Resources: CASE Insights Framework for Brand and Reputation Metrics in Education. Those at CASE member institutions can learn about the framework and even submit examples of the measures they use at their institutions. Non-members can reach out to me at tflannery@case.org and Terry can share more about the framework and the benefits of membership.
Exploring the Strategic Purpose of University Marketing
In the latest episode of the Higher Ed DemandGen podcast, host Shiro Hatori sits down with Teresa Flannery, an experienced higher education marketing leader, to discuss the complexities and evolving nature of university marketing. Drawing from her extensive career in higher education, Teresa emphasizes that marketing is far more than mere promotional activity; it is strategically aligned with institutional goals, deeply interwoven with the university’s mission, and vital for building value through revenue, reputation, and relationships.
Organizational Structure: Key Insights from Teresa’s Book
One of the crucial topics Teresa covers is the variety of ways marketing is organized within higher education. She acknowledges the “hot mess” of organizational structures, pointing out that an ideal setup involves a cabinet-level marketing leader who can engage across enrollment, advancement, and brand functions. This position allows for a comprehensive approach, ensuring the marketing strategy supports the university’s overarching goals. Smaller institutions might combine marketing roles, often seeing it integrated within college relations or enrollment, adapting based on resources and leadership understanding.
Rethinking Resources: Viewing Marketing Through an Investment Lens
Moving beyond traditional notions of marketing as a cost, Teresa advocates for viewing it as a strategic investment. She encourages institutions to frame marketing expenditures as necessary for generating returns akin to investments in facilities or endowment management. By aligning marketing budgets with strategic objectives, universities can better justify their spending and demonstrate its value to stakeholders. Teresa suggests starting with a small percentage of the budget and gradually increasing as results become apparent, similar to how startups allocate resources.
Measurement and Accountability in Higher Education Marketing
Teresa also delves into the challenge of measuring marketing success, suggesting short, middle, and long-term metrics to evaluate progress. Initial metrics are tactical, focusing on engagement and reach, while mid-term indicators might revolve around applications and gifts. Long-term success involves measuring changes in perceptions, which requires creating baseline measures and conducting regular surveys to track shifts in awareness, favorability, and brand associations.
For those interested in deepening their understanding of university marketing, Teresa’s book, “How to Market a University,” offers practical guidance and strategic insights, making it a valuable resource for higher education leaders and marketing practitioners alike.
Read the transcription
Shiro [00:00:14]:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Higher Ed DemandGen podcast hosted by Concept three d. If you like our content, please follow and or subscribe to us. As always, I’m Shiro Hatori, your host. And today, I’m very excited to talk about how to market a university as well as a new way of actually measuring brand efforts. So for the topic, I’m very thrilled to speak with Teresa Flannery or Terry. She’s the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Case. Terry, welcome to the show.
Teresa Flannery [00:00:51]:
Thank you, Sharon. I’m excited to talk with you.
Shiro [00:00:54]:
Likewise. And I love asking all my guests just to start things off. Tell us what you love about higher ed.
Teresa Flannery [00:01:00]:
Everything. I’ve worked in higher ed for forty years my entire career, and I think it’s probably the the mission. I have a passion for the purpose of what we do, and especially the transformative power of education.
Shiro [00:01:15]:
Thank you for sharing that. Well, let let’s jump in here real quick. Can you tell us a little bit about your background as well as what is case?
Teresa Flannery [00:01:23]:
Sure. So I mentioned I’ve worked in higher ed my whole career. I started out in student affairs, moved to admissions and enrollment, and that is where I first started to learn about marketing. And that’s actually one of the first places that marketing became adopted in higher education, and it provided me with all the opportunities to really make that the focus of my career. And so, I’ve been the chief marketing communications officer at three institutions, public and private, large and medium size, all in American higher education, I should note. Let’s see. I, my organization called CASE is a professional association that is the global leader for professional development in the profession of educational advancement. So that represents the people who do the work in either colleges and universities or independent schools who raise funds, who engage alumni, and who lead marketing and communication on their campus.
Teresa Flannery [00:02:31]:
It’s about three it’s about 3,000 member institutions representing something along the lines of 95,000 professionals all around the world in in four regions. So US and Canada, Asia Pacific, our office is in Singapore, in that region. Washington is the office in US and Canada. Latin America, the office is in Mexico City. And in Europe, the office is in London.
Shiro [00:02:58]:
That’s amazing. And do you know how big the audience is in is in North America or US?
Teresa Flannery [00:03:03]:
It’s about 2,500 member institutions, and I think it was about 81% of our members. So, the lion’s share of that 95,000 people probably in the seventies or 80 thousands would be US and Canada.
Shiro [00:03:18]:
Yeah. That’s a huge huge, huge number. Just a quick personal question. I know, like, marketing is is finally being adopted as a word. Right? And, like, people are using the word CMO now in higher ed. You’ve been in the in the game for a long time. At what point did you realize, hey. I’m I’m a marketing person, even though your title probably didn’t reflect that?
Teresa Flannery [00:03:42]:
Yeah. I knew it probably right away. I was the first marketing director in 1997, and it was clear that the leaders who hired me into the role didn’t really understand what it meant. My first vice presidency had communication in the title, but not marketing because it would have taken more political capital on behalf on the part of the president to get me at the executive table and give me the title. So we chose to put me at the executive table with an executive director title, for communication and then eventually to have the vice president in the title. I think it wasn’t until my last CMO role at Stony Brook University in New York that marketing was in the title. So for a while, it’s been, something that you had to translate and explain to people not really as understood and more accepted.
Shiro [00:04:32]:
Mhmm. No. That’s I mean, it’s it’s great to see this change and, I mean and I’m speaking to someone who helps spearhead some of that, so I appreciate that. Yeah. Is is, so what that are some of those things that, were played into a factor when it came
Teresa Flannery [00:04:47]:
to writing your book? Sure. So I was asked to write the book by the, editorial director at the Johns Hopkins University Press, and he has a series for higher ed leaders that does really well. It has some of the most important practical higher ed books in it. And he said, we need a book on marketing because leaders don’t understand it, but they know they need to do it. So, you know, explaining the really, the book starts out with explaining the strategic purpose of marketing, and that it’s not just promotion, and that it is aligned closely with institutional strategy, and that it’s a means for meeting your most important institutional goals by building value in terms of revenue, reputation, and relationships. When you start talking about that is what marketing really is, you start to get through kinda some of the misconceptions or the, the things that, academic leaders in particular typically think of when they hear the word.
Shiro [00:05:51]:
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s not just arts and crafts. We have a long list of direct attribution to to revenue. I’m I’m a marketer myself. So Yep. It’s it’s great that you’re talking about that. It’s so important.
Shiro [00:06:03]:
And I think an added benefit or a a differentiator with higher ed is that, that rebuilding relationships part is is such a key component of it that I don’t think is is as important in other industries. Right? But, it it certainly is in higher ed, and I think it’s great that you pointed it out.
Teresa Flannery [00:06:23]:
Yep.
Shiro [00:06:25]:
Okay. Well, let let’s talk a little bit more about your book, How to Market a University. Who was it written for and why? So
Teresa Flannery [00:06:33]:
as I said, I was asked to write it, and, the original audience was really for presidents, provosts, and board chairs. And the idea was that leaders are hungry to know how to do this work well, and they know it’s becoming more and more important. In The United States, we’re facing this enrollment cliff. In lots of different parts of the world, we’re facing a search cliff where it’s harder to use, data from search and that you have to get more primary data. They know some of those obstacles, but they don’t they’re not necessarily sure about how to, organize resource and measure higher education marketing communication efforts, marketing in particular. Mhmm. So I wrote the book for them to start. When I was in the, drafting phase of the book, Hopkins has a really rigorous process for their their book development, and I had to have two blind reviews of the manuscript once I’d written it.
Teresa Flannery [00:07:29]:
And one of the blind reviewers gave feedback, and it was clear that he was a marketing leader in the business in higher ed. And he was kinda frustrated that the book wasn’t for him. And I figured, you know, you have to translate all this stuff to the people who don’t know it. You’re probably singing to the choir when you write it for, chief marketing officers. But what he was really asking for and what I ended up doing is adding a secondary audience of, higher ed leaders themselves. And I created a series of questions at the end of every chapter, two or three questions that you could use to start a discussion about that topic, that chapter with your provost, with your president, with your vice chancellor, with your board, members that would help move the conversation along into a more sophisticated place where the purpose of the work is understood. And then you start talking about what should we invest, what should we focus on, all the important questions.
Shiro [00:08:27]:
Yeah. That’s that’s amazing. Yeah. I think there’s it’s a double edged sword. I think there’s a need from the leadership’s perspective as well, but also, like, a movement that has to happen from the ground up, which you’re not at the bottom of the the whole bowl. You could be a a marketing leader already, but, like, there’s ways to communicate upward and and and across as well. So that’s fantastic. Well, let’s dig a little bit deeper into your book.
Shiro [00:08:52]:
Obviously, this is gonna be much too short of a conversation to cover all the key points. But I think on our prior conversation, you mentioned three you mentioned three main areas that you get the most questions asked about, which means it’s probably the most important or or most, relevant. So those came down to organization and structure, questions around resources and resourcing, and then, lastly about measurement. So Mhmm. Let’s first talk about the organization and structural component. If you could just maybe give us some key takeaways from your book and what you’ve learned.
Teresa Flannery [00:09:26]:
So I think the the easiest way to describe how marketing is organized in higher education is one hot mess. There are so many ways that it’s done differently on different campuses. And a lot depends on whether your leadership understands the strategic purpose of marketing and wants to embed it in decisions, leadership decisions about strategy or not. Also, there’s this really, interesting dynamic of peep leaders thinking about where the marketing is most important to kinda plug in. Is it designed to affect enrollment? Is it designed to affect fundraising and alumni engagement? Is it designed to lead brand? And so a lot of times, you will see that the function is reporting to a vice president in another area. Not a lot of times, but sometimes. And the problem or the challenge we identify in the book about that is that it’s in service of that one really important piece of institutional strategy, but it makes you less accountable to the other areas. And, also, let it’s harder to influence those other areas.
Teresa Flannery [00:10:34]:
So I advocate for the ideal structure, and it isn’t always possible, one where there is an independent vice president or a a cabinet level leader who leads the marketing and communication function and must work really carefully to make sure they not only lead the enterprise marketing efforts, including brand, but they’re all and reputation. They’re also working really closely and collaboratively with their colleagues who lead enrollment and advancement to make sure that they’re tending the goals of those leaders with a marketing lens.
Shiro [00:11:09]:
That’s fantastic. And do you have different recommendations for different school sizes as well? Because I think that’s, like, the area that impacts organizational structure the most.
Teresa Flannery [00:11:18]:
Yeah. Well, the smaller you are, the more likely it is that it’s just all one unit. You know, in a independent college, an independent small college, it’s probably the college relations office where the function is organized, but it might just as easily be in the enrollment side. In a in a independent school, some of the same, things are true. You know, we’re seeing at the university level, now the majority of leaders and functions report directly to the principal, directly to the president, vice chancellor, you know, whatever the term is, head of school, and, have a function that services all those agencies. It’s about three quarters of the leaders now. So, you know, we’ve come a long way, baby as an old cigarette commercial would say. But there are still, you know, a lot of institutions, 25% at least, that don’t have that.
Teresa Flannery [00:12:13]:
And, you know, I I always say start from where you are, influence what you can, and see if you can get to the point that you can ask questions of the areas that aren’t in your sphere of influence to say to establish a relationship with the leader, to say, what are the goals you’re trying to reach? How can I help you? And demonstrate for them the value of marketing by kinda creating some bridges to those other areas.
Shiro [00:12:39]:
Oh, that’s fantastic advice. Just moving us along here. When it comes to resourcing and resources, what are some of your key takeaways, based on the questions you’ve been asked?
Teresa Flannery [00:12:51]:
So the first is stop talking about it as a cost and don’t accept the premise. Right? You wanna talk about it as as an investment that should produce a return, and that’s that value that we’re talking about. Right? So if you frame it in that way like you would other investments that your institution makes, they’re investing in an endowment manager who’s expected to produce returns on the endowment that the university can use for other purposes, or they’re investing in a residence hall so that the school, can generate revenues, boarding revenues, room and board, from that, but requires all the investment in, architecture and design and construction before it ever produces a dollar of revenue. Every one of those investments that are significant and strategic have a time and a upfront investment that produces no return, and then it’s expected to do that. And so thinking about it in that way, you then start to set the expectation that this won’t be quick and easy. It’s a it should be a significant investment, and that it related to the measurement piece that we’ll get to in a minute, you should start to measure what the impact or the return has been so that you can make judgments about which investments are are producing the best results. In the book, I provide you know, this book was came out in 2021, so I provided what then were some guidance about what higher ed spends on and education as an industry or sector spends on marketing, what corporate environment spends, how the spends are different in terms of where the dollars go. And so you can think about percentage of budget, as a as a piece of guidance.
Shiro [00:14:34]:
Mhmm.
Teresa Flannery [00:14:34]:
It usually really throws, presidents who’ve never thought about the investment in marketing before to hear that startups are investing three to 5% of their budget expenditures in marketing. And they think about what that means for a university’s, budget, and they’re like, kind of freak out at first. But it starts to really say, this isn’t, nice to have. This is a strategic investment that should produce a return.
Shiro [00:15:03]:
Absolutely. Do you do you mind sharing what the number was for investment percentages for higher ed from from your book?
Teresa Flannery [00:15:09]:
Yeah. So, I I think it was the education sector broadly, and it was pretty low. So I think we were looking at, these are data that come from the CMO survey from Simpson Scarborough. I don’t have one sorry. I don’t have my book in front of me, but it is certain it’s certainly a much lower percentage than the corporate environment, which coming out of the pandemic was something like 11%. It was much lower than that. And, frankly, just to tell any higher ed leader that they should be spending 11% of their budget would rock their socks off except for, I’ll have to say, Southern New Hampshire University, University of Phoenix, Western Governors University. They know.
Teresa Flannery [00:15:48]:
And they’re producing returns off that investment in big ways. But it’s a process they have to start from somewhere and get people familiar and thinking about it and experiment experimenting with it and then building over time. I I wouldn’t start with what the percentage the averages for the corporate environment as an example of where people should start. But I do like talking about that three to 5% for startups because because it puts in context, you’re probably spending less than that. And is your university a startup? How many hundreds of years has it been around? Maybe we ought to think about this differently. Right?
Shiro [00:16:25]:
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a great, great standing point. And I think, I mean, we have conversations here all the time that it’s a consumer market, so our our consumers, aka students, also have consumer expectations that they’re used to. And so, looking at things like that in a traditional or non higher ed, business model is, I think, completely is is is fair game. Right? And so, it’s good to bring up those numbers, I think. At least just
Teresa Flannery [00:16:54]:
with comparisons. Right?
Shiro [00:16:56]:
Yeah. As a starting point. I’m not say I’m not saying just because you now got all this increased budget, go spend it on Google because Google will take all your money.
Teresa Flannery [00:17:05]:
It will.
Shiro [00:17:05]:
Don’t do that.
Teresa Flannery [00:17:06]:
If you wanna pay the milkshake
Shiro [00:17:09]:
it. Yeah. Do some other things, not just Google Ads. Well, great. Well yeah. So I think a key component to your resource part was, like, are you able to measure your results? So let’s talk about measurement, which I think is the third piece you get asked about a lot when it comes to, portions of your book. So, what do you have to say on measurement?
Teresa Flannery [00:17:27]:
So we start really practically. We talk about short term, middle term, and long term measures, thinking about, very behavioral indicators in the early going that say, hey. This is registering. And those might be quite tactical. You might be they might be tied to a particular tactic in your reporting back whether it was seen, whether it was, clicked on, you know, whether it was found, whether it was engaged, pretty basic short term measures. The middle term measures are more proxies for changes in perceptions that you can’t measure yet. If you did a survey, you might not see much change in an attitude about, I don’t know, an awareness about the your university or the favorability in some way, towards your university or the reputation for excellence, things like that. But those middle term measures that are few years in are the things that leaders care about.
Teresa Flannery [00:18:20]:
So it’s applications and, annual gifts and, you know, a number of other very easy yield rate, for example, really easy things that the university already measures and reports for different reasons that you could use as a stand in. If they’re moving, they might be moving slightly, are an indication that the investment is having an effect. And then the longer term measures are really the true change in mindset because we know that brands exist in the minds of our customers and our stakeholders, not in the and not in the stuff that we do. We can try to influence it, but it’s in people’s heads. So you need to measure, and you need to measure regularly. And so creating a process of a baseline measure, especially if you’re starting your marketing investments to see where you’re starting from, awareness, favorability, a number of other things, and then brand associations. And then you measure again every three years or so and see how much that is changing is a good way in the long term to see, yeah, perceptions are actually changing as a result of this investment or they’re accurate if you don’t want them to change, but they’re staying there.
Shiro [00:19:29]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is this is very, very difficult stuff to measure. Like, even outside of what I do, like, it’s it’s the audience size is much bigger. The branding component is harder to measure. And so it’s it’s a def definitely a difficult task, but not impossible. So I think that’s
Teresa Flannery [00:19:47]:
It’s stable. It’s absolutely work. Yeah.
Shiro [00:19:50]:
In terms of, like, what you’ve seen in in your experience, like, how do you know I’ve I’ve been to a lot of conferences, and it looks like a lot of times higher ed institutions hire out for help with this part, right, the measurement piece, especially when it comes to perception, things that are harder to measure that they can’t do internally, like yield rates and such like that. Right? Like, what is your advice to, like, to know to when to, like, get some help, and, like, how do you know you’re working with a good vendor, I guess, as well?
Teresa Flannery [00:20:21]:
Mhmm. That’s a good idea. And probably a longer answer to the question, but I’ll say I have always leaned on institutional research at the university if they understand applied market research or they’re collecting something for a primary purpose that you can use secondarily because you might be able to start there. After that, you should hire somebody who’s got a good reputation, ask for recommendations from, you know, references from other like type institutions and hear what the experience is like. I have a friend, Elizabeth Scarborough, who leads Simpson Scarborough. She’s the founder one of the founders. And, she, talks about any research project is like an accordion. It can be opened or squeezed to the size of your budget.
Teresa Flannery [00:21:08]:
Really, it has to do with how much you can do with that amount of money. So you can almost start anywhere. But I would insist that no matter who you hire, you get them to teach you what they’re doing so that you are, one, an educated sumer of the results you’re getting, and two, you might be able to do it yourself next time with a little more support. So those are some things to think about when you’re hiring. But it is a really important skill, and it’s not one to, diminish in terms of importance because it’s gonna show a great deal of whether it’s worth continuing to do.
Shiro [00:21:40]:
Absolutely. I think, honestly, this is just my opinion, so I’d like to hear yours as well. But I think measurement is a piece that’s gonna actually get maybe a little bit harder to do in the future just because, one, like, for data, digital data is becoming more private, which is a good thing. Right? But that means that’s less tracking we can do on our own natively. And then just like the market, you know, everyone’s just trying to just grasp for more information and data. So there’s just so much more information out there. And so and on the consumer side, you’re less willing to give it up. Right?
Teresa Flannery [00:22:14]:
Yeah. Of course. I’m not personally, I’m I’m not. I get it.
Shiro [00:22:18]:
Yeah.
Teresa Flannery [00:22:18]:
I think we’ve gotten a little lazy with the early days of, search. You know? It was just this vast array of data to use. But we also underestimate all the data that our institutions hold, and we’re not optimizing that enough to help us. That’s a good place to start. Where is there already data and what could it tell us about the things we’re trying to learn? And then it really encourages you to do more more establish establishment of, relationships of consent with to get that primary data and then keep the relationship with the leads so that or whatever term you would use so that you can continue to track over time. That’s where the the activity needs to move to in my opinion.
Shiro [00:23:01]:
That’s amazing. You you brought up a great comparison earlier about resources and how, the endowment factor when you get an investment on, like, a new building or a new rec center, like, that’s a huge investment. Right? Like, probably, like
Teresa Flannery [00:23:16]:
Millions.
Shiro [00:23:17]:
Hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Do do institutions this is just I’m just purely curious. Like, do they ever do a ROI measurement of that? Like, hey. This rec center brought in we can assume brought in, I don’t know, x amount of new students. Like, they do do this kind of measurement?
Teresa Flannery [00:23:33]:
They certainly insist that endowment managers do it. And I’ve seen some institutions, including some I worked at, that they look at the total investment, in the building, And then there’s usually debt on it, so they gotta pay the debt back. So they’re looking at the annual revenue that they return, and they can use that data to back into an ROI. And I cover ROI in my book a little bit. There’s even a really sophisticated measure of lifetime value of the student when you think about all the revenue over time, that really savvy institutions can invest in. But you don’t have to start with that that complicated a measure. You can start with a project that you invested in and what what returns you can count on relatively speaking, whether it produced leads or applications or enrollments, or annual gifts. And it won’t explain everything about that, but you’ll have a relative cost per whatever the outcome is.
Teresa Flannery [00:24:32]:
And you can compare that to other tactics aiming at the same thing and say, this one’s better than that one. This is more efficient than that. That’s the first and earliest form of ROI that you can start with. And as you get a little more sophisticated, you can do more.
Shiro [00:24:47]:
No. I appreciate that. Oh, thanks for opening my eyes to, like, how incredible and large that project is in in trying to measure, return on investment on, like, a new building on campus. Yeah. Speaking of which, I I die by this phrase now, which is, your most visited building on campus is your website. So don’t forget that. If you’re throwing hundreds of million dollars at your new rec center, don’t forget that your website is getting a hundred times more visitors every day than your rec center or your state union is.
Teresa Flannery [00:25:20]:
And you can prove that in a heartbeat.
Shiro [00:25:22]:
Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, let’s let’s, kind of move on from just the key points from your book. If you’re listening, make sure to check it out. I know it’s available on Amazon and on Kindle, so definitely check it out, how to market a university. And then let’s let’s talk a little bit about, CASE and what they’re now developing in terms of a new brand measurement tool.
Shiro [00:25:45]:
So Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Teresa Flannery [00:25:48]:
Yes. It’s very exciting. So the thing is called it’s got a long name. The CASE insights framework for brand and reputation metrics in education. And what that really means is that CASE has been in the business of setting standards and measurement definitions of measures in two aspects of advancement, some for a really long time. So the CASE standards on philanthropy reporting standards on philanthropy, have been around for decades, and they are very mature. And there are whole there are hundreds of institutions every year, nearly a thousand in The US, similar measures in other regions that, submit their own performance data on philanthropy every year, and then they compare you know, they can benchmark against comparison institutions that are like them or aspirational that helps inform their thinking about strategy and performance. We similarly have standards for alumni engagement and measures, in four categories of engagement that we’re in our sixth year of collecting the data on.
Teresa Flannery [00:26:53]:
We have hundreds of institutions who submit the data on that as well. And, again, you can compare your performance to others. There are no measures in education for performance in marketing in brand and reputation. So it includes both strategic communications and marketing, activities. We know their measures in other industries. It’s notoriously difficult and the reason why they don’t exist in education because our organizational structures are so crazy, and so you can’t really know very easily all of what you’re investing and all of what you’re doing. It’s really decentralized unless you’re a really small school. And you might not have the sophistication to kinda know what the measure measure should be.
Teresa Flannery [00:27:38]:
I don’t mean your personal sophistication. I mean your school or your college or your university hasn’t thought about marketing as a strategic investment with the kind of attitude about what it should be doing for you. And if and schools and colleges are can be more or less sophisticated about that. And as they get more sophisticated, they’re usually trying to measure with more sophistication. So we’ve established that there are no measures currently, and CASE is gonna build them. And we think that CASE is the the group to build them because we have this global footprint, because we work with so many, professionals, in in these areas of work, and because we’ve done it in the two other areas of advancement already. So we think we know what the road map looks like. We introduced, late this summer, this past summer in 2024, this framework, which talks about six categories of marketing and communications activity and three levels of measurement.
Teresa Flannery [00:28:37]:
And it kinda outlined the frame for the measures to be inserted. And what we’ve done is kinda say, okay. We’re trying to build something that everyone can see themselves in. We’re not gonna be comprehensive yet. We couldn’t possibly be. We’re gonna start with the things that we have most in common across colleges, universities, and schools. So you’ll see the six categories of, measurement that include obvious things like recruitment and retention, or, philanthropy or alumni engagement, but they include new areas, including the pieces that relate to strategic communications and reputation management. So we take the six categories of measurement, and we think about levels of measurement that are most basic, that are reporting, that are kind of the mid level, complexity of measurement analysis, and the third level that has to do with real ins deriving real insights.
Teresa Flannery [00:29:33]:
And we’ve taken some examples. We’ve collected some examples, of measures that fit in each category and each level of measurement to kinda describe what we have in mind. And we have spent the last six months, taking the show on the road virtually and in person and asking professionals in marketing communications and education to think about measures they use and where they think they would fit in this framework. So we’re getting really good feedback. We’ve done great kind of crowdsourcing of measures, you know, lots of measures, And we’re gonna use those to choose the first measures that’ll go into the first data collection. And we’ll have to define those measures really carefully, and that’ll be a little messy. You know? We’ll we’ll work with colleagues from around the world to say, how do you define this particular measure? Get some input. Choose a standard.
Teresa Flannery [00:30:26]:
And then when we’ve got those first measures chosen, we’ll put them into a pilot survey probably in just more than another year now with a small group of schools. That’ll be really messy too, because it’ll be hard the first time we do it. But once we do that, we’ll be able to refine a survey that annually will allow people to submit their performance data on particular measures they use in these six categories. And eventually, we’ll collect enough for people to be able to compare their own performance, not only to their own performance in previous years, but to other institutions. And it’s gotten great reaction. People are so excited about it even though it’s gonna take a while to get to the the point that we really realize the impact, they’re saying this is gonna give me legitimacy on my campus. This is gonna really help, my leaders think about what the purpose of our work should be and how we’re measuring it. And in in many cases, we think, that it will help, to think about what how you should be structured and what you should be investing in in order to produce the measures.
Teresa Flannery [00:31:31]:
So a lot of institutions don’t have enterprise CRM or a CMS that’s integrated with their CRM. Right? In order to produce some of the more sophisticated measures, you’ve got marketing technology that you will need to do that. So we’ve not only built this framework, we started with 10 thought leaders who are in universities and schools, who are in agencies and practitioners, who are in marketing and communications, and who are in all the regions that CASE operates to build the framework. As we’ve been going along and collecting feedback, we’re now gonna engage some of our most important educational partners in the corporate world who are in the Martech space or the agency space to make sure they’re thinking about this, and they can help us build it so that when they’re working with clients or when they’re building products that collect this data, they’d be working to the standard that we’re using, and that’ll really help to make it easier.
Shiro [00:32:28]:
That’s amazing. When when is the expected date that, this will be launched? I know you said you’re you’re still working out the I knew
Teresa Flannery [00:32:35]:
you would ask it. I think we have to think about it in steps or in milestones.
Shiro [00:32:38]:
Okay.
Teresa Flannery [00:32:39]:
And so the next step is to start defining the, choosing the measures that we’re gonna start with starting in May And probably in another year, probably in July of twenty seven, we would have a pilot group of, schools to start filling out the first survey. That’s the goal anyway. I don’t think we’ll fully realize this. I’d be thrilled if five years from now, these you know, we’ve done a few data collections, and we’re really starting to be able to build a pool and cohorts of, data that people can use to make meaningful comparisons. But you gotta start somewhere. Right?
Shiro [00:33:18]:
Absolutely. Yep. I mean, at a much smaller scale, we I just worked on our first inaugural, higher ed marketing salary survey.
Teresa Flannery [00:33:28]:
Mhmm.
Shiro [00:33:28]:
We just posted the results about a month ago and ran a discussion on it, and that was our first one. My first salary report I’ve ever conducted, and it was a lot of work and definitely has a lot of work to be done. So, something even much, much bigger like you’re working on is is amazing, and I know it’ll help higher ed, as a whole. So appreciate that. Very exciting. Well, I think we’re just at about time. I’m just wondering where our listeners can learn more about your book, CASE, whatever you wanna talk about and promote here. It’s yeah.
Teresa Flannery [00:34:02]:
Yep. Well, you like you said, you can find my book, How to Marketing University on Amazon, on Kindle. You can find it on the Johns Hopkins University Press website, jhupress.org, I think it is. And, you can find me and Case on LinkedIn. Look for Teresa Flannery PhD on LinkedIn, or you can find CASE, which is the Council for Advancement and Support of Education at Council for Advancement and Support of Education on LinkedIn.
Shiro [00:34:33]:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining today. It’s been an amazing conversation. I love talking about BRAIN, and how to resource and restructure and measure. So this has been this has been great. Thank you so much for your time.
Teresa Flannery [00:34:46]:
Thanks for the opportunity, Shiro
rs? Like, how what are you looking at in terms of data? And the reason I ask is I’m trying to just for our listeners, you know, give advice on, like, how you look at data, how you look at programming that’s successful, like, this early, and especially with your background coming from outside of higher ed. Like, I feel like we move a little faster. So, yeah, I just wanted to see how what your lens is on how you’re seeing campaign performance.
Valerie Kelly [00:18:41]:
Yeah. It’s a good question. So this particular one with study college just launched, a week ago, and I’m actually due to have a consultation call with them next week. And so Mhmm. We’ll kinda figure out what those preliminary, results look like. So more to come on that. But we also work with another one, called McClatchy, a very similar type of, campaigns. And so, usually, what we do is, so we have a three month campaign.
Valerie Kelly [00:19:11]:
We usually have kind of a midpoint kind of touch base, kinda talk about some of the keywords that are working, how many clicks, how many impressions that we’re getting, and kinda discuss. And then, prior to launching these campaigns, I’ll usually be the one that puts together the warning, and work with a variety of different stakeholders on potential edits and things like that depending on the programs that we wanna feature. And this is really a focus on our graduate programs. So all of our advertising really is really focused on our graduate programs.
Shiro [00:19:44]:
Got it. And do you blend in some of the, like, quotes and pieces from your interviews with students and faculty into these campaigns?
Valerie Kelly [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Shiro [00:19:55]:
Okay. Very cool. Let’s let’s talk about LinkedIn real quick. What is your plan or strategy for the LinkedIn play? You already have 10,000 followers. What do you plan on doing that with that?
Valerie Kelly [00:20:09]:
Yeah. That’s a great question. So I think for our LinkedIn, our biggest showcase is really going to be and we’re actually just talking about that recently as well, but showcasing, the impacts of our faculty. So we’ll have our faculty feature. We’ll have our student feature, which are generally our graduate students, but this is also a platform where we will show some undergraduate students as well. There are some students that are involved within, athletics. So they have they’re managing a variety of different things, and they have such great stories to tell that will sometimes feature our undergrads there as well. And then, larger college of business initiatives.
Valerie Kelly [00:20:54]:
We had a business pathways networking event yesterday, and we have another part of our college. It’s called the office of student engagement. So there are parts of the college that they’ll maybe have, some LinkedIn pages that post communications that are specifically for a student audience.
Shiro [00:21:12]:
Mhmm.
Valerie Kelly [00:21:13]:
Our channels are more geared towards the college as a whole. But there are different subsets mostly on Instagram, but our LinkedIn will show, content, for the college as a whole, in any upcoming events, any guest speakers that we might, have on the campus, different networking opportunities, career fairs. So it’s really kind of a one stop shop for really everything within the college of business, positions that we’re hiring for, and things like that.
Shiro [00:21:46]:
Got it. Okay. Yeah. So it’s like it just seems like a multiuse kind of approach with your your company page. Got it. Do you are you planning to put any, paid spend behind this at all?
Valerie Kelly [00:21:58]:
Not at the moment.
Shiro [00:22:00]:
Got it. So kinda utilizing your current follower base and seeing what you can do from that.
Valerie Kelly [00:22:05]:
Yeah.
Shiro [00:22:06]:
Super cool. Last thing I really wanted to touch on, I know you actually have some experience using AI right now with Outlier, and so I’m speaking to the right person. But, like, how how do you envision AI being a bigger part of your team within marketing and your role and then as a organization at a whole, at, Sacramento State?
Valerie Kelly [00:22:35]:
Yeah. That’s a great question. So within, the College of Business as a whole, there is an AI concentration that is coming up, coming up this fall, which is really exciting. And
Shiro [00:22:48]:
Is that AI in business? Is it, like, AI use in business? Is that, like, a certificate that attract?
Valerie Kelly [00:22:55]:
So it’s like a AI concentration. So it’s gonna be part of the College of Business, but it’ll there’ll be a concentration, with our business degree.
Shiro [00:23:04]:
Got it. Very cool. And and keep going. Tell me more about how, you’re using it on the faculty or staff side as well. We’re planning on using it.
Valerie Kelly [00:23:15]:
Yeah. So it’s actually interesting, actually, with Sacramento State as a whole. There is a partnership that’s coming, with, OpenAI and ChatGPT, which is gonna make, the platform more accessible to faculty, to students. Of course
Valerie Kelly [00:25:32]:
it. Okay. But we got an email actually not too long ago about, there is gonna be a, software, in our software our software catalog. There is gonna be an option loaded on to there. So we’ll learn more about that soon.
Shiro [00:25:53]:
Okay. Cool. Very cool. I was actually going to I’m recording an episode with Tina Miller from ASU, and she’s their org is massive, but they have huge departments and budgets. Not even budgets, just more like people power allocated towards AI, and they have their own GPT and partnership with OpenAI too. So super cool. But, yeah, that’s that’s very exciting. I’m always constantly looking for ways to incorporate AI just beyond just, like, chat GPT prompts into my workflow.
Shiro [00:26:25]:
So I’m always curious to learn how other marketers are utilizing these tools. So love the podcast idea. I’d love to see how we can maybe, you know, create more clips or create more content from, AI as well. So that’s cool. Well, I think we’re just at about time. I’m wondering where our listeners can connect with you and learn more about all the good work, you’re doing, in your role or outside of this. Yeah.
Valerie Kelly [00:26:54]:
Yeah. It’s a great question. So you can find me over on LinkedIn. My name over there is, Valerie Kelly Curl. And I usually will post access to my podcast episodes over there. I have my own podcast called The Slice of Empathy. I’m over on Instagram at valerie j kelly. So you can connect with me over there.
Valerie Kelly [00:27:17]:
My website, valeriejkelly.com. Those are some of my passion projects that you’ll find, that both kind of intersect with my my daily marketing work, and also my passion for podcasting.
Shiro [00:27:32]:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining. It’s been a pleasure having you, and I’m excited to hear all the results maybe in, like, a year from now, once you’ve you fit into your boots a little bit more.
Valerie Kelly [00:27:44]:
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure.m. You know? So if you wanna see mom me, in you wanna see professional me, that’s, you know, more like LinkedIn and x.
