How do we help uncover and explain the most informative and persuasive information to prospective students?
How do we tell stories that get them excited about education?
We start by finding and utilizing data, analyzing that data, and then creating segmented marketing messages that will move the needle.
Bart Caylor, President & Founder at Caylor Solutions Inc, and Troy Singer, Senior Account Executive at Think Patented chat with Christine Harper, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management at the University of Kentucky, and Julie Balog, Chief Marketing Officer at the University of Kentucky about:
- How to utilize data to drive segmentation in messaging.
- How to engage undecided students using data.
- The difference between innovation and ingenuity.
- How the University of Kentucky is helping communities.
Know of a higher education marketing change agent you’d like to hear on the show? Does your university have an interesting story to be featured? Connect with Bart Caylor or Troy Singer. If you’re not on LinkedIn, check the Caylor Solutions or Think Patented websites instead!
To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to The Higher Ed Marketer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.
The Higher Ed Marketer podcast is brought to you by Caylor Solutions, an Education Marketing, and Branding Agency.
Transcript
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You were listening to the Higher Ed
Marketer, a podcast geared towards marketing professionals
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00:00:07.230 --> 00:00:11.910
in higher education. This show will
tackle all sorts of questions related to student
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recruitment, don't have relations, marketing
trends, new technologies and so much more.
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If you are looking for conversations centered
around where the industry is going,
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this podcast is for you. Let's
get into the show. Welcome to the
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00:00:29.260 --> 00:00:34.340
Higher Ed Marketer Podcast, where weekly
we explore ideas and insights from marketers we
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admire. I'm Troye singer here with
a marketer I admire, Bart Taylor.
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In Bart, we get to talk
to exceptional marketing executives in the BLUEGRASS state
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today. Yeah, Troy, and
thank you. I really appreciate working with
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you two. This has been a
great, you know, Journey that we've
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been on and we when we first
started to kind of promoting the high ed
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marketer podcast, had someone in the
Media Department at University of Kentucky reach out
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and say, Hey, we've got
a great story about how marketing and enrollment
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are working together at UK. Would
you mind if I pitched you on that?
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And so we listened and heard them
out and thought, boy, this
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is going a great story. Let's
hear about this, and so really looking
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forward to having this conversation today and
we've been so much so that it's going
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to end up being a two parter. Yes, it is, and,
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as you know, a common theme
among some of our previous interview he's has
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been how marketing and communication apartments are
customarily known for aligning with their alumni offices
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and how that is changing for some
schools, and at the University of a
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Kentucky they are aligning more marketing communications
with enrollment and we're going to hear more
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about that and the success that they
are having. Yeah, it's a fascinating
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conversation and I think it'll be really
worth everyone's time to listen to both episodes
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and I'm so excited about it.
Well said, let's get into the conversation.
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I'm excited to introduce Julie Baylog,
Chief Marketing Officer for the University of
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Kentucky, and Christine Harper, associated
vice president of enrollment management of the University
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of Kentucky. Welcome to the both
of you to the highered marketer podcast.
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Thank you. Thanks so much for
having us. Really looking forward to this
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conversation, as are we and I
know that we agreed to talk about some
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wonderful things, including how to best
the ligne marketing and enrollment. But before
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we get into it, could you
both give us a little bit of a
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background, or at least what your
roles entail, and would love to know
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your path to that cause I happen
to know they are unique paths. Julie,
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want to go ahead and start,
sure, I'll start. So I
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am the chief marketing officer here at
the University of Kentucky. I've been in
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that role since December of two thousand
and eighteen, so fairly new to that
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role. Prior to that I was
in a similar roll down at the Academic
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Medical Center down the street for UK
healthcare, which is part of the university
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system. In addition to that,
I've worked in the nonprofit room and I
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have often also worked in a place
called Keenland, which is a a major
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sporting a horse racing and auction,
Horse Auction Vitinue, and so I do
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have a varied background. Always been
in marketing. Proud graduate of the University
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of Kentucky. I tell the story
that I came here on a full academic
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scholarship first Gen. feel very fortunate
and came here thought I was going to
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study medicine, that I was going
to study pharmacy, something like that,
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and then I really did not enjoy
all of those sciences that go along with
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that and remember my advisor saying to
me, well, why don't you try
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something different just to see? All
right, so I took a business class
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it over at the Gatton College of
business and, as I like to say,
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it was like a little confetticanon went
off in my head and I'm like
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this is what I'm supposed to do, and so I've been in marketing ever
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since then. Thank you, Julie
Christine. Yes, so I have been
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in enrollment management in a number of
performs for over two decades now. I
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started just a couple of months before
Julie in my current role from July of
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two thousand and eighteen in the church
chief enrollment officer for the university. Prior
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to that I had come to the
University of Kentucky in two thousand and ten
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and worked in professional and graduate admission. So I was the Student Affairs Office
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as well as the admissions director for
the College of Dentistry. So dental professional
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admissions a little bit different prior to
that I worked another large public institution,
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since I had started there in two
thousand and one and worked in enrollment management
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in undergraduate education for a number of
years. Interestingly too, I think it's
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funny how you start down one path. When I started my collegiate degree,
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I was it between molecular genetics and
ceramics, and I remember my father say
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just do what you love and the
rest will come, and it certainly has,
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because I don't think many people think
that they are going to go into
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higher administration, but those were so
it was so formative. I had a
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great academic advisor and I've a student
athlete had great academic advisor. That got
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me thinking about the opportunities in working
with college students, and so admissions was
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where I felt and the statistical side
and this kind of art in the science
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of this work really mels with my
ceramics degree that I actually have as long
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as well as a master's and working
on my doctorate right now milds into it.
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I see nice play on words.
was that's great. One of the
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things I know that we talked about
earlier was when you both started your rolls
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back in two thousand and eighteen the
way that each of the offices, marketing
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and enrollment management worked with one another
was really different than it is today and
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I know that the way it is
today is being touted in seen is a
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very successful story. So maybe tell
us a little bit about the journey that
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where it was and the reason or
the decision to change that and why it's
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working so well now. I think
we can jump by by saying that it's
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working really well now for a couple
reasons. One Julie and I partner really,
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really well together and she's got a
great team. I think that we
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also benefited from coming in at the
same time to a brand at the university
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that was pretty done out and and
didn't really have much identity. We struggled
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with how do you, how does
this really talk about who UK is?
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And so through the uncovering of a
new brand strategy and that work, we
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work so closely together and really saw
such value in what each of us brought
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and all the data we uncovered and
kind of grew into it and then just
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kind of clung to each other thinking
about like this could be really great and
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we need to continue this and how
do we make it stronger? And I
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don't think I realized how much of
a Unicorn we were. I think that
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was a surprise to me for a
couple of reasons. One is, I
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outline my background, I actually also
worked at an agency for a few years
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as an account manager and when I
came in here, this is also what
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I did done at UK healthcare is
set it up as an agency model.
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And so what we have are two
people devoted to enrollment management from our team.
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I have another one who's devoted to
housing and dining one who works only
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with the current stuart population. At
the way we view this as Christine is
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our client and we actually almost practically
embed those account managers in Christine's team and
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there's a great deal of trust those. Those account managers that we have an
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em are pretty much just seamlessly part
of that. They go to Christine's meetings,
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she works with them very directly and
she tends to work more with them
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on the more tactical implementation and then
she and I work on the strategic side.
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And when she was referring to the
brand strategy development, that was one
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of the reasons that I was brought
down here was to develop and put a
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fine her point out what is the
University of Kentucky's poreent and what is our
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brand promise? And what I like
to say is that you can come to
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the University of Kentucky and you can
do anything and you're going to achieve it
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in a community that both challenges you
and support you, and I think it's
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that unique tension that that is what
makes us special. And Christine was very
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instrumental as we developed that brand strategy. We really did have the student population
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in mind, and so as we
develop that out, then we developed the
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creative expression of that brand, which
is what we call wildly possible, and
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so we talked about you can come
here and anything is wildly possible. We
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like to lean in on words like
dream boldly and achieve greatly, and so
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as we collaborate, she and her
team were so much a part of that
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brand strategy development. It's not like
we had to educate. They walk the
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path and so the words they use, the the way they represent us,
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it's authentic and I think that's the
key to a strong brand strategy implementation is
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it has to be both aspirational and
it has to be authentic. It's great.
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It almost seems like you're even living
out that brand promise internally with your
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own offices. I mean the fact
that you're collaborating and doing some bold things
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with with that. I think that's
really good. I think it's interesting too,
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whenever I talk with different different enrollment
leaders or marketing leaders. So many
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times, I think in higher education
especially more so than and maybe at some
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other industries, it's so siload,
I mean all the different areas of the
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university or Siload, and many times
marketing is kind of been borne out over
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the years out of the advancement office. I mean, you know, the
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Alumni magazine is really what drove a
lot of the need for any creatives on
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campus, and so I find that
even some of the schools that are are
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still struggling a lot of times that
that alignment between enrollment and marketing is sometimes
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still wanting because of the priorities of
being under the advancement arm. I mean
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is it? Have you guys kind
of witnessed that or maybe at some of
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the other organizations that you're part of? I think for me, the way
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I approach it, I don't necessarily
see it that way because I've always felt
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like marketing is a strategic enabler and
we need to have a seat at the
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table when the strategy is being developed
and if it's so much better to understand
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what is the strategic goal, because
then we can develop the tactics. The
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example I uses. I don't like
to have people call and say I need
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to billboard. Okay, well,
you may need a billboard, what are
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you trying to do? And at
the end of the conversation will determine whether
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a billboards the right way to do
it or another way to do it.
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And the fact that Christine is very
data driven and so am I, I
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think, really lends itself well,
because we have our brand strategy, but
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we also have a strategic marketing plan
that, again, we developed and one
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of with with them and with her
team in mind. And you know,
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strategies one and two really focus on
enrollment and how we build the esteem of
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that brand among perspective audiences. And
so when we developed that strategic marketing plan,
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we had to know numbers. We
had to know what are we what
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are we trying to reach, because
if it's a huge stretch, then that
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tells you how you need to resource
and do we have the right people in
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the right spots? And so I
can. I'll kind of let Christine speak
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to that, because I think when
she came in what she was challenged with
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is she was really asked to stretch
those numbers and so a lot of times
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she's she's telling me, well,
this is where we're headed and then together
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we figure out how we can get
there. Yeah, absolutely, I think
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the push in the push in the
poll. It's really our brand strategy.
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As you mentioned, Bart, we
really do live it out and July mentioned
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the embedding of her team members,
particularly Katie Benett, on our team,
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on her team, and not just
one meeting but multiple meetings where the data
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is provided. So just because you
know, we're talking about events and what's
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going on. Well, wire events
lagging. Having Katie in the room is
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so critical because we can not only
respond to the data but then react to
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it. She's also in our broader
recruit and meeting where we have our college
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recruiters come in. So then we
have the Intel there. We will look
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at our social media and here things
happening, and so this brand strategy is
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also a living, breathing thing that
the tactic shift based on the winds of
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what we're going through in the pandemic
is a great example. But to Julie's
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point, when we started where we
were, I was charged with growth and,
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you know, growth in different ways
and needing to be able to do
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that in a very strategic way of
where we going to put our funds,
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where are we going to put our
recruiters, where are we going to launch
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our digital assets? Where are we
going to physically mail versus who gets a
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phone call, and so so this
ability to have so close a tie is
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really critical and and the push in
the pull of it. You know,
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Julie Brings Information based off of what
they're seeing in the response rates, in
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the open rates and the clicks in
the in the digital we're talking about what
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we're seeing in the high school,
not now in the high schools, but
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in the zoom rooms. But but
then what are our high school counselor saying?
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Where is it that a lot of
times will have meetings because we see
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behaviors in the data that then make
us think something's not quite clicking, and
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then it's how did we how can
we communicate differently, or how is somebody
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reading what we're doing? And sometimes
it's because a change is made in a
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college or like the Honors College and
maybe the way that it's being the information
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is being received is is not what
we intended, and so that ability to
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really go back and forth is so
critical. And you know, wherever marketing
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is housed, I think that it's
the it has to be the the oonus
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of the enrollment management, chief enrollment
officer to say hey, come with me,
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partner with me, because if not, you're not going to make the
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strides that you need to, you're
not going to be able to look at
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data and have that inform and really
move things forward in the way the institution
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wants to, whether the goals or
growth goals, or the goals are selectivity
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or the shape of the class those
are. You know, it has to
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be a very close relationship for it
to be successful. That's great. I
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love the collaborative language in the ways
that you're talking about that. I know
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that in your comment, Julie,
about you know, people come to us
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and say we need a billboard.
Well, why? And Ethan Braden from
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Pretty University, he was guessed on
episode one and he kind of talked about
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that. You know, we're not
short order cooks. I mean the idea
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of the marking department is not just
here to take your order and go fulfill
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it. I mean we need to
be, like you said, at the
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table. We need to be talking
about things, we need to understand the
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data, asking the why is the
house, the the win and the what
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questions, just to be able to
be able to really kind of speak and
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talk and make strategic decisions, not
because, you know, by bringing all
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of our strengths to the table,
rather than just saying, Oh, well,
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you guys are creative, just go
do what I want you to do,
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because this is the creative I need
that I have. No we're all
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coming to the table to kind of
bring all that together and I think that,
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Troy, you talked a little bit
about, you know, the agency
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model, and Julie made a comment
about that. Maybe you can kind of
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pick up on ask a few questions
about that. Yes, Julie, you
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gave a great example of how that
works with enrollment. Are there other relationships
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or how does that agency model work
with other departments as you relate to them?
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Yes, we've extended it beyond enrollment. We did mostly start with enrollment
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initially, but I also have an
account manager who works mostly with housing and
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dining, because we do have a
lot of opportunity. Are All of our
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dorms, or, excuse me,
residence halls, or at least they're all
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quite new, and but with that
comes the obligation to make sure that they're
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being used and that we mark at
them. And and so one of the
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things that she did, for instance, is she figured out that the students
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who live on camp empus have a
higher GPA and are more likely to graduate
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in four years. So suddenly that
became a real compelling proof point when we're
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talking to families about this is why
you want to live on campus, because
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there's a there's a real factor there. We also have somebody who is completely
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devoted to the current the student success
stream, working with current students. So
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she is embedded with with that particular
group and she helps do everything from text
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reminders to students who need to get
their advising appointment going to shoe runs the
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editorial with some other folks on the
PR team for a newsletter that we do
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once a week called wildcat rundown that
has all the great information that a student
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needs to know, and the open
rates on that thing are through the roof.
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And so you know, she's really
good about keeping a pulse on what
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do we need to know? Because, you know, I like to say,
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at the end of the day,
you know, marketing's getting the right
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message to the right person at the
right time. You're really when you can
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most influence them. And so everybody
knows their their peace. And then we
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have I'm a big believer. I'm
a big believer in the daily huddle and
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I believe they should be short.
It did. They cascade. And so,
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for instance, one of the things
we do in them every morning at
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nine o'clock, we huddle and it
doesn't take us more than fifteen minutes and
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it's all of my direct reports and
then my counterpart, Jadel, who's the
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chief communications officer, his direct reports. We get on there, we do
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around Robin. We share out with
them anything that they need to know.
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They share with us any barriers to
success, anything that we need to do,
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and then what happens is then those
people then meet with their direct reports
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at ten o'clock and that we and
it should never take more than fifteen minutes.
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But everybody is aligned that way and
there's no surprises. And so that
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those are all the ways that,
from an agency standpoint, that we're trying
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to do it. We also have
a creative director who works in the role
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of making sure that we're assigning a
graphic designers to they're also aligned with account
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managers, so the same graphic designer
works on a lot of the same accounts
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so that they understand and become part
of that embedded team. We have videographers,
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photographers and all of that works jointly
with the PR team and so we're
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just in every college as a communicator
and then we meet with the college communicators
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once a month to share with them
anything that we need to share from the
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university level. That's great and I'm
sure, Christine, that you maybe even
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feel the residual as one of the
agency clients. But certainly if something's going
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on in the housing and on campus
realm obviously some of that data that you're
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they're hearing, that you're learning,
I mean, is is going to help
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with transfers, gets to help with, you know, the way that you're
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selling the university and maybe even retention
to degree. I'm not sure that's part
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of your you know, part of
your purview, but certainly those things are
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going to make a huge difference.
Yeah, I think that it really does.
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All of the weights. I feel
I just said this last week.
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I feel like we're really hitting on
all cylinders because of the way that the
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agency model works and the kind of
tentacles going out and then coming back in
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and then feeding one another. It's
amazing how much Intel and information we have
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and how that information then helps inform
everything else. Some people think, well,
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I'm only focused on this population and
this is really what my goal is,
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but that population then becomes our current
students, and so there has to
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be this this seamless process of what
are we telling our students from the time
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that they're early college, like we're, you know, but we're out in
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middle schools? Where are we telling
them? How are we sharing just how
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do you get to college and that
UK can be an option, or just
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college in general can be an option? And then, as they get closer,
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what are we sharing with them that
then hopefully becomes part of what they
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experience in their first year into their
second as they then graduate and become a
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lums. We've leaned into our alumni
for that very reason. We want them
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close. We want them to know
what words, what we're telling we want
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to hear from them so then we
can see how is it going? How
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have we changed and what is this
experience like? So to that point,
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when we have meetings, that retention
meeting, which is a huge broad table,
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we have our first time freshman meeting, huge broad table, housing and
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dining, will give reports if we
see things that are happening in terms of
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our LLP applications. So all of
these things inform the students across the life
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cycle through to graduation or whatever their
career plans or life plans are, and
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the agency model has really, I
think, sped up that knowledge base.
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I think Julie you can agree with
me that when we both started we knew
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we had gems and stories on this
campus and we had real hard time surfacing
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those. We knew, Oh this
student over here and this faculty member over
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here. That is because of a
lot of Julie and her team's work and
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also the way that they're embedded.
This college is will say I have a
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student that you really need to connect
with. Before it would just go off
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into what do we do with this
and get lost in the ether. And
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now, like I said, just
feels like we're hitting on all cylinders and
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a lot of that has to do
with that alignment and embedded nature and then
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that idea that we really are trying
to keep that brand promise and who UK
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is is is this and we want
you to experience it. For the right
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student, it's going to be a
great experience and you will do things that
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you didn't think you could do,
and so that that piece is is really
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critical for us and I think that
the way that it's aligned right now has
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been extremely helpful in getting us in
a very short period of time, very
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short period of time, to places. I think we thought it could be
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five, six, seven years before
we got to this and our were easily
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readily, you know, surfacing some
of this. That's great, great,
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thank you. Wow. We are
at the time that we try to keep
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it to for every episode, but
unfortunately we are only halfway through what we
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wanted to cover with the both of
you. So we're going to divide this
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into a two part episode and Bart
we're going to continue on next week for
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everyone else, but for us is
just going to be about five minutes from
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now. So, Julie Christine,
thank you and we look forward to everyone
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joining us next week on the second
part of our conversation with UK. The
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High Ed Marketer podcast is sponsored by
Taylor solutions and education, marketing and branding
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00:22:15.180 --> 00:22:21.619
agency and by Think, patented on
Marketing Execution, printing and mainly provider of
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00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:26.140
highered solutions. On behalf of my
cohost, barred Taylor, I'm troy singer.
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00:22:26.619 --> 00:22:32.329
Thank you for joining us. You've
been listening to the Higher Ed Marketer.
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00:22:33.049 --> 00:22:36.329
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