What five things do over 500 conference attendees of three recent conferences have in common?Well, for one thing they saw me.
From Tuesday, March 22 to Friday, April 2, I spoke at three higher education conferences presenting some 12 hours of content, including one pre-conference workshop, one all-day marketing and sales institute, and three concurrent sessions. My travels took me to Dublin, Ohio to the Ohio Continuing Higher Education Association (OCHEA), to Orlando, Florida and the Association of Collegiate Conferencing and Event Directors International (ACCED-I), and finally to Chicago, Illinois for the Aslanian Conference for Adult Marketing.
OCHEA 2011 was about ‘driving excellence through innovation.’ ACCED-I? ‘Creating Magic.’ And Aslanian? ‘Converting Credits to Degrees: 38 Million Students to Recruit.’
Outside of catchy themes all three conferences had five things in common:
1. Everyone is Interested in Growing …
From continuing education units focused on workforce development and non-credit courses to colleges offering degree completion programs, from universities offering online degree programs to higher education institutions providing conferencing and event services, everyone is interested in growth. In fact, Carol Aslanian noted that their conference had more four-year public institutions than in years past.
Yet, many lack goals or have been presented ‘stretch’- or as I like to call them unrealistic – goals. A few participants report that budget targets are handed down with no discussion – or resources.
Others report a more ‘rah-rah’ approach. Simply gathering the troops and suggesting a target with little idea of how to get there neither motivates staff nor provides much hope for success.
2. Yet Many Are Not Sure Where to Start
Where will the growth come from? Most are not sure. For some, it’s new programs. For others, it’s crafting a new tagline. Maybe it's more research. Others believe the answer is in social media marketing … somewhere.
When I shared an example of one institution’s multi-step follow-up process, one senior manager fretted about contacting prospective students too much.
Perhaps, we have 38 million adult students with degree credit and no degrees because of this type of thinking.
3. Despite Growth Objectives Many Colleges and Universities Simply Don’t Respond … or It’s Hard to Find Them
Prior to the OCHEA conference, we submitted student inquiries at ten institutions scheduled to participate. Only three (30%) bothered to respond. Not so fast … one of the 3 ‘responses’ to our inquiries looked like this:
With most of the attending OCHEA institutions offering workforce development programming, a simple Google search did not yield a single 1st page response from the participants:
At ACCED-I, we secret shopped 31 institutions prior to the conference. For this conference, sixty-four percent responded to our inquiry. Some of the responses to our attempts to book campus meeting space came back two and three days later!
Using these same institutions and regional locations, we performed Google searches using ‘Conferencing’ and ‘Conference Center’. Why these terms? Because there are an estimated 6.6 million searches annually. For the term ‘conferencing’ plus the institution’s city and state, approximately ½ of the institutions were not found on the first page of the search results. Conference center? Sixty-percent of the institutions were not listed.

Finally, at the Aslanian Conference, we attempted to submit online inquiries at 18 institutions. We heard back from 11 or 61%. The average response time for web form inquiries? 21/2 days. By email? 1 day and a half. We performed a Google search on a relevant keyword phrase. Only 5 of the 18 institutions appeared in our page 1 search results.
A few participants at the Aslanian Conference wondered allowed if we had submitted an inquiry to their units or someone else on-campus. Another participant asked, 'does it matter?' The bottom line is that prospective students and businesses were not being followed-up with in a systematic fashion.
4. Few Understand Their Pipeline
From our inquiry shopping efforts alone, it was clear that most of the institutions that we shopped simply do not value the ability to understand their demand pipeline. Undergraduate enrollment managers understand the funnel concept well. But for whatever reason those working with adult learners (or business) are not reverse-engineering their enrollment or business results and managing acquisition, conversion, and yield.
5. Technology is an Inhibitor
At two institutions, we were unable to submit inquiries due to technology problems. The problems extended across three well-known, higher education technology vendors. The Elgin Community College site was down for two business days. When I asked the conference attendee what the problem was, he reported a problem with their student information provider.
Zane State Community College’s ‘request information’ web site function was down two weeks ago when we attempted to shop the school. It's still down as of Sunday evening, April 3.
Finally, another institution reported that they do not accept online registrations for their adult students because of a vendor's student information system limits. For this institution, it's more important to have one centrally controlled technology rather than providing convenience for students.
Ah, the promise of technology. These are just a few examples of what happens when your efforts are IT-driven, rather than business-focused.
It's always more fun to throw the long pass, hit the grand slam homerun, or sink a game winning three-pointer, yet more often than not success comes from mastering the fundamentals.
Great trips. Met some nice people and caught up with past acquaintances.
I'm glad to be back.