Navigating the New Landscape of Higher Ed Marketing: Part 2

Kevin Hogan OK. Hello and welcome to episode 2 of eCampus News's series on the evolving landscape of higher education and the pivotal role of solution providers within this dynamic space. My name is Kevin Hogan. I am the content director for eCampus News and I'm happy you found us here today. In this episode, you can listen in as I follow up with Verlin Stevens. He's a managing partner at Agile Education to discuss the dramatic changes higher education institutions face. How these developments impact their brands and operations? And how companies can reach and maintain relationships with those same institutions? Berlin highlights the significant shift in marketing strategies, particularly the decline of traditional e-mail campaigns and the rise of micro targeting and digital advertising. He also shares valuable insights on how solution providers can adapt their approaches, emphasizing the importance of understanding specific audiences, leveraging engagement data and crafting tailored messages that resonate deeply with educators. I think you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of how to navigate the complexities of selling to higher. Ed. From identifying the right decision makers to creating impactful information rich content that fosters long term partnerships. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. OK, well, Verlin, welcome back. Thanks again for meeting with us here. Excited to kind of get into the weeds with you in episode 2. Two of our two-part series about the state of higher Ed and what solution providers can do to pivot in what is obviously a very dynamic space, right? Verlan Stephens Absolutely. And Kevin, thank you again for the opportunity to to join you on this and to be able to talk about the changes that we're seeing. As you said, you know, in the first session we talked a lot about the dynamic state of higher education and the changes that are coming there. And you know, I think the second part now as to what's the So what for the people that. Provide solutions into that space. Kevin Hogan Yeah. And even since we had our conversation, there have been dramatic changes. I mean, it's. You know, the fact that institutions of higher learning are on the front pages of newspapers or websites now, I guess every day that their brands are at stake, the way they're reacting to situations on their campus will be affecting not only their the students who apply there, but the faculty. That or enroll there. Let's just talk a little bit about what you see from your point of view. Some of the tools and strategies that universities have to use and more importantly for our audience. Is the folks who are trying to work with these institutions partner with these institutions to improve the way that they teach? Verlan Stephens Yeah, you know, just as the there's been massive changes in the education space in the last 10 years, we we've also seen it in the marketing side. So starting about 10 years ago, Google began to dominate as the e-mail box provider in education. The last time I looked up the numbers on it, they were running about 60% of e-mail boxes in education were controlled by Google. After a small failed attempt to insert their own advertising in the middle of emails, they basically I think made a very strategic business choice and said we're going to start killing e-mail as a, as a advertising medium. And they've been been really effective at it, frankly. You know, we've seen it in terms of, you know, one point we were sending into education. Three million 4 million emails a month and we're down to a fraction of that at this point that. They really, you know, they took a very interesting strategy of trying to cap the number. So if you're sending very small numbers under 1000 a day under 2000 a day, you can certainly still get into the space there. It doesn't trip the radar and suddenly you're on the. On the the radar screen and so you can still do some you're we'll never again see the massive numbers of emails going into the Ed space, at least in my opinion. I just don't think that's gonna happen. And and so and the other thing they've done is they've really base it off of engagement. So as those emails start going out, they're judging the engagement rate and they're gating it and they say, well, let's see how people will engage. And so if you people engage well, they continue to let stuff through. But if your engagement rate is fairly small. Which is kind of typical in the the Ed space. Then they just decide. First, they're going to start putting you in the junk folder and then at a certain point they just put up the stop sign and just block your emails from even going in. So you know that's been the biggest change from a marketer standpoint is you can't just do these big e-mail blasts like we were doing 10 years ago. It just is. Isn't it isn't effective at this point? So, but you do have some alternatives to that. You know, first is talk about if you can kind of micro target if you can really get down to if you've got a biology textbook that you want to reach out to instructors in a very particular space. You can look at the course materials we carry. Even, you know in our file what courses a particular professor or instructor is teaching, and you can get super targeted about it. And we've got some, some folks that are doing that and being very successful with that where you're getting to an audience that is super receptive is very interested and you can drive that engagement rate up and then you're OK. So, you know, I think that's probably the most, you know, if you're still e-mail advertise, you know wanting to. Do do outreach. I'm going even call it advertising if you want to do outreach via e-mail, you got to get down to micro targeting. What institutions, what people get that narrow, narrow, narrower till you've got an audience that's very manageable and then you're able to get your message out. Kevin Hogan There. So doing the due diligence on the front end doing doing the research there, which maybe in the past. Would have just been a fire hose kind of spam sort of e-mail. If you take that time in the in the beginning, you're going to see better results is. You're saying? Verlan Stephens Undoubtedly, for our clients that take that kind of approach, we see multi fold increase in response rates. I think basically because they're getting in the inbox better now. They're also have a more refined message. Their images are correct for the audience. They're going after. If they're doing imagery and they're. Campaign the topic is dead on the the subject line is very succinct so that people open it, you know, it's a whole combination, but it also then pushes your marketing team. To have to do a lot more work, you know, creative and things up front, if you're going after a very particular audience, you've gotta understand who that audience is. You've gotta get a list that's micro targeted. You've gotta have all the pieces together, and you may have to do dozens or hundreds of those type of campaigns. Hmm. That's where the work comes in, and that's where a lot of people in the space start to struggle is they don't have the staff to do that. And so they're looking to outside folks to help. Put together that created put together that messaging help with that to where? They're they really can get the outreach that they're trying to get and can get the response rates they're trying to drive. Kevin Hogan Because it is a really kind of fragmented market, right? Can you talk a little bit about kind of continuing on the thread where you mentioned the biology textbook that could be anyone from a professor at a Community College, small Community College in Utah versus? You know somebody, NYU? Verlan Stephens NYU. Exactly. Yeah. You know, NYU, when we first brought it on, it kind of broke some of our systems that it has over 10,000 instructors at 10,000 instructors. Things that worked where we were like, hey. Yeah, give me all the instructors at this college call. Suddenly when it was retrieving. Speaker Wow. Verlan Stephens 10,000 people became a little unwieldy, and so, you know, you're dealing that that size difference is omnipresent in the ad space. Like you said, where you're dealing with a small Community College that has a few thousand students. To you know, an NYU which has 10,000 instructors, you know, it's a big scale difference, right? And, you know, you got to kind of understand some of those things when you're going in there, you know, how? Who am I trying to reach? How many per institution? Am I trying to reach? All of that kind of stuff matters. You know, it was interesting a number of years ago. I was at. Sales forces big conference Dream Force and they were first talking about account based sales and marketing and you know it became really interesting to think about because our markets super oriented that way where there's lots of information. About every institute. And so by being able to have that in front of you understand that and target particular ones where you say, oh, I'm going to go after this set of universities. I'm not going after everyone. I'm looking for a particular set, whether it's driven by enrollment. And sometimes it's not always the biggest. You know, that's one of the things we see and we coach. People around a lot is that understand where your sweet spot is and how your product particularly resonates in that particular group so that you can then make sure you can leverage that and use it to your advantage. And the bigger the organization is. The more complex their decision making is, the more people that are involved in it, and that gets to be a challenging environment to sell. When you have a lot more people involved, a lot more voices and trying to navigate that. Kevin Hogan How about when it comes to the messaging when you've connected with these folks, you capture their attention, you have, you have them engaged, and whatever your product or services, what are some of the strategies there where you can help kind? Verlan Stephens Of. Kevin Hogan Demonstrate the the efficacy of your solutions versus maybe someone else. Verlan Stephens I think the one we see the most being the most effective is 1, where it's not all just about selling. It's about information. It's about helping them with their job and understanding what their challenges are. Ultimately that becomes the in education in particular. One of the best entrees is it's about. Information it's not just about selling and it's about being able to get that information that's relevant to these folks out to them and give them something they need. Not just sell them something. Kevin Hogan Right. It almost kind of reminds me as I date myself here. It was like when when IBM stopped just selling boxes and became business partners for corporations, right. So it's that idea of of partnership continuing relationship beyond maybe that initial sell. Verlan Stephens That and and educating the educators, you know, being able to talk about what's working in other institutions, what's what's being successful, how are people dealing with various topics. You know those type of things become very powerful it it's certainly a group that has, there is a pretty small group of leaders. And a much larger group of followers. If you can look at those people that are really leading and being successful and then be able to leverage off of them. That's a powerful message when you can say this group is improving their enrollment or this group is, you know, being able to leverage lifelong learning that really then that gives other people a blueprint to follow. That really is a is a great selling technique. Kevin Hogan We'll talk a little bit about your recommendations for solution providers who have been listening to our conversations here and saying well. I'm. Really kind of stuck in the in the past and I they kind of need to upgrade. What are the what are the first steps that you would recommend for them taking to kind of engage in this new dynamic? Verlan Stephens You know, there's one other major area. The other area that's really opened up for our clients is around the area of digital advertising. You know, one of the ways to get around Googles trying not to allow e-mail to be an advertiser is to be a paid client of theirs. And you know, at a certain point, you have to ask, am I going to continue to buck? Kevin Hogan Right. Verlan Stephens The system where I just get on board. Yeah. And you know the same things hold true there. You're because you're paying for eyeballs. You have to be able to to really measure and determine your ally. All the major platforms allow for building of custom audiences, so you can build a custom audience and say I only want this ad to appear in front of this group of people and that then becomes very powerful way to get that. Message out to as small an audience as you want it to be and really get to the exact people that you want to have that message in front. You're not depending on, you know Google's. You have somebody, somewhere along the way, they've determined they might be an educator or interested in education or whatever you're really saying here. This group of people, I'm going to give you names, addresses where they teach. And I want you to put out ads to this group of people. That becomes a very powerful way now. Again, it's a paid it's all ROI driven so that it it is so measurable that it really gets down to you know being able to track that at this point and say for my ad spend what's my return on ad spend and does it make sense and we've got a number of clients that are super happy with their return on ad spend. Kevin Hogan MHM. Verlan Stephens And have re upped and up and continued to increase what they're spending in that area because they're seeing. Their. Own and I have often told people in my own business, if you would tell me that for every dollar that I spend, I could get 3 back. Speaker Right. Verlan Stephens I'm interested right? You have my attention. So you know, while it's not free, it also is very measurable and you're really able to see that in total the the IT really comes down to all the same things no matter what medium you're using. It's know your audience try and get a message that is very appropriate, not just. Kind of on the fringe to that particular group. You know, you've got to drive some kind of engagement, whether it is just to get delivery to an inbox or whether you're paying for each set of. Calls those same factors all apply there. You really want to get it in front of people who want to see this message and make it not just about selling. Make it about providing information, providing insight, giving them a comfort level that you're not just there to to, to sell them. Speaker Something. Kevin Hogan Great executive summary there of the conversations that we've been having, I think those are certainly good first steps for for someone. Let me ask you this as as we wrap things up here, maybe gaze into your crystal ball a little bit. When you look at probably the toughest question that there is as we just said, it's kind of chaotic right now. But when you look at higher end going off into the future, where do you see some of the trends that sellers and providers should be making aware of? Down the Pike here. Verlan Stephens I think part of it is just continuing to stay abreast of where. Where education is going, there was an interesting article we in fact we talked about, I think the last time was that you know, we're really seeing a shift away from from employers requiring 4 year degrees, but large numbers wanting you know insight into AI. I I just watched. This last week was on Good Morning America. They had the CEO of Microsoft and the CEO of LinkedIn talking about, you know, what are employers going to be looking for? And they were saying, you know, they want people who know how to leverage the power of. Guy, they don't want it to do their job, they want them to be smart enough to know how to leverage that, how to help it write a better e-mail, help you write a better e-mail, how to help you write better, ad copy it. It's those type of things that employers are really starting to look for and. Well, for a A. Quite a number of years now we do not have near the level of tech savvy, AI savvy workforce that. We need to and so I think there's going to be a huge premium on things like that for a while and it's going to be changing. I can't believe how fast that technology is changing, how rapidly it's evolving and and ultimately what the impacts are going to be. So I think you, you can't just keep doing the same thing. You've been doing forever. You gotta stay abreast of what's changing. What does that mean and be really be thoughtful about. How do I adapt and change and my organization to take advantage of that? Kevin Hogan Well, it's certainly difficult not to have a conversation that involves AI these days. You're you're really coaching in terms of where those next steps are going, we're going to have to save that for a future episode, though. I think that that that deserves a show unto itself. But in the meantime, Berlin, thank you so much for your time and for your insights. In both of these episodes, I think they've been widely insightful. For our audience. Verlan Stephens Kevin, thank you. And again, thank you school news for giving us the opportunity to do this. You know, we'd love to try and share things that we're seeing and what we're kind of the changes in the market and and how that might impact our clients and other people in the space. So love the opportunity to talk about these things and we sure appreciate the opportunity. Kevin Hogan Excellent. Thanks.