In this episode, Shiro Hattori speaks with Melanie Linder, VP of Marketing Communications at the University of North Dakota, about the significant growth in enrollment and the strategic marketing initiatives that have contributed to this success.
They discuss the importance of centralized marketing, leadership support, campus renewal, and effective storytelling in engaging prospective students. Melanie emphasizes that a logo is not a marketing campaign and shares insights on how to measure and communicate marketing success effectively.
Takeaways
- The University of North Dakota has seen a 25% increase in enrollment due to strategic marketing efforts.
- Centralized marketing allows for consistent branding and effective long-term planning.
- Leadership support is crucial for successful marketing initiatives.
- Campus renewal and investment in facilities enhance recruitment efforts.
- Storytelling through visual media is key to engaging prospective students.
- A logo should not be confused with a brand; branding is about core values.
- Data-driven marketing strategies help in measuring success and making informed decisions.
- Community engagement is essential for student retention and success.
- A/B testing is vital for optimizing marketing campaigns.
- Simplicity in communication of data is important for executive buy-in.
Read the transcription
Shiro (00:15)
Hey everyone. Welcome to the higher demand, Jen podcast hosted by concept 3d. If you like our content, please follow and subscribe to us. As always, I’m sure Hattori your host. And today I’m really excited to talk about why a new logo is not a marketing campaign. and to speak on this topic, I’m really thrilled to have another returning guest join us today. She’s the VP of marketing communications at the university of North Dakota. Welcome back, Melanie.
Meloney Linder (00:41)
Thank you for having me.
Shiro (00:42)
Yeah, it’s great to see you again. I like that I get to see your office this time too. It’s a different environment. the video clip that we’ll get to pull from this will look a little different too. So it’ll be a nice change up as well. Yeah, so today I really thought we could cover a little bit about kind of like a recap. I think we spoke a little over a year ago. How are things been at University of North Dakota?
Meloney Linder (01:03)
It has been a really exciting time. The academic year of 24, 25, it was coined the year of momentum. And it was very much that we’ve had lots of activity. Last fall, we welcomed a freshman class that was 25 % larger than the previous year. It was our fourth consecutive year of enrollment growth, but ⁓ previous years had been modest increases year over year. And then last year we had this huge leap.
So that was really exciting and brought new energy to the college campus, which was great. And then this fall we’re expecting as large of an increase as last year. So things are really exciting at the University of North Dakota right now.
Shiro (01:47)
that’s amazing. And could you remind me at what point did you really start as an institution start really investing in marketing?
Meloney Linder (01:53)
Yeah, so right around 2017, the university really started making an investment in marketing. We had come off some pretty hard budget cuts in previous years, which forced the university to kind of rethink how it was doing. Sometimes there’s really great opportunities that come out of some of those challenging times. And the university made the decision to not only invest in marketing,
but create a centralized marketing. So rather than doing things in a decentralized way, there’s a real power of having that centralized marketing, the consistency of brand, the consistency of the campaigns. And we’re seeing the results of that now. In addition to that, they redid our budget model. rather than things being very dispersed across campus, again, centralized units such as marketing.
We have our own strategic budget so we can do long-term planning on where we believe we need to go to help make sure that we’re meeting the enrollment and other priorities of the institution, which I think was really smart. And that’s why we’ve been seeing the growth that we’ve been seeing is that we have the ability to do the long-term thinking and planning.
Shiro (03:04)
That’s amazing. And when you say reinvestment, sounds like one, you change the model or the structure in change management first off, right? So maybe that was a reinvestment in people in terms of like spend as well. Did that get reallocated differently or did you end up with net less or more?
Meloney Linder (03:21)
So the budget was different. So we went to a racing model, so a revenue incentive based model. So then all centralized operational units have a percentage of the revenues that come to support the entire campus versus marketing, for example, having to go to various deans or colleges and ask for a campaign. We have a strategic marketing campaign where we’re able to do.
Shiro (03:26)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (03:45)
branding, were supposed to be able to do recruitment marketing campaigns, etc. But rather than thinking about things in piecemeal, we’re able to think holistically about what are the university’s priorities and goals and how do we develop campaigns and marketing strategies that match those.
And then we do a lot of measurements, which is one of the things that you and I talked about before. So we’re able to know about how long it takes for us to get an undergraduate student from the time we start talking to them to the time that they enroll. Same with graduates. it’s not a year by year. takes, for an undergraduate, it takes on average about three years from the time you start talking to them before they actually enroll in the university. with graduate, maybe a little bit less.
But again, it’s a multi-year strategy and having that budget that you can plan in that way helps you be more strategic.
Shiro (04:38)
That’s amazing. I imagine just from that change management and not working in silos, just the efficiency created from that itself is going to use your investment resources more wisely and not be wasted in process time, unhelpful data, all those things, right?
Meloney Linder (04:55)
Well, and one of the things you and I have talked about before too is rather than working in silos, we’re able to create ⁓ a halo. So you have the university marketing as a whole, but then we may do specific recruitment efforts for a new program or program that has real market potential that we have capacity to grow. And we’re able to have those campaigns and they will leverage.
Shiro (05:00)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (05:20)
the institutional marketing that we’re doing as a whole. So everything works in a coordinated fashion and you really get the ROI out of that.
Shiro (05:27)
That’s so good to hear. I know I asked, you know, what are some of the key highlights that have maybe led to this amazing last year, 25 % growth projections also say similar for this fall’s incoming class as well, which is fantastic. I know there’s probably a lot of things that are part of this, but you mentioned two pieces, which was campus renewal, which is an investment in the physical campus, right? And then also leadership really supporting
and caring about how you’re investing in the community. So can you tell us a little bit more about those two things?
Meloney Linder (05:59)
Well, yeah, so I’ll start with the leadership. mean, I’m really fortunate to ⁓ work at a university where marketing is at the executive table And so we’re able to have that marketing and communication lens to those conversations about how does this support the brand, the who, the UND, who we are as an institution. We’re able to help align messaging. So everything again is consistent, which is really important.
Leadership as a whole, mean, I am very grateful for the fact that I have colleagues that really value marketing and communication and they understand that when we do this well, that it benefits everybody. So there’s so much buy-in that that really, really helps. And that starts at the top. Like you need to have your president or your chancellor and all of your executive leadership and your deans to be on that same page if it’s going to work well.
The other piece of it, which we talked about, you mentioned the campus renewal. So that started also about the same time that there was an investment in marketing. We had a lot of buildings on campus that were old, lots of deferred maintenance. And we made a real investment to revitalize our campus. We took down, or right-sized sometimes is the word that people use, our campus, so buildings that
were not ⁓ needed or they were passed their life cycle were taken down. That allowed us to reduce the defer maintenance and do investments in new buildings or renovating existing buildings so that we are able to have classrooms and environments that meet the needs and wants of our students today, which really helps your recruitment marketing. So when you’re…
able to entice someone to say, yeah, I really want to come and check out this campus. And then they come to campus and they see a campus that has been invested in and it feels cohesive. it just, when we get someone on our campus, the likelihood of them applying is pretty strong. And that is because of the campus revitalization.
Shiro (08:03)
I’d love to dig a little deeper there. Were you able to specifically point out that prospective students may be on a campus visit? The reason they went there was because I did want to see the new buildings. I did want to see the revitalized campus.
Meloney Linder (08:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so we do a lot of storytelling on new buildings or renovated buildings or we’ll make sure that we feature them in videos so that people kind of get an idea of what our campus looks like. And yeah, they want it. We have a new, I’ll just give one example, have a new Mr. College of Business. It’s a brand new building. And people are like, yeah, I really want to check that out. We have a new Memorial Union for our students and they want to see it and they want to see where they’re going to.
Shiro (08:22)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (08:42)
where they might potentially call home for the next four years. And it makes a huge difference. So weaving that into the storytelling or your visual ⁓ elements and all of your marketing, whether it’s recruitment marketing, whether it’s your general PR that you’re doing, all of that gets people talking. There’s a buzz about the activity that’s happening on your campus. And there’s that energy that people want to be a part of or check out. And it really helps your efforts.
Shiro (09:09)
this is great. And from a marketing lens, I also want to ask, what did you find the best ways about telling the story or sharing the media around this? Was it local newspaper? Was it digital advertising? I’m just curious to hear your distribution.
Meloney Linder (09:23)
Some of this visual advertising, but
a lot of it you can do with your owned media, meaning you can do it through your website, you can do it through your social media, you can do it in your campus e-newsletters that you send out. There’s so many ways that you can get the word out that doesn’t entirely rely on your normal media channels that where you’re earning them to pay attention to you and you can create that buzz.
My favorite though is when we have our students and becomes organic where they’re all excited about a space and they’re showing it on their social media as well. And that’s something that’s really cool. think the current social media landscape because it’s so visual, whether it’s photography or video that you can really do a lot of fun things that can highlight your environment for people in a way that we haven’t been able to do that maybe before.
Shiro (10:12)
Yeah, definitely. And certainly not as quickly as before, because now you can rely on your students to UGC or user-generated content things for you, and you don’t have to hire a professional team, set a date, Pay them lots of money.
Meloney Linder (10:16)
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, mean,
we still do all of that, ⁓ but there are so many things that you can do, like you said, that’s organic, that works really well.
Shiro (10:30)
Yes.
That’s amazing. Can you also tell me a little bit more about ⁓ the community element, right? And so when you say your leadership cares about community, like what are some of the actual like tangible pieces of that besides the leadership down and everyone caring about the community they’re creating?
Meloney Linder (10:53)
Well, we talk about community a lot that we want to care for one another. And that is in everything that we do, whether it is helping our students navigate just the financial aid and application process. Once they get on campus, it’s helping them feel welcome through student affairs and getting the word out about ways to engage in student organizations or events that are available to students. It’s helping them know when they’re available, when advising is available and how to connect.
And we work really closely with all of our campus partners to help them connect with our students. So students know the resources that are available, the activities that are available. And that when people feel cared for and there’s that sense of I belong, right? And that really makes a difference in not only the recruitment piece, but the retention piece. Cause the goal for all of us, once we get our students here, we want to keep them and we want to see
see them walk across the stage for commencement, right? That’s what it’s all about.
Shiro (11:54)
That’s amazing. it’s, I’m glad that you also talked about the campus revitalization part. Cause I have this piece that I say on the podcast quite a bit, which is, your website is your most visited part of your ⁓ university brand or your institution as a whole. Right. It’s, know it’s digital and it’s not physical, but it gets, it gathers the most amount of users and then they come on campus. But it’s great to see that. I do think.
that your campus is the next place, right, that students or prospective students, constituents visit the most. And it’s almost like it’s, if I were to like pinpoint a funnel, it’s like, here’s your website, next step is your campus and you reinvested there. Cause it, I’m assuming you’re able to figure out or you had projected that this was one of the blockers in between that student funnel.
Meloney Linder (12:37)
Yeah, it’s interesting. So yeah, everybody wants their website to look beautiful, right? But then you want to make sure that that pretty website, when they come to campus, they see the same experience, right? That it’s still beautiful and it’s a place where they want to be. So one of the things that we did, and it is part of the campus renewal, even before all the buildings that were on the schedule to be renovated were done,
Shiro (12:42)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (13:02)
We invested in environmental branding to help that tour route look more welcoming and have elements that they would see, whether it be in signage or murals or just, you know, color that would attach to the brand and speak to who we are as an institution and make that experience more welcoming. We also worked really closely with our enrollment management and admissions teams to make sure that the tours
we’re good. We review ⁓ presentation by schools and colleges to make sure that they’re putting their best face forward as well. So it’s a real holistic approach that once we get them on campus, we really want them to understand why, who we are and have them feel like, again, we want them to see this is where they want to call home for their college experience.
Shiro (13:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah, this story is really good. I’m so glad we got to recap on this. I know another part of this conversation, shifting gears a little bit. You wrote an article about why a new logo or why a logo is not a marketing campaign specifically for higher ed. Can you tell us a little bit more about what prompted you to write this article on LinkedIn to start? And then we can.
Meloney Linder (14:13)
Firstly,
it was more of like, my goodness, I get asked this 100 times every year. It seems like, we’ve got this new initiative. We need a logo for our marketing campaign. because everybody thinks a new logo is the end all and be all that’s going to make it successful. so writing the piece was a little bit therapeutic for me. I’m just putting it down on paper. A logo is not a marketing campaign. There’s a very specific reason why you might
need a logo, but more often than not an initiative should be attached to your institutional logo because that is the halo effect. Again, we talk about institutional marketing. If you attach to that, that has a much broader reach than any one little initiative that will. And so again, we want to talk about a marketing campaign is to reach a very specific audience, usually for a very specific action. Correct.
A logo is an identifier. Sometimes there might be a need because it’s an event, a major event, maybe a conference or a signature type of thing where you might want a graphic element that identifies the event, but to create a whole identity is actually more likely going to take away from, or at least it won’t be as strong as it could be, as if you worked with your institution or your organizationals main logo and then build
Shiro (15:04)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (15:31)
the messaging and the visuals around what you’re trying to get that specific audience to do. And so yeah, so that right end of the article is a little bit of me like I have to explain this often. And I just thought I’d put it down on paper or and then put it out there for the world to see. Some people might agree with it for me. It was a way just to try to explain it in the easiest way of like, know, I know what you want to accomplish. Can we try to help you get there?
and have it be the most successful that it can be. And again, a logo might not be the thing that gets you there.
Shiro (16:05)
Yeah. And when I read this article, it made me think about things outside of higher ed, right? Companies, some of the most successful companies outside of higher ed.
they really don’t do a lot of logo changes. It takes them years. And often if you watch like, you know, a video about the evolution of a logo over like a hundred years, they’re not too different from the past one, right? And so I do really resonate with what you’re saying. Like what a logo represents, the brand it represents is really more about ⁓ its properties, right? The actions the company takes, the solutions or products it provides, the people, most importantly, the people that work there.
and how they connect with their customers or their community. And so it was a really good point that it made me think a little bit, because sometimes I’m not going to lie. I’m like, we need a logo for this event that’s four days long.
Meloney Linder (16:50)
I get that all the time and I love it you say that because
again, a logo is not your brand. A brand is the who you are, right? It’s those core values that may adapt over time, but not quickly. A brand does not change quickly because it is your DNA and it has to be true to what the institution is. And then a logo is just a visual identifier that
Shiro (16:58)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (17:16)
that people can recognize your institution, your organization, your company, but they’re different, right? But they work together. And I think that’s where sometimes people will get the two confused, right? But if your brand doesn’t change quickly or often, and it shouldn’t, right? Then your logo shouldn’t either. Because if you’re changing your logo, then what is that saying about the brand?
Is the brand truly authentic if it’s constant, if it feels like your logo constantly needs to change? you can think of some really, Coca-Cola, for example, that logo has not changed. That color red hasn’t changed. often use the example of target corporation. again, I’m a branding geek. So like, I like to see if I can look at an ad and identify the company before they ever mentioned the company. That’s really good marketing and really good branding when you can do that.
Shiro (18:01)
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (18:05)
And that happens when there’s the consistency.
Shiro (18:09)
Yes, absolutely. And
I’m trying to think of bad examples of branding where they have changed the logo, maybe they changed the colors at the same time. And I don’t remember them because they’re no longer memorable, right? Yeah.
Meloney Linder (18:19)
Yeah, because they don’t last, right? Like a company,
if they’re smart ⁓ and have made a mistake like that, will quickly pivot. Yes.
Shiro (18:24)
Yeah.
Yeah,
great example. Okay, well, we’ve talked about campaigns and now we’ve talked about your investment in marketing that your institution started seven years ago and you’ve seen a huge uplift in the past two years. Can you tell me a story about a successful campaign as of recently that didn’t have to create a new logo for it?
Meloney Linder (18:45)
Well, I like to think that all of our campaigns are really successful in the sense that when we are developing a campaign, we get really down to the core of who is the audience. ⁓ What is it that we want them to do? And what are the differentiators about our institution ⁓ and the why? Why is this good for them? And we do the work. And the other thing that we do when we’re doing a campaign is we do a lot of A-B testing.
Shiro (18:49)
huh.
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (19:12)
I’m a true believer in the kind of the concept of fail fast. Like find out what’s working and build on it. And if something isn’t working, pivot. So we could have a campaign with a couple different visual elements or different email campaigns. And we’ll find out really quickly out of a two, an A-B test, which one’s working. And then you pivot and you push harder on the elements that are working. And we measure.
all the time. I we’ll have different elements in whatever type of campaign we’re doing and we’ll see what is getting the attention and the engagement and then we build on that over time. So I am a real advocate for testing and measuring and learning constantly so that you just have a continuous improvement loop.
Shiro (19:55)
Gotcha. I am definitely more of a numbers person than I am with like visuals, right? Like I have my own opinion on visuals, but I run paid marketing campaigns myself, so I can see the numbers. So A-B tests are very easy to see and very transparent. But when it comes to testing visual elements, how do you actually go about A-B testing?
Meloney Linder (20:13)
Well, a really good example, we always start out, we do a brand health surveys on a regular basis. And so before we even do a creative, we’ll in that brand health survey do testing and get input on which visuals are resonating. And then again, we’ll run two different campaigns, maybe with a couple of different varying visuals. And then as soon as we see one is outperforming the other, then we pivot. Yeah.
Shiro (20:37)
Okay, yeah, it is survey
based. I see.
Meloney Linder (20:39)
And
I loved it you said you’re a data person because again, I think it’s important for people to understand how much more sophisticated marketing has become over the years, where it’s not just about, have opinions about what I think is more attractive than others, but that doesn’t mean that what Melanie Linder likes is going to resonate with your prospective audience. And that’s why having the measurements there is really powerful.
And it’s also really powerful when you’re doing your reports back up to leadership or to your deans or other stakeholders that it’s not, it’s not a guesswork or we think this did well because of why there’s data to support it. And that’s really important in higher ed when you’re working with researchers because they love data.
Shiro (21:20)
Mm-hmm. ⁓ I like this.
Yes. I like this topic, so let’s, let’s go a little deeper here. there’s almost too much data now, right? ⁓ you’ve had a lot of experience working with your executive team, How do you communicate like a blend of data and storytelling effectively, so that you do get buy-in or that they do support your goals?
Meloney Linder (21:41)
Well, I think you have to keep it simple in a sense of what are the key takeaways you want them to remember. Because if you inundate people with too much data to your point, it becomes overwhelming. And you can almost have paralysis by over analysis, right? But if you know what the key metrics are that will resonate with your leadership, those are the things that you should be measuring. My team may look at more data than what we might show the executive team.
Shiro (21:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Meloney Linder (22:08)
because we know the executive team wants to know about inquiries, visits, applications, students that actually deposited, like they have key metrics that are important that everybody can kind of get their head around. And then we’ll talk about how our work has driven towards those key performance indicators.
Shiro (22:29)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think I struggle with the simplification part, but I like what you said about starting backwards from the end goal, which is what you want them to walk away with and then catering your metrics or your analysis based on what you want them to walk away with. I like that.
Well, this is great. This has been really fun. Congratulations to you, your team, your Jason teams, your institution. It’s really good to hear some positive news too. So this has been great. I’m wondering where our listeners can find out more about what you’re doing and your institution and your teams are doing.
Meloney Linder (23:01)
Well, they can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Melanie Linder. Or they can find me at UND.edu. ⁓ I’m the Vice President for Marketing and Communications at the University of North Dakota.
