832: LIVE from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Will McGinnis, Director of Sales, fullthrottle.ai

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to up on The EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. I'm going to give a warning. Of course, this is Dr. Joe Sallustio. But the warning is that I've just eaten lunch, had four desserts, and I've done a lot of podcast episodes. So you know what, there's no guarantee that I'm going to be able to speak at this point, as a nap seems to be the thing that I'm thinking about the most. Other than interviewing my amazing guest who's in front of me.

Of course, we're here at Insights, hosted by Education Dynamics in Phoenix, Arizona, talking about online student recruitment and online student marketing. This is the conference that you should be at if you want to talk about how to recruit and serve online students. One of the things you hear a lot about is online teaching and learning, and of course, there's an undercurrent of AI to everything that we're doing.

AI is a buzzword. What does it mean? How do you use it? How do students use it? How do institutions use it? Are they accepting of it? Denying its existence and not accepting of it? There's a lot to consider. So we brought somebody that is going to tell us all the answers to these philosophical questions, and no pressure to him. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Will McGinnis. He's Director of Sales with Full Throttle AI. What's going on, Will? How are you?

Will McGinnis: I'm great. How are you?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I'm doing well, man. Thanks for being on the podcast. We want you to level set for us. Tell us about Full Throttle AI. What do you do? How do you do it?

Will McGinnis: Great. Well, I'll try to keep you awake. Those four desserts sound delicious. We are a martech platform. So we're marketing tech in the higher education space, along with a couple of other verticals that I work with. Specifically, what we're in is the audience business. We're identifying traffic coming to the website, and we are building that true first-party audience, identifying those prospective students that are interested in the university or institution, if you will, and helping keep that institution's branding in front of them until they are ready to make that decision.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Does Full Throttle work through artificial intelligence to map the students' movements? Can you talk about kind of the inner workings of it? What's student-facing? What's behind the scenes?

Will McGinnis: Sure. One thing I guess I should make sure is understood is that we're very privacy-compliant in our approach to this collection. AI can feel creepy, right? So our approach there is with opt-in technology, permission-based tracking, if you will. And we're building that through their activity on the website. We're not reaching beyond the institution's website at all.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: When you say AI to some people, you get this... What is scary and creepy about AI, in your opinion? Is it the uncomfortable nature? Is it like Skynet? We just start fantasizing that AI is going to take over our lives and robots are going to come tell us to stay in the house. What is it that makes it creepy, you think? And why is it so important for companies like Full Throttle to anti-creep us?

Will McGinnis: I think not fully understanding what it entails. AI is a very broad, generalized term in all of our spaces, whether you're in higher education or marketing in general, or just the world in general. In our case, we use it to measure propensity and understand what the journey is for those prospective students. To answer your question a little bit deeper, I think just finding ways to utilize AI in a way that is safe is critical. Hopefully, as we continue to explore AI on a global scale, regulation will come into play to help it be less creepy.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: True. I think that's part of the deal, right? The more regulations there are, the more safety or when big companies like Microsoft put out ethical AI principles, it makes it more acceptable in our minds that it's not going to be unchecked.

As you work through – and I'm looking at your website right now, Full Throttle AI – you generate first-party data for a cookieless world and utilize AI to optimize sales results. There are people here that don't even understand what a cookie is. What is a cookieless world besides the fact that I would have zero desserts instead of four?

Will McGinnis: So, a cookieless world is where we're kind of already headed or very close to it. A cookie is simply a tracking type pixel. You see it on any website you go to; they're always asking you, do you approve cookies? Some forward-thinking websites are giving you the opportunity to choose how they track you. You can click those details to choose how you want or to decline them, period. 

Browsers like Safari, Firefox, Opera, Edge – they've all deprecated cookies, third-party cookies. And this year, Google kicked off the year by phasing it out on 1% of their users with the intention of being 100% cookieless by the end of the year. So a lot of those marketing tactics that require those third-party cookies are scrambling to find a way to continue to advertise for their clients.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's a fact.

Will McGinnis: Yeah. And then, you know, there are other components there too, right? With IP tracking and mobile ad ID tracking. So there are a lot of these very breakable things. And in a world where there is more regulation, we also have organizations like Apple giving their users the opportunity to control that for themselves. We have positioned ourselves over the last six, seven years to ensure that we have not only a privacy-compliant method in addressing those things but also being prepared for that.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You're here at InsightsEDU, you're talking with higher education marketing and enrollment professionals. What's the value proposition you're talking to these guys and gals and leaders? What are the conversations that you've been having like? Is it, "Hey, I need better marketing. Where do I start?" Or "I have pretty solid marketing, but I need more optimization. How can you help me?" What's the starting point sound like as you're talking to people here?

Will McGinnis: Well, the good news is, they start with AI. AI definitely drives a lot of the traffic to us. Because people are curious, thankfully. Once they understand, if they do a little research and understand we're a marketing component to that, they definitely want to learn more. 

What I would say to institutions is quite simply, you spend a lot of time, energy, and effort driving prospective students and traffic to your website. And as we learned yesterday, that decision is made within one to three weeks. And it's kind of wild to think, "Wait, we had no idea where this applicant came from." And boom, they're here. I'm here to tell you based on what we see and all the traffic that we monitor, that journey starts long, long before. It's just that we are in a world now where people aren't going to give you their information until they're ready for you to have their information.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Because they're scared about their information going into the wrong hands or because they're more intentional with the search?

Will McGinnis: Well, I think both, right? Because of the society that we're in now where we have constant connection. And the minute you start reaching out to them and connecting with them, they're not necessarily ready for that until they give you that information. So there's a lot more research going on on the forefront now because we're in a society where we don't answer our phones anymore.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: And we skip the intro on Netflix because we don't even want to watch the introduction.

Will McGinnis: Exactly. We're in an instant gratification mindset.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Fifteen years ago, there's – I forget his name, I feel bad about it – but he talked about the goldfish and three seconds attention span. And we are now in a world where that's rapidly dropping. And instant gratification, especially for our prospective students who were born with device availability to them by the time their parents let them touch a device.

Will McGinnis: With it in their hand almost.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah. One of the interesting things that you just said, and it's so true, is you think about giving your information over and you think about it from a student perspective and you go, well, they're interested, they're going to give their information. We, those that are not looking at college maybe right now, we don't want to do that either. And you know where I see it now is in AI programs that you want to go and check out. And they always ask for your Google information. You got to log in with Google. You got to give them information.

And I sit there and I start thinking about how easy it's going to be for me to unsubscribe after I try the AI and if I don't like it or not. So I have this moment where I debate, am I going to give this new program my information knowing that I'm going to get communications, knowing what's coming? Because I know people are going to contact me. And I think to think that students aren't thinking that would be naive. They're thinking the same thing. They know when they give their information over, somebody's gonna be in contact with them. That may be why the competitor set or the consideration set is smaller. What do you think?

Will McGinnis: Yeah, I think, you know, you have to earn people's information. That is correct. And you know, I have the opportunity and the privilege to be in multiple verticals as I run the sales team. And we're in the likes of performance marketing, automotive, senior living, finance...

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Okay, so you get to see it beyond higher ed.

Will McGinnis: Yeah, I have a very wide spectrum of opportunity to observe how consumers are reacting to those industries. And the one constant is that you have to earn that information. Oftentimes marketers want to get that lead form filled, and people are a lot like you. They're either going to give that if that is a blocker to what the information that they want and immediately unsubscribe when they have the opportunity to, or they're going to walk away. And oftentimes it's the latter.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: 100%. Why higher ed? If you've got these other verticals that you're serving or servicing, higher ed is sometimes adverse to change, sometimes slow to implement technology. You know, it could be the new and shiny toy, but then you try to go get it and get the funding for it. Sometimes for-profit businesses move faster. There's just a speed component that doesn't exist in all higher ed institutions. What's the interest for higher ed, to serve higher ed?

Will McGinnis: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I'm just a big believer in helping industries be better at marketing in a way that is not as invasive as what we go through in life. But also, I hire people based on those individuals and their skill sets and their fit within our team. And I was fortunate enough to meet my rep here who's with me today, Dawn Pepka, who has 15 to 20 – like 17 years in the higher education space, and now she has opened those doors for us over the time she's been with us.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Is this her? Is this her right here? That's her, you're giving her a shout-out.

Will McGinnis: Yeah, she knows everybody. Yeah, so I hire based on those things. You know, before we tried to break into higher ed, and to your point, you know some bigger institutions are not just averse to change but they're very hard to get through all the channels. Very hard to navigate. Who's got the blueprint? Who's got the funding? Where does it live? Who's making the decision? It's very hard. 

But I'll say this, and I said this yesterday on our panel. You have an opportunity to continue to be at a school, but you have to meet these prospective students where they are. And as we already talked about, they are born with devices in their hand. They are instant gratification-minded people.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Let me stop you before you keep going. When you say meet students where they are, let's dig into that for a second. Does that mean on the communication method? Does it mean the type of media? Does it mean like point in time? What does that mean from your perspective?

Will McGinnis: Maybe all of the above? I mean, it's kind of all-encompassing, right? You know, I'll just use the same example I used yesterday. I've spent a lot of time in the car business and as everyone knows, buying a car still in 2024 can be a very, very painful process. It's fuzzy math. And that challenge is because of, you know, resistance to change.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah.

Will McGinnis: And what happened over the past 10, 15 years is Tesla and Carvana, the likes of Carvana have come onto the scene and they said, here, press a button, order a car.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, like a vending machine.

Will McGinnis: Yeah. While you can have your opinions on those two organizations, what they did was disrupt the car business and it forced a change and forced those car dealers to make changes in their process to make it a little bit easier. And I think whether you are a 150-year-old institution or a 100% online school that's 15 years old, at the end of the day, those students, they are the ones making that decision. And unless you're going to adhere to that mindset, you could risk losing that because we're already in a situation where prospective students already don't value higher education in today's society. We have to resell to them.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That's the part about what we do here in higher ed. I talk about that all the time on the podcast. It's as if somehow we stopped selling to the student. We've given them the same messaging, we've said online, affordable, or come here, and you'll get this and get that and the students said, I don't know if I believe that anymore. And so all of a sudden, this value goes away. You have the timing of companies saying, wait, we don't want – we don't need degree requirements anymore. All that has diluted value in higher ed. We haven't been good about repackaging what we do in a way that students start to see value again, almost not fighting back enough against that narrative. And we have to do that. And it's companies like Full Throttle that can help you do that. 

We also have to know what the students are interested in, when they're interested, and meet them, like you said, where they are, or else it seems as if we don't know what we're doing, right?

Will McGinnis: I think a tailored approach, helping guide these prospective students to not only that education but what happens after the fact, helping guide them in that journey, making it very simple. And at the end of the day, they want to be a productive member of society and make money.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Bullseye.

Will McGinnis: So if we can help tell that story to them and help guide them in that direction in a simple yet authentic way, I think that's different.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Anything else you want to say about Full Throttle in this episode? Open mic.

Will McGinnis: You know, we are really excited to be here and meet all of these institutions. And whether you are small, big, older, new – we are in a cookieless world and Full Throttle has the unique approach to help you get in front of those prospective students.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. He's my guest. He is in one good-looking suit jacket. He's got the flower up there. I like that. It says confidence and it says that Full Throttle is – you know, you need the right technology, you need the right partners, you need to trust your partners. And that's important to have you both here.

When you meet people, they're not just buying the technology, they're buying the service that you provide. In this world of AI, we keep forgetting the people component. It's technology, but it's the people that make the difference. And I'm glad to know that you're both here talking to higher ed folks, because we need the help in higher ed. We want to repackage what we do. We need great marketers like yourselves to do it. So ladies and gentlemen, Will McGinnis, he is Director of Sales with Full Throttle AI. Will, did you have a good time at least as we did this?

Will McGinnis: I had a lot of fun and you didn't fall asleep.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I didn't fall asleep. Ladies and gentlemen, he's right. You just ed-uped.