Across all industries, marketing leaders are feeling the strain of growing expectations coupled with declining levels of marketing investment.
While paid media budgets are on the upswing, reductions in spending on MarTech, salaries and vendor support are stretching teams to the brink.
In higher education, changes in marketing investments can vary significantly based on institution size and type, but marketing leaders consistently feel under-resourced across the board.
Just one in four higher ed CMOs feel their institution’s investment in marketing is appropriate given the expectations of the marketing department, according to the Higher Ed CMO Study 2024 by SimpsonScarborough.
Along with the pressure of big goals and limited resources, enrollment and marketing leaders feel a higher degree of scrutiny than ever before. They face constant questions like:
- What is the impact of various marketing tactics, both in the funnel and on the budget?
- What is the return campus leaders can expect from incremental investments?
- What investment is required to guarantee that enrollment goals will be met?
Success in this environment requires a real-time — and full-funnel — understanding of marketing performance and ROI. Measurement and evaluation are crucial parts of the marketing strategy and planning process but are often overlooked.
An ongoing framework of measurement facilitates data-driven decision making and helps recruitment marketing teams measure both the quantity and quality of prospective student leads. It shows them the best strategies to nurture the students through the funnel and focuses resources on the strategies that generate the best results, which lets them continually refine recruitment strategies.
But gaining a clear view of enrollment marketing ROI is easier said than done. Many institutions are adopting new marketing technology to manage the complexity of marketing measurement through:
- CRM integrations that unify data and offer a complete picture of student engagement across the recruitment lifecycle.
- Campaign dashboards and real-time metrics that provide key insights for optimizing campaigns.
- Scoring and predictive models that feed student behavioral data into intelligent communication engines to capture and nurture leads.
By integrating marketing automation technologies like Capture Higher Ed’s ENGAGE, colleges and universities can monitor ROI, improve marketing outcomes, and create efficiencies to extend their capacity.
Taken from the new Capture Higher Ed white paper, “The New Rules of Enrollment Marketing: The biggest trends facing higher education enrollment and marketing leaders — and what you can do about them”
