email.  At one cent per email or less, let someone else handle it.  You'll still get massive ROI.
2. Thou shall make your template simple and unobtrusive: Simple templates are just more effective in getting the user to take the call-to-action as they don't provide any distractions along the way.  You can get super fancy with your design...but if your goal is to get them to DO something, there really isn't any reason for it.  
3. Thou shall make messages as segmented and timely as possible: See Barack Obama's email campaigns if you want an example for how segmentation and timeliness should be done.  The closer you can get to your recipients and their wants and needs, the higher percentage of users you're going to make the sale to.  
4. Thou shall keep copy short and calls to action obvious: You can't take a print letter and literally translate it to email.  Be short, succinct and redundant.  Ask for the sale in every paragraph and in the PS.  Your users are just going to scan the email and look for what you want them to do.  Make it easy to identify.  
5. Thou shall only send messages that offer value to the recipients: Providing value is the hardest Commandment to follow.  I just wrote a post for .eduguru about a book I read over the weekend called Neuromarketing, which talked about our self-centered nature.  You can email people every day of the week without turning them off if you provide them with value.  You can turn them off by only emailing them once a month but giving them nothing.  

What do you want to hear about?

So I have a bunch of presentations coming up in November/December.  They are all brand new (as in, I've never done them before and they are still in various stages of creation) and I'm looking for input into what you guys want to hear about.  I'll consider any and all advice, but particularly from those who will be attending the presentations - this is all about you guys getting out of it what you're looking for.   

Here are the presentations and a brief description: 

Eye on the Prize: Implementing Technology with an Eye on ROI

November 6 @ 1pm - Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference

Integrating technology in your marketing plan isn't about doing it just because all the cool kids are - it's about accomplishing a goal.  This session is going to discuss how to plan your technology implementations so that, down the road, you can evaluate whether or not they have been a success.  

Taking Email to the Next Level: Practical Advice for Creating an Integrated Email Marketing Strategy That Will Get Results

November 17 @ 11:15am - American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education

This presentation is all about giving practical, applicable advice for building an integrated email marketing program or improving the one you already have in place.  This is not 40,000 foot view, theoretical nonsense.  My goal is to give you strategies and tactics that you can take home and implement immediately.  

Marketing to Inboxes: 5-Step Plan to Effective Email Campaigns

December 2 @ 1:00pm - Higher Ed Experts

This is similar to the AMA presentation, but a bit more focused on helping those who already have an email program in place improve on what they already all.

Comment, email me or IM me and let me know what you want me to talk about within the presentation topics and I'll do my best to accommodate.