Click here to download/print a PDF of the program.
8:00 AM-5:00 PM
Registration Open
Oceana Foyer
9:00 AM-9:45 AM
Newcomers' Orientation
Oceana D
10:00 AM-11:30 AM
Opening General Session: Branding: Development, Management, Strategy
Oceana AB
In addition to clocking more cell-phone hours in airports and rental cars than George Clooney in Up in the Air, Elizabeth is a nationally recognized expert in the use of research to drive marketing and branding efforts. With over 20 years of experience conducting market research studies, she’s an industry leader in providing strategic solutions to colleges and universities.
An expert in survey instrument design, sampling plan development, data analysis, and the compilation and presentation of marketing intelligence, Elizabeth pioneered the use of customized research to inform college and university enrollment and marketing strategy.
She’s presented more than 200 workshops and papers at a veritable alphabet soup of higher education-related conferences and symposia, and chaired the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education from 2007 to 2011.
Elizabeth believes that bringing everyone along is crucial to making long-term strategy work — and prides herself on getting everyone in the organization to sing the same tune, at the same time, in the same key.
Sponsored by Waybetter Marketing
11:30 AM-7:00 PM
Exhibit Hall Open
Oceana Foyer
11:30 AM-1:00 PM
Networking Lunch and Exhibitor INSPIRE Talks
Oceana AB
1:15 PM-2:15 PM Concurrent Sessions I
Tell Your Story: Creating Data-driven Narratives
Coral C
We’re all proud of the work we do and the impact we have, but have you stopped to think about how you’re telling that story? A proactive approach to data analysis and narratives can support your work and the needs of your stakeholders. WKU crafted a data-driven narrative around the service we provide. In this session we’ll discuss identifying KPIs, share our solutions for data visualization, and detail how to communicate complex concepts to stakeholders.
Five Keys to Building an Admissions Training & Development Plan that Drives Results
Coral DE
It’s no secret that having a successful training program is essential for driving results and sustained success, but the thought of creating such a program from scratch can be daunting. An effective training program starts with identifying core positional competencies and establishing a systematic approach. In this session, the five keys to building a successful admissions training program will be explored, highlighting the Regis University post-traditional Admissions team as a successful case study.
New, Now, Next in Online Marketing
Oceana C
Online marketing for adult education programs is evolving at a breathtaking pace. In this presentation, we'll share what’s new, what’s next, and what’s changed in online marketing. We'll discuss performance shifts on common platforms and how to determine where you should be allocating your marketing $$. We’ll tie this into trends and changes in the adult ed audience. You'll leave with new marketing ideas and insights into which platforms may work best for your programs.
Lengthening the Life of Your Content
Oceana D
A newsletter design and print timeline varies from 4-6 weeks. In that timespan, content becomes stale. With little return, we resulted in a print newsletter that didn’t drive conversions and needed a new approach. “Lengthening the Life of Your Content” shows how to work with limited budget and resources, move a newsletter online and utilize it as a blog, where timely content can be refreshed often, shared in multiple ways/times, and used to drive conversions.
2:15 PM-2:45 PM
Coffee with Exhibitors
Oceana Foyer
2:45 PM-3:45 PM
Concurrent Sessions II
The Business of Strategic Enrollment Management at UCLA Extension
Coral C
Our schools can sometimes appear as siloes of academic and administrative departments operating earnestly in service of our students yet independently of each another. Developing an SEM roadmap provides schools the people, process and technology to align internally, more effectively leverage shared data, and to make insightful business-minded decisions. In this session, we’ll describe our SEM journey to date and help you begin yours by engaging in brainstorming and goal setting exercises.
Aligning Your Marketing Around the Ever Changing Digital Landscape
Coral DE
In this session Azusa Pacific and Keypath will walk through how the world of digital media has evolved over the last few years. We will discuss the current and future outlook of the digital marketing landscape. We will provide data and statistics to properly understand and benchmark your institution. We will provide real tactics, best practices and strategies for enhancing your marketing efforts in both the paid and organic digital space.
Beyond the Status Update: Get Measurable Results Through Digital Marketing via Facebook
Oceana D
Move beyond using social media strictly as a communication medium and begin using it as a verifiable and valuable part of your entire Digital Marketing Strategy. Learn what it takes to implement Facebook for Business, Ads Manager, Target Audiences, and Pixels into to your online strategy and marketing plan. Then see how you can measure and track consumer response and achieve verifiable results through the use of Facebook Insights and Google Analytics.
UPCEA Talks: Marketing Automation
Oceana C
UPCEA Talks is a curated series of short, idea-introducing presentations given in quick succession during an hour-long concurrent session.
Marketing Automation Basics: The Technology, the People and the Process
This session focuses on the concept of marketing automation: what it is and how to implement it. We highlight the challenges organizations face, the team and skills needed, the technology and tools available and the process required to be successful. Topics include:
- Stephanie Harff, University of South Florida
- What is marketing automation?
- How to overcome the challenge of implementation
- How to hire the right team
- Selecting the right tools for the job
- Putting processes in place
How Marketing Automation Changed the Way We Use SalesforceDo you have a struggling CRM system? Are you trying to integrate marketing automation into your recruitment strategy? Our Salesforce system was expensive and under-utilized. It wasn’t until we cleaned up the data and implemented a marketing automation system that we were able to improve our marketing strategy and enrollment numbers. Marketers and recruiters will benefit from hearing our process of integrating CRM with marketing automation to improve enrollment metrics.
- Jesse Revlin, California State University, Northridge
- Karen Sabourin, California State University, Northridge
4:00 PM-5:00 PM
Concurrent Sessions III
Sometimes the Best Isn’t Enough: Operationalizing the Biggest Brand in Higher Ed and Boosting Enrollment 17%
Oceana C
You have to operationalize your brand if you want to grow, even if you already have one of the best brands in higher education. We’ll share how, despite years of no growth, we increased Harvard Extension School enrollments by 17% in just two years using data-driven, relevant marketing campaigns.
Keeping it Real: Leveraging Content Marketing to Enhance the Prospective Student Experience
Oceana D
In this session, we will discuss how the JWU College of Online Education has leveraged content development and content marketing in order to add tangibility to the prospective student experience. We will discuss how to leverage blogs, testimonials, interviews, and videos in order to answer the key questions students ask during their enrollment journey: What will my learning experience look like? Why should I enroll in this program/university? How will this program impact my career?
UPCEA Marketing and Student Services Network Benchmarking Study Results
Coral C
Come and learn the results of UPCEA’s groundbreaking survey on enrollment management performance and practice within continuing and professional education. From organizational structure and staffing data, to recruitment and retention benchmarks, to current enrollment performance, learn how your enrollment management activities and data compare to national benchmarks.
Marketing Automation Next Steps: Driving Enrollment through Technology and Data
Coral DE
Focus is on five key technology groups that help us make data-informed decisions to drive enrollment. We provide examples from live campaigns that are achieving results. Topics include:
5:00 PM-7:00 PM
Welcome Reception Hosted by Exhibitors
Event Lawn
7:30 AM-5:00 PM
Registration Open
Oceana Foyer
8:00 AM-5:00 PM
Exhibit Hall Open
Oceana Foyer
8:00 AM-8:30 AM
Breakfast with Exhibitors
Oceana Foyer
8:30 AM-9:45 AM
General Session: Institutional Social Responsibility: Leveraging University Resources for the Common Good
Oceana AB
Beth Kanter is internationally recognized thought leader in networks, social media, and data. Beth has over 35 years working in the nonprofit sector in capacity building and has facilitated trainings for nonprofits on every continent in the world (except Antarctica). She is an in-demand keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. Named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company and one of the BusinessWeek’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media,” Beth was Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation 2009-2013. Her past and current clients include Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Gates Foundation, Brainerd Foundation, Knight Foundation, Knight Digital Media Center, Edutopia, HHS, and others. She author of the award winning Networked Nonprofit Books published by J.Wiley and is currently working her next book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Impact with Burnout.
9:45 AM-10:15 AM
Coffee with Exhibitors
Oceana Foyer
10:15 AM-11:15 AM
Concurrent Sessions IV
Jumpstart Your Creativity
Coral DE
Do you feel like your creative battery is drained? Are you in a creative rut? Do your marketing pieces look like everyone else's? Why do we think that we can keep doing the same things and get different results? Using examples from MSU's Executive MBA, we will look at some of our out of the box items that worked and didn't work. The goal is to help spark your creativity and take it to the next level.
Maximizing Results: Comprehensive Enrollment Strategies
Coral C
We need purpose in everything we do! As you look at your current enrollment and retention management process, do you have a full understanding of the reason you are doing what you're doing? This session walks you through the how to’s for identifying key performance indicators, process and asset mapping, and strategic planning. Take home templates on how to audit, analyze, and build your own comprehensive pipeline process.
Improving Your Home Game with Student-Oriented Enrollment Practices
Oceana D
Schools make significant investments in marketing and recruiting to attract prospective students. But what happens when those prospects begin the enrollment process? Are qualified candidates being quickly identified and nurtured, or turned off by complex intake processes and poor customer service happening back “at home”? In this session, learn how Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University grew enrollment in online, distance learning and residential programs by adopting student-oriented enrollment practices that leveraged technology, candidate nurturing content strategies, and responsive staffing. We will also explore the critical enrollment performance indicators that will help you measure the impact of your enrollment efforts, and effectively measure ROI across your marketing and enrollment funnel.
UPCEA Talks: University Branding
Oceana C
UPCEA Talks is a curated series of short, idea-introducing presentations given in quick succession during an hour-long concurrent session.
Brand: Beyond the VisualRather than taking a holistic view of the way they do business and interact at every customer touchpoint, most organizations focus on only the visual representation of the brand. In this session, the Chief Digital Officer and the Executive Director of Marketing from Georgetown's SCS will describe their experience executing this shift. After partnering with Story+Structure to redesign their website, they identified the need to first define their brand and the experience to support it.
- Stacey Corcoran, Georgetown University
- Guy Felder, Story+Structure
Bold or Bust! Creating a Standout Brand that Defines the Category and Aligns with Your UniversityBuilding on years of successful course-level marketing, Georgia Tech Professional Education undertook a multi-year branding project in 2014 aimed at distinguishing the PE category, driving awareness, and increasing the reach of our message to widen the marketing funnel for our programs. This is the story of how an in-house team achieved the near-impossible task of staying laser focused on standing out from the crowd and standing apart from the Institute while achieving buy-in from everyone.
- Stephany Sanders, Georgia Institute of Technology
Identity Crisis: A Branding Success StoryLearn about the importance of branding and how to utilize it via inbound and outbound marketing. Become educated on how professional branding and powerful content marketing make an impact on the student experience. See student testimonials about empowerment, reinvention and success. Learn how our “I Did It” campaign unifies our branding, college and University.
- Davia Lassiter, Kennesaw State University
11:30 AM-1:15 PM
Awards Luncheon
Sponsorsed by Blackboard
1:30 PM-2:30 PM
Concurrent Sessions V
Hive Mind: Collaborative Problem-Solving for Marketers
Coral C
Prepare to roll up your sleeves and tackle problems head on in this collaborative session. Designed for marketers of all institutional sizes and backgrounds, this hands-on session harnesses the power of our UPCEA MEMS colleagues to find solutions to marketing challenges. Hive Mind participants will walk away with a fresh perspective, newly acquired insights and knowledge, and proven marketing solutions.
Top of the Funnel: Engagement Strategies that Stick
Oceana D
How do you connect with students in a world of banner blindness, ad fatigue, and unread email? Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies (SCS) will share best practices for using audience insights to create engaging and memorable content to convert inquiries to applicants at the top of the enrollment funnel. SCS will cover the following areas:
Why, How and What
Oceana C
Most marketing focuses on what an organization does - its products. In this session learn how understanding the "Why" and the "How" can help you create compelling content to reach a broader audience. Why does your organization exist and who does that matter to? How do you do what you do that makes you different from your competitors? See how CSUF Extension is transforming itself using "Why" and "How" to drive its communications strategy.
Crafting Your Team's T-Shaped Social Media Strategy
Coral DE
With the number of connected users doubling every two years by some estimates, Social Media presents one of the most powerful opportunities to gain visibility, win loyalty, and drive enrollments. Take this 60 minutes to gain inspiration and practical tips for creating a Social Media strategy that aims to do a few things well for the right audiences on the right channel at the right time -- with results.
2:30 PM-3:00 PM
Coffee with Exhibitors
Oceana Foyer
3:15 PM-4:30 PM
General Session: A Vision for Enrollment Management
Oceana AB
MJ has served in various roles within Enrollment Management for the past 28 years: a women’s college, business college, law school, college of arts and communication and two large national research universities. Her wide variety of experiences have helped to shape her understanding of the core function of enrollment management within many educational contexts and the ways each institution must face its distinctive challenges in higher education.
At every institution where MJ has had a leadership role in enrollment, she has combined a strong belief that education has the power to change lives and make a difference in our society with a clear understanding of the need to support and manage enrollment to meet institutional goals. The partnership between high school college counselors and higher education enrollment managers is crucial to ensure we appropriately support students and their families during one of the most critical and transformative times in their lives.
MJ has a BA in Communication from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from Northeastern University. She frequently presents on data driven decision-making, strategic planning and diversity and inclusion across the country.
4:45 PM-5:45 PM
Happy Hour Reception Sponsored by Keypath Education
Event Lawn
6:00 PM
Dinner Groups
Meet in Lobby
7:30 AM-11:30 AM
Registration Open
Oceana Foyer
8:00 AM-11:30 AM
Exhibit Hall Open
Oceana Foyer
8:00 AM-8:30 AM
Breakfast with Exhibitors
Oceana Foyer
8:30 AM-9:30 AM
Concurrent Sessions VI
Personalizing Education’s ROI
Oceana D
The value of higher education faces an affront on multiple sides. From increasing costs and competition and expected outcomes and gains, university marketers are on the front line of trying to change the current discourse of public perception. Learn how effective utilization of data, advanced targeting, and integrated communications can help connect prospective students to your university by personalizing the potential return on a student’s educational investment.
Improve Your Online Marketing Effectiveness for Online Programs
Oceana C
If you have been using the traditional online advertising or paid search, consider new methods to attract students. This presentation will focus on behavioral marketing, which is sometimes referred to programmatic marketing. A case study of one online degree program will compare the results of different traditional online advertising, paid search, retargeting (sometimes referred to remarketing) and behavioral marketing. Attend and learn how behavioral marketing has made a big difference at one university.
Marketing and Recruiting: Are You Working Together?
Coral DE
When enrollments are down, marketing is always blamed. But marketing is only half of the equation. In this presentation we’ll explore how marketing and recruiting can and SHOULD work hand-in-hand. We will look at what every recruiting plan needs to include to be successful. We will also examine ways in which marketing should be working with recruiting to create a virtuous circle that improves both the quality and volume of leads for programs.
Incentivizing Calls to Action
Coral C
Consumers (including your potential students, of course) are constantly inundated with advertising and promotional communications. How can you effectively sift through this media fog in order to successfully convey your message to the target audience...while maintaining brand standards and properly measuring results? We'll talk about these challenges and more when trying to maintain and increase enrollments in your programs via calls to action -- and how incentives can play a role in this process.
9:45 AM-10:45 AM
Concurrent Sessions VII
Adapting Marketing and Business Development for Increased Success
Oceana D
As our industry changes, we must adapt our methods to recruit students and bring in corporate training partnerships. Follow University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) through their decision process, preparations, and motivators to maximize their outcomes with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution. UCSC needed to reach nontraditional students and corporate partners with timely, highly-effective and personalized communications with a goal of increasing enrollments. UCSC’s marketing processes have led to success in improving their marketing, increasing efficiencies, and shortening the sales cycle.
Re-Enrollment Campaigns for the Dropped or Stopped: Smart Approaches toward Completion
Oceana C
Part case study, part how-to, UPCEA CEO Bob Hansen will dialogue with thought leaders from InsideTrack about the strategic value of the completion agenda and examine tactical approaches to serving this audience. Details from real life campaigns will demonstrate how to leverage existing tools and the exponential impact such efforts can have across the institution and the higher education landscape.
Optimizing Video for Marketing
Coral C
Learn how Berklee Online uses video to drive awareness and enrollments across their multi-channel marketing strategy. This session will include an overview of best practices for optimizing and formatting video content for YouTube, Wistia, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as integrating with marketing automation software (Marketo) for lead scoring, landing pages, and email. Participants will walk away with new insights that will help them improve their own video marketing strategies.
Inspiring Collaboration: Integrated Approach to Executing Marketing Strategies and Alignment with Your Institution's Academic Plan
Coral DE
Ryerson University’s five-year (2014–2019) academic plan "Our Time to Lead" establishes our vision to become Canada’s leading comprehensive innovation university. It builds upon Ryerson’s unique traditions and expands our strengths with Scholarly, Research and Creative activities. The session will explore the collaboration between the marketing unit and program areas at Ryerson’s Chang School of Continuing Education, including the use of robust research to obtain strategic insights, developing segment-based marketing strategies to advance the academic plan.
11:00 AM-12:00 PM
General Session: Data Analytics: What’s Coming,Why We Need It, and What Smart Use Looks Like
Oceana AB
Feras Alhlou is Principal Consultant of E-Nor, Inc. which he co-founded in 2003. Feras is passionate about improving his clients’ ROI and led his organization to implement and launch successful digital optimization and analytics strategies for E- Nor’s diversified client base, including Fortune 500 companies. Feras has an extensive background in the areas of online marketing consulting, search marketing, web analytics and marketing optimization. Under his leadership, E-Nor achieved qualifications as a Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP), a Google AdWords Certified Partner, a Google Urchin Software Certified Partner, a Google Website Optimizer Certified Partner and a Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller. Feras received a Masters of Engineering Management degree from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tulsa.
12:00 PM
Adjourn
See you next year in Washington, D.C.!