I'm Moving Beyond the Inquiry Phase
Gil Rogers
Higher Education & Student Evangelist | Fractional CMO who helps EdTech startups refine their message and grow revenue
Well. It's official. Today is my last day at NRCCUA.
I've spent my entire college admissions career focused on changing the ways students and schools connect. From my early days joining Zinch, which was a way for students to showcase themselves as "more than a test score", to working at Chegg to combine strategies to support students researching schools across the web and re-engaging with targeted digital media; my passion continues to be helping students be found by, engage with, and choose the right school.
With all of that said, while there is still much work to be done, the "top of the funnel" is in great hands with companies like NRCCUA leading the way with new tools and resources to help colleges and universities be more strategic with how they invest precious resources building their prospect pool. In my view, the next area with the biggest need for disruption in enrollment management is the "middle of the funnel" ... that time when students are now actively connected with schools on their consideration set and are trying to figure out their best fit in a sea of hype and noise.
I am excited to announce, effective July 9, I will be joining PlatformQ Education as their new Vice President of Marketing and Strategy! PlatformQ Education is uniquely positioned to fix the "leaks" in the recruitment funnel by building tools and resources that support engagement throughout the recruitment process with its Conduit platform.
With Conduit, college's and universities can leverage a combination of webcasting, chat, and marketing tools to boost conversion and yield beyond the capabilities of "out of the box" webinar platforms and the standard resources available inside a traditional CRM. I look forward to joining the all-star team at PlatformQ Education to support our college and university partners, and am extremely grateful for the opportunity to "move down the funnel" with them!
It's been an amazing year supporting the rock star research team at Eduventures, building new content strategies to support enrollment professionals; and introducing the higher education community to Encoura, NRCCUA's approach to supporting colleges and universities through data science, analytics, and research. The future of how enrollment leaders are equipped to make data-informed decisions is in great hands with the rock star leadership at NRCCUA. I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to learn from, and grow with, this amazing group!
Now ... on to the next adventure!
Marketing mentor to presidents, directors, maturing leaders & students.
6 年Congratulations Gil! You are a marketing and strategy adventurer. Enjoy the journey!
Entrepreneur
6 年Hey Gil - great stuff and congrats on the new role. Here's my question though:? How can the top of the funnel be in good hands when students are applying to more colleges than ever and when most college's marketing strategy resembles that of phishing websites?? Some might attribute the former to students having more good options and unprecedented access, but as someone who recently went through the process I think it's much more a result of student indecision and inability to distinguish colleges from each other. It's not at all uncommon for kids entering their senior year to have college lists upwards of 20 schools, having little ability to distinguish between the majority of them.? What's worse is most colleges adopt the same "spray and pray" approach to marketing, building their prospect pools with lists of tens (or sometimes hundreds) of thousands of students (cold ledes) they purchase and then spamming those students with mailers and emails. All this email and mail just piles up like junk. My sister is a senior in high school now and gets 4 or 5 pieces of this junk mail a day.? There's got to be a better approach to top of the funnel marketing than buying 100,000 names from College Board to get a 3% conversion rate don't you think? It might work out okay for universities as long as they get their 3,000 applicants, but it's incredibly annoying to the 97,000 other students and I'm sure universities could save money if we figured out a way to just sell them the 3,000 names of the students who are already interested.? I know websites like Chegg (would love to get your perspective on this) and Hobsons claim to offer targeted lists of students who have indicated interest in the school, but the admissions officers I've spoken with are skeptical of the processes used to "qualify" these students as interested. Conversion rates are usually higher, but not usually high enough to justify the increased price tag relative to College Board.? All of this seems to present a really interesting challenge at the top of the funnel to me: how do we allow colleges to connect in a cost effective way with all the students who are already interested in that college and reduce the need for them to send out mass spam in hopes of finding the students who are interested in their university?? Note: all of this leaves aside the process for attracting students who otherwise would not have been interested in the university, which is another problem altogether. Anyways, would be really curious to get your take. You've been in this industry much longer than me and probably have the answers, but to me there seem to be plenty of compelling problems at the "top of the funnel".?
Higher education enrollment management professional.
6 年Congrats Gil!
Assistant Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing at LIM College
6 年Exciting stuff. It’s going to be epic!
Higher Education Admissions/Enrollment Management Leader
6 年Congratulations Gil!