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.
June 30th, 2008
I have also posted this in my blog, Insights on Admissions Marketing:
Per my previous post, I thought I would share two examples regarding the Holiday E-Cards I have seen/received this season. I offer no commentary on either. I am simply providing them as examples you can review, to arrive at your own conclusions. Names and information about each institution have been removed. You can click on each to see a full size image of my screen capture on my post at Insights on Admissions Marketing.
Example #1:
Example # 2:
Please feel free to send me your examples too. Happy Holidays!
December 24th, 2007
I am also posting this to my blog, Insights on Admissions Marketing.
The struggle I have with participating in a group blog program is ensuring the relevence of the information I provide, in comparison to what everyone else has done over the course of the year and making sure not to simply repeat previous items. Obviously, this is especially difficult when you are the last blogger of the year! 
However, there is one item I haven’t seen covered at all (maybe I missed it?) since the start of 2007…which I found surprising. That is email marketing. Especially, with all the changes in email since earlier in the year (the release of Outlook 2007, changes in Yahoo and Hotmail), I thought I would share a few thoughts.
Email continues to be one of the most widely used outreach tools by Higher Education professionals and yet, is also the tool I see used to the least effect. Too many poorly formatted text emails…too many HTML emails that play by old rules and thus cannot get to a recipient’s in box…bad subject lines or general mismanagement of the campaign, messages that don’t respect the recipient and as a result create roadblocks to future success. Especially with changes by both ISPs (internet service providers) and programs such as Outlook 2007, the rules are evolving. Are you evolving with them?
Delivering to the InBox
As with all marketing, content still rules. But while it used to be enough to avoid being blacklisted and ensure you weren’t using “banned words” you were usually in the clear. That is no longer the case. ISPs and the technology they employ to eliminate spam have gotten more comprehensive and aggressive. ISPs are concentrating on WHO sends the email as much as they are on WHAT is sent. If your emails are opened regularly, then you are in the clear. But, if a large enough percentage of individuals mark your emails as SPAM, ISPs will trace that back to your sending domain and IP address. In many cases, they will then block any subsequent messages you send. As a result, even the normal process oriented messages and individual communications you send (or others send from the same IP) will be blocked, thus hampering your efforts in other areas. So, if the ISP doesn’t trust you, you aren’t going anywhere. And the ISP is only going to trust you if your recipients trust you. So, what to do?
1. Get their permission and make it easy to keep it: Make sure, every chance you get, to get the permission of your recipients. A big part of this can even be the lists you purchase. Only work with reputable vendors that qualify recipient permission. Avoid small, internet-based lead generators. They will be less likely to have qualified a recipients permission or even interest…both of which will leave your messages more likely to be perceived as SPAM. Also, make sure you make it easy for them to unsubscribe at any point, even if they have been receiving your emails successfully in the past.
The biggest mistake you can make is to not respect someone’s desire to stop receiving your emails. If you don’t make it easy…they will simply block you as SPAM, which is a much bigger concern for your future. So, make it easy…make it apparant and help the user out. In addition, make sure you are managing unsubscibes quickly/automatically whenever possible. Don’t make this a manual process where someone is pulling the name from a spreadsheet. That is too much work for your recipients and for you. Also, it increases the chance that the unsubscribe request may not be respected.
2. Respect your recipients: This is a two part issue. First and formost, send them relevent information in easy to consume pieces. Don’t send long, rambling emails talking about the advantages of your institution. Have a goal or piece of information to share, get it to them quickly and simply (in format, whether text or HTML) and then make it easy for them to find follow up information on your web site or a landing page. If appropriate, step recipients through a process of automatically generated emails that or only sent if previous steps are completed, allowing you to extend the dialog beyond a single message. If you cannot be relevant (from the recipient’s standpoint…not yours) and provide information with specific value, then you are setting yourself up to fail. In addition, wherever possible set expectations for e-marketing and stick to them. If you allow someone to subscribe to your weekly email newsletter, make sure to send it once a week and once a week only. If you tell me you will provide periodic updates on campus events, don’t send me messages every week. Failing to meet the recipients expectations that you have set is a sure way to end up in the SPAM file.
3. Last but not least, work with an experienced e-marketing partner on a robust platform. Make sure you review your campaign reports and ensure you are getting a good return and connection with your recipients. If not, move to another vendor that better suits your needs. Avoid sending large marketing campaigns from your own servers and IP addresses. It has the potential to cause you abundant issues down the road if you aren’t careful or if you do a lot of e-communications.
Have a great week!
December 17th, 2007
