In last month’s mStoner blog, Michael—my longtime business partner, colleague, and friend—celebrated the past 20 years of mStoner’s work in higher education. It was a fitting topic, given Michael’s retirement at the end of this month and our joining this powerhouse company, Carnegie, in September.
Reflecting on the most recent past myself, I’m gratified and heartened by the collective resilience of our devotion to education amid political, cultural, economic, and epidemiological turmoil. In the face of sustained uncertainty and fear at a global level, we as a society remain committed to the idea that education can transform our individual lives and better our world.
In my conversations with clients and colleagues in recent months, three topics have come up repeatedly:
- The need for greater cross-departmental communication and collaboration.
- The realization of meaningful personalization in web communications.
- The discipline of measurement and adaptation.Â
Communication and collaboration
Those of you who are familiar with Carnegie’s approach to branding know that the foundation of our philosophy is the power of human connection. Why? Because as human beings, we are hardwired to seek connections. The core of our branding work is helping institutions to connect with prospective students on not only an intellectual level but also an emotional level. And we know that most decisions are made at the emotional level.
The importance of human connection applies to an institution’s brand—and also its administration. Simply put, we need to work together better. In a flash poll during our most recent webinar, more than 70% of attendees reported that key players in recruitment and retention—marketing and communications, admissions, information technology, student affairs, and advancement—continue to operate in tight silos. Differing and disparate strategies, execution plans, and technologies remain in place.
While a small number of institutions have restructured these offices to create more unified leadership, most will continue to retain more traditional administrative structures. My colleague Ben Arendt talks about how the traditional enrollment funnel has morphed into an enrollment and marketing ecosystem in which students may interact with institutions across entry points, channels, time, and space in non-linear ways. In that ecosystem, disparate teams in an institution are coming to recognize that their long-term, collective success relies on purposeful cooperation and collaboration across operational boundaries.
Personalization
We’ve been talking about bringing personalization to higher ed sites for more than a decade, and most everyone points wistfully to the Amazon experience and the Staples easy button. The biggest reason people cite for not implementing personalization is a lack of editorial capacity.
