The audio for this podcast can be downloaded at http://highedweb.org/2009/presentations/mmp7.mp3
[Intro Music]
Announcer: You’re listening to one in a series of podcasts from the 2009 HighEdWeb Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Karlyn Morissette: Thank you all for coming out at 8:30 in the morning. I�m just in as much pain as many of you are, trust me, but I think it�s going to be good. You guys are a motivated group. So I want to say, how many of you have seen me present before, anyone? Awesome. Okay, so if you can�t tell by the fact that I�m wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I�m a really laid back presenter. It�s not formal at all.
If you have questions at any point throughout the presentation, shout a mouth, raise your hand, do whatever. If you have comments about anything I�m saying or if you�ve had a different experience. I feel like the benefit of conference is that we all get together in a big group and learn from each other so I don�t want this to be the type of thing where I�m just sitting up here talking at you. If you have something to add, definitely shout it out anytime and yeah. So this morning we�re going to talk about ROI.
I�m also really about practical applicable stuff in my presentations. I was introduced as part of dojo of strategy which is my company but just to give a little bit more background for those of you who don�t know. I worked for colleges like for the past six years I worked for Harvard, North University, Dermott up until about a month ago. I worked for Dermott and then just left ago and worked for a I sold out, I�m a vendor. No, I work for Fire Engine Red and then I have my own company and that I also do some teaching but it was really important to me in doing presentations that I give stuff that you guys can actually take home and, go and do.
I think if some of you followed me on Twitter yesterday you saw me making some comments during Jarred Spool�s keynote. He�s one of those things like I think he has a lot of great lofty ideas but in terms of applying it to your everyday world, I don�t necessarily think the direct translation is there. Everything that I�m going to talk about in this presentation today it might seem a little bit overwhelming at first but its all stuff that I�ve actually done at colleges. Well, doing nine different jobs and having not enough time to get anything done.
So just want to give that preface there. So why is ROI important? Anyone go to Brian Niles� presentation yesterday? A few people, he was amazing. If you ever get a chance to see him speak, Brian is a great speaker but one of his key points is that colleges should be run well like a business and I�m fully supportive of that.�
I�m an MBA like you know it is what it is but for me, I�m a little bit more selfish than that. I like Return On Investment because it makes me look like a Golden God for the people I work for. [Laughter] Okay, so your directors, your VPs, your presidents, these are numbers driven people. I don�t think there�s a person in this room that has more funding than they can handle for their web projects, right? If you give them numbers, if you show them, I�m going to bring in more value to your institution than you�re going to spend employing me or keeping up funding my programs, they�re going to give you more money.
It�s really that simple. Everything you do on the web can be measured and you should be measuring it. It�s one of the easiest things to do on the world. We�re going to talk about that here. First, I have a question for you guys.
First of all, I guess I�ll put the marketers on the spot. How many people in this room consider themselves to be a marketer? Okay, a few timid hands. What�s the difference between marketing and communications for those people? Shout it out, it�s early I know.
Audience: One way versus two ways.�
Karlyn Morissette: One way versus two ways. Okay, any other thoughts?
Audience: Market is another line.
Karlyn Morissette: What�s that?
Audience: Market is another line.
[Laughter]
Karlyn Morissette: That�s public relations my friend. Oh, I just got very loud there, I apologize. External versus internal, that�s a good one. My favorite definition is this. I found this on Marketing Cross on a message board that they have on their site.
Communications makes marketing tactics tangible. So what does that mean? To me, I think that communications is one subset of the overall marketing process so it�s the execution of the tactic. It�s launching the website, it�s writing the copy, and it�s sending the emails to students in social networks.
Marketing is a much bigger picture than that. So this is a typical conversation, this is an actual conversation I had with a colleague when I worked at Dermott. He came to me one day and he said, �I want to create a blog.� And I get very excited because if you�re working on IV League School like we don�t necessarily do really fun stuff almost here on IT and I sound like, �OK, what do you want to write about?�
�Well, I want to give people a way to see responses to a survey that I did.� I remember looking him rather exquisitely I was like, �OK, why not just do a web page, you never going to update this thing again, why do you need a blog?� �Because I want to start using new technology,� blogs by the way are about 10 years old now. I had one when I was a freshman in college. �And so OK that�s great, but a blog by definition needs to be updated more than once.�
�Don�t worry about that,� he says. �Just let me worry about the content, you just set it up for me.� And I�m sure that�s an experience that a lot of you guys have had where, �We�ll figure it out just build it for us.� And then I run away swearing in my head because I know that without a set strategy for this thing, it�s not going to be successful, it�s not going to be long term and it�s not going to be maintained.
So this is kind of my marketing framework that I use. It�s a really over simplified framework but I think it kind of hits on all the key points that I try to think of when I�m executing a marketing tactic so number one, set strategy. Why are you doing what you are doing?
How is it going to benefit the bottom line of the organization? How is it going to increase the applications, increase alumni donations? Do any of those things. Now, a lot of what we do on the web does those but I want to try to draw a direct or even an indirect line back to those higher level business schools because that�s what your directors, your VPs, your presidents, that�s what they care about, okay?
Plan tactics. OK, we know we want to achieve. We want to give more applications. How we�re going to do that? What are the best methods to use to achieve that goal?
So notice I didn�t start off with the technology. I didn�t say, �I want a Facebook page or I want a blog.�� I started off with something higher level on that. Another part of step two is how are we going to measure these things, okay? Execute communications number three that�s pretty self-explanatory.
We�re going to be going over each of these a little more in-depth. This is the higher level overview and then number four, assessing results. That�s another key part of marketing so I think if you take nothing away from this it�s setting goals at the beginning. Figuring out how you�re going to measure it and then actually measuring it when you have executed your tactic. Let�s go through them one by one.
What are some business goals? I�m going to make you guys participate at 8:30 in the morning. What are some things that go back to the bottom line of your college? I�ve already named a couple of them: increasing applications, increasing alumni donations. Yeah.
Audience: Do faculty do this?
Karlyn Morissette: Yup.
Audience: Getting out mail...
Karlyn Morissette: Getting email addresses, okay.
Audience: Alumni engagements.
Karlyn Morissette: Alumni engagements, yeah.
Audience: Retention.
Karlyn Morissette: Retention. OK, so all oh do you have one? OK. All good things it speaks directly to what your leaders care about.
Number two, so we know what we want to do. I�m going to do application is because it�s the easiest one for the examples here. What�s the best medium to articulate your message? What is the strategy for your communication? How are you going to measure it?
Sorry, it�s 8:30 in the morning I already went through this. OK, time is money, this is a big part of this. I think a lot of times we forget that our salaries cost money, our benefits cost money. They cost money to the organizations so it�s not just about funding these things. I think one of the key things you need to consider is can you do something in-house or is there a need to outsource it? Not a college, shouldn�t be responsible for everything under the sun.
I�ll give you an example of this. When I started working at Dermott a couple of years ago, I found out on my second day there that they were sending out all their email in-house. Kind of made a little mental note of that, that was my second day I don�t want rock the boat too much but it really became clear to me like this is not something that�s going to be sustainable. We�re going to get blacklisted.
We�re going to get marked as spam, all that. Within about a week of my job there, sure enough we�re blacklisted by Yahoo and Comcast. So this is one of those things Dermott was not an email service provider, they don�t have deliverability professionals in-house you outsource that sort of functionality. It�s going to cost way too much to maintain it.
There are other solutions I think a lot of IT staff I was actually talking to someone from Princeton this morning who�s presenting right now as well. You know IT solutions where you do have the in house staffing to handle it and it�s going to be much cheaper for you to do it in-house than to outsource it. This is all going to be part of your tactic planning. I always include a salary estimate when I run doing an ROI calculation this is your basic formula.
So you take that kind of estimate when an employee salary I think we can all kind of figure out what our colleagues are making. You add one-third onto it because that�s the average cost of benefits that the institution spend, that�s the average cost of benefits. Step number two, total salary divided by 2080, that�s a 40 hour work week number of hours you�re going to work in a year and then your hourly wage times your staff hours doing a project is your internal cost for the project. So that�s pretty simple, just going to make sure to add that in. OK, so we got our goals.
We know what we are doing. We got our tactics. We know how we�re going to try to achieve them. Now, we execute our communications. And this can be, this is anytime you�re actually communicating a message to an external audience, or to a internal audience too because certainly you want to get internal buy-in and stuff like that but this is mostly your perspective students, your alumni, your news media, any constituents you have of your university.
I�m not going to go through best practices here. I think you guys are probably of all the audiences I have presented like stuff like this to, you�re probably the best versed in best practices that there is out there. Assess your result. OK, so in theory, you would have set up some sort of way to measure what you�re doing in the tactical planning stage. So after you execute your tactics, what was achieved as a direct result of the communication?
How many direct lines can you drive? And we can always tell certain anecdotal stories of I think this email achieve this. I think that this visitation program achieved that but with the web it�s really easy to say, �I know that the people who clicked on the link in the email went and did my online application or what had.� I�m going to show you how to do that in a second. Did that conversion result in a return on my investment?�
So am I bringing in more value to the institution than I�m spending to put it out there? What can I do better next time? I think one part of Jared�s presentation yesterday that I really liked was the fact that he highlighted failures. I think failures are a really good interesting thing to look at. I also think that we should always be seeking to improve the tactics of our organization and that can be a little bit tricky, right?
Because I think we all work with people who maybe don�t want to admit that they aren�t perfect. So I think that�s a really key question for me anytime I execute a marketing tactic, what can I do better next time? So now we�re going to do some examples and this is really the bulk of the presentation I just wanted to kind of get through the overview there. We�ll start off with email marketing because it�s really one of the easiest things to track out there.
How many people in this room use Google Analytics? OK, so you guys know it. We�re going to do an example. We�re setting up tracking for an email that is sent out to prospects encouraging them to fill out an online application for admissions, pretty straightforward.
If you�re one of the people that didn�t raise your hand right there and you want to know more about Google Analytics, this is a great book but basically kind of thought me everything I know about the tool. They also have a lot of great online videos and if you stick around in this track, Joshua Ellis and Shelby Thayer are going to be presenting next and they�re a fantastic one when it comes to Google Analytics. So we�re going to use two key tools here. We�re going to use their goals and the URL builder.
So number one, we need to set up a goal for our applicants. We need to say, �OK, we want them to land on the thank you page for the online application.� And then you can go through the number of steps you have. Anytime you set up a goal in Google Analytics you always have an end result page that they�re going to land on when they�ve actually achieved the goal and you can set up to 10 steps that they�re going to take to get there.
So in this case, we got our online application. This will be like the home page for the application. They�ve completed that. They�ve saved in next. They get on to page two. They get on to page three and then they click submit and you get the thank you screen.
So this is a funnel that�s just a visualization of the goal that you just set up so that we can see that of the 414 people who landed on this page, 134 of them moved on to the second page so on and so forth and 280 of them left. So this is actually really good information on its own. Let�s just forget the email example for a second because it tells you there might be a problem with the first page of your application. You�ve just lost all these people who are here that didn�t go on to the second page.
So it might be a good thing to look at to see if you can do any optimization there but we know ultimately this tells us that 134 people submitted the application. Step two we need to build a campaign URL. This is really a great tool in Google Analytics that it can just be applied to Twitter, Facebook, any type of web communication you do. If you�re using Google Analytics on your website it should have a campaign URL associated with it.
And you basically just go to this big long thing right here or you can search URL builder in their help section and it will bring this right up. There are three parts to every campaign URL or four parts actually if you count the actual, this is your destination page obviously. You got your campaign source so that�s more if I�m doing a series of emails asking students to apply online. I�m doing one in like October, November, December. I might generically associate application emails to all of those because that way it�s going to aggregate that information in Google Analytics when I look at it as a whole.
Obviously the medium is email. The campaign name is what we�re really looking at here. So application email November �08, remember that we�re going to use that in the second. This is for the specific message.
You�re making it as specific as it could be. Don�t worry about length. You can get this long ugly URL anyway and that you�re just going to mask it with some texter. I hope you don�t use click here but if you must use click here, definitely do that.���
Alright, so we�ve sent out our email. It had our campaign URL in there and we set up our goal for the application. You get into Google Analytics, and we can see the campaign for this email, application email November �08 so it�s tracked that we have 358 visits from that URL. So these are just people who have clicked on that URL in that email. You can draw a direct line right there.
The next thing you do is this is a link, so you want to click on that link and go down a little. This is what I�m going to show you a screen with a little bit more information. Now, you can have up to four goals set in any Google Analytics account anytime. In this particular account, they have goal one for online visitation submit, goal two for online event submit and then goal number three. So this is what we care about right, our online application submit so this tells us that out of those people who clicked on that link, 36.31% of them actually submitted the online application.
OK, they hit that thank you page. Site average 18%, so it�s a much bigger audience than this site average which we would expect because this was a targeted email campaign asking them to do one specific thing. OK, so we have kind of our base numbers here to use for the ROI calculation now. Send out 3,000 emails, had 358 clickthroughso people who clicked on the link and the message resulting in a 130 completed online application.
This email took two hours to complete at a cost of $40 an hour staff time and a $0.015 per message. So we almost have everything we need to do on our ROI calculation. Has anyone seen this tool? It�s a really simple ROI calculator.
It�s one of my favorite things because all I have to do is input all these data right here and it automatically does my ROI calculations for me. So we�re almost there right now. We got the number of pieces for mailing or emailing. We know what our total program cost are.
We know what our response rate is so our response rate is the number of people who clicked on the link. We know what our conversion rate is, the percent that actually filled out the online application. We don�t know our average profit per sale. This is where it gets a little bit marquees and sometimes accused of doing a little bit of PR in my calculations.
What�s the value of an online application? I used to work in fundraising so it�s really easy like whatever the gift was that was my value. [Laughter] But with online apps it�s a little bit more difficult. Assigning a monetary value to something though it gives you a way to compare things.���
Now, this is not an exact science. What you�re trying to do is find the common denominator so you�re saying I spent this much but we brought this much more in in value. And you can do it in a way that kind of makes sense so you�re assigning kind of an accurate cost to it. OK, really all you need to do is be able to justify to your superiors why it�s worth this much.
OK, so this is how I would do an online application evaluation and this is actually based on a real example from a school I worked with. Average tuition paid after financial aid $20,000, conversion rate from application to enroll 20%. So the students who, how many students applied that actually will attend the university so you�re bringing that tuition revenue. 20% of 20,000 is $4,000 so our average profit per sale is 4,000, okay? Is that makes sense? Yeah.
Audience: [18:39 Unintelligible]
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah. I guess yeah. You can do whatever you want with this as long as it makes sense to you as long as you can justify it at the end. You�re not pulling numbers out of thin air but as long as you can go to your boss and feel comfortable saying, �These are where these numbers came from,� that�s all what we�re looking for.
This one way to do it. Other questions? Alright, so now we got all of our values: number of pieces 3,000, total program cost a whopping $125, response rate 11.93%, conversion rate 36.31, we got this in Google Analytics, average profit per sale 4,000. Now, I really want to emphasize this seems like a lot of numbers right now but this stuff is a whole will probably take you about 10 minutes to set up.
Takes next to no time to do a goal in Google Analytics or to do a campaign URL and then you need a little bit of math with the average profit per sale but it�s a really, really cool process. Does anyone want to guess what are ROI is? No?
Audience: Orange. �
Karlyn Morissette: Orange? Thank you, Pennon. So we�re done here, 400,000%. It�s not too bad right? If I walked into my boss�s office and said I got 400,000% ROI and this is again this is actually a real example from a school that I worked with.
They might be inclined to listen to what I have to say at that point.� Now, obviously this is really high. We had a really low program cost and a really high average profit per sale so that�s going to give you a really high ROI. But email marketing typically gives pretty high ROI even with fundraising where I had kind of an exact profit per sale.
�I was getting between 10,000% and 15,000% ROI on emails which at Dermott they didn�t really think that the web was ever going to help them raise money. So to be able to go to my boss�s office and say, �Had a 15,000% ROI on this program,� it made the difference. So you have your ROI and like I just said, you had to share your success with people. One thing I found really helpful was to actually get all my key stake holders in a room and do a big meeting just like this where I presented them all the numbers at the same time and their eyes kind of go wow.
But you know do that at your school. Make it tangible. Talk about things they care about. Give a context. Biggest thing offer recommendations because like I said that�s the one moment where they�re actually inclined to listen to you.
Alright, so we�re going to go through and breakdown some more tactics now but I just want to pause and see if there are any questions about what I just did there. I kind of run through it pretty quickly. Yeah.
Audience: On all your slides with the steps seems to make any a key one in it, the one that you might be measuring how many conversions generate a return?
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah.
Audience: Because a lots of times it seems to be there are conversions that are beneficial in life and even though you actually finish the application or you go all the way? People can start an application maybe that be actually pretty good and there are exception to come back which way or...
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, I think that�s the ultimate question there are they going to come back and finish it later? You know I think started applications are great but that doesn�t get students in the door at the end of the day, it really depends. Those are also a good opportunities for you to go out and market to those students. They already have an interest level so it might be easier for you to convert them.
So really if your school values that, great, go for it. Other questions, comments. Yeah.
Audience: Do you want to present this of value of target users, this looks great, everyone in the 400,000.
Karlyn Morissette: Well, I mean you�re going to piss a lot of people off if you send an email to everyone in Canada. Right now I do student search and copywriting for Fire Engine Red and we�ve actually been talking about that a lot lately. And the thing we tell schools is, �Yeah, you can buy 400,000 names and send an email to every single one of them but your response rate is going to suck. It�s going to really suck.�
And if you do a more targeted list, it�s going to cost you less money to buy the list. It�s going to cost you less money to send the emails and you�re going to get a higher response rate. So definitely having that more focused list any critical modeling that you can do to help you get a more focus list is always a good thing. No limits and require really greater stuff like that. Yeah.
Audience: [23:30 Unintelligible]
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah. Well, it did work and like I said I was literally having those meetings where I got every key stake holder in the room and kind of gave them the deal. OK, I reset the mic, I thought I might have turned it off. OK, I�m going to go on now. There�s a little secret to web marketing. If any of you followed me on Twitter, you probably saw me kind of railing on this a lot last week.
Nothing special about the web. It�s all been done before. All we�re doing is taking our tactics, applying them to different tools and that�s a very old secret. Email marketing. So what I�m doing here is I�m kind of backing into things, right? So we�ve already talked about the fact that we need to come up with higher level goals before we select our tactics.
So now we�re going to talk about this different tactics what they might be good for, throw some ideas out there. If you guys have other experiences for successes you have achieved with any of these mediums, please feel free to add. I think email marketing is really great for increasing online applications. So if that�s your goal, definitely do it there. Registering for an event, bringing online gifts, starting a conversation with people I think that it can be really valuable to like push people to your social networking sites and really build your audience there.
Next Facebook ads, anyone here use Facebook ads? A few people, I think Facebook ads are awesome because they�re really easy to do. They�re really small and targeted. There are ways that you can do this picture here to make it kind of standout.
Always having like smiling sexy girls in your Facebook ads will actually bring in a higher return. I tested this theory at Dermott in fact they were thrilled with me for that. So another thing I really like about Facebook ads is that you can really target them. So here like say, �I�m in admissions office and I�m holding an event in Boston.�
And I know that there is like a really high conversion rate from people who attend this event to people who actually will fill out an application. So I want as many eyes there as possible. I can go on and say, �OK, I only want people in Boston, Massachusetts to see this ad and I want them to be between this age and this age. I can select a gender if I want to, I can add any keywords that they kind of like put into their profile. I want them to be in high school obviously because I�m at admissions office and it will tell me that I have 54,600 people that meet these criteria that are going to potentially see my Facebook ad.
The next part I like about it is that it�s free unless the person clicks on the ad and goes to your website. So potentially this is a great chance to just get your college name out there and have some visibility for free. You�re only paying for it if they actually go and do what you want them to do. So when you�re doing your Facebook ads you have two options.
You can do pay per click, pay per views. Obviously I�m a fan of the pay per click model. I don�t think there�s any reason to do pay per view at all. You can throttle how much you want to spend the day so here I�ve selected I only want to spend $25 a day. If I get more clicks than that, then Facebook is automatically going to shut off my ad and started again the next day.
I also have my suggested bid price, this is not necessarily what you�re going to actually be paying per click, it�s just what you�re bidding to get a higher position for your ad you�ve selected. OK, so Facebook ads allow like email marketing when you�re doing ROI and this is going to apply to any online advertising that you do. You use a Google Analytics campaign URL, you set up a goal and you can also use a unique landing page, that�s another option.
And then you assign the value to whatever you want them to do and input it to the ROI calculator. This is just the associated things in the ROI calculator and Facebook ads. This presentation is going to be made available online so if you want this, don�t be fierce to taking notes or anything. In this case, we said, �OK, assume attending this event, that�s worth 100 bucks to me. It�s not a lot but it�s still a little bit.
Audience: Yeah, I guess this is the point where you know that I asked about earlier.
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, yeah.
Audience: You don�t get a $100 bill from those people.
Karlyn Morissette: No.
Audience: You're doing some hardline marketing, maybe there's a way for this, it's pretty sad. It's that you know somebody coming to a college fair versus actually have been to a direct institution back leaves this to really apply for.
Karlyn Morissette: �Yeah, every admissions or I shouldn�t say every, a lot of admissions office out there have piles and piles and piles of statistics. So they can tell you this college fair will produce these many applications. They�re tracking everything that�s coming from that college fair. This event is a really big yield event for us so it�s like one of things I�m trying to illustrate here.
Again, it�s not an exact science. It�s not really a random assignment but that�s what we�re guessing based on the potential revenue for each individual participant of that event to bring in, is that makes sense? You have to do like some fancy calculus and all that.
Audience: Because these are new, the contract for an example I'm sorry I'm getting you off track...
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah. Go ahead.
Audience: But just to know the core key of the whole presentation...
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, yeah.
Audience: It�s something newer the way you're positive like one of your bullets was kind of engage in a conversation.
Karlyn Morissette: I�m actually going to get to that.
Audience: OK.
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, but no feel free to take me off track, that�s totally okay. So we do our ROI calculation. You can see here we only had like nine responders and three people who ultimately registered for our event as part of this Facebook ad but our ROI is still like 600% which is still more than a 100% so we�re bringing more value into the university than we�re spending to put it out there.
Blogs, how many people in the room have a blog? OK good, I think everyone should have a blog. I think this is going to get some of your points here. What is the value of providing authentic stories of the student experience or opportunities for interaction? Making institutional announcements that can actually be you can have conversion rates there gaining insights into the minds of your audience through comments.
And here are some of the things that you can kind of use to decide what your dollar value is for that. So if I�m looking at the number of readers say my goal was to have a lot of readers on this blog because I really wanted to just get information out there. What�s the cost of advertising in the similar channel to a similar number of people? So you�re still hitting all the same eyes and it�s actually probably more authentic than an ad that you would place in a magazine or wherever. Comments, you got a really robust blog in terms of comments or like a Facebook page, or whatever and it�s giving you a lot of good information into the minds of your audience compare to the cost of doing a focus group and have that be your average profit per sale in your ROI calculation.
Anecdotal evidence I think is kind of epee. A lot of places use anecdotal evidence but I think we only really hear about it when we either really suck at something or we�re doing something really awesome. I don�t think we hear a lot of that middle ground stuff. So I would take that on a case by case basis if you want to use that and try to do an ROI calculation.
Social Networks, OK, so I�m going to do my next slide. I actually added this one after the last week I posted a blog post and it caused all sorts of ruckus. Saying we should have a Facebook page is not a marketing strategy. OK, I think that social networking is awesome. I think that the number of fans you have on your Facebook page means nothing if you can�t convert them into something.
I know a lot of people, I�ve considered myself to be friends with a smaller number of people that I actually know in real life. But I place a different value on the friend that�s going to give me a lift to the airport and the one that will get up 2:00 to bail me out of jail, okay? That relationship is a lot stronger, that relationship actually means something to me whereas the one that will give me a ride to the airport that relationship is much strong.
And it drives me nuts when I see people on blogs or on social network saying, �You can�t measure the value of a relationship.� Well, yeah I can. I want the person who�s going to bail me out of jail, that�s the stronger relationship in my mind. If you cannot get a student to apply, then I don�t care how much time you spend on a social network and how well the relationship you�ve built with them. If you can�t get them to at least apply to your school, then how strong is that relationship? Same with alumni, if you can�t get them to get 25 bucks a year to your school, then how strong is the relationship that you spent all the time building on social networks.
So that�s my runt for the morning. Thank you for sitting throughout. I think social networks are really great. I think there is value to having people to be able to become a fan of your institution on Facebook or follow you on Twitter or that sort of thing.
You�re really getting industries spotted. Get some interns to go through your fan list. And actually make a note in that alumnus profile in your database for that prospective student profile because they�ve taken an action there that shows that they want to be associated with your school. And that�s good to know later when you�re trying to wool them to do whatever you want them to do.
I think that engaging incoming students over the summer to prevent like the summer sugar off. If those who don�t work in admissions, it�s kind of becoming a common practice nowadays for students to deposit at multiple schools. So you never know quite even on May 1st you don�t how many of them are actually going to show off. And if you engage them in a social network over the summer, then there�s a much higher chance that they�re actually going to show up and enroll at your institution.
I also think that there are a lot of places out there that have done great work with the accepted student networks obviously Rachel Rubin. If you haven�t heard about Cafe NewPulse, it�s a really great example of how you can engage in accepted students and really get them into your school. I also think I talk a lot about admissions and all other people do too but we often forget about alumni and donations which my year and half spending fundraising toll mate, they can be a significant source of revenue for the institution.
I think giving your alumni volunteers a way to react or interact with each other over a social network is probably a good thing and how much does that help them to become better fundraisers for your school? How much does that help them become better recruiters for your school? These are all things that you can measure, okay? How do you place a value on this sort of thing? So easy dissemination of information again going back to kind of the blog post what would have cost you over other mediums to disseminate the same type of information to the same audience?
How do you value that? You can have Calls to Action on your Facebook page so what is your conversion rate are people are actually converting to applicants? Are they registering for your events? Are they giving you money?
How was that working out using summer sugar off? Did the percentage of summer sugar off go down with the advent of social network?
Audience: For category, let me finish. The best presentation is all...
[Laughter]
Karlyn Morissette: Thank you Paul Gisla. I thought we all needed a bath at 8:30 in the morning. OK, so supporting your alumni volunteers are they more successful as the results? I�m totally thrown off now. Bottom line, are we bringing in more value to your institution and it�s causing you to implement these strategies. Again, being able to show people that what you do is valuable so they�ll give you more funding, they�ll give you more staff.
How much could more could you do if you had more resources available to you. I�m sure we�d all like to get rid of the templates on our website like Jared Spool told us yesterday but I don�t think that there are many people in here that have the resources to quite do that yet. So maybe if you show them value now they�ll give you those resources later. So key take ways, if you take nothing else away from this presentation.
Start with bottom line goals. Don�t start with saying, �I want to send an email. I want to do a Facebook group.� Start with saying, I want to increase applications. I want to increase donations. I want to get people to register for my event,� things like that.
Measuring everything takes a little bit of time but you get better at it as you go. Dollarize your results so you can draw those bottom line Apple Stopples comparisons and always ask what you can do better next time because what�s the point of assessment if we�re not going to go back and improve our results later on. And that�s it. These are all the places you can find me, questions, comments. What do you guys think, does this makes sense at all?��
Am I completely just making this up and doing smoke and mirrors? Yeah.
Audience: I just confirmed on my page that one the web, it is entirely inferenced but I already confirmed that.
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah. Well, it could, if you�re doing IT projects then I assume there�s probably like some streamlining to other things that have might be going on with them or there�s a reason that you�re doing this projects. And as long as you�re setting goals and you�re saying, �OK, we�re doing this project because we want to streamline this internal process. How many staff hours is that going to save? And that�s a value right there because you�re not spending that money on doing that project you can put those resources elsewhere. Yeah.
Audience: I kind of understand, but I want to hear what you have to say. How would mention to a senior administrator says,"Our goal is something broad like a skinny play," and really wanting to have that specific?
Karlyn Morissette: I would tell that senior administrator they�re probably going to be out of job because they can�t bring in applications because that�s how they�re getting paid and really that�s how we�re all getting paid. How you guys are guinea pigs, I don�t work for school anymore but it�s those applications is where your main revenue drivers. If you�re not doing those things, then we�re all going to be out of a job. And I think that�s probably a more important thing nowadays than ever because I think a lot of us work at places that just experienced layoffs not too long ago.
I know from me being a Dermott that happened I lost or the development office lost like 19% of our staff during layoffs. So really kind of hammered home that if we don�t have the revenue to do these things we�re going to lose a lot of really good people.
Audience: What's your secret? You said you're going to...
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, yeah share.
Audience: Pretty similar to that, you know in an audience not just strength. Not just trying to email off the camp and go on Google.
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah.
Audience: Because it's not certainly brought all these idea. It's sounds very expensive.
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, but it�s also about baby steps. I don�t think, I didn�t jump right in to doing all of this. It�s all about doing those small things you can add a little bit at a time. I think that jumping at some things like if you don�t have a Facebook page, just create. Well, I don�t think you need to have a strategy right off the bag. Just get in there and start doing and start twirling around.
And then get your administrator just to that idea and then once they�re a fan of the Facebook page say, �OK, so we can do all this other cool stuff where we�re actually showing that we�re bringing in an applications as a result of this.� You kind of hold their hand and walk through it. Yeah.
Audience: Are you asked to meet the cost for the project? Did you mention this to the stakeholders?
Karlyn Morissette: Yeah, meetings cost money. Big meetings cost a lot more money than little meetings. I think if we put a dollar value on each meeting that would be interesting, right to actually show people, �OK, we got a meeting here with 15 people, it�s costing us $2,000 or whatever what value depending on their salary ranges. And I think that that can be kind of an opening thing for a lot of people to see.
I never done it but if any of you do, I want to know how that turned out. OK, so we have five more minutes other comments, questions? OK. Well, I�m going to be putting this up on slideshow. I think it actually is already up minus the one big red Facebook slide. So you can download the presentation there.
It�s like a 10 megabyte file. Find me online in LinkedIn if you want to connect. I�m also like looking for more connections on there. So thank you for coming out, I appreciate it.
[Applause]