The Chameleon Net blog

Top Tips For Understanding Mobile Users

richardk@chameleonnet.co.uk (Rich Kirk) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:24:18 GMT

This topic was covered at yesterday's "Money Talks" seminar. I said I would post some info on how you can segment your mobile users within Google Analytics; well here it is! What appears below is cut from an article I wrote for Marketing Pilgrim in the States. You can check out the full article here.

Understanding Mobile Users: Entry Level

Even if you feel the implementation of a mobile strategy is a long way off for your company, and you have no technical skills whatsoever, there is no excuse for not starting to try and get a handle on who your mobile users are, and how they interact with your site. This is a customer segment that will grow in the future.

Demographics You can easily build up a picture of mobile web users through the plethora of surveys currently being released. Here are a few recent stats:

74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25, (31% are 35-49) and more than 70% of iPhone users are male. [see here]
64% of key decision makers in marketing departments are using mobiles to view emails [see here]
Leading mobile browsing systems worldwide (May 09) = iPhone/iPod Touch 37.2%, Opera 24.6%, Nokia 17.9%. [see here]
In 2008 61% of all smartphone owners had a household income of greater than $70000, compared to just 49% of normal mobile owners. [see here]
40% of “smartphoners” in ‘08 would access the internet at least once a week on their device, (78% for iPhone owners specifically). [see here]

Behaviour as well as looking at the demographics of people browsing the mobile web, it’s also vital to understand their goals are likely to be different to those of folks browsing on a computer. Conversion points for mobile users are often basic things such as finding a shop location, contact information, or viewing product details. Generally speaking goals are more immediate and information based. More traditional goals such as purchasing or accessing documents will only be undertaken as a last resort where a computer is unavailable.

Mobile users break down into three rough categories:

“Time to burn”: browsing between events / meetings etc: your goal is to offer bite sized chunks of interesting content in order to attract repeat visits later via traditional browsing methods.
“Monitors”: Users who browse your site for specific data that changes over time: stocks and shares, sports scores etc. Identify the information on your site which gets repeat visits and make it as easily accessible as possible.
“Need it Now”: Live information e.g. running information, store locations, opening hours etc should all be easily accessible from your mobile homepage for those people who are relying on your brand rather than just browsing.

Understanding the key differences between your mobile and traditional users should directly inform the architecture of the mobile version of your site. For instance: An airline may focus on selling tickets online, but its mobile site should focus more on check in information, live flight times, and airport locations for people who are about to fly. Similarly, a financial services company might view their website as a place for prospective customers to research their products, but their mobile site could add value by offering simple services to existing customers e.g. balance checks.

With a bit more budget you can start to build up data specific to your organisation. Marketers should be equipped with smartphones, as using a mobile browser is the best way to understand and discover the difficulties and opportunities surrounding your brand and the mobile web.

Understanding Mobile Users: Intermediate / Advanced Level

Google Analytics provides a segment for iPhone users, but a broader mobile segment for analysing this traffic would be preferential. The most obvious way to construct this segment is by grouping together the different types of mobile browsers currently on offer, but this list is ever-changing and many of these browsers are poor at executing JavaScript: mobile data will be missed altogether and the segment will be less accurate. [ more info here]

A better option is to construct a GA segment based around screen resolution, as there is a greater accuracy of data collection:

Open a new custom segment within your GA dashboard
Select “screen resolution” as the segment’s dimension. You can find this by drilling down on “Systems”.
Select the match type “Matches Regular Expression”
Paste the following regex into the next field: (^[1-2]?[0-9]?[0-9]|^3[0-1][0-9]|^320)x([1-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]$|4[0-7][0-9] $|480$ )

For the more advanced technicians amongst you the installation of mobile-specific tracking software is a further option, however this can be costly and difficult to integrate with GA. Bango Analytics, Mobilytics and Amethon are key players in this sector.

UPDATE APRIL 2010: GA now offers mobile website tracking for FREE.

Once mobile users behaviour on your site is isolated marketers are able to analyse top content, entry and exit points, site search, etc. It is crucial to try and understand mobile user’s goals this data. These goals will define the architecture of your mobile site.

I hope that's useful: Try applying this segment to your website and looking at monthly visitor numbers over the past 18 months: usually a pretty telling statistic.

If you're struggling to get buy-in for a mobile site, why not sit your boss down, give them an iphone and get them to complete a key user action on your site?! - better still set them a time limit of the average time it takes a desk-bound user to complete that goal.

Necessity is the mother of invention for Higher Ed

danm@chameleonnet.com (Dan Martin) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:19:37 GMT

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce)’s announcement that £449m is to be slashed from university budgets this year has led to much debate about the impact that cost-cutting measures will have on individual HEIs and the sector as a whole. It's certainly on the lips of most of the people in HE I've met in the past month or so.

Anyone working in HE will understand that each University is very much a unique institution even when compared with its peers. So likewise every institution faces a unique challenge in surviving the cut. Some are being forced to make redundancies and consider closing departments; others are increasingly asking postgraduates to double as lecturers.

The Guardian recently reported Newcastle University is dealing with the cuts by increasing their number of overseas students, some of whom pay up to £14,000 a year for their education. It's certainly an area where there is more flexibility for UK Unis in increasing their income, and an area Chameleon Net has been working in for the last year or two. What's more it contributes to the balance of UK, EU and overseas students that make universities cosmopolitan, diverse and thriving places.

If times are going to get tougher, it’s clear to me that universities will need to innovate in order to succeed. And connecting with prospective and existing students, wherever they may be, can be achieved in so many different ways. We can see this happening in relatively simple ways across the sector. For instance, City University London’s website has a plethora of options about how to interact with the university all displayed on their home page; City has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as providing RSS news feeds.

So putting more energy into web experience and social engagement can open up alternative avenues for recruitment; especially useful if it also allows you to cut down spend in other areas. An HE contact of mine whispered some taboo words the other day - 'You know, I think this might be the year we reduce our prospectus print run and do more online'. Times they are a-changing alright!

But it's not just about costs. Creating a good impression with prospective undergraduates and getting them engaged are major benefits; online tools can enhance the student experience and make existing undergraduates’ lives easier. For example, mobile sites, social networking accounts and an optimized, interactive website all work to improve communications, and give students a greater sense of community and belonging. And better communication always helps organizations to run more efficiently.

Speaking of efficiency, the digital world also has a big role to play in significantly reducing administration costs. Online student portals, e-submissions and e-marking could help to streamline the assessment process in some cases, while automated processes and better-connected online systems can help deal with incoming applicant traffic during, say, clearing. These are just some ideas I’ve been batting about with my friends in the higher education sector. They might not work for everybody - as I said early on, each Uni is different - but at the heart of all this is the opportunity to re-think what you currently do, and relish the challenge to explore new and different ways of doing things.

Because unfortunately, it’s often not until we’re financially squeezed that we start finding more clever and creative ways to do what really matters.

Analytics > Assumptions

richardk@chameleonnet.co.uk (Rich Kirk) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:58:42 GMT

Last week at Chamtech09 (our digital trends seminar in the City) I spoke to two great audiences on the need to do away with decision-making and assumptions when it comes to creating online content. I argued that simple analytics data and customer feedback should drive the development of a web presence, and that a marketer’s focus should primarily fall on turning more visitors into customers; getting more visitors should be of secondary importance.

It was great to speak to a bunch of people who could obviously see the benefit of this approach, and I hope that I’ll be able to work with as many of you as possible in the future.

In this post I wanted to expand on a few points I raced through on Thursday, especially around the development and operation of a Google Analytics (GA) strategy.

“The numbers in my GA reports don’t add up”

There are numerous reasons why GA might not track an individual visit. The most common ones are:

User has no java support enabled so GA code is not read (>5% of web users)
Users are blocking the first party cookies GA needs to place on your computer (>5% of users)
Code is not implemented correctly on certain pages of your site (Best practice = implement it once in a piece of content that is called by every page e.g. the footer)
Code is being interfered with by other javascript on the page. Fix this by ensuring the GA code is called before these other scripts.
Browser fails to execute the code (increasingly problematic as mobile browsers are susceptible to this)
Pages are failing to load properly.
User bounces before page load completes (often explains why your adwords clicks > visits from adwords). This problem is increasing due to mobile browsing growth. Bloated sites often designed for computers rather than mobiles and the 3G network are especially vulnerable.

A common problem arises around unique visitors (aka “the hotel problem”) and it can be seized upon by people looking for a reason not to invest time in GA as an example of its “inaccuracy” (I know, I’ve been there!). Luckily, the problem is fully explained and illustrated on Wikipedia, as is the issue of total visitors not being equal to new visitors + repeat visitors.

Link tagging

You can track the RoI of every link you put on the web by attaching a source (e.g. person / dept), medium (e.g. email / banner ad / social campaign), campaign (e.g. twitter competition / april newsletter) and an individual content tag to each link. GA allows you to analyse the behaviour of users via the individual link they arrived on. Very quickly you can start to attach a pounds and pence value to links, campaigns, marketing channels and people within your organisation. Who doesn’t want to do that?!

You can create these links really easily in excel spreadsheets as they all follow the same pattern (links broken down by section for easy viewing, obv. this would be one URL string normally):

www. ursite.com/?

utm_source=xxx

&utm_medium=yyy

&utm_campaign=zzz

&utm_content=123

In each case you would want to make the utm_content tag an individual descriptor for that link. E.g. if I was going to send out a Chameleon Net newsletter containing a link to our blog the link would be (again, broken down for easy viewing):

http://www.chameleonnet.co.uk/blog/default.aspx?

utm_source=chamnet_marketing

&utm_medium=email

&utm_campaign=june_newsletter

&utm_content=blog_home

Within the GA dashboard, under traffic sources > campaigns, you can quickly compare the successes and failings of different source, medium, and campaign tags. Then you can easily drill down to the individual content tags for more granular detail. For each tag you’ll be able to see a host of metrics, most importantly goal conversions, but also bounce rate, time on site, and of course visits/visitors/unique visitors.

Pretty neat huh?

“My goals are hard to track”

A number of Chameleon’s clients are charities or NGOs, whose website in many cases provide information rather than make a sale or get an email sign up. For these organisations simply getting someone to read a page is the goal online; the real conversion, i.e. that person taking action, occurs offline in the real world. Goal tracking still has a lot to offer, and maybe you need to think about how your site and your offline conversions interact: e.g. display a unique phone number so you can track how many calls your site is generating.

Another idea might be to flip the situation and instead of focussing on where people are going within your site look at where they are coming from. If you have particular traffic sources that send traffic which tends to bounce out of the site straight away, isolate that traffic and look at its top landing pages. There may well be an obvious disconnect between the content on those pages and the traffic source / audience.

Alternatively, you can look to diversify the traffic sources for your site. Social networks are the web’s watering holes and you can easily (and cheaply) search for and enter conversations around your campaigns. We advise on developing landing pages aimed at audiences you don’t normally target and the process of entering these online conversations. GA will be able to let you know if you’ve developed a new audience and whether they are exploring your site beyond the landing pages you have set up.

**********

Phew, long post. Hope these tips help you and your digital marketing teams.

Remember; your site is made up of sources, (your audiences: get granular by using segmentation) behaviour (the content they browse) and most importantly; defined goals. Without goals your site has no purpose: identify the pages that your user sees when they’ve done what you wanted them to do, then work back through your funnel.

Hit me up in the comments below if you've got issues you want answering!

Facebook Applications from a Marketer's Perspective

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:19:13 GMT

This week's internal Chameleon Net seminar was run by Louise Ryan, our Head of Pre-Production Systems, who shared a developer's perspective on Facebook applications.

During the session, I briefly tweeted about Facebook applications from a business developer / marketing perspective:

RT @vickyreeves looking forward to hearing the internal @Chameleon_Net seminar on facebook application development from @louzoid
Internal seminar focused more on developer's perspective. Let's see what marketing / business uses I can pick out from it.
Facebook apps: publishing to the stream is most important in @louzoid's opinion - gives application a wide reach to user's friends...
Facebook connect allows your website to connect up to the user's facebook account so they can quickly publish news items on their stream.
The facebook OpenStream lets users read their streams wherever they want: mobile, desktop, etc. This means multiple interaction points...
Facebook have placed restrictions on apps to reduce spam - considerations: developer credibility, app popularity, if app verified...
Internal teams are considering niche facebook applications that our clients could develop. Your ideas for Higher Education apps..?
@louzoid Thanks for good overview of developing Facebook Apps - interested to see what specific apps we can create for our clients.

If have you ideas for a Facebook application which you'd like developed at your organisation to achieve specific objectives, then leave a comment below or tweet me @surajshah.

Enhancing Student Experience via Twitter

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:27:42 GMT

In the city of San Francisco, "citizens can send direct messages 24 hours a day to the sf311 Twitter account to report standard non-emergency city-related sightings (like pot holes), request street cleanings, and any other service already supported by the phone or website." This was reported by the Mashable article San Francisco First City to Instate City-Wide 311 Twitter Program.

It goes on to say: "Of course the real beauty of enabling 311 support through Twitter is that residents can now have the convenience of sending in their requests on their terms, include photos, relevant links, and do so while on the go."

If a whole city can offer this service to enhance the experience for citizens, what are the possibilities for enhancing the student experience on a university campus?

Potential notifications include:

lifts not working
computer room out of operation
security gates rusty and need oiling
high-demand library books not available
paths and rooms requiring cleaning
lecturers inaccessible
issues regarding transport into university - e.g. extending what University of Bath did on Twitter when the snow in Feb 2009 had a big impact on transport in Bath.

Could you think of other non-emergency issues that students could report? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

Using notifications received from students and academic staff, the university's student relations and administration teams could raise the issue with the relevant parties to get it resolved, and report back to the person who sent through the notification. Where appropriate, messages could be tweeted and blog posts published to inform many more people about developments.

A service like this set up at the university could have a major impact, not only on how it serves current students and academic staff, but also on prospective students who take the university's online reputation into account when considering their university choices.

Afterall, the lines between student relations and public relations is blurring, and a disgruntled student being transformed into a content or happy student has a direct impact on way the institution is perceived on the web and therefore on student intake.

The Chameleon Net strategy-oriented technology trends seminar covers some of the latest mobile and web technologies including geo-tagging & geo-location. Other topics covered include augmented reality, social software, content moderation, web analytics & conversion.

Our Online Technology Update seminar is taking place on Thursday 18th June in London and you can read more about it and register at www.chameleonnet.co.uk/seminar

Lessons from presenting to a Higher Education audience

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:57:10 GMT

Earlier this month, I was invited by CASE Europe to present a session on International Student Recruitment at the Beyond the Hype seminar. The seminar was led by Pamela Agar, Head of Digital Media and Marketing at Imperial College London and Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services at University of Bath.

These are the slides from the session which I presented:

CASE Europe were kind enough to email me the evaluation of my session. I scored a few 'below average' marks, mostly 'average' marks, a batch of 'v. goods', and a handful of 'excellents' for the following criteria: knowledge of subject matter / topic, presentation skills, and ability to respond appropriately to audience.

Specific comments included:

A little too vague on the specifics, makes me wonder how much is theory and how much has actually been put into practice. Some hard stats and examples from any successfully completed campaigns would have been illuminating.
I liked the way he interacted with audience by taking a query from one of the delegates. But I was hoping to see a result e.g. collecting data on recruiting Law Students from China by phone for KCL - would have liked to have seen how Chameleon.net displayed this data as results (or maybe I got the wrong end of the stick?)
Suraj tried to be interactive but again, because international recruitment isn't necessarily the direct responsibility of those in the audience this was difficult. I think maybe there was too much to be covered in a short space of time.
Far too little detail left me thinking this was little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement.

As I intend to keep presenting to higher education professionals, I'm really grateful for the feedback offered by delegates so that I can improve my presentation style over time. It's also helped me realise that I need to prepare more useful content to present with the right level of detail.

In response to the first point asking for hard stats, the thing is that the strategy which I presented is still fairly new. However, I will be in a position to deliver examples from successfully completed campaigns in a few months time as a result of the work we are doing with clients at the moment.

There was of course quite a lot to cover in a short space of time, so my presentation was meant to only give a top-level overview. Although I had mentioned this in the introduction, I will now need to ensure that I clearly frame the session appropriately.

I'm concerned that one delegate was left thinking it was little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement, but as my intention is to keep serving the higher education community better over time, I hope what I deliver and what comes across is less about advertising and more about informing (and entertaining).

Anyone reading this thinking you'd be happy to spend 30 minutes with me to become a better public speaker, I'd certainly value your support. Tweet me @surajshah

International Student Recruitment for HEIs

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:23:14 GMT

How to digitally attract, engage with and recruit international students, while mobilising your existing students to help with language translation, to overcome cultural barriers and give them valuable online marketing work experience.

There are websites, blogs & social networks such as facebook and twitter, all crying out for your prospective students' attention. I'm sure you'll agree that there is simply a lot of noise that they are exposed to. For prospective international students, that noise online is amplified, as you are competing not just with other UK Higher Education Institutions, but also the hundreds of institutions around the world.

Play this slidecast (7 mins 37 seconds) to get an insight into the 3 stage process to run an international Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign at your university that spans across 12 to 24 months. The campaign involves forming a team of International Student Ambassadors, the creation of an optimised online destination, and digital community engagement to attract visitors to your new online destination and raise it's profile in search engines.

The slidecast also touches on a handful of tips to run a successful campaign and gives you a glimpse into what's involed in a 3-month international Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign if you want more rapid results.

International Student Recruitment for HEIs

View more presentations from Suraj Shah.

Seminar on Digital Student Recruitment - an overview

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:36:38 GMT

Chameleon Net held a seminar on Digital Student Recruitment for the higher education sector yesterday, Tuesday 24th February 2009.

Drew Davies, Head of Online Marketing at Chameleon Net spoke about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies for student recruitment.

Helen Aspell, Head of Digital at the Equality and Human Rights Commission and former Head of Digital Marketing at University of Southampton, spoke about User Experience, the heart of an engaging digital presence.

Drew Davies then spoke about Protecting Your Online Brand, where he shared a case study of the work Chameleon Net has done with Barnardo's UK on their opinion-polarising "Break the Cycle" campaign.

> > >

The seminar was well-received with feedback such as "Very useful & thought provoking", "Excellent - one of the best I've been to", "Impressive venue and tasty danish pastries in the break!", "Stimulating & Exciting", "Very well organised & professional", "Engaging & felt very current" and "Very interesting, frightening & enlightening!"

More on Chameleon Net's work in the higher education sector can be found at www.chameleonnet.co.uk/education

Introducing.... Higher Education!

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:21:19 GMT

Highlights of CASE Europe’s excellent “Introduction to Higher Education” one-day seminar giving insights into what’s hot and what’s not in higher education now and in the near future, how to maximise on the various types of donors, reaching out to “Generation Y” alumni, which factors and roles have the greatest influence on student choice when selecting the right university, and overcoming key challenges as a senior marketer at an HEI.

Although Chameleon Net have been working with higher education institutions for over 4 years, I have only started dipping my toes in this sector since August 2008. Fair enough, I understand the web and have an appreciation for all things digital, but as I get deeper and deeper immersed in the higher education sector, it’s evident to me that there are some gaps in my knowledge. It got me thinking: “How do I best serve the Higher Education sector over the coming years?” Hence, I signed up to attend a seminar titled “Introduction to Higher Education” which was run by CASE Europe and led by Peter Reader, Director of Marketing and Communications at University of Portsmouth.

In the 30 years since he attended university as a student, Peter has worked in six UK universities (Sheffield Hallam, Plymouth, Loughborough, Southampton, Bath and Portsmouth) in mostly externally-facing roles such as fundraising, marketing, communications, government and community relations. His professional interests include crisis management, communications and reputation management. These interests coupled with numerous presentations he has given around the world meant that I was keen to hear his views about the sector, including what’s hot and what’s not.

The full-day seminar which took place in London yesterday, Tuesday 12th January 2009, kicked off with welcome and introductions by Peter, and then dived into a session by Peter Reader on Current Issues in Higher Education.

Universities are split into two types – those who select and those who recruit. Selecting universities are those who have the privilege of receiving many more applications for a course than places available. An example of this would be the University of Bristol who have approximately 30 applicants per place on their English degree. Recruiting universities, in comparison, are those who have less applicants than course places available. These type of universities have to actively recruit for new students. Obviously most universities fall somewhere in between these extremes, where some of their courses may be heavily subscribed and they’d need to go through a tougher selection process, and some courses which are undersubscribed and require strong recruitment efforts.

Location of the university is becoming a greater factor in the decision a student makes about the institution they attend. Compared to thirty years ago when there were less universities than there are now, and even though students can travel a longer distance in shorter time, students are still opting to attend a university closer to home than halfway across the country. The rising cost of attending university and the difficulty of getting even part time jobs in this current economic climate has meant that students want to keep their weekend jobs to help pay for their education and want to choose a university which is easy to get back from at the weekends.

There are only three UK universities which are internationally recognised on a wide scale – Oxford, Cambridge and London (!) International students buy into the brand of a UK HEI, so this is why Northumbria University (whose students are 17% international) decided to rebrand from “Northumbria Newcastle” to “Northumbria”.

Data natives are those who were born with a keyboard in their hands while data immigrants are those who have had to learn about the web. As most of the staff at a university are data immigrants they are forced to think like data natives and build student recruitment campaigns from that perspective.

Some of the hot issues for HE in 2009 are the pay award and the recession. According to Peter Reader, if the 8% pay increase is not awarded this year then it may lead to industrial dispute, academic staff may stop marking papers, and students will end up suffering as a result of it. On the flip side, if the 8% pay increase IS awarded, then the money needs to come from somewhere – perhaps job losses are on the horizon for non-academic staff. Friction between academic and non-academic staff may be inevitable, although I sure hope not.

In a recession there are two things that always tend to get taken off the budget in the commercial sector: marketing and training & development. This is bound to have an impact on the number of employees being sent to university to do part-time courses. However, with a severe lack of jobs available, many job-seekers may opt to apply for higher education study to build up their academic credentials.

As for how higher education shapes up in the coming years, be prepared for larger and fewer universities (such as the successful merger of University of Manchester and UMIST), and new entrants into the market such as the University of Phoenix who are attacking the European post grad market by offering distance learning to 90,000 students across the globe.

Following a refreshment and networking break, it was down to David Rider, Director of Development at The Robert Gordon University, to open us up to what universities should use development and alumni relations for.

Philanthropy, popularised by the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Bill and Melinda Gates, is actually considered as all voluntary action for the public good which, based in values, includes giving, asking, joining and serving. People engage in philanthropic activities when their values align with the values of the organisation they are serving (financially or through other means). What this means is that to attract long term donor investment, your university must clearly tell the public what the values of your organisation are, allowing people to engage in philanthropic activities with your university and give towards something they feel strongly about.

Mission statements need to describe why the organisation exists (i.e. fulfilling societal needs) and not just describing its function. This is because as a university you’re looking for funding and support because you want to do something with that to change people’s lives, not just to reach the £100,000,000 goal!

As David Rider put it, “It’s not the bricks and mortar you’re telling people to invest into, it’s what comes OUT of the bricks and mortar.” Therefore, when building your fundraising campaign, consider which of the following causes your campaign addresses: reducing human suffering, enhancing human potential, promoting private equity and justice, providing human fulfilment, supporting experimentation and change, supporting pluralism, and building community.

There are three groups you can receive donations from: Individuals, Trusts and Foundations, and Corporates.

Donations from Individuals: Staff tend to have an association with their own institution, especially if the university is their own alma mater – so start here. In the USA, a letter goes out to parents asking for donations. Alumni including honoraries (a.k.a. Celanthropists / celebrity philanthropists) are a good source of donations so long as the institution’s values align with their own values. Other sources of individual donations are governors, affluent ‘friends’, and philanthrocapitalists. With individuals, you go through a cycle of identifying who they are, informing them about the university and causes, involving them by inviting them to the university, getting them to invest in the cause, and communicating with them how their investment has impacted the cause.

Donations from Corporates: Donations for a specific campaign at a university can often give a company good PR. Other ways companies can pump money into universities, is through workforce scholarships, up skilling (to gain a competence advantage) and through research (to gain a competitive advantage).

As for reaching out to “Generation Y” alumni, David gave a brief overview that Generation Y are under 25s (born 1983 onwards), they tend to have helicopter parents who fly over their heads and swoop in to clear away any challenges their child faces, they are digital natives and technology dependent, and demand immediacy of information and feedback, and from everybody!

Next... lunch: CASE held the seminar at the Etc Venues near Moorgate station in London – a truly exceptional choice of location for one thing if nothing else – their catering facilities! Lunch was absolutely delicious and catered for my vegan palate. I was served stuffed green peppers with some type of potato and a salad on the side. They took almost as good care of me as the chefs at the resort in St. Lucia took care of my wife and I on our honeymoon 3 weeks back – well done!

Back up in the seminar room we were challenged with a post-lunch practical exercise. Facilitated by Peter Reader, the interactive session gave us an opportunity to explore student choice in the ever-changing Higher Education market. In groups of 5 or 6, each group were asked to select one of the fictional universities. Our group chose ‘The (private) University of Windsor’ which had a striking resemblance to (the very real) University of Buckingham which is the only private university in the United Kingdom, was founded in the 1970s, and whose Former Chancellor was Margaret Thatcher.

Each member of the group were assigned a role (prospective student, parent of prospective student, school or college careers adviser, HE course tutor, Vice-Chancellor, or Students Union President), and during the role play were asked to to list why students would be attracted to our institution, why they would not be attracted to the institution, and which roles have the greatest influence on student choice. What became clear was that in all the groups, the choice of higher education institution was less about academic results and was more about location of the university. Also, depending on the type of university it was, the role which had greatest influence over student choice was different. i.e. the VC has greater impact at the private University of Windsor, but less so at the New University of Thames Gateway.

We were then asked to list who we would market the university to and communications channels we would use to market to them. Although all the groups shared a whole variety of communications channels, not a single group mentioned prospectuses. Isn’t it amazing that a university often spends £100,000 each year on producing and distributing prospectuses, and that wasn’t even a comms channel that was considered? It turns out that prospectuses are usually for the benefit of the prospective students’ parents rather than the students themselves.

Following the practical exercise and a short break, Alison Steel, Director of Marketing and Communications at Glasgow Caledonian University delivered a session on challenges faced by senior higher education marketers and how to overcome them.

It turns out that on the whole, university marketers tend not to have much authority with university management, especially the Vice-Chancellor, and it is often very hard to fight institutional inertia. Budgets are set and then the marketing ideas are set around the budgets. However, if you wish to make any progress with academics, the phrase to use is “evidence based” – try it out and see if you get any buy-in from academic staff as a result of it.

So there you have it – all in all a very information-packed day which offered a good foundation for anyone starting a career in higher education.

It’s important to note that Alison Steel, David Rider, and Peter Reader are all very well established in the higher education sector and volunteered their and resources to present at this event. Kudos to all three of you, and CASE Europe, for giving us “freshers” such a good foundation within this complex yet welcoming and caring field.

You’ll be pleased to hear that Helen Aspell, former Head of Digital Marketing at University of Southampton will be gracing our own seminar on Tuesday 24th February 2009. Keep the date in your diary for Digital student recruitment: macro strategy, micro issues which is free to attend for senior higher education marketers and student recruiters.

You can also check out our education portal at www.chameleonnet.co.uk/education for details of our web solutions for HEIs.

Quick Web Wins in Higher Education

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:18:25 GMT

As an Account Manager at Chameleon Net, my primary role is to spend time with Higher Education professionals to establish their digital needs and see where there is a match with the services we offer.

This week at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chameleon Net hosted a digital marketing educational seminar for some of the UK’s most dedicated marketing, communications, student recruitment, alumni relations and web professionals.

It was wonderful to see that what I have spent a significant amount of time on over the last couple of months, from the initial invitation calls and emails, to ongoing conversations and getting final confirmation on attendance, resulted in such a wonderful turnout of individuals dedicated to the work they are doing within the sector.

Would you believe that those who attended came for a two and a half hour seminar in London from as far north as Northumbria and Glasgow, as far south as Portsmouth as far west as Ulster?

The session which ran on the afternoon of Tuesday 25th November focused on Quick Web Wins for HEIs and covered...

Low risk, low cost ways to positively affect your brand by participating in Social Networks and measuring the results
Ways you can tap into the blogging community before blog marketing becomes saturated
How to use User Generated Content (UGC) on your site to create a powerful marketing impact, and avoid the potential pitfalls
The latest methods to protect your reputation online
New technology you can deploy quickly to gain quick wins including rich internet applications and widgets

For the benefit of those who attended I have put together a selection of summary slides from the seminar.

Some comments from our attendees:

“Very useful & interesting. Wasn’t a pushy sales pitch.” – Lindsey Summerhill, eMarketing Officer, Northumbria University

“Well run, engaging content.” – Paul Hough, Manager: Student Web and Communications, University of Ulster

“Very Informative.” – Helen Anderson, Assistant Director Marketing & Communications, University for Creative Arts

“I expected more of a sales pitch – so was very pleasantly surprised – v. useful!” – Sarah Empey, Press & PR Manager, Goldsmiths, University of London

“Good, talked about the issues we have.” – Amanda Hall, Marketing Manager, Brunel University

“A useful insight into things that can be done on the web!” – Krishna Tirbhowan, Marketing Officer, Birkbeck, University of London