Higher Ed Pulse

Every marketer knows the importance of word of mouth — people trust people more than people trust brands...plain and simple.   But, how do you get word of mouth to happen at scale? And how do you ensure that the words that people use to describe the experience your institutional brand offers aligns with the very way you want your brand to be perceived? Community marketing might just be the answer....

On this week’s episode of Fanatical Fridays, Zach and Mickey close out their Summer Sessions series with a discussion around how and why higher ed marketers and admissions professionals should adopt conversational marketing and admissions frameworks to their student recruitment mix.  Tune into this episode to learn the following: What conversational marketing means in higher ed student recruitment...

Communication flows are the bread and butter of student recruitment in higher ed — and yet, admissions and marketing professionals alike struggle to make them compelling and differentiated.  On this week’s episode of The Enrollify Podcast, Zach sits down with Bryson Purcell, an Assistant Director of Admissions at Lock Haven University, and the Co-Founder of SuccessU (a student coaching service), t...

The new fiscal year has started and budgets are more or less set...but just because you’ve spent your marketing resources on a particular collection of vendors, strategies, tactics, and technology doesn't mean you have to do the same next year! On this week's episode, Zach shares five questions that every higher ed marketer should ask themselves before they launch a single campaign this fall: Wher...

On this week’s episode of Fanatical Fridays, Zach and Mickey continue their Summer Sessions series with a brainstorm on the future of college and university websites. Zach outlines a helpful framework for how to think about, audit, and augment the experience your website offers to mirror the experience of being on campus.  Furthermore, Zach shares predictions for what the future of college and uni...

This special segment is the fourth and final part of our Enrollment Marketing Benchmarks Series brought to you by our sister company, DD Agency, an enrollment marketing services agency that specializes in SEO, content marketing, and all things HubSpot.  You can stream part one, the State of Event Marketing in Graduate Enrollment Management here , part two, the State of Content Marketing in Graduat...

Zach is out at a leadership retreat this week, so we’re featuring our most recent Starter Stories episode on the pod! Get ready to meet Elizabeth Johnson — Co-Founder and Chairman at SimpsonScarborough, one of the leading market research, branding, and design firms serving higher education today. In her senior year of high school, Elizabeth thought she’d go and study psychology in college. But, af...

In a recent Snapchat study , Gen Zers and millennials say that they watch over one hour per day watching video on social media apps alone. Over half (52%) of both Gen Zers and millennials say this increased viewing is here to stay. On this week’s episode of Fanatical Fridays, Zach and Mickey continue their Summer Sessions series and discuss how video is no longer optional in your marketing or recr...

This special segment is the third part of our Enrollment Marketing Benchmarks Series brought to you by our sister company, DD Agency, an enrollment marketing services agency that specializes in SEO, content marketing, and all things HubSpot. You can stream part one, the State of Event Marketing in Graduate Enrollment Management here , or part two, the State of Content Marketing in Graduate Enrollm...

This special segment is the second part of our Enrollment Marketing Benchmarks Series brought to you by our sister company, DD Agency, an enrollment marketing services agency that specializes in SEO, content marketing, and all things HubSpot. You can stream part one, the State of Event Marketing in Graduate Enrollment Management here. To access the full benchmarks report, visit www. BeatTheBenchma...

Guest co-host Jamie Gleason joins the discussion this week as Mickey breaks down his approaches to working prospective student pipelines. Mickey discusses three components to address the pipeline as the conversation gets intense quickly! From defining stages and substages, to high conversion moments, to prioritizing your daily and weekly engagement efforts, this episode dives deep. Tune in to hear...

This special segment is the first part of our Enrollment Marketing Benchmarks Series brought to you by our sister company, DD Agency, an enrollment marketing services agency that specializes in SEO, content marketing, and all things HubSpot. Tune in for insights, data, and strategic recommendations for how to up your event email marketing game plan! To access the full benchmarks report, visit www....

On this week's episode of Fanatical Fridays, Zach and Mickey flesh out a tried and true framework for social media advertising that helps schools of all shapes and sizes generate quality leads (regardless of their media budget). Furthermore, Zach shares ideas for how enrollment marketers should diversify their marketing channels based on their average annual budget for media buys. Get ready for so...

On this week's podcast, Zach sits down with Will Patch from Niche and Jeremy Tiers from Tudor Collegiate Strategies to discuss a survey they recently conducted of high school juniors. A total of 7,129 juniors responded to the survey and expressed their hopes, dreams, and fears about their college search process in a (soon-to-be) post-pandemic world. Tune in for a fascinating discussion on what the...

In our first SUMMER SESSIONS☀️ episode, Mickey and Zach chat about the disruption in the higher ed industry ushered in by the pandemic and the unique challenges faced by various types of educational institutions.  The hosts dive into the following questions: Is this the 'moment of truth' for schools who are facing massive enrollment declines? How do they become genuinely distinct, before going ext...

In 2019, SimpsonScarborough published a State of Higher Ed Marketing report, which noted that more marketers say their president relies on anecdotal opinions than many quantifiable measures and that only 1 in 3 are using periodic brand tracking to measure success. While tides are shifting, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in higher ed to associate brand and marketing impact with...

We're gearing up to launch a new, special segment of Fanatical Fridays called SUMMER SESSIONS. ☀️ Get ready for 6 episodes designed especially to teach you a new strategy and/or tactic that will help you become a better enrollment manager or higher ed marketer this summer. - - - - Connect With Our Host: Mallory Willsea  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorywillsea/ https://twitter.com/mallorywi...

Welcome to our YouTube Advertising for Higher Ed Marketers series, where we teach you how to up your YouTube creative game and generate qualified inquiries using YouTube TrueView for Action Campaigns. If a picture's worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million?! 90% of Gen-Z is on YouTube and watches an average of 23 hours of content on the platform each month. And yet, many enrollment...

On this week's episode of The Enrollify Podcast, Zach is joined by Bill Faust, Senior Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Ologie, to chat about the ways in which COVID has fundamentally changed how higher ed thinks about branding, marketing, and student recruitment. They discuss how higher ed institutions will evolve their offers and experiences and whether or not schools will become more specif...

This week’s Fanatical Friday’s episode is the second part of an Enrollify Podcast two-part series ( catch the first episode here ). Zach Busekrus is joined by a special guest, Jamie Gleason, a 15-year enrollment management veteran (both on campus and in the ed-tech/enrollment marketing space).   Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist said that “We yearn for change, but cling to the...

In this week’s episode, Zach Busekrus welcomes Jamie Gleason (DD Agency’s VP of Enrollment Strategy). When these two enrollment guys get rolling, the ideas (and tangents) become prolific.   In part one of this Enrollify Podcast two-part series, Zach and Jamie noodle on the age-old “what’s next in enrollment marketing” question. For instance, what would it look like to introduce a video-first commu...

A recent Pew Research Center report pegged YouTube as the most popular and fastest-growing social media platform, reaching 81% of US adults in 2021 — up from 73% in 2019. And Gen-Z? 90% of them watch one or more videos on the platform every month! But, enrollment professionals have struggled to effectively use YouTube for student recruitment — and it's time that changes.  On this week's episode of...

Everyone talks about the importance of storytelling in marketing...and a lot of folks in higher ed think they are good storytellers, but what are the mechanics and frameworks that separate the best storytellers from the rest of the pack?  On this week's episode, Zach is joined by Kerry Morrison, Chief Storytelling Officer at Goodkind — an education technology company focused on storytelling throug...

Zach and Mickey share practical ideas for the data points that enrollment managers should be leveraging to better personalize their communications to prospective students. Don't miss the debate on the value of personas at the end and a special announcement about a new series coming out this summer! Learn more about this episode and about our sponsors in our show notes . - - - - Connect With Our Ho...

TikTok advertising today is basically what Facebook Advertising was in 2014 — organic reach is incredible, generating quality impressions is a given, and competition (in higher education anyway) is low. So why aren't more schools allocating resources to developing their TikTok strategy? According to Enrollify subscribers, it's "because we aren't sure how to get started." Well, buckle up folks beca...