Oct 5th 10 Posted by Julie Staggs in Featured Articles, Graduate School Admissions, Research

Start the Recruitment Season with Dashboards to Determine Success

As we pass the long Labor Day weekend and move full force into our school year and recruitment season, I want to talk about an important tool to help keep the year running more smoothly. That tool is the marketing dashboard. With this year’s goals in place, the travel schedule set, on-campus events noted on the calendar, and the summer review and planning done, it is time to determine how you’ll measure your success in your tactics against your goals.

We’ve all heard some form of the statement, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” and we’ve all had the realization at some point, either when presenting to the dean or planning our budget, that we’d like to have some data to support our evaluation of our progress or our request for specific moneys for a campaign.  Those are the moments we would like to easily call up data so that our information is not just intuitive but is factual and predictive of our overall success. To prepare for these moments, now, at the beginning of the year, is the time to design a marketing dashboard that provides ongoing useful data which will direct and support decisions at intervals and not just in annual planning.

We all know there is far more data available to us today than we ever need. Some data is useful at a once-a-year review, some at intervals to monitor progress, and some on an ongoing basis to make tweaks and course corrections in tactics. How do we decide which data points to follow at what intervals? How do we cut through the noise and tune in to the most important data that creates outcomes? That is the key question when it comes to building a dashboard. 

To begin this winnowing process of determining useful and actionable data, you must first have your outcomes or goals determined. I am sure that for most of you this is not a new concept to begin with the end in mind. By knowing what success will look like, or in other words, by having decided goals, you can then determine the data that will provide insight to your progress in reaching your pre-determined outcomes. Think of these various metrics as guideposts along the way that indicate how far you have come, how far you have to go, your speed, your direction, and your timing. A productive, goals-based dashboard could have as little as 5 metrics and typically no more than 15. These data points should align with your goals and be monitored on a cadence that makes sense with your reporting capability. If you are using a CRM, SIS, or web analytics then you can do daily or weekly reports. If you are manually collating the data, then you will want to consider the time to refresh and do a bit broader cadence.

While I cannot suggest a single “best” set of metrics for your dashboard, I can suggest the data points many institutions track.

Let me just take a moment and say that if you don’t have a definitive set of goals, then that is the imperative first step. Basic goal data points consist of:

• Number of applications
• Number of visits
• Number of accepts
• Number of fees
• Number of matriculants
• Minimum/average GPA
• Minimum/average SAT/ACT/GRE/GMAT/LSAT/MCAT
• Diversity goals (male/female/minority/international/military/etc.)

 

You may have additional data points for your goals, but these are the typical foundational ones that are tracked. 

Once you have determined your goals, then you are equipped to design a dashboard, or should I say dashboards. Yes that would be plural, or you may think of it as a tiered approach with the highest level having just the goals and the numbers associated, then the subsequent dashboards or tiers leading to a specific goal.  Let’s dig into this just a bit more with an example.

On your recruitment calendar you have an event.  It is an open house in a major city, hosted by an alumnus at his office. You want this to be a success, so you determine what that “success” would look like in numbers. The goal for the event is of course to have attendees, then for them to apply, so this event is tied to the goal of “number of applications.” You set an attendance goal and an application goal, and then you begin to market. As you gather your list of prospects for the event, you pull from your current database (CRM). You may also decide to solicit names from area alumni, current students, or other contacts. As you invite and inform the prospects of the event, you want to track this correspondence in your CRM. At the event is a good time to gather a bit more detail about the prospective student with a card to determine interests. This information is invaluable in a more customized communication with this prospect.  Updating the CRM with the additional information on the attendees and the fact that they were in attendance then allows you to track their progress through the funnel. You may then pull a report at intervals on all those who attended the event and see if they have applied. 

While this may sound like common sense and very easy to do, it is often overlooked. During the season it is very busy in recruiting for events, executing events, and following up on events. Taking just a small bit of time at the beginning of the event plan to determine how to collect data on the event and its participants will help you determine its success, your return on investment, and whether the event should be repeated.

Remember, as you start the season, take the time to know your goals and coordinate all tactics, whether an event, fair, mailing, or a campaign to a specific goal, and then put in place the data points that will allow you to evaluate success and ROI.

A great resource on looking at marketing metrics is the new edition of  Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, and David J. Reibstein, Wharton Press.

Photo by dashboardsinsight.com