Dr. Courtney Skiles, the director of recruiting and admissions at Trinity Valley Community College, shares an unexpected tactic her team uses to engage students and increase college applications: dressing down. 

By wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and cool shoes, TVCC recruiters aim to be relatable and break down barriers between college representatives and high school students. This tactic has resulted in one in five students applying to their college after a visit. 

Courtney emphasizes the importance of building rapport and making students feel comfortable by sharing personal stories and being relatable. Overall, her mindset and leadership has led to an 8% increase in enrollment and has challenged the traditional perception of college as a distant and unattainable goal.

Guest Name: Courtney Skiles, Director of Recruiting and Admissions at Trinity Valley Community College

Guest Social Handles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyskiles56/

Guest Bio: Courtney Skiles is the Director of Recruiting and Admissions at Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, TX. She found her passion for higher ed as a student at TVCC in 2016 and has relentlessly pursued her higher ed career and education ever since. She is a proud gen-z leader that specializes in student engagement, creative problem solving, and organizational change. She recently earned her Doctor of Education in higher education leadership from Maryville University and aims to utilize her career to continuously promote higher education to underserved populations.

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this engaging episode of Talking Tactics, Dayana Kibilds delves into a unique marketing tactic with Dave Tyler, highlighting RIT's innovative use of GIFs on Giphy to drive traffic to their admissions page. Dave shares how a simple yet unexpected approach turned GIFs into a powerful tool for awareness and conversion, resulting in over 1,000,000 GIF view per week and  122 people visiting RIT's admissions page from Giphy in the last 6 months.

Check out RIT’s Giphy page: https://giphy.com/rit_tigers

Guest Name: Dave Tyler, Social Media Director at Rochester Institute of Technology

Guest Social:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-tyler-30974a2/

Guest Bio: Dave has been working in higher education for 15 years. At RIT, he directs social content and strategy across the University’s platforms. Before coming to RIT, he worked in a similar role for SUNY Brockport. He’s also worked in public relations and as a newspaper reporter, and he still considers himself a recovering journalist.

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you’re looking at your paid media campaign performance and have a feeling something’s not quite right… trust your gut. That’s Jeff Holeman’s advice, and the same instinct he followed for UF’s Warrington College of Business paid media efforts. After asking questions and working closely with his vendor and platform partners, he uncovered using first-party data and in-platform lead forms on LinkedIn could make a big difference. And it did: After using first-party data to target his audiences and implementing in-platform forms, Jeff saw 196% increase in leads, double the clicks/engagement, and a drastic 60% reduction in cost. The best part? You can do this too!

Guest Name: Jeff Holeman, UF Warrington College of Business

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsholeman/

Guest Bio: Jeff Holeman leads marketing at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, where his focus is strengthening the brand among the college’s 7,000 students and 90,000 alumni, while also building an enrollment pipeline for the college’s portfolio of graduate and undergraduate programs. Jeff has previously led marketing, communications or enrollment at the University of California, Berkeley, Arizona State University, Keene State College, and the University of Rochester, as well as several healthcare systems serving Arizona, Colorado, California, Nevada, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Jeff has more than 25 years of experience in marketing and branding and is focused on the impact that artificial intelligence or the simplest of best practices can have in driving marketing results.  

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this Bonus announcement, join Mallory, Chief Strategist of Enrollify, as she introduces the newly relaunched Enrollify.org. This episode highlights the fresh features and content now available on the site, emphasizing Enrollify’s commitment to revolutionizing higher education. Learn about the variety of resources—from podcasts to ourses to webinars—that can help professionals make impactful changes in their careers and institutions.

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cade was stumped. After doing all the traditional work to get applications in, he saw that applicants to the First Class Dental Assisting School of Nashville were not converting. After doing some research, he realized speed was key. When he tried an immediate and personalized conversation with one student, they became the new dental school’s very first enrollee. But how to do it at scale? In this episode Cade shares his ingenuity, connecting his CRM to ChatGPT via Zapier, training his GPT as an admission counselor for his school, and seeing the school’s incoming class go from zero to full.

Cade is the founder of Enroll Boost AI (enrollboostai.com). He packaged up this tactic in a way that can help your school, too.

Guest Name: Cade Scott, founder of Enroll Boost AI, Director of Marketing & Enrollment for First Class Dental Assisting School of Nashville

Guest Social Handles:  
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cade-scott-1535362a2/
https://enrollboostai.com/

Guest Bio: Cade is the founder of Enroll Boost AI, working as Director of Marketing & Enrollment with First Class Dental Assisting School of Nashville, and comes to higher ed with over a decade of expertise in storytelling and marketing.

- - - -

Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is about this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Ph0-mO9Bc. Go watch it!

A new program has launched — how do we make people aware of it? We make a video, of course! But, not all videos are created equal. In this episode, Emanuel Díaz from IE University will share how a team at the university (shoutout to Sofía, Lucia, and Elena) created a video to boost enrollment in a marketing program that ended up being a finalist for the Cannes Corporate Media and TV Awards, used by TikTok and LinkedIn Corporate as a great example of content, and received 20% more views than other program videos. 

The video was produced with a low budget and featured Andrew McCarthy, an academic director, taking viewers through the experience of working in the MarCom world — in a fast-paced, funny way. The team faced challenges with budget constraints but overcame them by utilizing in-house talent and resources. The video set a precedent for adding soul to video content, and opened the doors for creativity for all productions moving forward.

Guest Name: Emanuel Díaz

Guest Bio: Emanuel lives for a good story to weave, so he describes himself as a storytelling lover and aficionado. His passion for content started in the banking industry in his native Puerto Rico, where he was leading copy and digital marketing for the institution. The challenge of making a bank soulful caught him.

A Fulbright grant took him to Madrid to study at IE, where he stayed as the Associate Director of Alumni Communications. He is now Head of Content Marketing where he brings to life his passion for creativity, emotional content, and weaving stories that showcase the beauty of working in the educational sector. He is also a proud collaborator in LGBTQ+ initiatives and does improv theater in his free time.

Guest Social Handles:  LinkedIn

And social links for the video co-creators too:
Sofía Quetglas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofiaquetglas/
Lucia Malmierca Wainstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-malmierca-wainstein
Elena Böhm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-b%C3%B6hm-20729026/

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Picture a world where the standard social media engagement rates for educational institutions are 3.26% on Instagram, 1.36% on Facebook, and 0.51% on TikTok, as outlined in Hubspot’s December 2023 report. Now, imagine Duquesne University smashing these benchmarks with a remarkable 11% engagement rate, far surpassing what's typical for its size. This exceptional performance is thanks to Ian Hurley, Director of Social Media, who utilized a straightforward but effective tactic: listening and responding. By emphasizing relationship-building and redefining their voice, Duquesne University set a new standard for university engagement that carries relationships started online all the way to campus. Ian Hurley proves that just an hour a day can have significant community-building results. 

Guest Name: Ian Hurley

Guest Social Handles:  
https://twitter.com/ianphurley
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianhurley/

Guest Bio: Ian Hurley is the Director of Social Media at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa. He has over 20 years of experience in the marketing and communications field, working for Northeastern University, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Health Organization and CQ Roll Call, among others. He holds a B.A. from West Virginia University and an M.A. from American University.
At Duquesne, Ian works to align the social and brand strategy among campus partners and help to advance the Division of Marketing and Communications and University strategic goals.  

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Imagine requesting information for a master’s program and being asked about your favorite movie… that’s what Lydia Fine did at the University of Iowa Tippie School of Business! As the Senior Marketing Technology Specialist, Lydia faced a challenge: form submissions were okay on desktop but not quite up to par on mobile. Taking matters into her own hands during the transition to Drupal 9, she took advantage of the in-page, multi-page option and revamped the request-for-information forms to be more engaging. Lydia's clever idea? Making the first question effortless to answer, with a twist of fun. This approach has been a game-changer, skyrocketing their MBA program RFI's conversion rates by 192% and an extraordinary 595% on mobile.

Check out this very effective (and fun!) form on the Tippie College of Business website: https://tippie.uiowa.edu/masters-finance

Guest Name: Lydia Fine

Guest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydiafine/

Guest Bio: Lydia is a 14-year higher education veteran with a focus in marketing technology, lead generation, web conversion tracking, CRM, integrations, data analytics, and all the ways that technology and marketing intersect. She’s currently the Senior Marketing Technology Specialist at the University of Iowa Tippie School of Business and she has a BBA in Marketing and an MBA, both from the University of Iowa. Lydia runs a photography business and chases her two kids around in her free time, and wishes that Reese's Eggs were on the shelves all year long.

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This special cross-over episode features clips from Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO, Talking Tactics, and The Application with Allison Turcio. These discussions highlight the significance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education marketing. Through these carefully selected clips from several podcasts within The Enrollify Network, this episode illuminates the multifaceted approach needed to authentically represent and engage a diverse student body.

Key takeaways include:

• The Importance of Diverse Leadership and Marketing: An engaging story from Jaime Hunt and Kevin Tyler reveals the impact of having openly gay and black leaders in higher education. This segment underscores the pivotal role diverse leadership plays in shaping inclusive marketing strategies and fostering an environment where all students feel represented.
• Amplifying Voices through Authentic Stories: Dayana Kibilds and Mikki Collins delve into how the University of Chichester's podcast initiative succeeded in significantly boosting social media engagement by sharing real, unfiltered stories from minority and underrepresented groups. This discussion highlights the power of authentic narratives in enhancing a university's reach and its commitment to DEI.
• Accessibility as a DEI Pillar in Digital Marketing: The conversation between Allison Tucio and Raman Bhalla explores the often-overlooked aspect of DEI - web accessibility. It offers practical insights into how a systematic approach to making digital content accessible can serve as a form of advocacy for inclusivity, demonstrating the crucial role marketers play in ensuring all students have equal access to information.

Listen to the Full Episodes Featured:

Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO - Episode 42: Authentic Allyship: Crafting Campaigns That Support LGBTQIA+ Students Year-Round

Talking Tactics - Episode 17: Walk The Walk On DEI And Amplify Reach With Raw Authentic Stories

The Application - Episode 34: Roadmap To Web Accessibility Success For Higher Ed Marketers

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Getting a mention on social media is only half the win. Real engagement happens when we respond. This was Sabreen’s philosophy going into this shift in mentality for Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. As the sole social media manager for the university, she decided to devote at least as much time to social listening (and responding, and reposting) as content creation. The results have been incredible for RFU: In under one year, their mentions have gone from 600 to 7,200 (that’s over 1,000% increase), and the number of people engaging on social (aka unique authors) from 170 to 1,600. Want to reach more people on social? Rebalance your listening to posting ratio and get these astonishing results.

Guest Name: Sabreen Alfadel

Guest Social:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabreen-alfadel/

Guest Bio: Sabreen Alfadel is the Digital Communications Specialist with the Division of Marketing and Brand Management at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, where she’s responsible for establishing and executing a strategy for the university’s social media channels. She specializes in content development for social media efforts and initiatives, actively engages in online conversations with prospective students, enjoys building connections around campus, and takes pride in revealing the university’s tight-knit community across social platforms. In Sabreen’s free time, she likes to attend concerts, cook, travel and discover new restaurants. 

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Connect With Our Host:
Safaniya Stevenson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safaniyastevenson/ 

About The Enrollify Podcast Network:
Talking Tactics is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too! 

Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.