Puzzling over web analytics?
Welcome fellow e-marketers, bloggers and readers. I’m Carmella Manges, E-marketing Director, St. Edward’s University and your EduWeb guest blogger for the month of July. This is my first post (ever) and I look forward to hearing from you throughout the month.
Here’s a little bit about my background and how web analytics has come to play a key role. I’ve been a marketer for a couple of decades now. Before arriving in higher education, I worked as a financial services marketer, followed by 10 years as a strategic planning consultant to Fortune 500 companies, banks, investment firms, architects and technology firms to launch e-commerce web sites, develop online loan and mortgage applications, calculators, sales tools, online banking and bill payment, and other e-commerce functions. Along the way, using web analytics to measure ROI has been a key factor in helping shape strategy for my clients and, more recently, for St. Edward’s University.
I’d love it if we had a running dialogue on web analytics or other e-marketing topics that you might have questions about. So feel free to add your comments or questions here and I will make every effort to respond in a timely and, hopefully, interesting manner.
If you’re wondering what an e-marketing director does, here’s the scoop. I was hired in 2004 by forward-thinking St. Edward’s University to be the primary strategist for the university’s electronic marketing efforts. Since then, we’ve made wonderful strides in advancing the level of quality and creativity of e-marketing as part of the university’s integrated marketing effort.
E-marketing is one of those things that “takes a village.” Some of the strategic enhancements our village has collaborated are:
- Guiding the e-marketing effort into a direct response marketing model that more appropriately aligns to the purpose of this channel — to cause someone to take an action. (This is a huge leap of faith in higher education, which generally rose out of either a PR or publications business model.)
- Integrating ROI tools into every facet of e-marketing (web, e-mail, e-newsletters and print-to-web) to inform strategic marketing decisions.
- Establishing and maintaining a highly successful partnership with our exceptional IT staff. (We couldn’t do what we do without their support.)
- Implementing the university’s content management system (CMS) and launching three admission recruiting web sites in only 18 months.
- Having the fundraising web site up BEFORE the kickoff gala.
- Continuing to set new traffic records in the 3rd year of the Admission recruiting web site.
- Getting the university’s SEM/SEO strategy off the ground.
Sadly, I will not be able to join you at EduWeb 2008 as planned. However, for those of you who were looking forward to “Puzzling over Web Analytics,” I am happy to say that we’ll cover that case study in my July blogs so that you don’t miss out.
Also, to help you out, I’ll end each entry with a glossary for any new terms that might be used in that post. So stay tuned as we start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
GLOSSARY:
Web analytics: The study of web site performance metrics to understand whether business objectives are being met.
Content management system (CMS): Content Management is a process used to create, manage and integrate text, images and data for marketing communications purposes.
Direct response marketing: Marketing via a channel (the web, for example) that allows the consumer to respond directly based on a call-to-action that is trackable and measurable.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing): A series of online tactics that, when combined with SEO, help to attract consumers, generate brand awareness and build consumer trust. (Elliance, an industry thought leader on this subject, has some wonderful infographics on this subject.)
SEO: Acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” This is the process of editing a web site’s content and code in order to improve visibility within one or more search engines. When this term is used to describe an individual, it stands for “Search Engine Optimizer” or one who performs SEO. (Source: http://www.sempo.org/)
Reach me at:
Carmella Manges
E-marketing Director
St. Edward’s University
3001 S. Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas 78704
512.233.1635
carmellm@stedwards.edu
Founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross, St. Edward’s University has been named as one of America’s Best Colleges for 2008 by U.S. News & World Report and was selected by The Princeton Review for inclusion in the guide Colleges with a Conscience. St. Edward’s is a private, Catholic, liberal arts university of more than 5,300 students located in Austin, Texas.
1 comment June 30th, 2008
