The National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP) 25th Annual Conference just finished up last week in Austin, Texas. And after some down-home Texas BBQ, armadillo races, and countless inspiring sessions, the over 900 attendees left energized and brimming with new ideas. The marketing and recruitment track was a popular one at this year’s conference, with many of the standing-room-only sessions focusing on new ways to connect with potential and current students through digital media and ways to develop more personalized recruitment strategies. Our CUnet folks, along with representatives from our sister company Peterson’s, met with numerous enrollment managers, marketers, and admissions professionals and one thing was apparent: schools are all looking for ways to do things differently. In many cases, they’re looking to drive inspiration from the marketing techniques and tactics employed by schools in the for-profit sector – an area where we have lots to talk about!

If you’re looking for presentations and recaps from the conference, head to the NAGAP conference website. They’re not up yet, but we’re told they should be soon!

And now, we thought we’d share some quotes from the conference, via Twitter (#NAGAP):

MarcusHanscom

Sean Michael Green: “Go home and kick some traditional undergraduate ass.” #NAGAP #awesome

Paredes: The most significant innovation in #highered is happening from the for-profits like Devry and Phoenix.#NAGAP

brandonlemley

“There are very few people who do research when they are doing well…” @JulieStaggs #Txgap #NAGAP

DoctorJeremiah

This workshop is also a webinar being broadcasted back on the presenters’ campus…a webinar within a workshop. Genius!! #NAGAP

Dr. Paredes says, “The current model of public higher education cannot be sustained.”#NAGAP

DrEducationBlog

Jaschik: pressure on grad schools to create new programs with “cash” potential #nagap @IHEadmissions@insidehighered

EMjennielle

“It’s time to reform #highered. A good place to start is in graduate education” Raymund Paredes #NAGAP #EMchat

“almost 50% of students in #highered start in#comm_college” -Raymund Paredes

Well, faithful readers, it’s been a full week since LeadsCon officially started and we’re just now starting to recover. The booth is back in transit, we’ve bid adieu to the beautiful Mirage Hotel & Casino, and we’re now reflecting on what turned out to be an excellent event. We’ve compiled some of our own highlights, along with a list of links to some of the great content that came out of LeadsCon this year.

But first, fancy LeadsCon statistics!

• Over 2,500 people attended LeadsCon this year!
• CUnet’s two presentations drew a combined audience of about 200 participants generating more than eight days worth of collective eyeball time.
• In total, we tweeted the official CUnet Twitter account tweeted about 50 times during the show, inspiring over 100 total engagements and reaching a potential audience of more than 25,000 people. And that doesn’t include the bevy of tweets produced by staff actually at the convention.
• With a booth staffed by six people for about 12 hours, the CUnet team collectively burned about 16,000 calories would be 4.6 pounds lighter, if not for Stack Restaurants Tomahawk steaks covered in giant blobs of butter.

CUnet Highlights

Some of Our Favorite Posts About LeadsCon

• Mobile Marketing for the CPL buyer (whitepaper- DoublePositive)
• BestOnlineUniversities recap
• Mobile Marketing and Closing Leads in the Post-PC Era
• Guide to Generating Leads with Display Advertising (whitepaper)
• Google+ and SEO
• Understanding the future of media session recap
• Creating the next big thing session recap
• The Ikea effect- Michael Norton
• Twitter handles of LeadsCon speakers
• Top 10 CPA networks announced
• RingDNA mobile marketing app press release
• Datamark press release
• VigLink recap
• Twilio blog post
• TRUSTe blog post
• AdRants blog post
• Making money with affiliate marketing infographic

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

Affiliate Summit West kicked off again on Sunday, and the CUnet team is busy meeting with current and future affiliates (and giving out pens).  Located at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, this is the final day of the summit, which provides educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fosters a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers. If you’re still milling around the halls, come stop by booth 125 and we’ll give you a warm welcome.

	The CUnet Staches Team
Jeff Herz Director of Internal Operations	Ray Philip Senior SEO Strategist	Ben Counter Director of Telephony Products
Gianfranco Origliato Business/Technical Analyst for Peterson’s Interactive	Jay Donaldson Senior Director of Application Development	Tabitha Pierce Senior Affiliate Manager

Well, it’s been an exciting month here at CUnet. Beyond our fabulously amazing team of performance marketing specialists, CUnet also secretly harbored a team of manly, hirsute individuals that opted to support Movember, a month-long charity event where men (and some women) grow mustaches to help raise funds for men’s health education and research. In order to help out the CUnet Staches team, our employees engaged in increasingly outrageous behavior to help drive the fundraising goals, including eating a head of lettuce in less than 15 minutes and ingesting a ghost pepper, which was the hottest pepper in the world in 2007 according to the Guinness Book of World Records. We also live streamed some of these events from the office so that our clients could watch.

Ultimately, the CUnet Staches team raised over $4,300 for charity and placed in the top 80 Movember teams with under 10 members.

(more…)

Attendees get ready to tee off during CUnet’s inaugural Premiere Vendor Summit. Second Row: Jon Delrusso, left, Ben Counter, Brad Gibbs (CGO – Plattform), Patrick Mckenna (CEO – DMI Partners), Jerry Slavonia (CEO – CampusExplorer), Matt McLaughlin, Brian Eberman (CEO – Avenue 100), Greg O’Brien (CEO – CollegeBound). Front Row: Dante Aubian (Sr Account Exec – CollegeBound), left, Greg Loeffelholz (Managing Director – CUnet), Brian Keigley (SVP – CampusExplorer), Doug Brown (CEO – All Star Directories), Rob Carbonaro (SVP- Avenue 100), Anthony Rolon (President  – Americolleges)

The weather’s turning colder, the leaves are turning color, and CUnet has officially wrapped up another exciting summer season. The warm weather always brings good opportunities to reconnect with partners and customers – we thought we’d share some of our favorite highlights here.

CUnet Vendor Summit
This year, we kicked off with our inaugural Premiere Vendor Summit, a free event that brought together our clients and vendors for two days of discussion about news and trends within the online education space, the impact of government regulations on vendor partnerships, and one-on-one networking opportunities.

“It was an opportunity to engage our vendors in a discussion about how to thrive under the new government regulations.,” said Greg Loeffelholz, managing director of Inquiry Generation at CUnet. “We wanted to allow our top vendors to interact directly with executives from our agency schools to build a better understanding of operational change.”

Oh. And we also managed to squeeze in some golf at the lovely Paramus Golf & Country Club and take in a Mets game at Citi Field.

The event was a rousing success. According to Greg O’Brien, CEO of CollegeBound:

“The CUnet Vendor Summit was a very focused, balanced forum for higher education marketing leader. It provided a unique opportunity for leading organizations to share opinions, voice concerns, and discuss changes in the industry. If this becomes an annual event, I certainly look forward to next year.”

(more…)

Gen. Colin Powell came across as warm, funny and engaging during his talk today at the close of APSCU’s 2011 Annual Convention & Expo.

Titled “Higher Education and the American Dream,” the speech ranged from Powell’s life to his thoughts on the for-profit education industry, and it ended with a standing ovation for the former Secretary of State.

“Our society has such a need for education and no field has more to help than career and private sector education,” said Powell. During the talk, he urged the industry to continue fighting for regulatory reforms. “Make the case,” said Powell. “The purpose of private sector education is to help American people strive for a brighter future.”

Powell also pointed out that he himself was a product of what education can make you. His parents were poor, uneducated Jamaicans that came here to start a better life. Education enabled Powell to “change the history of my family,” he said.

Proprietary education is an increasingly important part of the American Dream largely because it allows immigrants a route up. The United States is an inspiration for the world, said Powell. Immigration is the lifeblood of the American system. Other countries like Japan do not integrate immigrants well- The United States.