Stamats' QuickTakes
Insights into Research, Strategic Planning, and Integrated Marketing for Colleges and Universities by Dr. Robert A. Sevier, Senior Vice President at Stamats (quicktakes@stamats.com)
Vol. V, no. 10: Evaluate
In this issue.
This past spring I held a series of three, one-day conferences in the Midwest and on the East Coast. We will be holding a couple more: Steve Kappler will be in Dallas/Ft. Worth on June 18 and I will be in Vancouver, WA on July 15. We'll begin at 8:30am and run to 2:30pm. One day, but three topics:
1. Integrated Marketing
2. Branding
3. Messages That Matter
If you're interested (and I hope you are), please e-mail brandy.huseman@stamats.com. She has all the details. Or, check out Seminars.
ON STRATEGY I: THE BALANCED SCORECARD
Since the beginning of the year, I completed more than a dozen board retreats on strategic thinking and planning. In several instances, we have talked about the Balanced Scorecard, a set of measurements and management tools that help guide and evaluate strategy.
The Scorecard is built around a basic premise: If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. In fact, a quote from Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) is often used to illustrate this penchant for linking measurement and management: "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."
At its most basic, a Balanced Scorecard is a way to operationalize strategy. In other words, it links strategy to human action. This is a key and perhaps pivotal understanding because we know from long experience that strategy, if not used to guide action, is useless. In fact, this is the biggest frustration with strategic planning in general. Developed by Kaplan and Norton (Kaplan and Norton: The Balanced Scorecard (Harvard Business School Press, 1992), the Scorecard is used by leaders to communicate to employees and external stakeholders the outcomes and performance drivers by which the organization will achieve its mission and strategic objectives.
The "balance" in the Balanced Scorecard comes from the fact that it seeks more than financial indicators to manage and measure. The other three (there are typically four) include the customer perspective, the internal process perspective, and the employee and organizational learning and growth perspective.
In the next few issues of QuickTakes we will be exploring the Balanced Scorecard. Specifically, we will look at how it can be used to improve our colleges and universities. If you have a thought or insight you would like to share with QuickTakes readers, please drop me an e-mail at bob.sevier@stamats.com. Thanks.
ON STRATEGY II: FINDING A COMMON LANGUAGE - PART III: MARKETING AND POSITIONING
For the past couple of issues we have been presenting a common language for marketing and planning. This issue will focus on marketing and positioning.
Integrated marketing (IM) - A listening-first, database-dependent, approach to marketing that includes a willingness to segment and coordinate such strategic assets as product (customer), price (cost), and place (convenience), and to develop effective promotion (communication) strategies for key target audiences.
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) - A comprehensive, coordinated, institution-wide effort to communicate mission-critical values and messages in ways that target audiences notice, understand, and respond to. IMC stresses data-driven segmentation, message integration, and evaluation and includes three critical components: brand marketing, direct marketing, and customer relationship management. The purpose of IMC is to establish the brand, or position, in the mind of a target audience.
Image - A set of attitudes or beliefs that a person or audience holds about a college or university. Institutions have multiple images. For example, older alums often view you differently than younger alumni; faculty with tenure often perceive you differently than do faculty without tenure. Importantly, an image is how you are perceived and not necessarily how you are. But because perceptions guide behavior, it is very important that you know how you are perceived by the audiences you value most.
Promotion - The downward distribution of messages from a college or university to target audiences that focus almost solely on organizational needs and goals (to contrast, see communication, below.)
Marketplace - A subset of the larger environment in which the college or university must create sustaining exchange relationships with key audiences.
Communication - The creation of customized and segmented messages founded on careful listening that address both institution and audience needs and goals.
Marketing action plans - Clarification of who will do what and when to achieve your marketing goals.
Segmentation - Dividing large, heterogeneous populations into smaller, homogenous subpopulations and creating, based on research, customized and more desirable products, services, and messages.
Vivid descriptors - The words or phrases you wish to establish in the minds of your target audience. Might also be called brand attributes.
Position - Very similar to a brand, a position is where your target audiences place you in their minds; the words they use to describe you when asked.
Positioning - The act of building a valued and preferred position in the minds of your target audience.
Competitive positioning - Developing and communicating powerful and meaningful differences between your offerings and those of your competition.
Our final group of terms will be related to strategic planning. We will cover them in the next issue of QuickTakes.
EVALUATE
TO REALLOCATE: WHO COULDN'T USE AN EXTRA 10%
By Eric Sickler, Principal Consultant
A few weeks ago, I heard a colleague recommend to a group of recruitment and marketing practitioners that they should reallocate the least effective/least efficient 10% of their budgets each year to fund new initiatives. Those words stuck in my head because, in theory, they make perfect sense. And who couldn't use an extra 10% for next year?
In practice, however, I know that we all struggle with measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of what we do. In the admission office, we monitor search response rates and conversion ratios through the recruitment funnel. In the advancement office, we tally class-by-class contributions to the annual fund. In the public relations office, we track column inches of hometown releases that make the newspapers. And on a good day, we make note of the attendance at special events or count the hits on our Web site.
But when it comes right down to project-specific metrics, our industry just hasn't done a very good job of really knowing what's working and what's not. With budget belts tightening across the nation and the economy pounding away at nearly every inch and penny of our programs, there has never been a greater need for the higher education marketing community to be fully aware of the return on every marketing investment.
Magic Formula
Truth is, there's no easy answer, magical formula, or simple scorecard you can
use to accomplish this never-more-essential management exercise. But there are
some systemic practices you can introduce right now—as you're catching
your breath and launching headlong into a fresh new cycle—that may bring
you closer to knowing which 10% of your department's annual operating budget
you should probably consider reallocating a year from today.
Step 1. Inventory each of your planned 2002-2003 department-funded programs, projects, events, activities, mailings, trips, etc. It's probably easiest to develop your list chronologically, but I'd recommend that you group similar initiatives before moving on to the next step.
Step 2. Identify and tally anticipated costs and expenses associated with each initiative. With any luck, you have completed most of this step when you built your budget proposal a few months ago.
Step 3. Establish a measurable expected return for each initiative, something as simple as expecting 400 responses from an 8000-piece mailing. This is the tricky part because so much of what we've done heretofore has not included a measurable expected return. How to do it? Instead of just sending out that Student Life brochure because it's always been part of your direct mail sequence, create in it an offer and include a call to action (and by the way, "For more information." statements make lousy offers).
For example, direct your readers to a specially developed Student Life splash page on your Web site where they can participate in a t-shirt design contest for next year's Orientation Week programming. Or have them return an attached card to be drawn for a premium parking spot on campus. Let loose your creative juice and make an offer (and a call to action) they can't refuse.and you can track.
(By the way, if you're thinking this will only work in the admission office, think again. Alumni, donors, faculty, staff, community member, and most other humans enjoy appropriate, compelling offers, too. The fundamentals of direct marketing transcend audience boundaries.)
Step 4. Calculate your expected investment per response. If the 8000-piece mailing cost $10,000 and we expect 400 responses, we're looking at an expected investment of $25 per response.
Step 5. As your staff completes each of the inventoried initiatives during the year ahead, compare actual costs and returns with your expectations. If you've been honest with the process, the least effective/least efficient of your initiatives will become fairly obvious.
At this point, your favorite colleague in the math department can probably help you identify the 10% of your budget that just didn't return as expected. Invest those least effective/least efficient dollars in a program that is a proven winner or in something new to keep your program vibrant.
I'd be interested in hearing your success stories. Where and how did you find new or reallocated dollars to fund new initiatives for your department? E-mail me at eric.sickler@stamats.com. And enjoy the summer sun!
If you are interested in a high-end prospect management tool for less than high-end cost, I strongly suggest you take a look at Goldmine contact management software.
Whether your interest is admissions or fundraising, Goldmine has been consistently rated as the #1 contact manager by PC Magazine, PC Computing, Home Office Computing, InfoWorld, and Windows Magazine. It easily records and analyzes all of your contact information, processes all of your decision dates and missing items, integrates your entire communication process (letters, e-mail, phone, Web-capture, etc.), and manages your complete calendar of future efforts scheduling follow-up actions of all types. Bridges can be built to integrate GoldMine with your primary administrative software so data management is seamless.
Sometimes the better mousetrap does exist. If you are interested in Goldmine, contact Steve Henderson at 888-424-0440 or steve@christianconsulting.net.
DIRECT
MARKETING MATTERS: EVALUATING E-MAIL
By Karen Hildebrand, Direct
Marketing Associate
The fact that people are using e-mail as a direct marketing medium should come as no shock. It seems as if everybody's doing it—some a lot more than others. And while more and more colleges and universities are joining the e-mail marketing frenzy, many may find themselves struggling with determining the best use of this medium for the specific needs of their institutions, and more importantly, their prospective students.
In the ClickZ article, "E-mail SWOT," by Lynne Rolls with Inbox Interactive, she provides an initial pass at evaluating e-mail marketing. Here is just a sample of points to ponder as offered in the article:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
You can review the rest of the e-mail SWOT analysis at www.clickz.com/em_mkt/em_mkt/article.php/1348121. Hopefully it will help you further evaluate e-mail's role in your institution's marketing mix.
NEW CLIENTS
Stamats would like to welcome the following new clients:
STAMATS SEMINARS SERIES
Generating
Successful Recruiting and Marketing Strategies for Graduate and Professional
Schools
When: June 16-18
Where: New Orleans, LA
REGISTER
NOW!
Successful
Direct Marketing Strategies
When: August 7-8
Where: Boston, MA
REGISTER
NOW!
Generating
Successful Integrated Marketing and Branding Strategies for Colleges & Universities
When: August 11-13
Where: Washington, DC
REGISTER
NOW!
TeensTALK Conference
(Pre-NACAC)
When: September 25
Where: Salt Lake City, UT
JOB OPENINGS
College of St. Joseph
Assistant Director of Development
Full-time position supporting college publications, public relations, and fundraising
activities. Job responsibilities include grant writing and graphic design/layout
for advertising and publications including brochures, magazine, and newsletter
production. Requires competence in computer-based graphic design and strong
writing and communication skills. Desktop publishing experience required, preferably
in PageMaker 6.5 and Photoshop. Grant writing experience helpful. Salary mid-twenties.
Send resume, writing and publication samples, and references to: Director of
Development, College of St. Joseph, 71 Clement Rd Rutland, VT 05701.
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Admissions Counselor
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is seeking a full-time annual Associate
Student Services Coordinator with a working title of Admissions Counselor. Position
description, responsibilities, qualifications, and application information are
available at: www.uwlax.edu/vacancies/03ADM01-0709.html.
MIT
Director of MBA Student Affairs
The Director of MBA Student Affairs (the Director) works with the Executive
Director of the MBA Program, Sloan faculty and students to deliver an effective
MBA program. This includes: working with the Executive Director, staff, and
faculty to set MBA Program policies, strategy, and tactics; managing staff;
overseeing student life activities, and key events (e.g., pre-term, orientation,
international trips); working with students to build community both within and
outside of the classroom; overseeing cohort management process (and also managing
a cohort) and academic advising; improving Student Affairs services and processes;
providing administrative support for the MBA program curriculum; and managing
summer communication with incoming 1st years. Job requirements: a team player
with a positive attitude; someone that enjoys challenge and change; high energy
and an outstanding work ethic; excellent interpersonal skills and the ability
to work with a wide variety of people and personalities; cultural sensitivity;
strong managerial and organizational capabilities; experience working within
an academic institution preferred; MBA highly desirable. Applicants can contact
the Executive Director of the MBA Program at mandrews@MIT.EDU.
William Rainey Harper College
Director, Student Recruitment and Outreach
Provide leadership to recruitment and outreach programs to generate enrollment.
Includes, but not limited to, administrative responsibility for recruitment/outreach
professionals, database management and telemarketing outreach. Successful candidate
should demonstrate: understanding of a comprehensive community college; strong
communications and organizational skills with an emphasis on collaboration with
the division leadership team; excellent management abilities; strategic thinking
and strong implementation abilities as they relate to recruitment and outreach;
ability to work collaboratively with area high schools and local business and
industry; appreciation of and support for diversity; 3-5 years directly related
experience in admissions, outreach, marketing or sales; Master's degree in higher
education, marketing, communications, business, student personnel or other related
area or equivalent experience. Submit resume, copies of credentials (including
graduate transcripts), statement outlining contributions you can make to the
college, and three (3) letters of recommendation to: William Rainey Harper College
, Attn: Employment Specialist, 1200 W. Algonquin Road Palatine, IL 60067. E-mail:
jobs@harper.cc.il.us. Hiring Range:
$60,071 - $90,106
If you have a short position description (100 words or less) you would like posted, please forward it on to info@stamats.com. There is no charge for this service. Job listings available online at Higher Educations Careers.
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Stamats QuickTakes is published by Stamats and is distributed to our clients and colleagues in higher education at no charge. Contents (c) 2002 by Stamats. Please feel free to forward copies of Stamats QuickTakes in its entirety to colleagues. Visit QuickTakes for past issues.
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