Jessica Stutt, Integrated Marketing Manager at UNB, is one of the 12 presenters of the 2018 Higher Ed Analytics Conference.
In this 3-question interview, Jessica tells us about what’s coming in 2018, the challenges of embracing analytics in higher ed and the best ways to keep learning about data and measurement for higher ed marketers..
1) What’s coming for higher ed analytics and measurement in 2018?
From my perspective, tool-wise, Google Analytics continues to make improvements both from a user interface perspective and a functionality perspective. As more people in higher ed continue to focus on web analytics, I think this will make it an even *more* popular tool and enable better discussion and sharing of best practices within the higher ed community. Our data efforts continue to be focused on telling stories with data and using data to inform our decision-making. We execute marketing initiatives in support of a wide variety of stakeholders at our institution. Having clearly defined objectives and KPIs and knowing where and how to collect the data and then how to share that data is our focus. We continue to work on how to best convey our learnings and implement processes to apply those learnings to a wide variety of situations so that the data isn’t siloed or inaccessible.
2) What’s preventing higher education from embracing data and analytics more widely for digital marketing?
Making time for data collection, interpretation and reporting is hard. (I even wrote a blog post on it!). Marketing budgets in higher ed are usually tight and people need to wear many hats. It’s just not that common yet that one of those hats involves an analyst or data role. I think that’s changing as the focus shifts, but higher ed tends to be a bit behind the curve. Also, data can seem intimidating and time-consuming (I’d argue it isn’t!). The more we empower all higher ed marketers to be able to read and report on quantitative metrics associated with their efforts, the more that the gut decision-making will be replaced with informed approaches.
3) What are the best ways to keep learning about analytics, measurement and data?
I’m a graduate of both Higher Ed Experts analytics courses, which I started taking when I was very new to my higher ed marketing career. They were really crucial for both my knowledge and my network growth. I also follow a number of people and organizations who post on best practices for analytics. I also recently finished doing my MBA part-time and wedged analytics, measurement and data into every project, course and assignment I could which gave me great reasons to focus on those areas. And then, honestly, setting time aside to play in the environments – to let yourself learn by doing – is one of the most valuable things you can do to develop skills.
A conference focusing on higher ed analytics?
The Higher Ed Analytics Conference is a must-attend event for higher ed marketing professionals and teams looking for new ideas and best practices.
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Analytics Conference say about the experience.
Tags: HEA18, Higher Ed News