The Power of UX in Higher Education Marketing

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Jaime: Hi, I'm a higher ed CMO and I have a confession to make. I can really geek out. Around user experience. I think that it's something that we don't pay enough attention to in higher ed. I think it's something that I, to be very honest and very confessiony, have not paid as much attention to as I have gotten really, really busy with some other things in My current role, but it's something that I think is super, super important and really could make the difference in what institutions are going to survive the enrollment cliff or the demographic change or whatever you want to call it and which institutions thrive.

[00:00:38] So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Michael Lamphere. We're going to be talking about all things user experience, but we're also going to touch on some other topics. around hiring, about making sure you're getting the right team and some of the realities of working in higher ed. So I hope you enjoy.[00:01:00] 

[00:01:14] Welcome to Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO, the podcast designed for higher education marketers. I'm your host, Jaime Hunt, and I am so excited to have this opportunity to share insights and inspiration. With Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO, I'm designing a different kind of podcasting experience. With each episode, I'll be bringing in a guest for a deep dive into the challenges and joys we all face in higher education marketing.

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[00:01:45] Higher Ed CMO. I would love to see this become like a book club, but for a podcast. And be sure to follow me on Twitter at at Jaime Hunt IMC. That's J A I M E H U N T I M C for more [00:02:00] opportunities to connect.

[00:02:07] Well, I'm super thrilled to be having this conversation with you. And I want to start out how we always do. And that is, can you tell us a little bit about your higher ed journey? 

[00:02:16] Michael: Sure, I'd be glad to. I am, as you said, Executive Director of Marketing and Communication here at Wake Forest for the School of Business.

[00:02:23] And in my current role, my team members and I have three core areas of responsibility. We manage the overall brand identity for the school. We handle internal and external communications and media relations. And we also do enrollment management marketing for various of our graduate programs and our undergraduate school.

[00:02:44] And I've been in that role for about five years now, but for the majority of the rest of my career, I've been in the private sector and really had. The, the good fortune to be involved in a broad cross section of marketing roles from consumer packaged goods to [00:03:00] business direct to consumer on the agency side, and even in media.

[00:03:05] And, um, so it's been a, it's been a fun and terrific career, but I did start in higher education. When I graduated from undergrad at Wake Forest, I went to work for a terrific guy named Jim Schlemmer at a sleepy little Methodist institution here in North Carolina called High Point College, not so sleepy anymore as High Point University, uh, and had a terrific couple of years there working for Jim and then decided to come back to Wake Forest.

[00:03:35] To get my MBA. And when I left there, I went to work for R. J. Reynolds tobacco company and was there for several years. When I finished, I was the brand manager on the Winston brand. And we had about, this is going to sound crazy, but I was in charge of about a hundred million dollars in print and outdoor advertising responsibilities, but.

[00:03:54] Perhaps the most important thing I did at RJ Reynolds was to meet my wife of 26 years, Danielle. [00:04:00] But I also have a second love that came from that company. And that is billboards. And I'll talk about that a little bit later, but it left Reynolds. I've worked in cash, you know, I've worked in the apparel business and champion athletic where I got to work for.

[00:04:14] The, on the agency side of the business for Lowe's Home Improvement. One of the most interesting roles I had though, was working for a guy named Bob Page, who is a, just a, an amazing person who started a company called Replacements Limited. And if your listeners haven't heard of that, that's a company where, let's just say you're at your in laws for Thanksgiving and you're clumsily break your mother in law's heirloom gravy boat for her China pattern.

[00:04:41] Replacements is who you call. They have discontinued and hard to find patterns and a terrific direct to consumer company. And Bob Page is, is the source of a lot of my business inspiration, particularly around, you know, some of the subjects we might talk about tonight, but he is hands down the smartest business person I've ever met.[00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] Then, you know, one of the things that he influenced me to do was to get passionate about owning my own company. And so I left replacements and got. To got to start up my own outdoor advertising company and billboards. And at this point, I've got three companies that I'm a part of two that I own with a graduate school classmate and one that I own by myself, but all in outdoor advertising, and it's a terrific industry that gets you a little bit of extra time.

[00:05:27] So I was doing some consulting, ended up working for. The school of business for about a year and a half as a consultant and that translated into to a full time role here as executive director of marketing and communication. And as if that weren't enough, I just started this semester as a master of arts in the sustainability student to go on top of all that I'm trying to get my triple D credential.

[00:05:53] Jaime: I feel like I'm, How do you sleep? Like, when do you sleep? You must, you are so busy, it [00:06:00] sounds like. 

[00:06:01] Michael: Well, it's all about parts and pieces and process. I have, I really strive to try and make myself as productive as possible, but to keep things in their place. So I try not to let any one of them command too much of my attention.

[00:06:13] And certainly, you know, there are more important things in life in terms of family and so forth, but it's all pretty manageable if you take it all in both sides 

[00:06:20] Jaime: pieces. There are so many things, hearing about your background and getting to know you a little bit, that I feel like we could talk about on this podcast.

[00:06:28] I feel like we could talk about outdoor, we could talk about translating, coming from consumer marketing into higher ed marketing. I feel like we could pick your brains a lot around What you were talking about with the replacements limited, that's not related to higher ed, but I am super interested in how he gets all of his China and all of that.

[00:06:49] However, we're here to talk today about user experience, because that is something that someone who used to work for you spoke so highly of you and your work [00:07:00] in, and that's what piqued my interest in talking to you. So tell me a little bit about why user experience is of such interest to you. 

[00:07:08] Michael: Sure, and I can say this, I think back across the span of my career, I have, have every one of those experiences has shaped my thinking around user experience, which, you know, I would say to that user experience these days is much more frequently used in the, in the context of interactions, consumer interactions with a website, but I think it's really more broadly about customer experience.

[00:07:32] And I tend to think of, of. Thank you. You know, the user experience as being a component of that. But I think it gets back to as marketers that the things that we, what we aspire to do, I hope in each of our institutions and organizations is to make sure that our core users, our customers have the best experience possible with, with our brand, with their, our products and so forth.

[00:07:56] And when you think about the sequence that has to happen [00:08:00] before someone You know, engages in a behavior that you want them to like joining your program or enrolling in your institution, you know, a couple of things have to happen and they're kind of very fundamental, you know, aspects of marketing where first they have to be aware of it, you know, there's a moment when they weren't aware and then they were, and then they start to have.

[00:08:20] in their interactions with you, perceptions about your brand, those build into attitudes, and ultimately those translate into behaviors. And that continuum can take a long time, it can be immediate, but it's pretty well established that those are sequential components. And I think those middle two, perceptions and attitudes, are greatly affected by, you know, what are often seemingly mundane aspects of the interactions But so many of them that add up to, to be very important, uh, that, that users and customers have with, with our institutions.

[00:08:55] And so I think it's a critical component of shaping those perceptions and [00:09:00] attitudes. And I will say, and I referenced earlier, my, my love of outdoor advertising and billboards, it has really honed my thinking about communicating because if you think about. You know, what we're trying to do in a billboard of trying to translate or transmit a message to somebody who's going down the highway at about 70 miles an hour, and you've got about 3 to 5 seconds to communicate something, it becomes so much about what it is that they.

[00:09:28] Need to hear what they want to hear and less about what we want to say. And the process of discerning that it's really, it's, it becomes an art form. And I think shapes user experience. I often talk about thumbs versus fingers. If, if what we're looking at as a team feels more like we're pointing back at ourselves with our thumbs versus pointing to our audience with fingers, then that.

[00:09:52] That's a big tell for us that we're doing, you know, for if it's thumbs versus fingers, we're doing the wrong thing. So, 

[00:09:59] Jaime: [00:10:00] Hey y'all, I hope you're enjoying this episode of Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO. I want to take a moment to thank my friends at Mindpower who are making Season 2 of the Symbolify podcast possible.

[00:10:10] Mindpower is a full service marketing and branding firm celebrating nearly 30 years of needle moving, thought provoking, research fueled creative and strategy. Mindpower is woman founded and owned, WBENC certified, nationally recognized, and serves the social sector, higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, and more.

[00:10:31] The Mindpower team is made up of strategists, storytellers, and experienced creators. From market research to brand campaigns to recruitment to fundraising, the agency exists to empower clients, amplify brands, and help institutions find a strategic way forward. You can learn more about their work in the world by heading on over to MindPower, Inc.

[00:10:50] That's M I N D P O W E R I N C dot com. And be sure to tell the crew that Jaime sent you their way.[00:11:00] 

[00:11:01] When you think about a billboard as being kind of this distillation of your entire brand and something that somebody's going to drive past at, you know, 65 miles per hour and see and consume that message. I mean, those few words and that imagery that you put on there is so critically important in conveying that message and I could talk about billboards all day and now I kind of wish that was our topic, but that's okay.

[00:11:26] So in terms of user experience, do you have any success stories where you optimize the user experience to get, you know, an improvement in some sort of metric that you were tracking or improvement in applications or some other type of success story? 

[00:11:43] Michael: Sure. We've had one in these last few years that thankfully by sheer luck happened right at the beginning of COVID.

[00:11:50] And we basically probably the most impactful thing we've done so far is to partner with a company called Drift to add conversational chatbot [00:12:00] technology to our website and. We, like everybody else out there, who's listening, you know, looks at our Google analytics, you know, visitor numbers and understands that there are just so many of those folks who are on their own transcending our website, sometimes only once, uh, too often, only once and that we all know, and I think it's.

[00:12:22] I think it's a safe bet that every one of us knows that if we can talk to that person, if we can get them to identify themselves, we have a great track record of helping them to understand the fit of our institutions with their goals, but they've got to, they've got to raise their hand. And so we realized that too many of our folks were Transiting in the night, so to speak, and not really raising their hands.

[00:12:45] And, and so we launched this drift chat bot. We call him deke bot because he wears a top hat and a bow tie, just like our demon Deacon mascot. And so we launched deke bot and I'll just have a great anecdote about this. We worked with one of our programs, our master of [00:13:00] science and management program, the program lead on the recruiting side of our business.

[00:13:03] And we worked with her. to create a waiver chatbot, one that invited students to consider if they were eligible for a waiver of the testing requirement. We launched that in a soft launch on a Friday afternoon. And on Monday morning, she walked in to find eight consults already booked on her calendar and Attached to each of those consults as it came up during the week was an email ahead of time that reminded her of all of the responses that candidate gave to various of the questions that were asked in the chat flow.

[00:13:35] And we never looked back. Our recruiting team will tell you that it saved countless hours just in the mundane of, Oh, are you free at Tuesday? No, how about Thursday? And all that back and forth. Plus the other part that can't be ignored is that because the recruiter is able to see the answers. Ahead of time before even meeting this person, they can dive into that conversation in a much more engaging and a deeper level [00:14:00] and forego all of the kind of, you know, fact finding on the front end of a call.

[00:14:05] And I think that really does for the student on the other end, that has to be a better experience, especially when you can get into the real. Essence of why they're there. We're now, I think just on that basis alone on the, the basic implementation of, of DeepBot, we've reduced informational friction. We've gotten, you know, this category of students in the, you know, that age band are much more willing to engage with the computer than a, than a person on the front end.

[00:14:34] So it's increased their willingness to raise their hand. We've. We're now employing AI in the responsiveness. So we're using the, the bot to start to shape on its own using machine learning inherent within the product to be able to, to come up with the right answers. I think on our side of the ledger, you know, we certainly think it's an improvement for the student on our side of the ledger.

[00:14:56] Quantitatively, all else equal. If you took a [00:15:00] student who raised their hand to the traditional request for information form, the RFI, and then compared that Same student, everything else the same, except the other student went through the drift consult experience. We have a 65 percent increase in those students who you, who were encounter us through drift, who through deep bot, who.

[00:15:25] I actually go on to start applications, and so I don't think it's any magic of the chatbot itself. It's just that the chatbot breaks the barrier of their willingness to, to let us know who they are. And as a result, it gets them to a recruiter much faster. And as I've referenced before, you know, you know, and I know if we can get them on the phone and get them on a zoom, we can make good things happen and help them.

[00:15:51] I think that's the root of, of why we saw that kind of increase. And yet I still look at our Google analytics and see one time visitor numbers that are [00:16:00] way too high. And so we're always about trying to improve that, that experience that would call some of those people to engage with us. And, you know, it's a law of large numbers.

[00:16:09] You know, we don't have to make a huge difference in that big bucket of folks to make a large difference for ourselves. 

[00:16:14] Jaime: No, I had a colleague or actually someone who I hired when I was at Miami, Zach Vineyard, who said, you know, if you can make a one or 2% Difference in a big pool like that, that can be dozens, if not hundreds of additional students, which I think that sort of incremental progress can feel almost like, oh, we're not making that big of an impact, but in raw numbers, you really can be.

[00:16:44] Michael: Yeah, yeah, I really think that and I'll reference it, you know, anytime anybody will listen, I think there's great power and incrementality and we'll take a, we'll take a large advance when we can get it, but we're all about the small advances anywhere and everywhere and those things [00:17:00] add up. 

[00:17:01] Jaime: When you were talking about the chatbots, I was just thinking, there are still schools that don't have chatbots, and our chatbot currently is not AI enabled, so it's primarily requires a live body to be on the other side of it, but those AI enabled Driven bots, which is what we're moving towards.

[00:17:21] They can be tremendously helpful for just the reasons that you're saying. Um, we implemented one when I was at Winston Salem state and we saw a 36 percent reduction in inbound calls, which. You know, to your point, that frees up our admissions counselors to be focused on other things, including shepherding students through the process, making outreach phone calls versus responding to inbound calls, really helping the students that have more complicated problems and having the opportunity to do that at a greater level because they're not answering those simple questions.

[00:17:57] And at the end of the day, we saw. An 8 [00:18:00] percent increase in freshman yields after we rolled it out, which translated into several dozen additional students, which translates into, you know, hundreds of thousands of additional tuition revenue dollars, and it's just. By doing something simple, that's really, chatbots are not expensive.

[00:18:19] They're really not. 

[00:18:21] Michael: They're really not pound for pound. They are probably the most important investment besides core web vitals that you can make in your website, I think, and the beauty of. Of so many of these tools, we've chosen a tool that allows us to be very conversational. So we anticipate the types of conversations that, that we are going to have with students.

[00:18:42] And then we have a whole pathway of various possibilities and outcomes. But, you know, we look at the pathway report and if, if we misanticipated, it's easy to fix. And five minutes later, students that encounter it after that are having a different experience. So really, it's pretty amazing that the [00:19:00] real time nature of these tools.

[00:19:02] and our ability to impact, you know, that user experience. I guarantee you if you had done a, a study of, of user satisfaction prior to when you launched that and then did a, a study after, you'd see objective, substantial, statistically relevant advances as far as those measures are concerned. Oh, 

[00:19:20] Jaime: absolutely.

[00:19:21] I actually, Used a chat bot today. I use Gobble. It's a meal delivery service, kind of like Blue Apron or HelloFresh. And Dave had texted me, that's my husband. My husband, Dave had texted me that one of the ingredients was missing. And I went on their website and started a chat with a bot, I'm sure. And said, I had a missing ingredient and they said, which meal is it?

[00:19:47] And I said, this meal. And they said, okay, well, you're going to get a refund of. You know, the cost of that meal. And, you know, do you have any further questions? And it actually keeps me a customer because. [00:20:00] Otherwise I would have to make a phone call and I'm not a millennial, but I'm also not wanting to carve out the time of the day to, to make phone calls.

[00:20:07] And I didn't have to sit and wait on hold for anything. And I feel like if that happened often enough, I would just stop using the service, but having this, the tool there for me to be able to kind of self help and get the answer and the help that I need in a matter of. You know, two or three minutes, it helps them retain me as a customer in the long term.

[00:20:30] Michael: There's a, an entity here in North Carolina that has used chatbots to greatly improve what is otherwise a, a, an abysmal brand image. And that is a North Carolina DMV. You know, everyone hates the DMV, right? But. They've instituted a chat bot that allows you to do pretty much everything. You can renew your license.

[00:20:49] You can get a duplicate made, all manner of things. You can get a vanity tag and you can do it all by chat. And it takes five minutes and they'll even take your credit card over it. It's in a secure environment [00:21:00] and it's a great experience. You don't have to go wait in line. So they've, they've done a tremendous amount, I think with that.

[00:21:05] You know, I'm hopeful that, that our, we certainly see the results on our side. And I think, I think the student, you know, what we call verbatims, the feedback that they give us in, in various of our contact points lead us to believe that, that we're greatly improved and ever improving in our ability to kind of get them what they need as quickly as possible.

[00:21:22] Jaime: We found at Winston that the number one thing that somebody message, the chat box was thank you. And that was sort of like, okay, that was a sign for us that we were actually helping. Because if you weren't helping, you're not going to thank you. You know, you're going to just hang up in front or end the chat in frustration.

[00:21:40] But we felt that. The number of people who thanked was also an important metric to keep track of because it, it just demonstrated some satisfaction with what they experienced. 

[00:21:51] Michael: Absolutely. There was another thing I was going to mention too, in terms of success stories, and it's very basic, but it is so impactful.[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] We, a couple of years ago set out to try to provide these one stop information sheets, very basic, but it's information about the program, what it takes, you know, what are the, what are the foundational requirements to be considered? You know, how much, how long does the program last? How much does it cost?

[00:22:17] What's the count? You know, the basic things that's, that are indicated as being, you know, we know that's what folks are coming to, to find out and yet with so many, and it was us true of ourselves for some time, but with so many websites. In higher education, you really have to work hard to get at some of the most basic information.

[00:22:36] It's almost never in one spot. You have to, to search the site for multiple places. So we instituted a number of just summary sheets that are, uh, there's nothing magical about them. They just have everything in one place. And what I would say about them is it's not going to be the answer for every single user.

[00:22:53] But for those people who appreciate them, they really appreciate them. The same is true of an application checklist [00:23:00] on, on each of our program sites. You know, some folks like to have a checkbox that they can check off, but it also served in an application checklist was a great example. It served to allow us to ensure people that you can start your application and then come back to it, or you can do it all at once.

[00:23:18] But there are so many people who thought, well, I'm not going to start because I don't have everything pulled together. Well, that tool was something that allowed us to help them understand. And of course we appreciate them starting the application sooner than later, regardless if they finish in one sitting or not.

[00:23:34] And it really does help. With, um, the inertia of, of that process. So very basic thing. And, and it's just a surprise to me that we weren't doing it and that so many others I still see are not providing what we know to be the things they're looking for. We, every time that we talk to them, they're asking those same things.

[00:23:53] Why not put it in one place and make it easy for them to find. 

[00:23:56] Jaime: Well, that kind of brings me to. My next question, which [00:24:00] is, you know, what are the obstacles that you run into when you're trying to improve those user experience? And obviously there are some, because otherwise we all would put these things on our websites, or we all would make these changes.

[00:24:13] Michael: Yeah, I, I've got a couple of things that I would say. Or, or an answer to that question that are really general, no matter whether we're talking about user experience or not. And then I've got a couple that are pretty well related to user experience. I think the general things are, and I've found coming out of the private sector into higher, back into higher ed, the general thing that's true regardless is that everyone you encounter thinks they're a consumer.

[00:24:36] And so they're all too ready to ignore the target audience and simply tell you what they want to have happen. And it takes a lot of diligence and discipline for us as marketers to remind all of our constituencies and partners that, Hey, the user is this group over here and they're expressed wants, needs and desires are these things.

[00:24:57] And this other thing that you want to have happen doesn't really feed [00:25:00] that. And so you, it's a, that's an ever, I mean, everybody in marketing encounters that I would say that's a basic thing, but I, I've also. Again, coming back into academia, I've encountered, and thankfully not as much in the School of Business, so I'm really fortunate, but I've encountered in general, there's an academic mentality of perfection.

[00:25:21] We have to do a study, we have to have a committee, we have to do a lot of meetings, we have to make things perfect before we can actually engage them. And, you know, I, I just, as an entrepreneur and as someone who's been in a number of different company settings, you know, especially in our current, I think everybody listening is in this situation where we are under resourced and probably won't be fully resourced for some time.

[00:25:45] It's just not an option to. To, we don't have the latitude to take everything to the, to the final perfect pitch. We, you know, really an entrepreneur mentality says, take calculated risks, move quickly, run a pilot, you know, fail, [00:26:00] fail quickly, but don't fail. Don't fail at the same thing over and over, right?

[00:26:04] But take a risk and, you know, running pilots is the easiest thing. You can take a small piece and turn it into a big piece. And the great thing is if you see success in what you do, then you can. Communicate that success and each little piece builds on and you can convince people to, to maybe do things that they might otherwise, you know, wouldn't have been willing because the data doesn't support it.

[00:26:27] I'd say 1 other piece about the academic mindset is I, I don't see this everywhere, but where. It is apparent. It's really unfortunate. And that is that there's somewhat of a, I use the word disdain for marketing and sales. And when I think about what we are, we as a category are about to encounter in a few years with declining student numbers.

[00:26:49] It is going to be a sales game, like it or not, we are going to, and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, the true essence of sales is understanding customer needs and helping them to understand how you can [00:27:00] meet those. And that's a process, you know, how do you counter objections? Oh, your institution is too costly.

[00:27:07] Well, you know what I hear you and I'm, I can tell you that I just last week went to commencement and watched so and so walk across stage and get her diploma. And she said the exact same to me thing to me 4 years ago, but we found a way to make it work for her. Would you be willing to let me connect you with our financial aid people and see how we can make this work for you?

[00:27:26] I mean, that's a pivot. That's a countering of an objection. And all too often our folks just say, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You know, let me know if we can help you if it changes. And that's not sales. We need to get comfortable with the process of sales. And now on to user experience. There are two things that I think stand right in the way of user experience, and that is web resources and design resources.

[00:27:49] We are Probably a unicorn, very fortunate in this arena where we actually have a, in the school of business, a dedicated web developer who only works on our stuff and [00:28:00] a dedicated designer who again, only works on school of business materials. I cannot tell you if I lost those people, I'd probably quit. It is just so.

[00:28:09] Uh, it is glorious to be able to, to wear and they're great folks. They're just super performers. And, and, but it's, it makes a huge difference for us to be able to implement things. I know that not everybody is in that position. And so, you know, it is a big challenge, but I don't think it's insurmountable.

[00:28:25] And so, you know, if I were to, if I were to trade places with somebody who was didn't have those resources, you know, I think that probably the first thing I would do is figure out. Who those people are on my campus and become fast friends with them. And I'm not bashful, food bribery, lunch, you know, fighting out what they want.

[00:28:45] You know, it is perfectly fine to be their best friend for all good reasons. Right. And, you know, and, but I think the most important of them is they don't know what you need unless you let them know, and they may not be able to help you at that moment, but if you're persistent [00:29:00] and you keep it on top of radar, the moment they have some open bandwidth.

[00:29:04] And if you've been a good partner in other things, the chances are, they're probably going to take your project over something else that is in front of them. And so I would just say, you know, persistence pays in that regard. I don't, you know, and of course, if you can see successes, like I mentioned earlier and start to sell the success.

[00:29:24] Then you could start to make the case for, for dedicated bandwidth. And that's, you know, that's the process I would follow. But yeah, I don't, I don't see, you know, it's not like we're hiring a bunch of new people to do just web and just design in all of our institutions. We've got a lot of competition on the private sector.

[00:29:38] Well, 

[00:29:38] Jaime: that's the thing. I had several staff that were in. user experience specific master's programs, and almost immediately upon their graduation, they were snatched up by the private sector for jobs that paid between 50 and 100 percent more. And it was Such a bummer to lose, you [00:30:00] know, talented people to the private sector in ways that higher ed just couldn't keep up with the salaries.

[00:30:06] And I feel like, and I'm curious about your thoughts on this, but I feel like higher ed really has to get down to brass tacks and think about, are we really going to put the effort in to continue to thrive? And when I mean by put the effort in, I mean, Getting that top notch marketing staff and that top notch and putting air quotes around sales staff with admissions that are really going to hustle to fill those classes, get that net tuition revenue and all of that, or are we going to quietly say what we've been doing for 300 years is just fine, and we're just going to keep doing it and slowly fade away.

[00:30:48] Michael: Yeah, it's a tough one. We experienced some of the same things you're describing. I'm sure it's not unusual or atypical for others who are, who are listening, but we, you know, at some point, you just can't, you're not gonna be [00:31:00] able to match the salary. That's that. Is just a reality we've come to realize and, and heck that the companies are coming after them.

[00:31:08] It's not like they're, you know, dissatisfied and starting to look, I mean, we, and in one particular case, I can mention the, you know, somebody was at a cocktail party and it just was talking to someone else. And then next thing you know, they're off to another company. And so it's the person came after them and said, Hey, you know, really.

[00:31:24] Really enjoyed meeting you and so forth, but what we do have, and I think it's powerful for the right people is in many of our institutions, we do have an educational benefit. And so, you know, I think we've seen some success where folks are at that point in their careers, where they, they do want to think about an advanced degree and, you know, that's something we can offer that, that, you know, maybe not, not, might not be available in.

[00:31:49] You know, in terms of tuition benefits, that's the 1 thing I've seen in corporate is, you know, those used to be that certain corporations would would pay for your entire degree if you went back and advanced your career, [00:32:00] not so much. And so I think that's an area of distinction, but I think the other 1 that is.

[00:32:05] Extremely important and I fear that it's being overlooked is that it has always been much more the case in academia that that when comparing across levels, you know, you're like counterpart in corporate worked many more hours and had a worse quality of life. And then we were able to promise you quality of life on a, on a, on a campus with smart, interesting people with a lot of vitality and.

[00:32:33] If we forget that and we start to ask of our people that, hey, there's still all this work to be done, and now there's fewer people to do it, but you still got to get done, rather than saying, okay, our bandwidth is, is, you know, smaller for the foreseeable future. We're just not going to do these other things.

[00:32:49] We're going to focus on these core fundamental priorities. That, that's really what we should be doing. I fear that too often. You know, we, we just forgetting that, Oh, [00:33:00] well we can't do it all. And if we don't have that discipline, we're going to pay for it in loss of, of talent. 

[00:33:05] Jaime: That right there is a gem.

[00:33:07] What you just said is such a gem. Cause I do think the instinct is like do more and we're just going to drive people away. Cause that you're absolutely right. I think that, you know, if you're at the. Vice president level, I think I'm very, fairly compensated. And I do think as the vice president, you know, I'm putting in significantly more than 40 hours a week, but I have no business expecting someone who, you know, makes.

[00:33:36] Significantly less than I do to really burn the candle at both ends. Work till midnight every night to do stuff, particularly when there's no opportunity for a bonus at the end of the year. It's not like if you hustle, hustle, hustle, you're going to get a 30, 000 bonus at Christmas time, higher ed's just not set up for that.

[00:33:55] We have to be really realistic about what we offer people in terms of [00:34:00] flexibility, in terms of work life balance and all of that. 

[00:34:05] Michael: Well, and then you layer on the, the aspect of, of either declining or challenging enrollments in some of the programs, or, you know, you can, you can work to amend it. And we work with such wonderful people.

[00:34:17] I think it's true of, of higher ed that if you ask people to do those things, they'll do them. Until they don't and, and often you won't see the signs and, um, and usually, you know, it, it comes in the form of, gosh, we, we broke our backs to get the enrollment we have, but it wasn't enough for, for the finance department, you know, because we were making, you were making goals and I, we're not the ones who calls there to be fewer students to even attract and more programs against which to compete.

[00:34:47] I mean, but we, we did the best we could with what we had and. You know, if we're going to, if we're going to do that much, well. Why not just go do it for somebody who's going to pay me twice as much? It just starts to erode the, the quality of life of [00:35:00] being in an academic institution. I paint a, it's not, I don't think it's that bad yet, but I see that if we don't start to exercise more discipline in our priorities, and I don't, I think it's true of every institution I see it.

[00:35:12] I think we're going to, in the long term is we're going to pay for it in that way. 

[00:35:15] Jaime: I completely agree. And I feel really grateful that I'm at an institution that I think gets that and has that. Identified what those big rock priorities are and kind of set aside the things that are not as impactful or that aren't going to get us to where we need to go, or in some cases may actually be working against us to get there and.

[00:35:38] I also feel really fortunate, you know, today I spent an hour and a half having lunch with a faculty member and talking about marketing and marketing theory and just getting really geeky in the conversation and that's not something that I think you could do if you worked at, um, certain, in certain corporate environments, you know, that's something [00:36:00] that comes with working in higher ed.

[00:36:02] Michael: So true. I mean, you can in most campuses within a five minute walk, you can be in the school's library. What a cool place. And I was bragging to my walking buddy today that, um, he was recommending a book to me and he said, I'll get you at the link. I said, buddy. I work at a school. I can do interlibrary loan and get that thing and they'll even deliver it to my house if I ask and so it was just really, really a neat, just a neat reminder to me of how cool it is to work for a school.

[00:36:30] It is 

[00:36:30] Jaime: fantastic. We have gotten way off topic. So I do want to user experience, although this is such a great conversation. But when I think about. What you were talking about with user experience, the user is right there in the name, right? How do you make sure that you understand what the users actually want versus what you think that they want?

[00:36:54] Like, how do you get that feedback? How do you get that input? Yeah, it's 

[00:36:58] Michael: a great question. I mean, I, I [00:37:00] think that, you know, kind of in the corporate mindset, you'd go out and run focus groups and do panels and multivariate studies and so forth. We're never going to have the kind of resources, the 100 million budget, you know, to be able to, to go do that kind of thing.

[00:37:13] And yet we can still go out and interact with our target audience almost on a daily basis. Now, you know, we can just walk in for those of us in undergraduate. Recruiting, you know, we, we can walk across campus and talk to freshmen. And so much of, of what we need to know is available for the taking. If we'll just ask questions and sit back and listen.

[00:37:35] And, you know, again, food bribery is not bad. So if you want to, if you want to have a, a, you know, a half hour pizza session where you're simply asking for feedback about various aspects of, of what they want and what they need and what their experience was, we had one of those. Where the, the student said, yeah, I got this, I got this email.

[00:37:56] It was like the fifth time I got it for the, you know, in the year that, and it said something [00:38:00] about waiving the application fee. And I figured finally, I was like, okay, fine, you know, and it was almost like this, okay, I'll do it, and yet the student. Was enrolled and we were, I, you know, sometimes we wonder, are we communicating too often or in, in, you know, in the right ways?

[00:38:16] And that was a good touch point. Now, certainly we always want to be mindful of, of message burnout and message frequency and all those things, but it was just a, you know. I don't know that we would have thought the same way had we not heard that type of comment. So talk to your users if you can. I think it's important to, to look at the object of stuff, get in, get a comfort level with, with Google Analytics.

[00:38:40] You don't need to be a data person to be able to get to some of the essential components. You can look at the traffic on a webpage and kind of get a feel for, is it engaged? Is it, does the page appear to be delivering what it should? But I think that. You know, probably the most important piece of that is just listening and [00:39:00] listening involves actually engaging with folks who, who it is that you want to want to influence.

[00:39:04] Now, the other part of that from a tactical standpoint is I think we all too often try to tell folks what they want to know, but we do so in the long form, right? We write an article and I'm very fond and my team and I. You know, really try to focus on and always improving. We're not there yet, but we're always trying to focus on what is the consumption funnel, and this is back to my billboard days.

[00:39:29] What if I only got a glance from somebody on a webpage or a brochure or a tabletop? What do they take away from that glance? I'm hopeful to be able to give them a headline that imparts, you know, what, 60 percent of the message, three to five words, if you're in the billboard industry. And then, you know, if they give you a couple more seconds, maybe there's a sub line that further pays that out to get you to 75 or 80%.

[00:39:53] And then if they really engage the thing. Maybe there's a, a couple of full body copy, you know, paragraphs and [00:40:00] things, but really giving them the opportunity to decide the depth at which they want to interact with what it is, whatever it is you're communicating and then letting them kind of self navigate.

[00:40:11] And, and we've, we found better engagement and responsiveness on vehicles that we put out that are conforming to that mindset than some of the others. 

[00:40:22] Jaime: That's really interesting. When you're looking at students and having those conversations with them, are you having them show you where they're running into obstacles or are you just having them sort of riff on what their experience was or what they're looking for?

[00:40:38] Are there any tools that you're using to try to get that feedback? 

[00:40:43] Michael: We have not, not yet employed what I, what I hope to is, is actually, and this is website specific. I hope to, to very soon start to engage students in a kind of an, a very, um, formalized kind of, of here is a [00:41:00] task. Now go to these various websites and try to complete this task and, you know, watching their journey for, you know, how do you sign up for this program?

[00:41:08] Or how do you sign up for that program as a task? And then watching the types of things they encounter in the absence of that, though, we do have a tool that we, it's a third party tool called hot jar that we use to kind of watch our pages and hot jar, we'll just kind of. You know, it'll kind of monitor the traffic to a given page and it will give you a visual heat map of where people spend their times and their clicks time and their clicks.

[00:41:31] And it's pretty sobering. Look, you know, you look at a page that's a couple of button scrolls down and you know, that the majority of the traffic is on the very top of the first. First page, they're not doing much scrolling, a little more so for mobile. They're, they're more accustomed to that concept, but, uh, hot jars are great in there.

[00:41:50] There are, I think a couple of tools out there that do the same thing, but, you know, just taking a snapshot, we don't monitor the entire website. We don't monitor it all the time. [00:42:00] We'll go in periodically and, and look at the, the most important of our pages on the site, you know, pretty, at least quarterly to, to kind of get a beat on, you know, if anything's changed.

[00:42:12] That is a 

[00:42:12] Jaime: really smart. way to do things. I've done that when we're going to launch, either launch a website redesign or launch like a new portal or intranet or something. And it is so fascinating to watch different people and how they approach using a website and how they get to different pages. in different ways and how they look at content from a different lens.

[00:42:39] And it's interesting to try to create something that will work for all of those ways of navigating. And it's so fascinating when it starts to, when the pool gets bigger and bigger of people that you're having tested and you start to see some commonalities in the way people navigate. And then you can make some decisions and you [00:43:00] can make some changes and then test those again and see if you get, you know, whether it's fewer clicks to get to where they want to go or it's fewer, um, areas of friction.

[00:43:10] Cause you mentioned that, that friction earlier, but you know, every time there's a little bit of friction in the process, you have the opportunity to lose people in that. And I'm not sure people really appreciate that. 

[00:43:23] Michael: When you encounter friction points, certainly if you can watch your users and, you know, get a collective understanding of how they respond when they do that, you know, the great thing about certainly for websites is that you can.

[00:43:36] Make a change and see how it works and then make another change and, you know, really modify it as many times as you need to over, over a very short period of time. I think the harder thing is to with with printed pieces and let's just say you wanted to do a table tent in the cafeteria. And 1 of the things I would suggest there is, you know, run a couple of designs and mock them up and have somebody walk by it at, at the, at the cafeteria [00:44:00] equivalent of a 70 mile an hour drive by and just ask them, what did you take away from that?

[00:44:05] And I think the key questions are, what did you take away in general? Kind of what was, what was the core message? And then what was the call to action? What do you think is being asked of you or that you, you know, are incentivized to do now that you've, you've consumed that message? Well, what do you think is the next step for you?

[00:44:24] And that's really important. You'll too often find, and this is, this is true of so many ads where, Oh, we wanted to put in the main headline and we want to put it in the phone number and the website name. I like. You know, pick, pick one, you know, do five table tents and put one of those things on each of them.

[00:44:41] So they'll consume all five, but not try to consume all of that information in one sitting. So yeah, it's a bunch of trial and error. That's why I mentioned how important it is to have a great design partner that can, you know, can work with you to, to knock that type of thing out. 

[00:44:57] Jaime: When you're hiring somebody who can be [00:45:00] a partner to you in that, what kind of things are you looking for?

 

[00:45:05] Michael: You know, I think it's, it's kind of these, the, well, certainly, you know, at the core of every hiring decision is a well written job description. So we spend a lot of time making sure that the job description itself truly does, you know, cover what it is that we want of that person. And then you start to look in their answers to various questions for, are they demonstrating a passion for, um, improvement, a passion for Learning what people are they curious about people and, you know, I love that Ted Lasso, you know, clip on, on be curious, not judgmental and, you know, finding people who really are excited to dig into those challenges and.

[00:45:48] You know, Bob Page at Replacements had a sign on the showroom wall that said, Customers are not an interruption of our work, they're the reason for our work. We're about the task of trying to create the shortest [00:46:00] distance between them and the thing they want. My wife worked for a guy, she's in the medical space, and she worked for a guy, a doctor, who, one of his favorite phrases was, The answer is yes.

[00:46:11] Now, what's the question? And I love that because it just starts with the assumption that we're going to find the solution. Now, what's the problem we're working on? You know, and so I, I think certainly evidence of, of those things and ideally evidence of those things is demonstrated across the. you know, the job, the requirements of the job description.

[00:46:32] Yeah, that's, 

[00:46:33] Jaime: it's something to try to hone is that skill of drafting a job description. And then also those interview questions that help you determine if. the candidate has those skills that you have listed in that description. And I honestly, I've been leaning a lot on chat GPT for the generation of those questions, uploading the job [00:47:00] description and saying, you know, help craft questions that will help me determine if this candidate has these skills or has these qualifications.

[00:47:09] And ChatGPT has been amazing with crafting those questions. 

[00:47:13] Michael: It's scary how good that stuff is. It really is. We, we Use a product called Jasper to help us write a lot of our marketing copy, at least. And what I found is that it's rarely the case that we give it a prompt that it delivers the thing we use more often than not, it delivers the starting framework that kind of gets us, gets us going.

[00:47:34] And then we modify the general framework, but it's just a great. You know, kind of jumpstart to get us down the path and, and turns us more often into editors than writers and what a great tool in whatever form one takes. I've, I've got each of the, the various language models loaded on my phone, whether it's a chat GPT or, uh, you know, the, the Bard from, from Google and the others [00:48:00] that now.

[00:48:00] Microsoft has woven it into their, their main engine. And it's just fascinating to take the same question and pose it to each of them and see, and see what happens in, again, across them. They kind of each give you a different framework and something to work with. But at the end of the day, we know our audience, we know what resonates with them and we can craft kind of fine tune those things and craft them.

[00:48:22] But I almost look like. Look at it as if they provide us with modules that we then stack to, to create the actual tool or the, you know, tool being the message that they have, uh, crafted for us. What I 

[00:48:36] Jaime: love is there's nothing scarier than a blank page when you are trying to create something from very, very scratch and you are just looking at this blank page.

[00:48:47] And for me, it can be incredibly overwhelming to just. I'm creating something I have to start from my own brain a hundred percent of the [00:49:00] time and having tools like chat GPT and others really help fill that page up with something that can then spark something better and spark a different way of thinking about something or, Oh yeah, you know what, that's a good point that I might not, might not have thought of and work it in there.

[00:49:17] So for me, it's like the ultimate starter. For me, it's just right out of the gate. I have something that isn't intimidating to me the way a blank blank word document or whatever it is. 

[00:49:32] Michael: It really does seem that all of these tools are going to start to coalesce into what they've hoped that. You know, Siri or Alexa and, you know, that these things are going to really become personal assistance in ways that we can't even begin to imagine, you know, the processing speeds now, the quote unquote intelligence that they carry, you know, they can just do so much so fast.

[00:49:53] I'm fascinated by. Ability to just blunt force hard problems that these things can do [00:50:00] that we haven't even thought of yet, you know, but they can do them that light speed. And we might have gotten there if we had 100 years, but this thing does it in 5 minutes. And, um, and I think to, to bring it back to our, our category, I mean, we're going to start to be able to, we're, we're, we're not going to need a, an outside data analytics firm to come in and analyze the patterns of engagement on our You know, in our slate instance, we're going to be able to kind of bolt on a tool that says, yeah, I'm looking over your data and it looks like these core trends are happening and you know, they're not going to be perfect, but there'll be directional and they'll start to illuminate things that we couldn't see otherwise.

[00:50:36] And I'm really looking forward to that. I am too. Having the machine do the work, 

[00:50:40] Jaime: you know? Well, it, it should make us so much more efficient because we'll be able to have the technology do that. And then suddenly our time is going to be freed up to do The more strategic things, the more human interactions, the more face to face engagement that we just don't always [00:51:00] have time for because we're having to do this.

[00:51:02] I almost want to call it busy work, but this like low hanging fruit work that AI can tackle for us. 

[00:51:12] Michael: Yeah. And it really, you know, to our earlier, earlier discussion, it, it allows us to engage prospective students and their user experience, you know, is going to be. Greatly improved because we can engage them at a different depth than then, you know, once we have some of these insights and turn those insights into actions, you know, and that has to improve all else equal.

[00:51:36] It has to be an improvement on on how they experience our institution. My team is probably say this way too much, but I incrementality.

[00:51:48] One of my favorite phrases, we don't have to be faster than the bear. We just have to be faster than the other guy. And every increment of improvement that we can make that, [00:52:00] you know, someone else who's competing for the same student isn't making, you know, increases our odds and just on that path of continuous improvement.

[00:52:07] Now, at the end of the day too, though, the most important thing is not whether we get a student or some other institution doesn't, the most important thing is that we've. Equipped the student to make the very best choice for themselves. And so that, you know, all of that plays into, all that experience plays into theirs and our ability to kind of match up, you know, what they want with what we can 

[00:52:28] Jaime: offer.

[00:52:28] That is so true. That is just a perfect way to think about it. I've really enjoyed this conversation. As we wrap up, what advice would you give to someone who might be looking at making some user experience improvements from a marketing perspective? 

[00:52:45] Michael: You know, I think the very first thing that I would do is very low tech, but it's simply to try as best you can and maybe take a couple of, of sessions to do this, but we, we did this on one of our programs, we carved [00:53:00] up three hours where we had everybody in recruiting and marketing and operations kind of sit down and walk through what is the journey when we broke it up.

[00:53:12] And the, the funnel. So the admissions funnel. So we looked at top of funnel and then we try to answer, you know, in each sessions, we had three sessions, top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We, we try to answer the questions along the lines of, okay, what are the non negotiables? What has to happen no matter what?

[00:53:31] To, you know, for a student who first raises their hand as an inquiry, it's things like, you know, did you respond to them in the first 48 hours? Or did you introduce yourself through email? You know, all these core things that are basic, but so important. And then we do another part of the session where we say, okay, we've got the non negotiables identified.

[00:53:52] What are the ideal? Characteristics of that journey in this portion of the, of the funnel. And then of course, the [00:54:00] last one is what does it take to be best in class? And, you know, maybe a handful of things will come out of that, that you can act on right away. But I think the most important part of that from a user experience standpoint is it, it sets the aspiration.

[00:54:15] We now know and have collectively agreed on what the framework ought to look like. And so then when we're talking to our web developer friend who we've made good buddies with at a lunch, you know, gosh, if we could just get X, we would be able to greatly affect this part of the funnel for this user and, and start to have those conversations.

[00:54:33] And it's methodical, it's consistent. And. You know, it, it, it provides a roadmap for us. That's the first thing I do. And if you need a piece of pad of paper and a whiteboard and a group of people with, with the intent to be able to go through that process, the other thing I would do is start to employ tools.

[00:54:50] Like we talked about hot jar. If you can get it, it's, I think it's a pretty simple piece to add to your website. I will say the one, the one tool that I absolutely can't live without. And it's, [00:55:00] it's web related is a, a tool called Bug Herd. If I were joining a staff that didn't have it, I would insist that there'd be budget for it.

[00:55:08] It's not that expensive, but what Bug Herd does is it essentially is like putting a sticky note on your website. And so gone are the days that you were to get an email that says, Hey, on that page in paragraph two, line three, word, number five, can you change the spelling of that to me? You know, you don't get that anymore.

[00:55:24] You basically click on the word and Bug Herd creates a task. That pops up and you can assign that task to somebody and you can have a dialogue about that task and then you can close it out. We use it certainly to manage the content on our website, but more importantly, or equally as important, we use bug herd projects to do competitive analysis.

[00:55:44] So we'll create a project for each of the AACSB, you know, competitive set schools that we've identified. And, you know, anytime one of our. But team members transits to that site, the bug herd toolbar pops up and we can say, Oh, I [00:56:00] love how they did this menu item, or I love how they wrote this article and it's available to any of the people on that project.

[00:56:08] So that that's, I would say is the probably, uh, aside from deep bot is, uh, our single most important tool that we use to try to manage the content and ultimately the experience. 

[00:56:20] Jaime: As you're talking, I've gone to, uh, Bugherd's website and I am sending the link to my, uh, director of digital strategy. Cause that sounds phenomenal.

[00:56:31] I mean, that just sounds, and the pricing doesn't look that bad. I feel like every time I find out a tool like this, I'm like, Hmm, there's a sponsorship opportunity for this podcast. 

[00:56:43] Michael: Well, we We discovered bug herd right at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were having to spin up all of these different web assets to deal with, you know, an online graduation and this and the other.

[00:56:55] And I told my boss, I said, if I hadn't found this, I probably would have quit because it really was just a [00:57:00] lifesaver. And we have chosen to invest in a larger package to encompass a lot of team members because, you know, there's probably a core of 10 of us who use it regularly. But. You know, we've got 3, 500 web pages on our site and there's the web developer and myself.

[00:57:15] And so, you know, we really do rely on crowdsourcing to help keep the content, you know, current. And of course all of our most transitive pages are accurate, but the further out on the long tail you go, you're probably going to find some stuff that shouldn't be there. And we, you know, it's, it's. You'd have to use the group and crowdsourcing to be able to manage that.

[00:57:35] Oh, that's 

[00:57:35] Jaime: fabulous. Well, I feel like listeners have to have gotten a conference worth of stuff from this episode. I really appreciate it, Michael. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up? 

[00:57:49] Michael: No, I just, I would say, you know, just generally that, that You know, we are all going through the same things, so, so certainly it's great for me to hear that, that others have some of the same [00:58:00] challenges.

[00:58:00] I do. Um, we are all right there with each other that, you know, in terms of bandwidth and priorities and so forth. So keep at it. The other thing I say to my team is, you know, for instance, on a web page or, or, or, uh, some tool is the worst today that it's ever going to be. Meaning that every day we wake up, we will have done something to make it better.

[00:58:21] And if you keep doing that, talking about making incremental changes, you look back after three months, you've actually made a pretty darn good difference. So keep at it, stay encouraged. We're in a great, great, you know, we're doing great work of purpose. And it's always fun to see that we. didn't know, you know, walk across stage on the day that, that they graduate.

[00:58:39] Jaime: Yeah, that's the best day. It's the absolute best day. Well, Michael, if people have questions and they want to reach out and chat with you, where can they find you? You know, I'm on 

[00:58:50] Michael: social media, but I mostly use it to, to promote the work of, of the school. So to amplify that work, I'm happy to talk with anybody who wants to, if, if you'll just call or [00:59:00] text, I would suggest texting first.

[00:59:01] So I answered later and just text me and, or leave me a voicemail. My number, uh, my cell phone direct line is 336 408 8255. 3978 and I'm happy to talk with anybody. I just were, I always, I always get more, I think, out of these conversations than, than others do. I always enjoy them. And so, uh, welcome, welcome any, any outreach from anybody that hears 

[00:59:24] Jaime: this.

[00:59:24] Well, listeners, as always, you know, you can find me on, I guess we're calling it X now. I'm finally giving in on X at Jaime Hunt. I M C J A I M E H U N T I M C. You can find me on LinkedIn. Jaime Hunt. You can also find me, although I haven't gotten too crazy with it, on TikTok as the higher ed CMO. Thank you so much, Michael, for coming on the show.

[00:59:48] There was a lot of great nuggets in here, and I hope that people walk away inspired to really look at user experience and how they can help improve that at their institution. So really, really [01:00:00] appreciated this 

[01:00:00] Michael: conversation. Well, thank you, Jaime. It's been a real treat for me. 

[01:00:04] Jaime: Awesome. Well, listeners, thank you so much for listening.

[01:00:07] And as always, let's go bust some silos.

[01:00:13] Michael: Hey all, Zach here from Enrollify. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO with Jaime Hunt. If you liked this episode, do us a huge favor and hit that follow and subscribe button below. Furthermore, if you've got just two minutes to spare, we would greatly appreciate you leaving a rating and a review of this show on Apple podcasts.

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