Hello, faithful readers! We’re coming to you live on the last day of LeadsCon from the beautiful Mirage Hotel & Casino (site of the “America’s Best Bagger” national grocery bagging competition this month). For anyone interested, Las Vegas hosts more than 18,000 conventions each day. Check out the bottom of this post for a list of other conventions you may want to crash once LeadsCon is done.

Yesterday was an exciting day at booth 113 on the LeadsCon floor! We started off with an exciting keynote by Michael Norton, the Marvin Bower Fellow and an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Norton touted the idea that building perceived value hinges upon getting consumers involved in the process and transparency into the production process is a great way of doing that. After all, there’s a significant discrepancy between what a product creator thinks something is worth compared to what a product consumer thinks something is worth.

We also got confirmation that our bright baby blue shirts make a powerful statement, we tried on some different hats, and, in general had an awesome time.

Today is shaping up to be even better. First, if you haven’t stopped by booth 113 and helped us celebrate the one million inquiries that are passing through our Sparkroom inquiry management software, you should. We think it’s kind of a big deal (basically, one quarter of all education-related inquiries each month are now being processed through us) and one lucky school stands to win $1,000 in CUnet services for it – this could be anything from mobile search advertising to social media management to SEO. So come on down and help us celebrate.

Two of our most fabulous employees will also be presenting a session tailored to the higher education industry later on today. At 3 p.m. in the Events Center Room C3, Steve Smith, Managing Director of Product Management, and Jeff Herz, Director of Internal Operations (the member of the Five CUnet Jeffs that grew the bestest moustache for Movember), will be presenting the results of our Higher Education Compliance Survey. For anyone who can’t attend the conference, we’ll also be posting a copy of the presentation later today.

Also, don’t forget that we’re giving away free marketing and compliance audits to schools at our booth. If you interested in getting an assessment of how you’re doing, holler at us.

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CUnet’s booth is built, the giveaways are ready, the ballot box is in place and we’re primed for the show to start. Pull the trigger on this day already, LeadsCon! The anticipation is killing us! With just hours until the exhibit hall opens, the team at CUnet is ready to take their stations at booth 113 for the first day of LeadsCon!

This year, we’re  proud to announce that we recently surpassed a major milestone, processing over one million inquiries each month through our Sparkroom technology platform.  To help get everyone else in the celebratory mood, we are giving away $1,000 in CUnet services to one lucky school. Whether you are looking for help with your SEO, Social Media, or you’re looking to expand into Mobile, this could be the perfect way to get started. Don’t forget to stop by booth 113 to enter your school to win.

If you missed our very own Steve Smith reviewing “KPI’s You Can’t Live Without” yesterday at the Buyers-only sessions, you can access his full presentation here.  Steve will also be at the booth if you’re interested in learning more about how your school can benefit from looking at your data in a whole new way.

We’ve got a lot more to share throughout the the show – from our 2012 Compliance Report to free offers for compliance and marketing audits. If you’re at the show (and even if you’re not), don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/Cunetco for the latest updates.

Greetings, fellow online marketers. We’re coming to you live from Leadscon at Las Vegas’ Mirage Casino, the most expensive hotel-casino ever built (due in part to the use of real gold dust in tinting the hotel’s gold windows).

This year, the CUnet crew is stationed at booth 113 and we’re celebrating quite a few things this year. Back in January, we hit the milestone of processing 1,000,000 inquiries each month, which is pretty amazing when you consider the fact that an estimated 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 education inquiries are generated across the entire industry. To get everyone in the celebration mood, we’re giving away $1,000 in CUnet services to one lucky winner, to announced after the convention.

We’re also offering free compliance and marketing services audits to eligible schools that stop by the booth. So, whether you’re interested in seeing how well you comply with federal guidelines or if you’re interested in getting an assessment of your social, SEO or PPC campaigns, drop by the booth and say hello to our lovely CUnet representatives for more information.

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In July 2011, the Department of Education passed a series of new regulations targeting for-profit schools which have a significant impact on recruitment. These regulations created the need for agencies like CUnet to place a greater focus on compliance, and help schools become more transparent for prospective students. At that time, CUnet committed itself to becoming a leader in the quickly-evolving area of compliance through significant investments in:

People: Dedicated internal team of compliance specialists

CUnet responded to this challenge by forming the Marketing Operations Quality Control (MOQC, pronounced: MOXIE| MOK-see|) team in Lincoln, NE and hiring 13 associates to focus exclusively on creating and implementing our compliance practice. We also dedicated a team of developers from our Toronto, ON office to focus on extending Sparkroom, our industry-leading platform, to track our client’s affiliate networks and ensure compliance guidelines are being met.

The MOQC team is made up of Analysts and Professionals who are responsible for manually reviewing websites, looking for issues, and creating compliance violations; marking them as major or minor based upon client standards. The MOQC team also proactively identifies and monitors the internet for fraudulent or “blackhat” activity in order to attack compliance violations on all fronts for our client base.

Processes: Clearly defined set of operational processes to monitor, enforce, and address misrepresentation

CUnet’s MOQC team manages the following  processes :

   -    Creating & managing compliance guidelines

   -    Conducting automated monitoring

   -    Performing analyst reviews

   -    Tracking & communicating violation alerts

   -    Providing in-depth reporting

   -    Performing periodic audits

Technology: Significant investments in technology solutions, backed by our industry-leading Sparkroom platform

The Sparkroom Monitor software supports the compliance team by storing URL information for monitoring, crawling the URLs daily, and comparing URLs against previous records. When Sparkroom Monitor detects changes within the URLs, it takes an image snapshot for analysis. The system also records when manual audits are performed by the MOQC team and scores all media objects (URLS) to help the MOQC team quickly prioritize their tasks; flagging client designated banned terms, and automatically tracks the differences in pages that occur over time.

With February 14th being the “official day” to share your feelings with the ones you care about – with cards and roses and chocolates and more – well, with all that going on, a few of us here at the CUnet office started to “feel the love” ourselves.

What better way to share with the world – and each other – how much we love working at CUnet, than with a virtual valentine. Anyway you say it – French, Spanish, Cantonese, Hindi, German, Jamaican, Russian or English – there’s clearly a lot of reasons to be happy that you work here at CUnet. 

A huge thanks goes out to Jeff Berg and Pooja Shah for making this happen.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at CUnet!

Faster, Smaller, and Integrated – Now What?

As we continue our series of predictions posts, we take a look at the quickly changing world of mobile devices, and share some thoughts on some ways that higher education marketers can respond to these changes.

1. 2012 – The Year When Mobile Smart Phones Reach 50% Of The Market

Back in March, 2010, Nielsen projected that the U.S. cell phone smart phone market would finally reach 50% of the total handset market by Q3 of 2011.As it turns out, they were a little premature in their estimates – the majority of Americans still have feature phones (according to comScore’s latest survey, which puts smart phones at 38%). However, with smart phone prices down, tier 2 carrier smart phone inclusion, and increased competition, we can expect to pass that milestone in 2012. With almost half the population accessing the internet on their mobile devices – from social media to shopping sites and more –we can expect the marketing pendulum to begin the swing in favor of “mobile first, desktop second.”

2. The Rise of the Tablets To Main-Stream

The increased competition in the tablet market will drive prices down and increase sales as new models come out allowing the devices to be more main stream. More Americans who use their PC for simple activities like e-commerce, news, web, email, will buy tablets when they want to replace their PC.

So what does all this mean for higher ed marketers? Schools can no longer afford to build and test their websites purely with a desktop user in mind. Sites that are optimized for mobile (including touch screens) will offer a better user experience and in turn, drive better results.

3.  Social Sites and Apps will Continue to Dominate Mobile Traffic

All analytics and indicators show the strong dominance of social sites and social games. This theme will continue throughout 2012, and we’ll see more and more marketers exploring ways to leverage that trend to increase brand awareness. In particular, we expect more attention on Android and iPhone GEO Social apps with creative uses of targeting them.. This recent Nielsen Study reinforces this prediction.

4. RIM Losing Market Share

Research in Motion, the manufacturer of Blackberry, is in serious trouble. With sales already on the decline and a series of network issues in the recent past, they will continue to lose marketshare going into 2012, with the other 3 major players (Google, Apple, and Microsoft) benefiting.

While it’s still possible that RIM could find it’s way back by introducing an advanced touch OS with features and benefits equal to – or better than – Android and iOS operating systems, this doesn’t appear likely at this point. Having said that, marketers should keep focusing on optimizing their mobile presence for all handset types in the market with mobile web design best practices in mind.

5. The Beginning of the Start for Contactless Payments adoption via NFC & Virtual Wallets to Replace Credit Cards

This trend is unlikely to directly impact higher ed recruitment any time soon; however, our list of mobile predictions would be incomplete without it.

Many new smart phones that are coming out now and the rumored new iPhone5 to come will probably have NFC. Allowing users with these handsets to store credit card information in a virtual wallet on the phone and start using the phones at terminals that accepts them like the MasterCard PayPass for quick and easy checkouts.  One example is the Google Virtual Wallet.

6. The Rise of Smart Phone-Connected Gadgets

Finally, if you are up to date with the latest trends and hip gadgets craze, you may have noticed new gadgets in your electronics store that take advantage of the smart phone’s connectivity features to enhance everyday life activities. Today, smart phones enable everything from listening to music through Bluetooth connected stereo phones to tracking fitness and health through app-supported devices like the UP  bracelet or the Fitbit activity and sleep trackers. Expect more of those life-enhancing gadgets to show up and to satisfy our technology-driven lives.

While this is another trend that doesn’t have immediate/obvious ramifications for higher ed marketers, it is worth watching how this evolves. As more companies come up with ways to take advantage of smart phone connectivity, marketers are bound to follow.

LeadsCon Las Vegas 2012 at the Mirage Hotel & Casino is approaching fast, and that means that the early registration pricing is only available for a couple more days. At CUnet, we’re offering a further discount to customers and partners that provides $400 off the on-site pricing – but the discount is only available for another 3 days*.  If you haven’t registered yet, now is the time! (discount is only available using the link provided here)

The LeadsCon show, which runs from February 28-29, is the leading conference for school marketing teams to learn about new and emerging inquiry generation techniques while networking with fellow marketing and admissions professionals. Here at CUnet, we are super excited that we’re not only exhibiting this year, but also have team members participating in two speaking sessions, including one at the Buyer’s Only Summit.

If you’re planning to attend, be sure to stop by and visit us at booth #113, an don’t forget to check out the speaking sessions (details below).

Key Performance Indicators To Monitor When Buying Inquiries

Presenter: Steve Smith, Managing Director, Product Management
Date/Time: Lead Buyer’s Summit, Monday, February 27 / 1:30pm – 2:00pm
Location:  Events Center C

Higher Ed Compliance Survey Results: What Are Schools Really Doing?

Presenter: Steve Smith, Managing Director, Product Management
                     Jeff Herz, Director, Operations & Compliance
Date/Time: Wednesday, February 29/3:00pm – 3:45pm
Location:  Events Center – Room C3

*Discount rate good on new registrations only. Credits or refunds cannot be issued on previous registrations.  Discount rate good through February 10, 2012, prevailing rate applies after that.

As we continue our series of 2012 predictions for higher education marketers, one overarching trend stood out that we thought deserved a deeper dive. Across all industries, the availability of data has been growing exponentially over the past few years. For marketers, this unprecedented access to real-time data has the potential to have startling a startling impact by allowing educational institutions to make quick, well-informed business decisions. At CUnet, we have a team of people dedicated solely to analyzing and reporting on that data for our clients; they pulled together the key “data-driven opportunities” that we see making the biggest impact for our clients in the coming year.

Refining of inquiry scoring strategies

Inquiry scoring is a useful tool, but has fallen off the radar for some schools over the past year for various reasons. I believe that 2012 will see a renewed push toward using scoring especially in evaluating marketing spends. In the past, scoring has been mainly used to differentiate how a school connects with potential students. Moving forward, more emphasis will be placed on using scores for tiered pricing structures as opposed to other strategies.

Increased focus on demographic and segmentation information

What is a great way to target your potential students? How about data points that typically aren’t asked for on the average inquiry form. Where do these potential students live and work and what do they do in their spare time? Do they like HBO or Showtime? This type of information has become the norm for a number of industries and the higher education space is certainly no exception. Schools want to know how to reach their target markets, and this type of information is a gigantic step in attracting new students. Combining this with tiered pricing through inquiry scoring will also be of greater interest in 2012.

Conversion metrics evolve

Applications and starts are certainly still important, but ultimately student retention (graduating and finding a rewarding career) will be the primary goal. This trend gained significant momentum in 2011 and will escalate in the coming year. Student retention helps to ensure a given school’s dedication to education, building strong brands, and adding qualified and successful individuals to the work force. Schools will spend more time and effort analyzing the factors that impact retention, and use that data to help refine recruitment efforts.

Predicting program trends

With more and more data available, schools will look for ways to identify program trends as before they take shape, so they can quickly respond by adjusting program offerings. For example, the IT field has grown in popularity in the for-profit space significantly in the past few years, and we expect this trend to continue. Even as budgets become more refined as 2011 progressed, interest in IT programs has not only held steady but grown as an overall percentage of total inquiries. 2012 will see even more emphasis placed on IT specific program offerings and will continue to generate even more interest in the coming year.

Source: CUnet seasonality and data findings for 2010 and 2011