Transforming Marketing Across Campus with Salesforce for Higher Ed

Marketing is complex. Marketing in higher ed is even more complex. That’s why we’ve recently hosted a webinar series on Transforming Marketing Across Campus with Salesforce for Higher Ed. During our webinar series, we heard from marketing experts at four different universities across the country about how they use Salesforce to listen and engage on social channels, create personalized communication, and send timely messaging – all while creating efficiency at every step along the way.

The recordings of these webinars are available on-demand and we encourage you to share them with your colleagues. For a quick recap of the series and answers to some of the top questions from each presentation, read on!

Strategic Marketing And Communication: Arizona State University Shares Best Practices

In the first webinar of the series, Dan Dillon, Chief Marketing Officer at Arizona State University, talks about placing ASU as a prestigious international research institution in the eyes of potential and current students, alumni and the community as a whole with the help of Salesforce.

Q&A
What is the Hub? How many people on your marketing team are leading the Hub and how long did it take you to build the Hub?

The Hub is ASU’s Enterprise Marketing Hub. It serves as ASU’s internal branding and marketing agency, providing services and consulting to the ASU enterprise.

Dan started out as the first person in the department. When he asked his assistant to call together all the marketers across the institution so he could introduce himself, she said it would take 30-45 days to get everyone together because there were over 400 marketing employees. Yet, none of them reported into a centralized function. Dan spent the first 12 months standing up the Hub. The Hub now has about 100 people in it and was built around the model of an internal marketing agency that not only services the university, but also provides students with an agency experience if that’s of interest.

How do you get other departments to work and collaborate with you?

Dan felt very strongly they needed to earn the business of the university and felt that they would be more effective with a collaborative model as opposed to a compliant model. They spent the first year trying to reach out to certain schools and units. If they did good work for them and provided quality services, they would advocate on their behalf.

 

Watch the recording

 

Social by Committee: Driving Social Media Success Across Campus

This webinar focuses on social media at Pepperdine University. The social media manager talks about how their Integrated Marketing Communications group established a Social Media Committee and implemented Social Studio across campus to measurably achieve recruitment, engagement, and fundraising goals as well as manage crises.

Q&A
Can you restrict someone to only be able to see certain parts of the account on Social Studio?

This is actually one of the features that Pepperdine’s social media team sought out. With Social Studio, customers are able to give accounts certain levels and privileges. For example, there’s a level that allows someone to be able to observe on Social Studio, but not interact and engage. There are many different customizable options for each workspace so it works for your team.

What’s your recommendation for universities that are not planning to move to a centralized model but still want to drive engagement to individual departments?

While Pepperdine has centralized to a certain extent, there are also groups like student clubs that aren’t included. The central office provides social media best practices on their website and contact information for those groups.

Noelle, the social media manager, thinks it’s important to not over-control messaging because students will see right through that. However, she notes that it’s important that the student groups know that the social media central office is a place for support if need be.

 

Watch the recording

 

Two Tales of Marketing Automation in Higher Ed

Marketing gurus from both UC Berkeley and University of New England joined us for this webinar to discuss how they use Pardot to streamline their enrollment process and personalize their communication.

Q&A
For a university that’s just getting started with drip campaigns, where would you suggest to start?

A great place to start is mapping the entire student lifecycle, starting with when the prospect enters the database all the way through graduation. From there, you can identify when communication makes sense and what communication would be most effective.

How much digital marketing is included in your marketing plan versus traditional marketing?

The majority is now digital marketing. At least 80% is online and 20% is reserved for more traditional tactics, like radio and television advertising. For programs such as an online degree program, the marketing is 100% digital because that’s what makes the most sense for that particular audience.

 

Watch the recording

 

Transforming the Student Journey with Marketing Cloud

In this webinar, Salesforce employee Liz Farrelly explains what the Marketing Cloud is, what it encompasses, and how it can be used to transform the way you communicate with and engage constituents across the student lifecycle.

Q&A
How is Pardot different from the Marketing Cloud?

Pardot and Marketing Cloud are two really great products in the Salesforce family, but there are specific benefits with each one.

Pardot is really good at nurturing early leads until they’re ready for sale and automating that experience for you. Marketing Cloud is thinking more about, not just the early interaction, but the points throughout a lifecycle.

In an education setting, Pardot could be really useful for the prospective student journey. When you get lists of prospective students from high schools and college fairs, Pardot can take those lists and help you understand who is actually interested in your university.

Marketing Cloud would then use that data you’ve gathered already and start to integrate it into the rest of the journey. As the prospective student window gets tighter, Marketing Cloud can help you communicate to different prospective students about different topics, such as honor programs, paperwork due dates, etc.

Should a university always be working with a Salesforce partner to get up and running? Where can people go to get more information about the technical aspects of Marketing Cloud?

When you’re getting started with Marketing Cloud, there are certain pieces that are really easy to get started on your own. However, as you start thinking about the more technical aspects, it’s highly recommended that you do one of three things:

• Consult our Marketing Cloud services team. They’re all digital experts on the product and can help you get started.
• Look into one of our many great partners. The benefit here is you can use someone in your hometown or close by.
• Leverage the Salesforce community. Look at your alumni community to see if there’s anyone who might be in the position to help you get started.

Lastly, Connections is our digital marketing conference which will be held from May 10-12 in Atlanta this year. Get more information and register!