Just for fun. Interact Wordcloud.

We’re on a bit of a high at the moment in the office with a few new signups to our student recruitment partnetship – Interact-Recruit.

We’ve also got a really slick social questions and answers tool that allows students to ask our university partners questions, straight from their website, using their Facebook or Twitter login – clever eh? I’ll show you more about this in the coming weeks on the the blog.

Anyway all this got us thinking……how do you describe what we are all about? How do you express what drives us? …anyway it was getting tricky so we came up with a word cloud to help. Hope you enjoy it.

Derek.

Oh, feel free to use the image if you want for presentations etc – so long as you credit our website!

HE Marketing Tip 3: Application Farms and the risks they present.

How to ensure you get your applicants over the line at the final hurdle.

Imagine you sell footballs: you sponsor all the best teams, you advertise online, you do great direct marketing to interested people. You are amazing at marketing your footballs. You make your customers SO interested that they go to your website, browse your footballs, decide on the one they want.

Then they click ‘Buy Now’ and………….eBay opens up! The customer now surfs through a directory of all footballs from around the world and buys one somewhere else. Arrgghhhhhhhh!

So, what are ‘University Application Farms’?

Basically, you have done all the hard work, students want to apply to your course and you send them to a place where your competitors are listed…..that is an application farm.

Stop diluting your well spend marketing budget by allowing your applicants this weak customer experience.

An example of aplication of these sites is UKPASS. You’ll notice on these sites your hard earned applicants are exposed to banner ads from your competitors throughout the experience. Luckily in this screenshot it is one of our customers doing the advertising – Edgehill!

Your student recruitment solution should integrate the whole process from when interest has been generated until the applicant has paid their deposit to begin your course – from enquiry, through application and onto accept offer/pay deposit.

If you want to look at how I setup our postgrad recruitment service for our partners feel free to get in touch by phone, (+44 (0) 870 735 2888), email, Tweeting, LinkedIn or EVEN write.

Keep an eye on the blog for more weekly HE marketing tips. Talk soon,

Derek.

HE marketing and recruitment tips: Watch your words!

Watch your words?

One thing that often slips the minds of HE marketing and recruitment professionals is to look at their application forms. They spend huge budgets generating the applicants and then, at the final hurdle, destroy the great customer experience by presenting nasty application forms.

Even if you are still using paper based, pdf or some online forms you need to carefully look at them. Most clients that I work with haven’t refreshed their forms in 4-5 years but the expectations of their ‘customers’ have moved on leaps in this time. 4-5 years ago your customers applicants were happy to post paperwork, happy to photocopy docs – now they expect more…….damn Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and others have pushed out the expectations!

HE Application Form Checklist

Here’s the first thing I ask all marketing, admissions and academics that I work with to do: fill out one of your own applications and ask your self these questions:

• is it clear what I expect my applicants to fill out?
• are the questions presented course relevant?
• do the questions I ask enable my academics to make fast offers?
• could I have prompted for more specific answers?
• were there unnecessary questions for my course?
• after I’ve collected this application does a member of staff have to follow up for more info?
• does my form clearly tell my applicant what they are thinking; “what happens next?”

Nerdfest Christmas Quiz

This Christmas we had our annual ‘Nerdfest’ organised for any member of staff who stands proud when being called a nerd! We had almost 15 contestants with the prize being bragging rights for ALL of 2012.

The questions are attached below and the answers can be found at the link below the questions. Let me know how you get on.

Derek.

P.S. I scored 0.5/10

Interact Christmas Party(s)

We’ve been having a great year at CampusIT and what better a way to celebrate than by throwing a Christmas party…..or THREE!

This year we’ve been all around Dublin, first at the Aviva stadium for a meal, then a lunch in the Shelbourne Hotel (also a fundraiser for a really good cause – Respect Charity) and finally we had the annual ‘Nerdfest’ organised for the techies of the business in ‘Oil Can Harry’s’.

Given that I’m ‘techie’ challenged, the developers thought it only fair to spring the annual quiz on me, even after arriving 2 hours late to avoid it:) I’ll post the questions later for you to have a go. I’ll let you know where you rank!

BTW, my score was 0.5/10….apparently I didn’t even complete my name correctly!

Talk soon,

Derek.

HE Marketing Tips: Can Your Applicants See the ‘Apply’ Button?

Can your postgrad students find your online application?

So, you’ve allocated your budget, organised the print advertising, Google Ads are running like clockwork and social marketing is improving. You’re doing a great job and getting plenty of applicants onto your course information pages on your site but then at the last step you’re making it tricky for the student to apply!

Ok, this might seem like the most basic advice but where the heck do you have your ‘Apply’ button?

Within the last year I have visited no less than 150 UK HE and FE websites. I’ve counted the number of clicks from the homepage to the application form (if it even exists!) and one thing I kept coming across was that I needed psychic powers to find the ‘Apply’ button. Your Apply button should literally jump off these pages, screaming PLEASE PRESS ME.

Here’s a little test for all of you– go to your website right now, navigate to a course page and check the following:

• Can your ‘Apply’ button be seen without scrolling down?
• Is it the most prominent call-to-action on the page? It should be…that’s ALL we really care about on this page.
• What colour is the button? Through our in-house A/B testing I can promise you that you will lose applications if the button is red…..red is a STOP colour. Make it green or at least something contrasting with your base colour.
• What wording does the button have? Does it say ‘Application Form’ – hopefully not. Make sure that it is a verb.  It’s a subconscious thing but it is an effort NOT to follow a command.  Try this –  BLINK NOW – see

These are techniques that we’ve been using in e-commerce for years – hopefully the HE sector is catching up, I know my clients are.

The point of this rant is, that with all the effort you’re putting in, you can get your potential students over the line with this one simple change to your Apply button. Your webmaster can do this within minutes and, if you want to look like a real smarty pants, ask your webmaster to test the change and measure how many more clicks you get as a result. Imagine if you could report an increase of 20% extra visitors clicking ‘APPLY NOW’ from one small change to the position, colour or wording of a button. Imagine if this one change helps you get one extra postgrad student – what’s the ROI there?

If you want to look at how I setup our postgrad recruitment service for our partners feel free to get in touch by phone, (+44 (0) 870 735 2888), email, Tweeting, LinkedIn or EVEN write.

Keep an eye on the blog for more weekly HE marketing tips. Talk soon,

Derek.

HE Marketing Competition – iPad prize Video

HE Marketing Prize

Just one of the dashboards touched by the research findings.

I’m delighted to announce the winner of our HE marketing research competition to be Emma Leech from Nottingham University. Emma, along with everyone whom entered, was a great help in guiding us towards a more suitable product to aid student recruitment.

The Prize is a brand new Ipad engraved with our web address on the back. The iPad is currently on the way to Emma so I really hope she enjoys it as much as I like mine!

Talk to you soon,

Derek.