848: LIVE Onstage from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Sarah Russell, VP, Marketing, Chris Gilmore, VP, Enrollment Management, & Becky McCafferty, VP, Account Management, Education Dynamics

Joe Sallustio: So in this session, we're bringing together a group of seasoned experts for a live podcast on stage. The innovative format will not only offer unique insights, but provide a fresh and engaging experience for you. Imagine the atmosphere of a live podcast, and I know a lot of you have participated, and I've been listening to them. They have been awesome. And the knowledge of three industry experts sharing their experiences, challenges, and success.

Our moderator, Dr. Joe Sallustio, the Chief Experience Officer at Lindenwood University and then the co-founder and host of the Ed Up Experience, the nation's leading higher education podcast. And if you haven't, prior to this, been listening to it, go ahead and take a listen. There are lots of podcast partners that they have and it's just very enlightening and you'll learn a lot. Dr. Joe Sallustio has led a broad range of educational institutions, giving him a unique and effective breadth of knowledge in on-ground and online higher education administration. 

With over two decades of experience in higher education operations, Joe has led teams in marketing, enrollment, finance, financial aid, student services, student affairs, human resources, accreditation and Title IV compliance, business-to-business relationships and product strategy for on-ground, hybrid and online universities. Our co-moderator is Elvin Freitas. I don't know, there you are.

And he is the co-founder and co-producer of the Ed Up Experience podcast. Elvin has 20 years of experience in the higher education field and brings a wide range of expertise such as international student recruitment, admissions, college consulting, housing, financial aid, and academic and student affairs. Sarah Russell, our VP of marketing here at Eddy, has over 15 years of higher education marketing experience. She leads the agency marketing division for Education Dynamics and oversees strategy and execution excellence across paid media, organic search, marketing, automation, and creative channels. 

Chris Gilmore, our vice president of enrollment management here at Eddy, is responsible for leading all aspects of the Education Dynamics, enrollment management services, contact center operations. He has spent his career in the online higher education field and has held various leadership roles at institutions including the University of Phoenix and DeVry.

And last but not least, Becky McCafferty, our VP of Account Management at Education Dynamics. She works directly with clients in the account management team to build and maintain strong partnerships. By closely collaborating with both teams, she understands the objectives, metrics, and barriers required to execute a plan that delivers on the client's end goals. She has over 20 years of experience in sales and client services, with 10 of those years spent in various leadership positions. So now I'm going to turn it over.

Hey guys. If you've been on the podcast before, you know we use in-episode sound effects and I was hoping to bring them here to you, but Elvin messed the machine up this morning. So it's not working. So I thought, let's do something else, everybody looks really tired. Is he tired? If you're sitting by yourself or at a table of two or less, can you group up? I'm going to have you do a little exercise.

Everybody group up, make sure you got four or more at your table, please. You're gonna have to participate. If you don't, I'm gonna call you out. Okay, everybody move to a table with more people. See these guys over here, should group up one table. Here's what I want you to do. Take out a sheet of paper or scrap paper, please. Close that laptop. Sheet paper. Go on old school, take out a sheet of paper, borrow one from your neighbor.

We're gonna let this panel take a breath for a second. On this sheet of paper, I want you to write the one question about enrollment and marketing that you wanna ask this panel. Because yesterday when we asked who has questions and nobody raised their hand, I don't believe it for a second. We're gonna randomize this, so don't be afraid to write down the actual question that you might have. Maybe you say, what does marketing mean? Maybe that's your question. It's okay to write down dumb questions.

There's no such thing as a dumb question. But any question you have about enrollment and marketing that you want to ask this panel, how do I get more? Anything at all. We're going to randomize this. I need a table leader to take those three questions or take the questions from your group. And you're going to pick a random table, mix them up, and go drop them off at a different table. Does that make sense? No. Huh?

Okay, now they're talking, so it's going good so far. Okay, I'll say it one more time. Write down the question that you want to ask this panel about enrollment marketing. One representative from your table is gonna take the questions from your table, all the scrap piece of paper, and you're gonna pick another random table and drop your questions off. So there should be like 15 people moving around here dropping questions off in a second. Ready, set, go. Oh, we got a mover. She's on the move. Okay, so pick a table, any table.

Drop them off randomly. Make sure no table gets all the questions. So once you get a drop off, that table's off. So there should be somebody moving around now. We've got one winner. Give her a prize.

At we got to work okay worried about just nobody has yet moved around nobody has yet moved this should be easy got some numbers got some movers

Like we've got the sounds going. Awesome. I see Casey, Casey's on the move drop him off at a table. Pick a table and drop him off. Any question about enrollment in marketing? Make it up if you don't have

Different questions at your table than what you started with now. Okay. Okay. Now start looking through the questions that you have at your table now. And if you think there's a good one, you're asking the question on behalf of one of your colleagues. It's not even your question anymore. So if you see a good question that needs to be asked, Elvin's gonna come around and get you the microphone. Yes, yes, yes. Let's go, let's go. Yeah.

I got a microphone. This is fun. How we doing? I won't fail you again. Okay, so I'll do the intro now. Okay, this is how I Hold on. Hold on. Welcome back, everyone. How do I do my intro? Welcome back, everybody. This is the Ed Up Experience podcast where we make education your business and we're recording this now. So if you're asking a question on behalf of a colleague,

You're live on the podcast, so raise your hand and ask a question to this panel. And you guys are being recorded too, so here we go. Joe, Joe, it's Elvin Freitas, co-founder of the EdUp Experience podcast. We're here at Education Dynamics in Phoenix, Arizona. Yes, I am telling them how it works. OK, we have one. Are you ready? Here we go. All right, two-part question. How have you seen AI used in enrollment strategies?

Has this changed or what are the plans to use this in the future? That's not for me. It's for the panel. 

Sarah Russell: I'll take it. So I think probably the most common one that is not news and we're all seeing is the emergence of AI chat bots for pre-enrollment stages of the funnel. In my experience, I think it's fantastic. We talked in a few different sessions. I know it came up this week about the different platforms, the different types of chatbots, what you need to consider when you're vetting one. But when done right, when deployed right, I think it's a way to just further open the funnel pre-application, pre-enrollment to students. We're really seeing a lot of great advances with them. They're certainly not the chatbots of yesterday or even a month ago. And so that's really where I see it the most common.

Other things that come up with AI in terms of enrollment, pre-application, pre-admission really, that have been more common that I think we don't necessarily think a lot about, but it's just generally like lead scoring. Things like that to help our admissions teams look at, they have limited resources, bandwidth, which we're all dealing with. How can we use AI technology built into our CRMs to figure out where I'm going to get the most return. And that doesn't mean that we're thinking of working this student over this student, but in terms of feeding our strategy for various nurturing cadences, what messages should go out to who, what leads and inquiries are more likely to respond and engage with what kind of messaging, that's probably the other area that I see it most commonly impacting our work right now. 

Chris Gilmore: There's a lot of it. There's a lot of solutions in budget. Sometimes dictates which solutions fit within your budget or your specific need. But removing the human aspect of oversight and not just going with the budget-conscious option, which may then not be suitable for your students. So again, going back to, and know Sarah said shots.

Student-centric, but looking at that, iterating it, making sure that you're evaluating the solutions that you're deploying. And then when we think about lead scoring, same idea. What are you prioritizing? Why are you prioritizing? What is the information and the data that you're using? And Jody's talked about this before. Even if you don't have a CRM, a robust data set, use a spreadsheet. Figure out and then reevaluate your assumptions. Don't just go with the first thing that data says. Sometimes data can be misleading or you're not asking the right questions or you're not challenging that. So I would say that those are definitely amazing options, but again, it's not a one size fits all. 

One other thing that I think probably doesn't get as much attention, I certainly didn't highlight it in my first response, but AI is really impacting a lot of what we do in the background for quality assurance. And there is really, really significant advancements in terms of the technology we're using to help enrollment and admissions management, be able to monitor how information is flowing to our prospective students, whether that is listening to calls, which, you know, prior to some of the AI technology is really, really time consuming on leadership. There's a lot of different platforms now that can help us get a much broader view of how information is being passed to students through those verbal communications with our enrollment coaches, our enrollment advisors. And so AI has really, really made an impact in that already.

Joe Sallustio: Sorry, that was a runaway. Elvin gets another question. We have another question over here. Yes. Yeah. Let's go. Here you go. Go for it. Wait, wait, wait. What's your name? 

Audience Member: My name's Andy Benes. LA Pacific University morning Joe. I'm nervous about the sound effect following this question. All right. 

Joe Sallustio: There we go. Never disappointing. 

Andy Benes: What are your top tips for aiding the coordination and collaboration between marketing and enrollment teams? 

Becky McCafferty: Talk. Top tips. Yeah, talk. Talk is your first one. Make sure that your teams are talking to one another, that you're aligning on your strategy. It's often we still see the disconnect there where it's a lead issue or it's an advising issue, it's a university issue. So how are you talking to each other and evaluating the areas of opportunity at all areas of the funnel, not just pointing fingers? So my top tip is having conversations, removing ego from those conversations. It's not a personal issue, but reevaluating and secret shopping. Go to your website. Can you find the information? Put it in an inquiry. Go through the application process. What is that process? And talking to each other about how to improve that.

Sarah Russell: I think I would add data and making sure you're investing in the data literacy of both your marketing teams and your enrollment teams because it's going to be really important that as you're talking, you're able to look at the data and understand what might be driving certain trends and how you can adjust your strategies either on the enrollment side, the marketing side, or both to really address challenges or reverse trends that might be bad or double down on areas that are doing really well for you.

Chris Gilmore: I think those are both great points and cover the majority of it. The most that I would add here is making sure that your teams, both on the admissions enrollment side and the marketing side, have as good a rapport as possible really view themselves as the same team the same objectives and take out the what sometimes seeps in of an us versus them mentality between recruitment and marketing and focus on that relationship. If got that you got the data you've got a regular cadence of meetings and talking to review the data. I think it's going to be good collaboration. 

Joe Sallustio: This is kind of what it's like to be on the podcast you guys. We want to give you a live. We've had a few of you on this week. We try to keep it light, right? This is really hard work that we do. This is, these experts in enrollment and marketing, we all put a lot of effort into recruiting students and working in higher ed. So on the podcast, we like to let loose and have a little bit of fun along the way. So you gotta be careful what you say, because I got a sound effect that's gonna follow it. We have another one, another question here. So what's your name and where do you work?

Audience Member: Brian Curtin with Cantab Strategy.

Brian Curtin: What is the most effective marketing channel slash platform for small budgets?

Joe Sallustio: It's Fuzzy Pants. 

Sarah Russell: I would say if you have a small budget, Google is probably your best friend. Google Ads as a marketing platform is going to see the highest inquiry to enrollment conversion rate, which means your staffing on the enrollment management side doesn't have to work through quite as many leads if you were chasing cheaper but lower quality leads in other platforms. So you do have to pay a little bit more on the marketing side, generally on a cost per lead basis, but it's gonna pay dividends on the return that you get with the higher enrollment rates and just the higher quality of the outcomes that you get out of that platform.

Chris Gilmore: I would add, that's assuming your website is in check. 

Sarah Russell: That's correct.

Chris Gilmore: So if you've got a small budget but your website's a mess, don't go and spend that in other areas. Spend it on content, spend it on user experience on your website. Again, to Sarah's point, if you've exhausted that, you've got the organic channel running well for you. Yes, paid search and specifically branded or specific program terms are gonna be your best friend there and highest converting typically. But your website, that's your storefront. I know we talked about customer, don't wanna trigger anybody, but your website is your storefront. If you are having students coming there and they can't find the information in the OCS report, talk to that. They're not finding the right information. They're going to a different store. So making sure that you're investing there and continuously investing and testing your website.

Sarah Russell: Yeah, for stack ranking priorities on the marketing side, website is always going to be number one. Once that's in a good place, once you feel like the conversion volume and application volume you're getting from your website is as good as it can be, that's the point in time that you want to invest in paid media. And first, start with the lower funnel lead generation. And as that practice is built out, then you want to invest in the upper and mid funnel. It's definitely a pyramid. 

Joe Sallustio: Websites are, everybody's website is really good, right? All of them. Perfect. We recorded this to represent most websites out there. That's websites are mostly confusing. Okay. Let's move on question. Name and where you work. 

Audience Member: I'm Mickey Baines and I work at Kennedy and Company.

Mickey Baines: What free tools do you recommend for people new to marketing on behalf of their department?

Sarah Russell: Ooh, that's a wide question because there are a lot of different ways that you could tackle that. I think from a productivity standpoint, there are a lot of free versions of AI chat bots or other productivity tools like an Asana or a Trello or things like that that's going to get your team aligned. From a maybe strategic standpoint, you can also leverage tools like a ChatGPT or a Gemini to help actually iterate on brainstorming, on strategy. It can really be a good opportunity to extend the productiveness of your team even from an initial planning stage. So if you're looking for free, that's probably where I would go.

Becky McCafferty: Our website. Consume white books on AI and content. But use resources associations, depending on the topic that you're trying to gain knowledge on. There's tons of information out there. UPCEA's got a ton of information. And use your partners. Use the people that you're sitting here today with. Network and ask what they're doing. Ask what they're using. They're going to be your best advocates. Yes, you're competing for a limited pool of students, but you're competing for different programs in most cases in different areas. It's you know collaborative not competitive, and I think that that's gonna be a really good tool for you 

Joe Sallustio: We have another question. She is very enthusiastic about asking her question name where you work any question and 

Audience Member: Carmen and now from Brad University as I am very 

Carmen: This question how do trends like influencers impact the overall marketing landscape?

Sarah Russell: Ooh, that's a good one. So we have actually been trying to crack the influencer code for our marketing campaigns for a while now. I think influencers were very at the forefront of marketing for a lot of beauty and wellness industries, and we really haven't found a way to make it work as much in the higher education space from a paid influencer standpoint. Where I do think that there is a lot of opportunity is really focusing more on student and alumni ambassadors and you can really leverage and tap into their stories. Their networks they can do social media takeovers. You can highlight their stories on your website. That is I think the more personalized way to implement influencer marketing trends is not by hiring somebody who has XYZ following but no real connection to your school or your institution, but instead looking at your own alumni and student body to find the right stories that are going to resonate with other prospective students and that's going to be I think a lot more powerful.

Chris Gilmore: I would just add if you were in the session with day one with David Dai from Texas A&M and Matt Lunen from LinkedIn and myself we talked about knowing who at your university has a following so from an organic standpoint or even translating into, so we did a test with Conversation Ads. They have a professor who has a following of 10,000 followers on LinkedIn related to, I think it's international tax law, so very niche area, and testing using those to influence and engage your audience. So again, knowing who at your institution, from faculty, staff, alumni, students who have a positive connectivity and a positive audience that you can test trying to leverage that in a meaningful way. To Sarah's point, I think the general influencer marketing tactic is less influential in higher ed, but you've got your influencers, you've got your detractors, so you've gotta just make sure you vet who you're using and making sure that you look at all of those angles and figure out what's gonna work best for your students.

Becky McCafferty: I agree with all that. I would add that post inquiry generation, once we've gotten that prospective student to submit the RFI, our biggest influencers are our admissions and enrollment staff. And often what we're hearing from prospective students at that time, we all know what they're interested in. And one of those things is, where is this going to get me? And they have an objective, whether that is career advancement, increased income. And we really need to invest in training, enrollment, and coaching staff to be able to ask those developmental questions, tie those career and employment objectives to the programmatic outcomes. And it is super helpful when those admissions and enrollment staff can point to things in the marketing of the university, whether it's images of alumni and students on the website or on the various universities social media pages, that really paints the picture of what the student is describing. You know, maybe it's a potential, an RN student who's looking to complete that BSN student and on your nursing page you have those kind of alumni images. It's just really helpful to be able to tie that in so that your enrollment staff have those kind of visual aids as well.

Joe Sallustio: All right, excellent. Thank you. We have another question here, sir. What's your name? Where do you work? And what's your question? 

Audience Member: That was more intense than I thought it would be. My name is Brian Wisdom. I work at Carson Newman University. I have a hypothetical question for you. If we could take money and tuition out of the picture and students are no longer considered customers, what if anything would be different from your perspective?

Joe Sallustio: That's a good one. Could I hear that question again? Say it again, say it again. It's a lot of nuance. Yeah. All right, here we go. If we could take money or intuition out of the picture and students are no longer considered customers, what if anything would be different from your perspective?

Well that's quite the game changer. Wow. Nice. I set you up with that, by the I mean, from my perspective, I can't really envision us living in that world. But if we were in that world and money, tuition was not on the table, I think from an enrollment perspective, that is one of the major objectives have to help every prospective student manage. Even if that's not their type of concern, you're going to be working with them to help cover the cost of tuition. So the elimination of a top three concern would really make that conversation quite different. In terms of actual advising and consulting from the enrollment staff, you know, I don't know. I don't know that that would make it that much different in terms of advising to the best interest of the student. We'd still be talking to them about their career outcomes and objectives, but definitely taking the financial aspect off the table a big, big barrier that we would no longer need to address.

Chris Gilmore: I think time is money, so even if you remove a dollar sign from it, you're still having to connect to the value of what you're offering and why somebody is taking their time. Our attention spans are, I think you said, knots or moths or, somebody said it the other day, where it's just so quick that we're on to the next thing. So if I'm gonna invest months, years into something, I'm still investing. So it doesn't detract from the need to articulate your value versus somebody else's and do that really well. And I think we may end up in a situation where tuition and some of those things do change in the future. And what does that look like? There are free options. So why would they want to come to your institution and pay? And that, again, is that value creation. It's like anything. You can get free options. There's free AI tools. And then there's paid AI tools. So what is the value that you're getting? And what is the problem you're solving? And how do you continue to articulate that?

Sarah Russell: And I think if you're kind of democratizing education by removing the tuition pricing element, to Becky's point, it then becomes about the time and the value, but also what am I as a student getting out of it, and does that change the game? Because we know that cost is often the, or one of the top factors that decide where a student decides to go to school. So if we're taking that out, then the bigger factors become the quality of the program, or the student experience, or what they're going to gain after the program is completed with the return in their career or impact to their family. So would we have more students choosing programs or schools that they don't see themselves as being able to do right now and how does that shift the marketplace? I think it's kind of an interesting question.

Joe Sallustio: It's kind of a good way to think about what your value proposition is beyond affordability, right? If you actually take tuition, sorry, I'm just talking to the podium. If you take tuition out, and everything was free, there's still a sales process. You're still selling some value that you have to define. That's actually pretty cool. Whoever came up with that, that's good question to start thinking about. What would we sell if we weren't selling affordability? We would sell student services, or we would sell student life, or the online platform, or what makes us different. That might be the true value proposition of your institution if all tuition was equal.

But time is money. And time would be what I think it would come down to. That's my opinion. A lot of times students don't, the money isn't as important as the time, right? That's why they accelerate. That's why they accelerate. That's why you look at CBE, because they need to get in and get out as much as possible. Some students will pay more money for less time. And yeah, I'm sure you all downloaded immediately and read every page of the online student report in your hotel rooms this week. But there's a couple pages on there that did include some questions really on the topic of for those students who highly value price as a top factor in where they choose, a significant portion of them are still willing to go with a more expensive option regularly, assuming that the value propositions are in line with other components of their consideration criteria. So I think that does really reinforce that, you know, if you're a price leader, that's great, but not all of us are, and we always, always, always need to be leading with our unique value propositions. 

Elvin, you got another one? We have another one. We got a lively people back here. Cool. I like these. They're all pointed to this gentleman. So what's your name? What's where you work? And what's your question?

Audience Member: [Name not provided]

Audience Member: What is the appropriate number of times to attempt to contact the applicant, and what is the best method to do that?

Chris Gilmore: Great question. Yeah, great question. I'll talk best practices with the disclaimer that I don't think there is really a one size fits all, and there is a lot of consideration that should go into where is the inquiry or the application coming from, what source, what marketing channel, things like that. In general, I would map it into kind of two responses there. If it's an inquiry that's coming in that's requested information, we have a plethora of data points that support how critical it is to get in touch with that student absolutely as soon as possible. Surprise. Especially now as students are getting to that point with fewer and fewer institutions. And it was only a few years ago in the online student report that we regularly saw students were considering five, six institutions at that stage. And now that's one or two. I agree. So if you make it to that consideration point, it's critical that you can get in touch with them as quickly as possible. To do that, you need to be fairly aggressive early on in that contact or engagement strategy with every channel that you can be active in. 

When I'm talking with our university partners or even with our internal teams, know, today's students, they're going to engage with you on their time through their preference and when and how they choose to. So we need to be available and present in whatever channel that is. The main ones, obviously, an outbound phone call, a text message, an email, a chat, any and all of those need to be involved in an initial engagement strategy. So in terms of how many times, typically for that first two weeks that an inquiry has inquired, but we have not made positive contact with them, you want to have a few touch points on a daily basis with them through multiple channels. And those are more the short and sweet, hey, we're trying to reach you, following up on your request information, things like that. And we're driving them to the outcome of just simply making that engagement. 

Once you've made that engagement, maybe they turn into an application, or maybe they are an organic application already. I think there is some strategy to a bit of a slower cadence there. And that is where you may come into more your automated nurturing campaigns that are going and have a longer cycle with that inquiry, but we still want to keep the university in front of them. We know that initially they inquired, maybe they even moved into an application, but if they've gone a prolonged period of time in that cycle and they haven't engaged, something's gone on with their interest level. They may not be as hot as they were 10 days ago, but we definitely still want to stay in touch with them, slow that cadence down, but also be still present in multiple channels.

Becky McCafferty: Chris, I would add, I mean, you talk best practices. So is there anybody from an institution in this room that maybe has a very small team trying to work the number of inquiries coming in, or you're limited on those channels? So maybe you only have the ability to call. You don't have the ability to use SMS or deploy something where you're outreaching multiple times a day or multiple times a week. So we encounter that a lot. So when we talk best practices, yes, we want to aim for that. But if you're coming from an institution where you're limited on human capital resources, I would go back to the earlier question I think Casey asked related to lead scoring and really prioritizing, again, using your data to determine who is most likely to convert. Can you deploy more automated strategies for those lower funnel inquiries that are, or those, I'm sorry, those inquiries that are gonna be less likely to convert. They're shopping, they're more in that consideration set. They're not giving you the buying signals. So using email and some other methodologies to outreach to those and then prioritizing the people, your advising resources that are your best assets to articulate your value propositions on those most likely to start. So going back to your data using that, so it doesn't mean you have to have every one of these things. Yes, it'd be awesome if you did, but if you don't, starting there. Not treating every inquiry coming into your system as they are exactly the same, because they're not and knowing where they are and how to meet them where they are is gonna be really important.

Joe Sallustio: That's a fact, that's a fact. 

Sarah Russell: So that is a fact, and I think that's a really good point that a lot of the universities that we work with have limited resources in terms of executing a manual engagement strategy via multiple channels. That is easier said than done for a lot of the sizes of our team. So I think also as much as we can, implement student facing options that allow the student to self navigate that option of scheduling a time that works for them directly to connect. So whether that's sending out a calendar link with your text messaging strategy, your email strategy, anything that's going out to the student where they can actually just schedule directly with the enrollment representative, I think can help too in those situations. 

Joe Sallustio: We have another question. Wait, you have to ask the real question. Questions, but she's to ask a real question. I think she's the second one. Name? 

Audience Member: My name is Allie Manley. I work for Education Dynamics. I have two questions. This first question is a tough one. This person asked, can I borrow $5 million? 

Joe Sallustio: 100%. And for real, 

Allie Manley: What makes the biggest impact on lead to enrollment conversion? 

Joe Sallustio: Ooh, that is a big one. That's a good one. I'll answer the $5 million question.

Becky McCafferty: I would say no, I don't have that, but look at where you do. I think if you were in Melick's presentation yesterday, he talked about investing. If you're making $1.25 and your investment's a dollar, reinvest that back into. So even if it's not $5 million, start somewhere and think about how you're reinvesting instead of holding on to those finances. And that can be reinvesting in your website, in your people, in your technology. Knowing what percentage of your operating budget should be going towards each of your functions. So going towards your marketing investment, going through your, to your paid search. So if your budget is $50,000 a year, what percentage of that is going to each thing? And as you grow, keeping those percentages in line and reevaluating that. So you don't need to borrow $5 million. You can grow to that point where your budget becomes $5 million.

Chris Gilmore: That's a good point. I think the other thing that I would add, you know, is not the most important because I think it's very difficult to rank them. Everything matters. But I would just use the opportunity to reinforce how critically important it is to professionally develop and train enrollment and admissions staff that are student facing, especially in the prospective student portion of the funnel. You know, again, to use the data point of students are only requesting information from one to two schools, a significant portion of the work has been done when you get that student to that point. They've done a lot of research, they've compared, they've removed institutions from their consideration set, so you have the opportunity to be a significant influencer there, and we really need to treat those human resources like that, make sure that they are empowered to have those open-ended, impactful conversations, and that takes a lot of training and professional development. And we don't see it, think, as much with the admissions and enrollment staff. But it's a big, big area that I would focus.

Joe Sallustio: We talked about that on your podcast, didn't we? Sorry. Turnover, if you want to increase your conversions, avoid turnover at all costs. Put a lot, a lot, a lot of money into professional development for your admissions folks. Turnover is the worst, right? You have somebody leave, puts a lot of pressure on everybody else. Avoiding turnover at all costs and it's like impossible to hire good people right now I don't know if I'm the only one out there It's very very hard to find people for certain jobs Especially in financial aid and enrollment that are really good that are bought in that stay motivated Turnover for me. It's it's the biggest risk to my business is keeping my people Good point last one. Yes. I forced this gentleman to come up with a question because He's sitting all over. He's being very nice. He will ask Name, where you work, and your question. 

Audience Member: Chris Mayweather. I work with Claremont Lincoln University. So the question I have is, what do you guys foresee being the biggest challenge for enrollment marketing over the next five years?

Joe Sallustio: Nice. Through. Thank you. Biggest challenge. Where do we start? I know. Over the next five years. 

Sarah Russell: I think this is a little bit of a cheat because it's more on marketing side of enrollment marketing and you know there's there's a much there's a lot more that goes on past that point but on the marketing side I really think that we are continuing to see what Chris just mentioned about extremely well researched students at the point that they actually get in touch with you like at that point they have eliminated so many other schools they've eliminated so many other possibilities which can I think be positive when you have made that cut. They're already really, I think, a lot more bought in than maybe the students of yesterday who were enrolling or at least applying at several different institutions. But from a marketing standpoint now, it's extremely hard to get into that consideration set. Students are really being impacted by a lot of different factors that are really hard for us to see or even control on the marketing side because it's not happening linearly, as you've heard this week, the messy middle. It's also not happening all digitally, there's a lot of influences even as to is it worthwhile to take on the amount of debt that I'm going to need to make this happen? Is higher education worth it in general? So there's a lot of noise before they even get to the point of inquiry or application. So I think a challenge for us as an industry is going to be how do we make sure that as students are doing more of that self-selecting before they even get to the point of inquiry that we are putting our institutions in the position to stay a part of that consideration set?

Chris Gilmore: I would add, I think anybody who's worked in higher ed knows that the speed of change is slow in most institutions, but technology is changing rapidly. The way that consumers are engaging and connecting and shopping is changing much faster than I think institutions are poised or historically have been able to react. So I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges I see. Budget aside, which is always gonna be a potential barrier or challenge, is making sure that you're not waiting to think about the changes of remaining student-centric, meeting those students where they are, finding new ways to engage with them. Because if you're waiting until you see the data on that to make those changes, you're late. And so that's where I think it's gonna be really critical to stay competitive and keep evolving and thinking and testing what you're doing, whether it's through your marketing or through your enrollment strategies, how you're engaging, how you're trying to give students options, bringing them to the forefront of the decision-making process. But that's a change for the way that institutions historically have approached that. It's like turning the Titanic. I think you've got to start turning now, ahead of five years, and be thinking about what's coming.

Becky McCafferty: There's a lot of things that are going to impact over the next five years. But I feel like the most significant one is the broadest one. And that is, if you geek out over Pew Research data, it is really, really fascinating to me over the last three to five years, the shift in Americans' perception of the value of a college degree and specifically the disconnect between that and the economic data that shows, I mean, actually screams the value of a college degree when it comes to earnings. And a great mentor of mine early in my career always said, you cannot be part of the solution unless you are part of the problem. And so we have to really think as higher ed our role in allowing Americans' perception to be that and there's very loud pieces in the media of around the college debt crisis and earnings income of college graduates and the completion crisis and things like that. Those pieces are very loud and you know a lot of people are reading them taking them in and they're thinking differently about the value proposition of a college degree. We have to play a role in helping correct that and also owning you know some of our role in that looking at affordability and cost and outcomes, considering program development and value propositions, making sure that they're aligned with industry hiring needs, that we have a very short funnel from graduation to employment, that we're successfully helping students get where they need to go. That is a lot, a lot of work. It involves admissions and marketing and academics and student services and career services. It is really the work of what we do. And we've always done it, but I don't think that we've articulated it quite as well as we need to. And now more than ever, and especially I think over the next five years, that's gonna be one of the biggest challenges is we have to turn up what we've always done, but we also have to find a way to message it and talk about it so that we can play an active part in correcting the perception of the value of a college degree.

Joe Sallustio: Well, just like we began here a little discombobulated getting all the sounds and everything to work, we're ending the same way because the power has gone out on it except for got to plug in the battery. So I can't give an applause to these amazing panelists. We're going to have to do it the old fashioned way. Hopefully you felt engaged. This is what it's like to be on the Ed Up Experience podcast. We'd love to interview you. We interview anybody across higher education that believes they have something to say. We don't make it you know like a lead-ist or exclusive if you have something you want to say about students and student success or anything at all related to higher ed we're gonna interview you and we're gonna put it out So it's what we say it's your podcast There's a lot of people in here that have co-hosted with me before too if there's somebody cool you want to interview But as we like to say in the podcast ladies and gentlemen, you've just ed upped.