3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc. Bringing Digital Labs to Boston and NYC
3E’s one-day Digital Labs are working sessions for marketing, enrollment, and admissions professionals responsible for social media planning, content, and implementation. The objective is to impact student recruitment results.
Oneonta, NY
November, 2019
3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc., (3E) modern marketing built for higher education, will host two Digital Labs in Boston and New York City this December, supporting the use of digital media in generating measurable improvements in student recruitment.
Designed as day-long working sessions, the Labs are led by Matt Hames, Associate Vice President of Social & Digital Strategy at 3E. Participants will leave understanding how to:
1. Use digital media to improve student recruitment results
2. Build a plan focused on supporting application and deposit generation
3. Measure social media results within the context of enrollment goals
The Boston #3EDigitalLab is December 12 at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
The New York City #3EDigitalLab is December 17 at Mercy College.
The Digital Lab is a practical approach to a complex intersection of issues currently faced by enrollment marketers, marked by the proliferation of digital and social channels in the last decade. Students have flocked to different platforms at a rapid pace. Colleges and universities have tried to keep up after them—and then different divisions of those colleges and universities have followed suit. Add in college review sites and Wikipedia, and the result is the underpinnings of a complex SERP (Search Engine Results Page) algorithm, where an institution’s site isn’t always prioritized. Ultimately, digital media is incredibly important to institutional recruitment and marketing success, but it is increasingly challenging to harness its power.
In the #3EDigitalLab, attendees will break these issues down and meet three objectives:
Cracking the SERP Code
One of the first things a student does when they hear about a school is Google it. The outcome of that action is the SERP, and what the student sees is a mix of the .edu site; Wikipedia; rankings sites such as U.S. News and World Report, Niche, Princeton Review, and/or Forbes; social sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; and other pages such as the institution’s athletics site. The Lab will tackle the questions of how and why certain sites rank higher on the page and how to influence the results—as well as how to update Wikipedia, as it figures prominently in Google search.
Prioritizing Resources
Over the last decade recruitment marketing has included scrambling to be where students are. First it was following them to Facebook, then Instagram. Then Snapchat, now TikTok. While it’s easy to get onto a new channel, it’s quite difficult to successfully market on a new one. Discussion in the Lab will include where institutions need to be on social and where they don’t—the short answer is they can be doing less, while doing it better.
Drafting a Roadmap
Within a particular social channel, an individual institution will often have an array of accounts: a general account, admissions, fundraising, athletics, schools within a university, different departments or divisions, clubs or organizations. The result? A lot of noise, and a lack of focus. The message—and audience—gets diluted. Lab attendees will get a roadmap to synchronize overall institutional messaging. They’ll also understand the metrics they should be tracking to assess the efficacy of their efforts.
The overarching objective goes beyond optimizing the institution’s online presence; it’s to build it into a positive driver of enrollment.
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About Matt Hames
Matt Hames has been cited as a pioneer in higher education social media management, referenced in Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education Head Count blog, and University Business. His uncanny ability to see the future of social and digital trends and his grounded, common sense responses to this quickly shifting landscape make him a highly effective social and digital marketer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthames
About 3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc.
We are modern marketing built for higher ed. Enrolling a student is challenging—and as marketing channels grow and the technology solutions to manage them multiply, it’s not getting any easier. In fact, it can take coordinating up to six vendors to try to build a comprehensive marketing plan. That’s insanity. 3E stops the insanity and manages the complexity. We are difference makers.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/3enrollment/
PULL OUT QUOTE
“The Lab is not a typical workshop or conference. We don’t want to talk about problems. We want to solve them. We don’t have all the answers, but we know some of the questions. We want to discuss those questions in the Lab— and the ones we haven’t thought of yet—and try to solve them.”