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Shiro Hatori
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the higher ed demand gen podcast hosted by concept 3d. If you like our content, please follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple, Google, wherever you listen to us. My name is Shiro Hatori. And I’ll be your host today. And on today’s episode, we will be asking ourselves, did COVID Kill the campus tour? And let’s talk a little bit also about what’s working now. So for the conversation, I’m very excited. I’m actually more than excited to have this guest on today. I’ve been kind of chasing him down for a while. So yeah, we’re gonna have Seth Odell on the showing on the show today. He is the founder and CEO of Canna, Houma, and he also co hosts the higher ed pulse podcast. Welcome to the show, Seth.
Seth Odell
Thanks so much. I’m really excited to be here. Appreciate you reaching out and and work with me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
Shiro Hatori
Fantastic. And I love asking all my guests this to start. What do you love about higher ed,
Seth Odell
I what I love most about higher ed is how transformative it is. You know, education is the great equalizer. And I definitely was raised that belief. My grandfather was a college president. My grandmother built one of the first adult advising programs in the 80s definitely have a family history of believing that education can transform. And so I love all forms of it. But mostly, I really love open access education that reaches folks that makes a huge difference in their families, generationally. So, to me, it’s just so cool, right? I was telling marketers in higher ed, we don’t sell vacuums like this is important, impactful work. And just you know, the purpose and the impact of higher ed is what makes me proud to be a part of the industry. That’s
Shiro Hatori
great. Thanks so much for sharing that. All right. Well, yeah, I love love to get started with the with the show here today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background as well as kind of home as well? Yeah,
Seth Odell
absolutely. So I’ve been in the higher ed space for a little less than 20 years. I did about four years at UCLA, and then another four years at Southern New Hampshire University. During my time at SNU. We went from 7000 to 70,000 students, and so it’s really rapid growth all online. So I have kind of the r1 background, the online background in the middle of those two, UCLA and SNU. I also found at higher ed Live, which was a live weekly web show network for higher ed built that in 2010 and sold it in 2012. I worked as a GM for an OPM at one point. And then I was Vice Chancellor and CMO at national university system for less than four years where I built one of the industry’s largest in house agency teams. And so been in the traditional side and entrepreneur side. And then I founded Canna Houma about a little over three years ago now. And we are a digital marketing agency that works with colleges, universities to help grow enrollment both on campus and online. We are 30 full time employees, we work with over 15 institutions today, I’ve been really lucky, it’s been a great growth and love working with the partners that we serve and support. So we work with a lot of small private tuition dependent institutions, a few big public DEA one, our one institutions, but in all cases, all partners want to grow. And so we’re definitely a growth shop and love the team we built and I’ve been really enjoying the work the last few years. So been on the institution side, the agency side, the OPM side, but been in edu for just about 20 years now.
Shiro Hatori
That’s fantastic. And I kind of joined the higher ed marketing space just around three years ago. And I remember when I first joined and got more active on LinkedIn, you’re making some noise on LinkedIn from like an organic posts perspective. I was like, Oh, this, this guy probably knows what he’s talking about. And you follow Him? And I think you should in that time for right at the beginning, you launched a newsletter, right? Yeah. And I’ve been following their newsletter pretty religiously for the last two years. I appreciate your writing style there as well. But I know about I think two newsletters ago at the time of this current recording. You sent out a newsletter around the topic of did COVID Kill the campus tour, and I was like, I need to read this one. Can you tell us a little bit more about your perspective? And what you covered on this newsletter? Yeah,
Seth Odell
absolutely. So it was definitely a divisive topic. And it was informed by a couple things, some research in the marketplace, but also some experiences we’ve had with some of our clients and partners. And so for smaller private tuition dependent institutions in particular, this is where the conversation hits, but I think it works across the board. Your The reality is COVID had a huge impact on institutions. One of the things that happened, which we all know is it shut down campuses. And so campuses stopped giving campus tours for a certain period of time. For some folks, that was only a few months, if you’re in some areas like Florida or Texas, potentially in some other areas, it was really dramatic. Like if you were in the LA area, you are closed for over a year. But collectively what happened is we sort of had this cycle during COVID, where a whole generation or hoax. There’s a whole class of students didn’t go on a campus tour in the traditional fashion. And so you would think that now that we are sort of post pandemic, although COVID still around that we would be recovering from that. But what we’re seeing in the data is that students are not returning to campus tours at The volume that they did before COVID. And so even though enrollments have recovered in a lot of cases, campus visits have not, that is something that we’ve seen across multiple partners, but also it was really highlighted in some research from Chora that they put out. And I think really, it’s Inquirer research that I think, highlighted how significant this is. They talked about that, you know, while 82% of high school sophomores and juniors say they plan to visit a campus before they apply, only 48% 48% of seniors actually have. And so what we’re seeing is both a decline and visit volume, but also a shift in when the visit is hitting in the cycle. And so what it means is people are visiting less, and they’re visiting later. And that has a huge impact. Because I think for most of us that have been hired a long time, we always hear the story that like you know, nothing converts better than a campus tour, all we have to do is get them to campus, and they’ll convert according to the data from a career, that’s no longer the case, there’s actually other sources that perform better than a campus tour, including college websites, even email marketing, from the survey work that they did. And so while things have shifted, oh, since COVID, the biggest change has been this dramatic drop in the influence of campus tours and open houses, because people are visiting less and visiting later. And it’s not just oh, like visits are less important. It’s really complicated. Because the timing of those visits shift, we can come post application. And so we as marketers, if you’re using a similar drip series that you use two or three years ago to drive visits, it may not be as effective today. And so the landscape has shifted, has COVID totally killed the campus tour. No, people are still taking it. But it’s certainly killed the relevance of the campus tour and it’s killed the role that it plays in the decision making process. And so, for me, this is one of the bigger conversations and I’m kind of surprised more people aren’t having it, because the data is pretty clear that something like really big has shifted, and I don’t think it’s going to recover. And I think this is like a moment in time where the role of the visitors is going to be evolving. And we’re not looking back.
Shiro Hatori
Yeah, absolutely. I know, I actually covered the same topic on a webinar, I hosted a similar time that you sent this newsletter out, and I kind of looked into it a lot. One thing that I did want to take away just as a whole, right, so campus tours used to be so pre pre pandemic or pre COVID campus tours in, in house tours and open houses used to be the most impactful channel or engagement point before an application was sent to a college now that’s moved into that third spot, and it’s probably dropped around like 60%. And what’s moved in its spot is College website, the influence of a college website, which moved into that top position, email communications from the college into that second position. And it actually increased a lot since 2020, pre 2020. And some other channels that were had a lot of growth, post pandemic, we’re actually school social media platforms influence which almost doubled, as well as text messaging or SMS messaging from the college having influence almost tripled in influence. And then virtual events hosted by college like Quinn triple and I think, in importance, it’s still lower on that, you know, chain of influence are in the in the ranking. But all these channels have really increased a lot. And kind of my takeaway from all this is like, digital channels, or digital engagement points are really having a bigger influence in the pre application or decision making process. So totally agree, really interesting.
Seth Odell
I think it’s super interesting. I think it like the role of website and email is only getting more important. And part of it is because people have decided they’re going to make this decision to apply without necessarily visiting and like so what information are they leveraging to do that. And I do think that like that, to me is so key that the visit really used to be a pre application activity. And now it’s really moved to post and so like folks feel very comfortable saying, I can stay home and make these evaluations on where I want to apply without ever visiting. And that has been a big shift. And to your point and you call it out, it’s really meant that the website that email and other digital solutions are suddenly really even more important than they already were.
Shiro Hatori
Definitely, yeah, it’d be interesting if they if somehow they were able to do this survey and research for students already admitted, but before decision day, how impactful the campus tour is, because I think it would actually be very, very high there. I
Seth Odell
totally agree. And I think that’s probably the maybe we can unpack that a little bit. It doesn’t mean people aren’t visiting at all it means they’re visiting later in particular. And why I think that’s really critical is that it means people are visiting less schools. And so the back of the day when I went to traditional undergraduate, I got in the car with my parents, we drove around for like two weekends and I saw a bunch of different Schools. And the key thing to understand is when you visit before application, it means The visit comes before price. When you visit after admission, The visit comes after price. And so this disproportionately benefits public institutions and negatively impacts private tuition dependent higher cost institutions with a higher sticker price. Because back in the day, the story was just getting the campus, they’ll fall in love, then they’re gonna decide to apply, then look at the aid package. And yes, we might be more expensive than some other institutions, but they feel a connection to us. But now, if you’re a private institution that’s more expensive. Someone’s not even thinking about visiting until they get their aid package from you. And now they’re comparing, you know, 30 $40,000 a year potentially, in tuition, compared to a state institution that’s half that or less, and they’re deciding, you know, let me go look at the state institution first, and then all of a sudden, they’re there, they’re experiencing that. And so we’re we’re seeing, even within our own portfolio of clients, it’s the private tuition dependent institutions that are higher priced, often that are farther away, that are getting less visits. And it’s specifically a decline in senior visit volume. And so I’d encourage the students to look at their senior visit volume. And the data it wasn’t in the core that we’re seeing with small sample is like, Look, if you could look at the decline and senior visit volume, by geography, you’ll find that the further away you get, the less people are coming. And so what that means is, I think we might see a trend for private institutions that are going to be seeing a decline in out of state students and out of region students, because they’re just not taking the trip yet. So it’s really hard for institutions, because again, back in the day, you were able to talk about value first, make a first impression, help students fall in love with it, and then talk about price. Now people are seeing the price and other deciding if they want to visit at all. That’s a huge shift in and the question, I guess is Has that been shifted in your nursery series is that shifted in the way you communicate. And so I just think it’s a really good point that people are still visiting, but they’re visiting in this spring for seniors when they’re making a decision. And that means rather than visiting a high volume of schools, they may be going to one, two, or three. And oftentimes, I think, from what I’ve seen, they’re choosing the lower cost options, which means this is going to propel this price pressure that we’re seeing in the industry.
Shiro Hatori
That’s amazing in terms of that seasonality shift that you’re seeing, I think I had another guest on here, actually, that talked about how they’ve changed their you know, drip or their email campaigns to, to bring a lot more of the informational stuff that students need upfront, and then packaging, like, like, come to our campus, right, come for a tour, inviting them to campus, maybe even substance subsidizing some of that and bringing that later into the funnel, like in the spring. Yeah,
Seth Odell
that’s such an important point. And some schools are doing some innovative things around that, you know, there’s schools that will pay for hotel rooms, you know, in the market, there’s a lot of schools that are having success with visit scholarships. And so that means that like, you know, if you come to visit, you’ll be eligible for a scholarship during your time with the institution. Those kinds of offers are important, I think, to get students to campus. And to your point, historically, one, you may not have been offering them, but to even if you have, you may have been communicating that as a junior visit offer, which you still want to push Junior visits. But if you know now that your seniors are going to visit, that push later is even more important. And so it does mean you may have to do things differently. And otherwise, you may have to do things at a different time. And it just shifts kind of the way we communicate, which is not a small thing, right? Like, you know, the email series that we have built into our CRM for law schools are dozens, sometimes hundreds of emails, like you’re talking about, like, potentially really shifting your offer strategy or at a minimum layering in, you know, in other series on top of that, now, it’s a senior visit campaign on top of everything else.
Shiro Hatori
That’s fantastic. And I know, you know, speaking of driving more campus visits, I know one of your clients, you’ve had some success with driving, you know, some of those campus visits and request for information from the digital campaign side. Can you tell us some advice on like, how to go about that? Or what, when to know that it’s the right solution for you or write test for you? Yeah,
Seth Odell
absolutely. So that is a really key one. One of the things that, that we’re seeing as a need to find new digital sources to drive visits. And so it’s like, well, maybe email and phone call and text aren’t the only ways to do it. And so you know, we have one partner where we’re able to drive sub $100 campus visits from paid social ads. And so that’s quite literally using like, you know, meta and Instagram ads targeting towards you know, high school juniors and seniors, specifically driving to a campus visit RSVP page, I would really encourage students to explore doing that, like, you know, traditional undergraduate doesn’t use the RFIs or the request for information forms, in the same way that like adult or online education does. Adult and I’m in the kitchen is heavy fill out an RFI and we call you with a call center. But most institutions aren’t staffed at the traditional undergraduate level to do outbound calling to high school juniors and seniors. And I don’t know if you know any highs But you’re just seniors, but like they’re not picking up the phone. Like they don’t want to have a call anyway. And so I think the idea is, can you drive someone to a visit directly and create an RSVP as an action, I would encourage folks to test that it does not work across all partners from the same cost perspective. But it’s definitely something that can work. And something that we’ve seen working is worth worth testing out and exploring.
Shiro Hatori
That’s fantastic. And, you know, moving a little bit away from just specifically driving in person visits. Are you seeing schools that are seeing success from let’s let’s start with text message marketing, I know that grew a lot from post pandemic, I can definitely see the see why that’s working, right? Because again, like you said, students don’t like getting called, they may be new to email, if I was 17, or 18, new email might be a little bit newer to me. But yeah, just want to see what you’re seeing in the market there.
Seth Odell
Yeah, I think a lot of folks are doing SMS these days. And so that is like a factor. But the question is, how well are you doing it? And where are you doing it. And so there’s a couple of tips that I’ve seen. The first is to be as conversational as possible, you want these texts to be coming from a person, not from a brand. And so that’s one piece. The second is you don’t want to just like to drive people to emails or websites, you want them to build to complete the call to action in the SMS. So the first is like, make it personal to the person and to the to the sender and the recipient. The second I think, is to make the call to action, something that can be completed in a text exchange. So it’s not like go back to the application or do these things like where can we push the conversation forward as much as possible. And then the third thing, I would say that’s the newest is like an SMS campaign for parents would be just fantastic. And it’s very rarely being done. But parents are still a huge factor in the decision making process. But oftentimes, they are left out of the SMS, or they are submitting their phone number under their student’s name. And so now you’re really texting the parent, we think attached to the student, it can get confusing. And so I think a parents specific one, those are three areas on the SMS side that I think are all like really worth pushing and exploring.
Shiro Hatori
That’s fantastic. Yeah, marketing and parents. I’ve had Mary Beth marks on the show a few times. We just hosted a webinar on FAFSA delays, and she’s a big evangelists and a promoter of marketing to parents and getting them involved in the decision making process. So that’s definitely something I’m hearing and resigning from higher ed right now. Yeah. That’s great. I’m kind of along the same lines around talking about, you know, things that have changed and are here to stay or are the new normal post, post pandemic, right? What are some other trends that you’re seeing that are have shifted and changed since 2020?
Seth Odell
Yeah, there’s probably two that I would call up. One is we just talked about using paid social to drive campus visits. That idea came about out of necessity, not innovation. And the necessity was the fact that that list buying is becoming a decreasing influence, and a decreasing contributor to student enrollment. Your traditional undergraduate enrollment has been disproportionately driven by list buying. Historically, we spend crazy amounts of money buying lists of 10s, or hundreds of 1000s of prospective students. And then you email them, direct mail them, you try to do outreach, and a percentage of them will convert. But what we’re seeing is You by and large, there’s two factors. Well, this way three, you know, five years ago, you know, College Board stopped capturing religious affiliation. So for private faith based institutions, it became harder to target by faith that impacted that segment first, the second thing we’re seeing is a shift away from standardized tests, you know, more schools are becoming test optional, or you no test blind. And so that means less students are taking tests, it did recover a little bit last year, to be fair, but it’s still not at pre pandemic levels. And I don’t think it’s going to get back to that. So less students are taking tests, which is less students on the lists. And the third thing is for this year, that’s kind of the third deathblow to list buying, has been the fact that now students have to opt in at a brand level to have their information shared based on new federal guidelines where you can’t just fill out a test, and then they sell it to, you know, 50 different schools. And so list buying in its traditional original sense, is less influential. And so how are we going to get in front of high school students in a different way. And so that was where we’re like, well, we gotta move and do paid social to drive campus visits, you listeners, maybe we’ll come with something different or better than that. But that first one is a shift away from list buying as a source. The second thing I’ll say is we’re seeing an increase in direct admissions. And so direct admissions is obviously student’s ability to immediately be apply and be accepted an institution that can be done at a larger level, like through a common app, but it also can be done through platforms like your niche. And so direct admissions means more students are applying immediately, which again, that’s pulling price up even earlier into the conversation, because direct admissions is telling you your acceptance and an overall what your price point is going to be. And so that means students are applying to more institutions than ever at the same time that they’re visiting less than ever, right? So it’s harder than ever to get in front of students, the students that you can Get in front of are applying to more institutions than ever before, and they’re visiting less, and they’re visiting later. Like, these are pretty big shifts in the traditional undergraduate recruitment cycle. So those are probably the big ones that I would call up.
Shiro Hatori
So in the case of like, you know, students are applying to more institutions than ever before. Is it like, from from institutions perspective as an enrollment marketer or, you know, brand marketer? Like, what is the, how do you differentiate yourself? Or what are some tips to, to make that student really want to attend your institution over their menu they’ve applied to because you said, again, there’s increasing choice.
Seth Odell
Yeah. So, to me, this is like working, working in the funnel masterfully. So if it’s only the direct admissions is coming sooner, one is okay, well, like let’s drive direct admissions, Let’s Participate in that the quality is going to be lower, you know, you may yield anywhere from 15% to 10% or less. But like, let’s still focus on that. But those are happening in the places outside of your website. So like, even outside of the incorrect data, it means your digital presence is bigger than just the.edu. Like, what is your profile on third party sites? Is it going to be a key piece of that? And then how do you respond to direct admission? And then how do you work direct admission, I have seen multiple institutions that are working there direct admission students the same as other admitted students. And that’s a mistake, because you know, if an admitted student has had a visit, or has had engagement with you, that’s fundamentally different than a direct admission student who’s maybe never spoken to anybody and never visited. And so historically, a lot of folks have done funnel management based on status stage, have you been admitted or not? Have you applied or not? I think we now have to have very clear bifurcated segments within the funnel, which is like this is a, an application. And it’s either like, sorry, I have like a weird reaction for it or watching a video that just popped up. That’s fireworks. Yeah, it was fireworks. If you’re listening, just imagine beautiful fireworks appearing. The idea to me is that like you have now have an application or admission, but within that, you need to know whether that was a visit or a no visit. And whether that was an engagement or a no engagement. And that based on that you need to have different communications and different guidance and different outreach. It just means that the funnel is even more complicated, and that the reliance on digital experiences are more important than ever, your campus map your virtual campus tour, the content that you can engage with is paramount, because students are relying on that more and more. And so to me, it’s making sure that you have a nurture series that is pushing people to learn more about the interests that matter to them. So I talk a lot to folks about interest based segmentation, don’t just segment based on academic area of interest, but are they interested in clubs or not? or sports or not? Are they from out of state or in state, the more that we can tailor that outreach based on that utilizing our CRM, the better. And then the same way, we now need to tailor our admission communication based on whether or not you’ve visited yet, because if you’ve been admitted, and you’ve not visited, that’s the only thing we should be hammering you with is getting you to campus. But if you’ve already visited and you’ve admitted, that’s a different yield conversation. So it just made everything more complicated, which is sort of like the, you know, the nature of the beast in higher ed. I feel like,
Shiro Hatori
Yeah, more segmentations more audiences, different flows. Yeah, it’s kind of what I’m hearing across the bow here. One other flip side to everything you just said. Like if you’re a smaller regional institution, one thing I’m hearing a lot is like, you can’t be everything to everyone, right? Like, like a D, one or one school can be. And so I think employers are sorry, institutional brand, is something that’s, you know, really surfacing more, who are we and who do we represent? And we’re, who are the students that we want is something that’s, I think, coming into conversation more? And yeah, what do you think about, you know, layering that into all of the flows you talked about just now,
Seth Odell
I think it’s so critical, I think it’s a really, really great call out a differentiation has never been more important. There’s 4000 colleges, universities in the country, the markets, noisier than ever. I think understanding positioning of differentiation is key and making sure that you have a unique offer, about why someone should come and experience your institution. So to me, it’s also not just having like a big giant brand project, but like I always talk about like, this content block that works really well. So if you’re listening to this, you can just steal this music, which is like Why choose insert your institution name, question mark. And it’s like, what are the four to six bullets under Why choose institution name, that should be on your website should be in your emails, but it needs to be really distilled, and to be able to talk about it. And so an example of that is, we did work with Concordia University Irvine. And we launched a campaign called freedom to explore they are a Lutheran faith based institution, where all faculty and staff are, you know, professed believers, but students can come from varied backgrounds, and they have this unique thing where you have the freedom to explore religion, but you don’t have to, like adopt anyone else’s beliefs there. And it was this idea that it was like, we’re gonna force you to ask tough questions about life’s toughest questions like like, what is truth? What is beauty? Is there a God that said, whatever your answers are your answers, but you’re not if you want to come get a college education from us, we’re gonna force you to Ask these things. And I thought that was really powerful in the campaign that we produced together and their application volume is up significantly, was that like, you know, students want to ask those questions in a college environment, a lot of it is that are drawn especially to liberal arts education. But not all of them necessarily want to be either indoctrinated or feel like told what to believe. And so we took a message that was like, not as traditionally found in religious institutions about freedom. And we’re able to weave that into a conversation about a faith based education. And I do think that’s working. And that took hard work to figure that out. And a lot of credit goes to the institution for leaving a lot of that. But that’s an example of what you’re sharing with, like, what’s the unique differentiated offer and in that case, we literally repackaged the curriculum and how we talk about the curriculum in a way that we thought was would resonate better, with, you know, today’s prospective high school, or taste productive college students in high school as they were considering their progression into college?
Shiro Hatori
That’s fascinating. Yeah, I think one thing I’ve learned from hosting the show and speaking to some more religious institutions is like that is an underlying principle of most of them is, you do not have to be of the faith of the school. They’re quite open. It’s actually an opportunity for those who are in question to explore that. But yeah, you’re right. That’s not usually in the messaging, because I totally misunderstood that. And so I learned through, you know, speaking to their enrollment teams, and, and their marketing teams that that’s, that was in fact not true. So that’s, that’s a very interesting and unique way to position. I like that a lot. Yeah. That’s great. Well, just kind of last topic, before we wrap things up, I know you, you sent a recent newsletter around. You don’t want to be you want to be a fast follower. Right. And yeah, an innovator. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that?
Seth Odell
Yeah, that’s so that’s a bit of a contrarian take on my part, which is I think there’s there’s a lot of risks and dangers and being first and it’s way better to try to be second, you’ll higher ed is undergoing a lot of disruption. Everybody wants to innovate. And a lot of folks especially want to innovate on the product itself, you know, the degree is being decoupled into micro credentials, and stackable credentials and skill based learning. But I had a board member recently chat with me, but they want this just want to make a large investment into this kind of unproven AI model. And I told him, Look, if you look at institutions like Southern New Hampshire University, where I worked, they’ve made a lot of acquisitions, they’ve done a lot of innovation, and they’ve shut a lot of things down. Like when you are a large provider that’s driving, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year, you can invest in r&d at a level where, you know, research and development is not always successful. And so you look at schools like SNU, or others, they often do things that don’t work. And they do that because they have the budget to do it. But if you’re a mid mid market player, and you’re gonna make this bet, like, that’s a huge, huge bet. And the question I always ask people is like, Why do you think you’re going to outperform better resourced and more successful institutions, because respectfully, you’re not outperforming them today, at least from an enrollment perspective. And my advice is, you do not need to be first you need to be second, which means like, don’t buy any product without a case study, you know, a lot of the innovation is going to come from the outside of the market. If it comes from inside institution, people share a lot, go to the conferences, listen to the webinars, stay in touch. But don’t I don’t think you have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to be the first one to license the wheel as soon as somebody else reinvents it. And so I would push the costs and the burdens of innovation onto others. And I would focus on being a fast follower. I think it’s a contrarian opinion, not everybody likes that everybody thinks they’re supposed to innovate. But the reality is, if you want to survive and thrive, you like, I just think there’s a better chance of being a fast follower than it is to suddenly imagine that you can just wake up one day and be first. Maybe you could do it, and maybe your solution can pull it off. But for most institutions, I think abandoning the aspirations of being first and embracing the realities of being second would probably serve the institutions. Well.
Shiro Hatori
Got it. So maybe even a caveat in parentheses, that if you’re not, you know, if your budget if your institution isn’t the highest in the top 50 of the of the United States, maybe being a fast power is better. That makes sense. Yeah. 100%, what are you seeing in terms of like, okay, what are some trends in higher ed that are schools or examples that you see, of fast falling that that have been successful?
Seth Odell
So I would say like when you look at growth of new technology, so the area is probably going to come out first and foremost is going to be how we integrate like AI into student nurture, and communications. You know, I think most of the innovation that we’re going to see is not going to be coming from the institute or is not gonna be coming to the institutions themselves. And so even if we look at this historically, examples, I would say, but one way in the past would be like the migration off of Blackboard as an LMS into more innovative LMS platforms like a canvas from Instructure. You know, the folks that were on there earlier, we’re able to benefit from the learning benefits from that sooner. You know, on the marketing side, I think there’s all sorts of tools that we can use. You can use AI now to cut up video snippets and create you know, subsidiary content for paid social ads. There’s a lot of things like that. But it’s I think it’s happening in small pockets and small pieces. And so to me, it’s the application of tools from outside the market into higher ed. But I would just wait for other folks to try to do a lot of that stuff and then pick it up personally. Like, I think that until there’s a case study, you don’t need to chase it. And so, you know, I think AI chatbots are interesting. I haven’t seen enough of a case study to see a lift. That’s an example probably the one I’m watching the most I think it’s gonna be the next innovation in the next three to six months will be aI having more demonstrative impact on the funnel than it does right now. Yeah.
Shiro Hatori
Riverside was being so good until just now just beeped out for I think I got a timestamp though. So we’re all good.
Seth Odell
Yeah, no worries. Happy to go back and redo that or whatever you’d like.
Shiro Hatori
It should be recorded. It just laggy on my end, I think. Okay, cool. Cool. Well, I think maybe that’s a good wrap up point. Yeah, be honest. Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, it’s sad. I totally agree. I think AI is definitely on the frontier. I know that AI chat still has a long way to go. I think it was like one of the airline companies that had to like, yes. What was the scandal like someone who was
Seth Odell
they had like promised that they promised reimbursement for something with the chat. And then when the person went to get the reimbursement, they said, that’s not the policy. And the chat said it is and then the court deemed that, that if the chat says it’s a policy, it’s a policy that is exactly I think it’s going to keep schools nervous about implementing this kind of stuff, right? Because I think you’re on the hook for whatever it says. And so I don’t know if people really are totally ready to embrace that. Definitely.
Shiro Hatori
Yeah, it’s a little scary. It’s definitely a bit of unknown. So if you want to be like sad, be a fast follower. Vader. Well, it’s, it’s, we’re just about time right now. It’s been great speaking with you. I’m wondering where our listeners can catch up with you and Ken Houma.
Seth Odell
Yeah, you bet. So people can find me online at Seth O’Dell. LinkedIn is probably the best place but I’m also on x. I’m on Instagram. You can email me at Seth at Cana home a.com. Or learn more about the agency at Canna houma.com. So anything that works for you, feel free to reach out. I’ll always love connecting with you folks. So if you did listen to this and enjoy it, I would always love and welcome a note. And yeah, anywhere you can find me works for me.
Shiro Hatori
Awesome. Yeah. And I’ll plug two things for you too. Yeah, definitely follow Seth on LinkedIn. He’s a wealth of knowledge on there. And also sign up for Canna homos newsletter because it’s always a breath of fresh air in terms of reading content in higher ed marketing. So I love the newsletter. So everyone listening please sign up. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining the show. And thanks for audience for listening in.
Seth Odell
That’s for sure. appreciate being here.
Shiro Hatori
Yep, you too. All right.
