Ideas, insights and inspirations.

To higher education marketing pros, April & May is “yield season.” It’s the culmination of all their marketing and relationship-building efforts to convert a suspect to a prospect to an applicant to an admitted student. Yield is the percentage of admitted students who actually decide to enroll. This is a big deal in enrollment marketing – having knowledge of where the yield percentage might fall provides a target of how many students the admissions office needs to, or is willing to, accept. Tracking the tuition deposits as they begin to trickle in is a daily process for admissions, and is why the final piece of marketing communications – the admissions yield piece – is so important. Over the years I have seen all kinds of yield tactics from fact sheets to multi-page brochures. They all seem compelled to give the prospect ‘one more reason’ to consider their school. (As if two years of curated courtship through the admission process has … Continue reading

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Thought you might enjoy some inspiring videos: Typolution Words as Image The Ten Commandments

It’s getting hard to remember life before social media – much more so since mobile devices enabled its wholesale invasion of every corner of our lives. One of the conundrums I’ve observed people encountering is that of how heavily committed one should be to keeping up with the goings-on of his or her social set. If I’m following 1000 people on Twitter, do I need to read all of their updates? If someone engages me constructively online, is there an obligation to reciprocate? Is it okay to go on hiatus for days or weeks and, if so, is there some etiquette I should follow? For my personal life, I chose a policy of obligation-free, occasional engagement. I am very unselfconscious about the regularity with which I read or post to social websites. A month away from Facebook is of equal value to me as flooding Twitter with nonsense, and I take and leave them interchangeably. But I’m an individual, I’m … Continue reading

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Perhaps this is already old news, but I see sign all around us that we have now entered the age of visual thinking. Here are a few signs: Infographics are everywhere now Target, with its focus on affordable yet well designed objects, keeps expanding Cultural institutions such as museums, botanical gardens, aquariums are now all creating visual experiences Architects are the new rock stars New books on visual thinking keep getting published every few months Designed experiences in upscale foods, coffees, clothing, shopping, computers, cars and other home gadgets are commonplace Design and visual thinking are being democratized. Mass class is now truly here. Design is the new cool now.

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