The conference is now available on-demand. If you didn’t register for the live conference, you can buy a $485 on-demand 12-month pass to get access to the 12+3 sessions.
If you’ve already registered, log in now to access them.
- Do you think it’s time to get better with digital analytics in higher education?
- Are you in charge of making sense of all the analytics data for your unit?
- Have you ever lost yourself in Google Analytics reports, dashboards and, oh, the possibilities?
Entirely focused on analytics in higher education, the 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference (the 8th edition!) is now available on-demand.
This online conference features a dozen of 10-minute sessions presented by higher ed professionals working in institutions just like yours — with real analytics solutions to real higher ed problems.
This conference is THE annual event for higher ed analytics professionals and digital teams interested in data-driven decisions to help advance their school.
Want to watch the #HEA20 Conference sessions?
If you previously registered and paid your registration fee, LOG IN! to access the recordings and handouts.
If you didn’t attend the conference live, buy a $485 on-demand 12-month pass now and get unlimited access to the:
- 12 (+ 3 bonus) session recordings
- handouts (PDF)
- Audio recording of the general Q&A Session
Past conference attendees always rave about it!
The 2021 Conference will take place in February 2021. The call for proposals will go out in September 2020.
2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Program
This online conference, now available on-demand, offers 12 (+ 3 bonus) focused sessions of 10 minutes each and a general session Q&A.
Getting your Google Analytics accounts & properties in a row
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
Most higher education websites are big mashups of individual web properties across multiple servers, CMS systems or even (sub)domains, often assigned their own Google Analytics account or property. It’s messy, but there is tremendous value in clearing up this mess. In this session, Tatjana Salcedo will share a roadmap to “Mari Kondo” the GA set up at your school. You will learn tips and tricks for creating a “master” institutional dataset and importing historical data into your master account while retaining autonomy for individual units at the same time.
Leading the development of a data-informed culture in higher education
Dr. Nicholas Ladany, Dean, School of Leadership and Education Sciences – University of San Diego
Relying on data analytics to make decisions doesn’t always come naturally in higher education. It requires a cultural shift. In this session, Dr. Nicholas Ladany will explain how to develop a data-informed culture by sharing his experience at USD’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences. You will learn more about the approach to leadership you can use to develop and implement this kind of change at your school.
Moving your analytics practice from a cost center to a profit center
Avinash Tripathi, Executive Director of Analytics – Kaplan Higher Education (Kaplan, Inc.)
Marketing is often perceived as a cost center in higher education – even at non-profit institutions. So, measuring its performance or return on investment isn’t always a priority. Yet, analytics can become a well of insights and recommendations with positive impact on the bottom line of any institution. In this session, Avinash Tripathi will explain how adopting a strategic approach to analytics can help you reframe it as a profit center at your institution. You will also learn how you can make the case for more time and more budget to move your analytics practice in the right direction and align your analytics resources with high-impact strategic initiatives.
Talking analytics with faculty for better departmental websites
Elicia Dennis, Web Strategist – University of Notre Dame – College of Arts and Letters
Websites aren’t usually the top priority for academic departments and campus units. So, they often fall behind due to the limited understanding of their role in strategic goals. In this session, Elicia Dennis will outline how she integrates analytics into the website redesign process to help engage key stakeholders the process. You will learn to identify the data that matters most to your campus partners and also streamline your web conversations to achieve better departmental websites, faster.
The case for measurement strategy with Harvard’s “To Serve Better” microsite
Aaron Baker, Associate Director of Content Strategy – Harvard University
Digital measurement strategy is often skipped in higher education. Yet, a digital measurement plan is key to the success of any digital marketing or communication project. In this session, Aaron Baker will make the case for measurement strategy by sharing the case study of To Serve Better, the latest microsite launched by Harvard University Public Affairs and Communications. You will see how the measurement plan of this project connected user interactions to key success indicators and understand how much it helped streamline the web development by clearing up uncertainty.
Create actionable insights for SEO/SEM using Google Analytics’ calculated metrics
Mandee Englert, Asst. Director of Digital Strategy – Penn State University
The standard metrics available in Google Analytics can’t always tell what you need to measure the impact of your SEO efforts or paid campaigns. In this session, Mandee Englert will explain how calculated metrics in Google Analytics can help uncover the ROI of your SEO efforts and SEM campaigns. You will learn how to set up new metrics like non-bounced traffic rate, cost per acquisition and content value to add them to your custom reports in Google Analytics or Google Data Studio dashboards.
How to cut your email audience and boost conversion rates
Emily Gustafson, Assistant Director, Digital Marketing – Cornell University
When it comes to email messages, nobody ever says: “the more, the better!” But when your emails bring in online donations, event attendees and digital engagement, it’s tempting to send even more messages (and potentially alienate a good part of your audience). Fortunately, analytics can help! In this session, Emily Gustafson will explain how Cornell University is working to downsize its email audiences. You’ll hear how interest-based audience segmentation and other data tricks can positively affect engagement.
Creating & measuring advertising landing pages for GenZ
Laura Montgomery, Director of Program Marketing – The New School
While best practices in digital marketing can get you started, you should never stop there. In this session, Laura Montgomery will share a case study of how she used analytics to test out a new take on landing pages for lead generation ad campaigns. You will also learn how you can still measure the return on investment of your paid media efforts when your GenZ target audience chooses to go stealth and shuns your request-for-information form.
Connecting the data dots between admissions and marketing for successful campaigns
Corynn Myers, Digital Marketing Manager – University of Michigan
Higher Ed institutions are notoriously siloed, causing disconnects between enrollment and marketing teams. Yet, with the looming 2026 cliff, it’s time to get smarter and more collaborative. In this session, Corynn Myers will walk through bringing admissions and marketing teams together with data. You’ll also learn how to identify and maximize the cross-team data necessary to create successful recruitment campaigns.
How to use a decision matrix to take action on great data
Joshua Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation – VisionPoint Marketing
You’ve got the data and you’re not afraid to use it. But, do you know what you’re going to do with it? Data alone will never magically transform into actionable recommendations. Analysis is required. In this session, Joshua Dodson will introduce a decision matrix you can use to identify next steps and optimization opportunities for your digital marketing campaigns. Your will get a practical framework to help you speed up some of your data analysis process.
How to assess the return on investment (ROI) of your social channels?
Orion Stavre, Associate Director of Marketing Technology and Measurement – WPI
In their early days, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have boomed thanks to their strategic use of vanity metrics. Between social media and analytics, it’s always been complicated. In this session, Orion Stavre will focus on measuring the impact of social media further down the marketing funnel in your school website. You will learn how to track engagement and conversions that can be directly (and indirectly) attributed to your owned social media activity to assess its return on investment.
Using data connectors to streamline social media reporting
Kris Hardy, Director of Web and Digital Marketing – Messiah College
What do social media platforms, ad consoles, CRMs and web analytics all have in common? They have important metrics that help us make informed decisions. In this session, Kris will explain how you can aggregate and blend data from those different systems into one report in DataStudio. You’ll find out how it’s possible to save time in data collection to streamline reporting with data connectors.
2020 Bonus On-Demand Sessions
Analytics Report that Gets to the Point (released on March 9, 2020)
Dalia Abubakr, Senior Director for Digital Communications, The American University in Cairo
Analytics isn’t rocket science. Yet, many analytics reports are still missing the point. In this session, Dalia Abubakr will show us how to plan and deliver reports that get to the point by starting with measurement objectives and providing actionnable recommendations based on data. You’ll get practical tips on how to structure your analytics reports.
Measuring the Performance of a User Journey-focused Website Redesign (released on March 23, 2020)
Matthew Diehl, AVP Inbound Digital Marketing, Carnegie Dartlet
User experience is everything when you redesign your website. You take extreme care to create user journeys that infuse your institution’s personality and drive visitors to take action – be it, request information or make a gift. But, is your user journey-focused website redesign really working? In this session, Matthew Diehl will show you how to unlock new insights into user journey-based audiences using sequence segments in Google Analytics.
Using Data and Automation to Drive Enrollment (released on April 14, 2020)
Arbazz Nizami, Digital Marketing Manager, Claremont Lincoln University
Marketing is a number game, especially when it comes to driving enrollment. In this session Arbazz Nizami will share the blueprint of the data and automation approach his school used that led his team to be named AMA Higher Ed Marketing Team of the Year in 2019 You’ll see the different steps you need to follow and hear about some great tools and tips you can use to help drive enrollment at your institution.
Higher Education Analytics Conference Faculty
Tatjana has been working in higher education for her entire 30-year professional career. She started in the field of instructional technology at Harvard University working with faculty on a variety of multimedia based educational initiatives. She was an early adopter of web-based technologies and brought her expertice in delivering educational content via the web to Lewis & Clark College and Williams College. For the past 20 years, she been part of a small team managing the University of Vermont’s web presence including the web infrastructure and centrally managed web content.
Tatjana is responsible for setting up and maintaining UVM’s central web traffic data collection in 2007 and has been collecting and using that data ever since to help inform web content strategy both centrally and among the university’s many individual units. She works with campus leaders to configure analytics goals on an institutional and departmental level and produces reports complete with content development and marketing recommendations that align with strategic objectives and initiatives.
Tatjana particularly enjoys coming up with creative solutions using analytics to answering enrollment management questions. She is an alumna of Web Analytics for Higher Ed (2011), as well as additional HEE courses on Advanced Analytics and Predictive Analytics.
Dr. Nicholas Ladany is Dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences and Associate Provost for Academic Outreach at the University of San Diego. Prior to arriving at the University of San Diego, he served as the Dean of the School of Education and Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA.
He previously served as Director of the Counseling Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA; Chair of the Department of Education and Human Services and Program Coordinator & Director of Doctoral Training of the Counseling Psychology Program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; and has served as a faculty member at Temple University and the University of Maryland, College Park.
He received his Ph.D. from the University at Albany, State University of New York, in 1992 and his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has more than 80 publications and has conducted over 200 national and international presentations in more than 20 countries in higher education leadership; and supervision and training of counselors and psychologists.
As a leader of the data strategy and analytics team, Avinash establishes the organization’s strategy and vision and provides operational support for the delivery of information and analytics platforms and solutions to the business’s key stakeholders. 15 plus years of advanced analytics experience with strong emphasis on design, development and implementation of predictive, prescriptive, machine learning and AI models.
Highly effective at building high performance analytics teams to maximize organizational profitability. Strong analytical discipline with a sense of urgency to translate ideas into action. Over the years, his emphasis has been helping senior leaders understand how to adopt strategic approach to analytics and transform analytics from a cost center to a profit center.
Avinash is a frequent speaker at industry conference. His goals are to expand his innovative strategic analytics experience and continue to have an impact for organizations willing to stretch themselves through the challenging exercises that a solid program of advanced analytics, consumer insight, competitive intelligence, statistical analysis, interpretation and recommendations can bring about.
Elicia Dennis is the Web Strategist for the College of Arts and Letters, the largest and oldest college at the University of Notre Dame.
In this role, she oversees the redesign and day to day support of over 100 department, center, institute, and special project websites. Drawing on her own Notre Dame education in sociology and computing and digital technologies, Elicia also integrates analytics across channels to better align marketing efforts with the specific needs and goals of the College.
Aaron is a 15-year veteran in the Higher Education industry, with experience in Admissions, Academic Affairs, Information Technology, and Marketing Communications. Aaron is the associate director of content strategy for Harvard University Public Affairs and Communications, where his primary responsibility is measuring the impact of digital content produced by Harvard or written about Harvard. He also serves as a data evangelist, helping writers, editors, and content distributors get a sense of how engagement metrics can inform their work.
Aaron’s experience in many aspects of the digital product lifecycle gives him unique insight into what metrics matter most and to whom. He produces reports and dashboards, organizes professional development events for digital communicators, and translates business objectives into action items for developers.
Aaron is a faculty member at Higher Ed Experts where he teaches web analytics for higher ed. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Technical Writing and a Graduate Certificate in Data Science from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Aaron has also taught upper-level technical writing and information technology college courses.
Mandee is the Asst. Director of Digital Strategy on the Strategic Communications Marketing Team for Penn State University. She leads efforts to drive core insights from data to suggest, create, and execute optimizations that will drive fundamental improvements to the site experiences. She often consults campuses & colleges within Penn State using digital goals specific to that unit, and user feedback as a starting point for building a growth plan, monitoring/reporting suggested tactics and recommending further optimizations based on data collected from growth marketing efforts.
Mandee has developed a diverse skill set with a degree in graphic design, held positions as a front-end web developer/UX designer and has a passion for web optimization/analytics which has led her to her current position at Penn State University.
Emily Gustafson is the assistant director of digital marketing for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University. An alumna of the university, she now works within the division’s digital team to improve marketing performance through web tracking, data analysis, and creative problem solving. Gustafson is a certified Google Analytics user and trained data visualizer.
Laura Montgomery draws on nearly 15 years of experience in higher education marketing and communications.
She is currently Director of Program Marketing at The New School in New York City, where she is responsible for positioning, messaging, and enrollment marketing strategy for degree programs across the university.
In past roles and consulting projects, Laura has worked with more than 35 universities, professional schools, and organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Her areas of expertise include international communications and recruitment, audience segmentation, content marketing, media planning, and marketing analytics.
Corynn (kor-in) Myers is the digital marketing manager at the University of Michigan. She oversees all digital marketing strategies at the brand level and is a dedicated marketing strategist for the university’s schools, colleges, institutions, units, and health system. Her team provides campus-wide, digital first marketing services and has successfully moved over $1M in media spend in-house.
Joshua serves as Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing. Josh’s experience working both inside higher ed and as an outside consultant gives him a unique perspective. Before joining VisionPoint, Josh was a key player in helping many universities modernize their enrollment and marketing programs. He’s led digital marketing efforts at Bentley University, Southern New Hampshire University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Lincoln Memorial University. In fact, his work at Bentley resulted in the most marketing-generated leads in the university’s history.
Josh’s expertise also makes him a sought-after speaker. He has delivered many presentations, keynotes, and workshops at national higher ed marketing conferences and taught more than 500 students as a faculty member with HigherEdExperts.
Orion Stavre is associate director of Marketing Technology and Measurement at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
His focus is on ingraining the use of data, decision-informing measurement and actionable insights as part of the decision-making process. Stavre has worked to build integrated measurement structures across PR, communications and social media and to represent the long-term impact these channels have on a brand’s perception, reputation and ROI.
Prior to WPI, Stavre held positions at Panera Bread and Uno Chicago Grill, with roles in customer insight and business intelligence.
Kris Hardy is passionate about making the web a better place for prospective students and their families during the college search process. Hardy currently serves as the Director of Web and Digital Marketing at Messiah College and works part-time at Ruffalo Noel-Levitz as an Associate Consultant.
He specializes in user experience, information architecture and web analytics. He has recently presented at the Higher Ed Analytic Conference, EduWeb, HighEdWeb, the RNL National Conference and the Slate Summit.
Dalia Abubakr is the Senior Director for Digital Communications at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Joining AUC in 2009, she managed three revamp projects for the University website. She is currently managing the institutional AUC website in both English and Arabic and the AUC centennial website, created to celebrate 100 years of AUC. She is also supervising the project of migrating AUC schools websites to the same platform of the institutional one. She has more than 20-year experience in web communications, with special focus on website management and information architecture. Her communications experience also include strategic planning for content marketing and web content writing.
She earned her bachelor degree in English Language with high honors. She pursued her post-graduate studies in translation. She also earned a graduate diploma in Arabic studies from the American University in Cairo. She has international exposure through attending a number of international workshops in areas of writing for the web, search engine optimization and digital marketing. She is a stellar speaker for Conference of Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and she is a member of the planning committee for CASE, MEAC 2020.
Dalia is also an alum of Higher Ed Experts’ course on Website Analytics for Higher Ed.
Matthew Diehl is the AVP of Inbound Digital Marketing Services at Carnegie Dartlet. With over 13 years of Google Analytics experience, he brings knowledge, insights, and excitement to any conversion about web analytics and tracking.
After a short stint as a software developer, Matthew put his IT degrees to good use in the digital marketing world, running websites and consulting with clients on how to make them perform better.
Google Analytics has been at the core of every performance analysis. The need the understand how GA collects, processes, and visualizes website user data helps marketers make the right decisions for a successful strategy.
Arbazz is an award-winning tech-savvy data driven digital marketer that loves creativity with a background in helping hundreds of socially conscious startups, small businesses and nonprofits grow in the digital world. Some of Arbazz’s successes have been raising over $1 million dollars for nonprofits through digital campaigns and helping e-commerce and businesses reach six figures in online sales and revenue. Arbazz has earned his stripes as a master of lead generation, analytics and taking advantage of the micro-moment.
Arbazz has previously worked as the Director of Riverside County’s Nonprofit Resource Center and as the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder at Sahaba Initiative. Arbazz is a recipient of the 2018 Google Developer Scholarship and has been recognized as Top 30 under 30 by California State Assembly and the Center for Strategy and Development. He has also received the Young Achiever of the Year Award by the American Advertising Federation and his content was ranked #3 among higher education marketers by LinkedIn.
Arbazz’s Team won the AMA Higher Education Marketing Team of the Year Award. Within one year, the team expanded student interest by 651% resulting in an overall student population increase of 471%. Additionally, the team helped launch 3 new degree programs and several concentrations, assisted displaced students from closed institutions, and increased social media followers by 3100%.
Should I get the Higher Education Analytics Conference on-demand?
This on-demand conference is recommended for teams including:
- Digital Analytics Professionals
- Higher Ed Experts Analytics Course Graduates
- Higher Education Marketers
- Marketing Directors
- Marketing Professionals
- Online Marketing Specialists
- Publication Professionals
- Social Media Directors
- Social Media Marketing Managers
- Social Media Strategists
- Web Communication Coordinators
- Web Content Contributors
- Web Developers
- Web Editors
- Web Managers
- Webmasters
Still have questions? Contact Karine Joly at karine@higheredexperts.com
What is included in my Conference access fee?
The access fee covers 1-year licensing and includes the following:
- A 1-year unlimited access to the recordings of the 2020 sessions on-demand.
- All session materials (slides handouts in PDF)
2019 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
If you previously registered and paid your registration fee, LOG IN
Avoiding burn-out with measurement strategy
Karine Joly, Curriculum Director – Higher Ed Experts
No time to measure? No time to be strategic about measurement? You’re not alone!
Time is the most precious commodity for higher ed digital professionals with so many (added) responsibilities on their plate. But, if you don’t take the time to consider and implement strategic measurement, you will never get out of this infernal “cycle of more.”
In this session, Karine Joly will show you how to reclaim your time, sanity and ultimately your creativity by adopting and adapting a sound – but simple! – measurement strategic approach.
Tracking Form Abandonment with Google Tag Manager
Aaron Baker, Associate Director of Content Strategy – Harvard University
If they start filling out your online form and leave before submitting it, you will never know, right? Form abandonment is a big, but invisible problem, because most analytics solutions only tracks success. In this session, Aaron Baker will share a smart Google Tag Manager recipe you can use to automatically track not just one but multiple forms across your whole site. You’ll also see how this script detects an abandoned form and sends an event to Google Analytics, so you can see the last fields people filled out before leaving your form and you in the dark.
Getting back to them on their terms to optimize engagement
Avinash Tripathi, Executive Director of Analytics – Kaplan Higher & Professional Education
Online higher education institutions targeting working adult students often struggle with disjointed and inconsistent communication and engagement efforts due to the typical length of the conversion path as they approach learning differently than traditional college-aged students. It’s a long journey from the stage of inquiry to enrollment. In this case study, you will learn how Avinash Tripathi tapped into the mine of behavioral analytics data from prospective adult students to help increase engagement throughout the student journey. You will see how Kaplan Higher Education (KHE), now the back-office support services behind Purdue University Global, use Google Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud platforms to optimize the performance of its response to inquiries to drive greater effectiveness and efficiency in communication across digital channels.
The Care and Feeding of Site Search
Alan Etkin, Senior Analyst – British Columbia Institute of Technology
Visitors who use your site’s internal search engine are well on their way down the recruitment funnel. Help them find what they’re looking for, and you’ll see significant improvements in your conversion rates. In this session, Alan Etkin will show you how to configure Google Analytics to track site search and, and he’ll point out keymetrics to watch. You will also learn how to use the data to improve search results through examples taken from BCIT.
How to extract actionable insights from Google search console
Jessica Stutt, Integrated Marketing Manager – University of New Brunswick
Google Search Console (GSC) now provides greater value than ever to higher ed digital marketers since its major update released in April 2018. Yet many are still not leveraging GSC to its full potential. In this session, Jessica Stutt will show you how to leverage segments, filters, dimensions and more features available in this great SEO tool. You’ll learn how this data can directly impact your institutional marketing strategy and content.
Auditing Your Content Strategy with Google Analytics
Mandee Englert, Digital Strategist – Penn State University
Determining what website content needs to be updated can be a real struggle. What is the most important content to your audience? What is just rotting away on your site? Pageviews and time on site don’t always tell us the whole story of the user experience. In this session, Mandee Englert will share actionable tactics relying on custom metrics like scroll rate and the page value metric you can use to push your content strategy to the next level. You’ll learn how auditing your website content and measuring its performance can help you create an unforgettable experience that will connect your website user to your brand.
Podcasts Analytics: Measuring success when there’s (basically) nothing to measure
Jackie Vetrano, Online Marketing and Social Media Manager – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
More and more universities are getting into the podcasting game, but while podcasts have been around for over a decade, analytics hasn’t been a priority for most platforms. So, how can you measure the success or the impact of your podcasting efforts when data points are scarce? In this session, Jackie Vetrano will give you an overview of this podcasting analytics landscape. You’ll find out how to tackle podcast benchmarking, understand the available data and develop a report that makes sense.
How to inform your video strategy with data
Courtnie Ridgway, Digital Media Strategist – Tarleton State University
Video is in on social media. While the format is hot, it does also require more resources than text or pictures. So, missing the mark has a higher cost. In this session, Courtnie Ridgway will tell you how a focus on data has changed the video strategy of her school for the best – a 400% increase in video performance! You will also find out how she uses analytics to determine subject, style, schedule and more.
Drawing Actionable Data from Instagram and Instagram Stories
Robert Bochnak, Social Media Strategist – Harvard Business School Office of Alumni Relations
How can you inform a “high-touch” engagement strategy on Instagram? By getting personal and tracking engagement data. In this case study, Robert Bochnak will discuss how tracking alumni engagement on Instagram has helped him share targeted content and increase audience engagement. You will find out the type of metrics to track and how story polls and questions can be used to collect even more data.
Giving credit where credit is due: Uncover the hidden value of your marketing campaigns
Sarah Kowalski, Web Content Strategy Manager – Montgomery College
In Google Analytics, conversion and acquisition reports are very valuable—but they typically show you the last user interaction prior to a conversion. In this session, Sarah Kowalski will share how she uses the Assisted Conversions and Multi-Channel Funnel reports to conduct a deeper analysis. You will see how you can follow this approach to see the real role paid search, social media, and other marketing campaigns play in your conversion funnels.
Are they really my audience? Tips on segmenting “real” prospective students
Joshua Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation – VisionPoint Marketing
So, you’ve set up a filter to exclude on-campus traffic from your reports. Great! But how can you be really sure that you are looking at the right audience? In this session, Joshua Dodson will show you how to use the demographics feature in conjunction with the in-market segment to zero in on all potential students — whether or not they have filled out your inquiry form. You’ll also learn how the resulting segment can be used to remarket to your audience via Google Ads or to analyze the content consumption on your site from these very important visitors.
Hacking your CRM to improve campaign reporting
Kris Hardy, Director of Web and Digital Marketing – Messiah College
Customer Relation Management (CRM) isn’t a tool just for the admissions team anymore.
In this session, Kris Hardy will explain how a simple hack can transform your CRM into a powerful campaign reporting tool. You will also explore the difference between anonymous campaign reporting in Google Analytics and the reporting capabilities available in most CRM systems.
2018 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
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Engaging stakeholders with analytics
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
Collaboration with many academic units is required to plan the analytics strategy at most institutions. From one academic department to the other, primary goals often differ, so it’s never an easy task. In this session, Tatjana Salcedo will explain how she conducted a “collaboration campaign” in the name of measurement at her university. You’ll learn more about the process she developed to get more leadership buy-in and engagement, define goals and develop ongoing analytics strategies across multiple units to focus efforts on web marketing that works.
Better data through a unified tagging process
Bryan Wolf, Marketing Applications Producer – Indiana University Bloomington
You can’t measure what you don’t track. And you can rarely track what you don’t tag.
Consistent tagging is one of the top analytics roadblocks in higher education. With 9 units, more than 10 websites, multiple social media channels, more than 20 million email messages and 2 CRMs, the Office of Enrollment Management (OEM) at Indiana University Bloomington couldn’t afford to ignore the issue. In this session, Bryan Wolf will share the new, more collaborative approach the team used to make consistent tagging a reality. You’ll see how this has helped eliminate data silos between units and modernize marketing analytics efforts for all units involved.
Simplifying Social Media Analytics with… Excel (Yep, with Excel!)
Erin Supinka, Assistant Director of Digital Engagement – Dartmouth College
Collecting data is one thing, but analyzing it is an entirely different beast. With so much data made available by social media platforms, how do you sift through it all to find the useful and actionable chunks? In this session, Erin Supinka will walk you through the social media analytics process she created at Dartmouth… with just Excel—saving time and money (small teams and budgets rejoice). You’ll learn useful tricks and tips to simplify your own analytics process.
De-mystifying the Facebook data export: A how-to on gaining meaningful and actionable insights
Jessica Stutt, Integrated Marketing Manager – University of New Brunswick
Facebook’s data export provides a lot of useful information you can’t find on the Insights platform. But the multiple columns of the data export look intimidating and their analysis can be quite daunting. In this session, Jessica Stutt will help you to identify key information to gain insights into your post and follower data. You will also learn some quick tips on visualizations to help you share the story behind your data with colleagues and stakeholders.
From (snail) mail to metrics, measuring the impact of print pieces
Holly Sherburne, Director of Digital and Social Media – Bowdoin College
Print marketing is not dead in higher ed marketing: colleges are still sending plenty of snail mail. But, print doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. In this session, Holly Sherburne will share a case study on measuring the impact of Admissions postcards. From campaign tagging and vanity URLs to landing pages, KPIs, and Google Analytics goals, you’ll learn the necessary planning — and collaboration required — before you mail your next print piece to measure its impact. You’ll also see how you can make the results come to life and monitor them in real-time using Google Data Studio.
Lessons learned measuring the impact of a brand awareness ad campaign
Shelly Adams, Digital Marketing Analyst – University of Dayton
Branding gets a lot of attention from leaders and a good chunk of marketing budget in higher education. While branding can be seen as an exercise in institutional vanity, it doesn’t mean brand awareness ad campaign should only be measured with vanity metrics. In this session, Shelly Adams will show you how to go beyond ad impressions and clicks to measure brand awareness. You’ll learn how to provide a more complete picture of university brand health by
measuring organic traffic, on-site engagement, returning visitors, and custom metrics.
S.E.Ohhh! Tips for measuring organic search engine performance
Joshua Dodson, Director of Research and Integrated Marketing – VisionPoint Marketing
How do you measure the effectiveness of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts on your website traffic? In this session, Joshua Dodson will explain an effective approach to measure the impact on your SEO work. You’ll learn more about several tools that can help you get a handle on your site’s search engine performance.
Finding opportunities to increase conversions with Google Analytics
Mandee Englert, Digital Marketing Analyst – Penn State University
Since you don’t have time to test all the marketing tactics at your disposal, focus is a key to success for higher ed digital marketers. In this session, Mandee Englert will show you how she unleashed the power of data-driven focus by optimizing the campus visit registration process at Penn State University. You’ll also get tips and tricks to identify what you can do to drive high-quality prospects and growth by analyzing your data to find big growth opportunities.
How to configure the new visibility tracking tag in Google Tag Manager
Aaron Baker, Digital Analytics Lead – Harvard University
Still using event tracking hacks to measure engagement with your web content or online forms? Meet Google Tag Manager’s new built-in “visibility tag” and rejoice! In this session, Aaron Baker will show you how you can track whether a certain element was shown in a given pageview. You’ll also learn how to configure this new tag in GTM and how the resulting data looks like in Google Analytics.
Website testing made easy with Google Optimize
Laura Turner, Interactive Multimedia Manager – Lehigh University
Has A/B testing always intimidated you because you didn’t know where to start? Google Optimize makes it easy to set up and run A/B tests on your website in minutes. In this step-by-step session, Laura Turner will show you how you can test multiple versions of your web page without touching code, target tests to different groups of people visiting your site, and view the test results integrated with your Google Analytics data. You’ll learn how to use Google Optimize to quickly set up tests on your website and see how small changes can have a big impact on your website goal conversions.
How to use Google Tag Manager to personalize your website
Kris Hardy, Director of Web and Digital Marketing – Messiah College
Do you wish you could personalize your website content for specific audience groups, but don’t have the budget for an expensive personalization engine? In this session, Kris Hardy will explain how he used Google Tag Manager to incorporate some personalized content in Messiah College’s newly redesigned homepage. You’ll learn more about the approach you can use to implement some basic personalization for your graduate and undergraduate audiences with the help of GTM.
Data storytelling: bringing data to life (on a budget and a time crunch)
Victoria O’Malley, Director of Marketing and Communications – University of Denver, University College
Numbers alone never lead to actions. By providing context, data storytelling helps unveil meaning behind data points. In this session, Victoria O’Malley will outline ways to bring your data to life with a data analysis process that works for you – even with limited time and budget. You’ll learn how to choose the right visualization, understand your audience, and find stories in your data to support decision makers at your institution.
2017 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
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Digital Analytics in Higher Education: Checked? Really?
Karine Joly, Executive Director – Higher Ed Experts
When it comes to digital measurement in higher education, are we there yet? Have you really checked web, email or social media analytics off your to-do list? In this session, Karine Joly will share the ideal analytics road map for digital analytics in higher education. You will learn what you should have in place, what you still need to work on and how to get there.
No Longer Treading Water
Joshua Dodson, Director of Digital Marketing – Bentley University
For those who have learned the basic skills of Google Analytics, it can sometimes feel like we are repeating similar analyses or looking at the same reports. If you want to go deeper into your analysis, some tools can help. In this session, Joshua Dodson will share some tips for advanced techniques such as forecasting and intervention analysis.
Analytics not Vanity-lytics: Connecting analytics with real-world results
Sara Kisseberth, Web Content Manager – Bluffton University
Social media isn’t the only channel to rely on vanity metrics for “performance measurement” in higher education. After years of analyzing web stats in a vacuum – with no connection to what the numbers really mean in “real world” actions – admissions and PR at Bluffton have finally began to collaborate to track what matters. In this session, Sara Kisseberth will share a case study on how this collaboration enabled her school to track and measure “real world” actions. If you’re still reporting on page views or sessions, you’ll also learn how to get this process started at your school.
What You’re Missing: Using Analytics to Find Admissions Content Gaps
Jens Larson, Manager of Student Communication Strategies – Eastern Washington University
Analytics can tell you a lot about what’s happening on your website, and it can tell you a lot about what’s not happening, too. In this session you’ll discover analytics strategies that help you identify content gaps in your admissions content. You’ll also learn how to determine if you’ve filled those gaps with the new content you’ve created. And yep: these strategies work for non-admissions content, too.
Content Analytics: Beyond the imperfect time-on-page metric with scroll tracking
Aaron Baker, Digital Analytics Lead – Harvard University
In the world of public affairs and newsroom analytics, you don’t have many concrete conversion goals to track. In this session, Aaron Baker will tell us how he went beyond the best out-of-the-box metric (bounce rate and the tricky average time-on-page) to help measure engagement on news stories. You’ll learn why tracking how far a user scrolls in a given page or story proved to be a great engagement metric and how it also improved the quality and reliability of those other out-of-the-box metrics.
Measuring session duration in… dollars
Alan Etkin, Senior Analyst – British Columbia Institute of Technology
Higher ed marketing campaigns are painfully difficult to evaluate, especially when promoting programs. Long lead times to conversion frequently surpass Google Analytics’ ability to connect campaigns with submitted applications. In this session, Alan Etkin will explain how BCIT monetized session duration as an additional metric for measuring campaign performance. You will see how to calculate the value of session duration based on goal values, and find out what monetized session duration can help you learn about your audience.
Go commando: Drop the GUI and use the GA API
Ed Garabedian, Manager of Digital Analytics – Johnson & Wales University
Do you manage multiple GA accounts for your school website(s), because… it’s complicated? In this tutorial, Ed Garabedian will show you how you can pull all your data together into a report using Google Analytics API, Google Sheets and a free add-on. You’ll find out where to get the plugin, how to configure it as well as more practical tips to develop your report configuration.
Data Visualization Road Map: How to choose the right visualization for your data.
Bryan Fendley, Director of Instructional Technology and Web Services – University of Arkansas at Monticello
When it comes to presenting data, the wrong visualization can destroy your message. It can be challenging to choose the right element (pie, histogram, etc.) to best present your data. In this session, Bryan Fendley will show you when and how to use the most common visualizations to help you better report analytics data and share insights.
Using Google Data Studio to Create Interactive Dashboards with Actionable Data
Laura Turner, Interactive Multimedia Manager – Lehigh University
Google Data Studio allows you to transform your data into dynamic dashboards with easy to read charts and graphs that you can share with anyone. If you already use Google Analytics dashboards, you’ll be amazed by the new possibilities offered by Data Studio. In this tutorial, Laura will show you the basics to get you started with this game changer tool. You’ll also see how much of an impact this tool can have on communicating analytics data and insights in an understandable, clear and engaging way.
Maps and legends – finding and visualising our online influencers
Robert Perry, Head of Research – Pickle Jar Communications
How do you identify the real social media influencers of your target audience? Using data, of course! In this session, Robert Perry will explain how he developed a data-driven approach to identifying online influencers for a London-based university. You’ll get some practical tips to replicate this approach at your school to differentiate the real influencers from the wannabes on social media.
Measuring Success on Facebook
Michelle Leslie, Interactive Marketing Specialist – Chapman University
Like it or hate it, Facebook is still a major social media platform in higher education. You spend time crafting the perfect social media content, but are you investing enough time measuring their performance? In this session, Michelle Leslie will tell you where to find analytics data, how to interpret the metrics and how they can help you optimize your content strategy on Facebook.
Snapchat Analytics: Measuring Snapchat Success to Inform Strategy
Colin McGinnis, Graduate Research Assistant – University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Think Snapchat is difficult to use? Wait, until you try to measure the success of your stories and other snaps. In this session, Colin McGinnis will go over how to use the limited metrics provided in Snapchat to develop an analysis strategy to help measure performance and inform decisions on content delivery. You’ll get practical tips about what data to pull and how to analyze it.
2016 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
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Web Acrobatics in Higher Ed
Joshua Dodson, Director of SEO – Southern New Hampshire University
Imagine, with a number in hand, the web acrobat shoots above the onlookers, hoping to reach his mark. He has data and desire, but how does he balance it all to get the most out of it?
In this session, Joshua Dodson will discuss the key components of a balanced measurement and improvement strategy. You will learn how all these elements should work together to give you a full picture of what happened, what the results were, and what you should do next.
Higher Ed Web Analytics Project: Data and Insights on Higher Ed Websites
Karine Joly, Executive Director – Higher Ed Experts
From October 2014 to September 2015, Karine Joly conducted a 1-year project on higher ed websites in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and France. She published monthly benchmarking reports using Google Analytics benchmarking reports for Universities & Colleges websites. In this session, Karine will share – for the first time – data and insights, gained from this 1-year benchmarking project, on web traffic to higher ed websites.
Tips, Tricks, and Bribes: Getting Departments Onboard with Analytics
Bryan Fendley, Director of Campus Web Services – University of Arkansas at Monticello
Getting institutional buy-in for your analytics program may be harder than you think. Everybody says they want to be data-driven, but many in higher education still fail to get the “Analytics” message across. In this session, Bryan Fendley will show you how to turn data skeptics into data believers on your campus. You’ll learn some good tips and useful tricks to help you get all your units onboard with analytics.
Get More Actionable Data, Faster with Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
Google Tag Manager has made it easier to implement Google Analytics on higher ed websites. It has also helped make content and design decisions on a daily basis by facilitating the measurement and analysis of all kinds of additional website interactions (file downloads, jQuery interactions, YouTube videos, etc.). In this session, Tatjana Salcedo will cover how to implement the latest version of GTM (v. 2.0) at the institution-wide level while preserving departmental GA accounts. You will also learn how to implement tags to collect the data that matters to your team.
Top 10 Google Analytics Questions (and their Answers) From Your Campus Community
Avalee Harlton, Service Coordinator & Web Content Designer/Editor – York University
Big university or small college, if you monitor your website’s analytics, you inevitably get questions about what’s getting tracked, how content is doing, and how to do things more easily. In this session , Avalee Harlton will share the top 10 questions — and their answers – you get when your job is to help your campus colleagues gain insights on their web content performance.
Email Activity or Email Achievement: What Are You Really Measuring?
Jens Larson, Manager of Student Communication Strategies – Eastern Washington University
Less than 20% of higher ed enrollment emails use cross channel analytics. So, what matters in email reporting? In this session, Jens Larson will dive into the key email metrics you need to track. You’ll get useful tips pertaining to your email system, your Google Analytics account, and your handy statistical calculators.
Brand Breaker or Brand Maker?
Alan Etkin, Senior Analyst – British Columbia Institute of Technology
How can you use Google Analytics to measure the impact of web projects that don’t immediately align with your standard marketing initiatives? At BCIT, Alan Etkin compared the conversion rate from the visitors of an unconventional brand-focused micro site with the CR of non-visitors. In this session, Alan will share details about this approach and tell you how you can apply the same techniques at your school.
EXTRA from 2015 edition: How to Show the Financial Value of Your Website Conversions
Alan Etkin, Senior Systems Analyst – Web Analytics – BCIT
What’s the contribution of your website to the bottom line of your institution? To answer this (hopefully!) million dollar question, you need to put a dollar value on each of your key conversion events – everything from contact forms submitted to program applications paid. In this session, Alan Etkin will share the steps he took to identify the value of each site conversion. You’ll get details about the process, lessons learned and examples of the resulting reports demonstrating the real value of a web conversion for the institution.
Data Is Queen: Quantifying Relationships, Influence, and Engagement To Inform Your Strategy
Chase Baker, Social & Digital Media Coordinator – Colorado State University
Numbers don’t lie, but proper analysis and context are needed to understand your strategy’s success. Investing time and energy into monthly analytics reports isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. In this session, Chase Baker will discuss top Key Performance Indicators for social media. You will also learn how this data is presented in custom visual reports.
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Snapchat Analytics 101
Lindsay Nyquist, Director of Digital Communications – Fort Lewis College
Snapchat – the new kid on the social media block – is a tough platform to measure. But with 50% of its users in the 13-17-year-old age group, it’s clear that it’s a great place for colleges and universities to infiltrate. In this session, Lindsay Nyquist will share the best ways to measure Snapchat to determine its value for your institution. You will learn more about metrics, tools and best practices for SnapChat measurement.
(Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Measuring Social Media ROI
Robert Bochnak, Assistant Director, Alumni Marketing and Communications – Harvard Business School
Social media Return on Investment (ROI) is difficult–but not impossible–to prove. In this session, Robert Bochnak will share how the Harvard Business School’s Alumni Office collects and reports on social media ROI by tracking and “scoring” alumni interactions on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and measuring calls to action. You’ll find out how this data is reported in a variety of ways.
From Social Media Listening to Social Media ROI with CRM Tracking
Adam Coulter, Social Media Marketing Specialist – Curry College
In 2013 social media had an integral part – proven by data – in helping to enroll the incoming class. Moving beyond correlation and complex channel attribution models, Adam Coulter tagged and tracked prospects to measure the impact of his work. In this case study, he will show you how this simple but strategic process helped him measure social media return on investment at his school.
Combining Facebook Ad Insights and Web Analytics to Measure Success
Dr. Liz Gross, Social Media and Market Research Strategist – Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.
Facebook ads, particularly when combined with sophisticated targeting, can be a great way to reach your audience. In this session, Dr. Liz Gross will show you how to set up a Facebook advertising campaign so its results can be tracked. You will learn how to use both Facebook Ad Insights and web analytics to measure success in relation to your key objectives—not just reach, clicks, and likes.
2015 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
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Beyond Numbers: The role of storytelling in effective analytics reporting
Stephanie Leishman, Social Media Strategist – MIT
Good analytics work doesn’t stop at numbers — and sometimes, it doesn’t always start there either. In this session, Stephanie Leishman will discuss why qualitative analysis is essential and will demonstrate the role of qualitative reporting for integrated media campaigns, emergency communications, and more. You will get some great pointers to use storytelling techniques to make your analytics reporting more effective.
One Google Analytics Account to Rule Them All: How to move to a centralized account
Avalee Harlton, Web Content Designer/Editor – York University
Got dozens (hundreds?) of Google Analytics accounts originally set up by decentralized units? It’s time to consolidate to get the big picture and track your website visitors throughout your institutional website. In this case study, Avalee Harlton will explain how York University recently moved to a single university-wide account. You’ll learn how you can do it at your school with practical recommendations to consolidate your Google Analytics accounts at your institution.
How Google Analytics can help you focus your energies — and strategy
Matt Hames, Manager of Media Communications – Colgate University
Want to help your stakeholders make decisions on real data? Meet your new friend: Google Analytics SEO Queries Report. In this session, Matt Hames will explain the data you’ll find in this report. You will also learn why and how you can use this report to help make the case for your integrated digital strategy.
When Google Analytics meets your Calendar: What on earth happened at 6pm?
Shannan Palma, Senior Online Producer – Emory University
When you track analytics on a quarterly or annual basis, it can be difficult to figure out what caused a particular spike in traffic on a specific day. In this case study, Shannan Palma will show how Emory University tracks significant events throughout the year (admission cycle, conferences, and even snow days) and correlates those dates with analytics data. You’ll learn how you can do the same to tell coherent stories in your reports and to guide future decisions about content and the organization of information on your website.
Lessons learned from analyzing an academic program marketing campaign
Erik Hagen, Director of Web Communications – California Lutheran University
California Lutheran University rolled out a major marketing campaign for its Bachelor’s Degree for Professionals program in Summer 2014, incorporating both digital and offline media. In this case study, Erik Hagen will share the process used for planning and measuring relevant data to find out what worked and what didn’t. Through this example, you will learn how to analyze campaign results and to break down the performance of each channel using advanced segments, multi-channel funnel analysis and A/B testing.
Measuring the Performance of Academic Program Sites and Pages
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
One of the biggest selling points of an academic institution is its academic programs. In this session, Tatjana Salcedo will explore methods to measure programs pages accounting for prospective student interest, potential for program growth, and institutional enrollment goals. You’ll gain insight on how to approach improving these important pages and measure your efforts going forward.
How Google Analytics Can Help You Assess Your Social Media Program
Liz Gross, Social Media & Market Research Strategist – Great Lakes ELS
If you’re assessing the success of your social media program using only Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics, you’re missing important data points. In this session, Liz Gross will show how you can use segments in Google Analytics to gather information about the behavior of your website visitors referred by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites.
Silo-Busting Using the Google Analytics Social Report
Vanessa Theoharis, Integrated Marketing Manager – Babson College
The Google Analytics Social Report can do more than simply capture traffic from social networks to your college website. In this session, Vanessa Theoharis will explain how this report can spark discussions about social media, but also content strategy, audience analysis, and education. You’ll learn how Babson College has integrated data from the Social Report into the school’s dashboards, thus giving social media a place at the analytics table.
Social Media Scorecard: A Single Overarching Metric for Social Media
Ted Hattemer, AVP Interactive Communications – The Ohio State University
Ohio State’s Board of Trustees asked University Communications to report, on a monthly basis, a single metric that would track and show progress on the university’s use of social media. This seemingly simple request blew open the lid on how difficult it is to compare retweets to Facebook comments, how traffic pushed to social media compares with traffic driven to owned properties from social media posts. This presentation will share a process Ohio State has established for the monthly tracking and reporting of a single metric for measurement.
Using Digital Analytics to Help Secure Project Funding
Todd Gregory, Digital Analyst – Penn State University
How do you make the case for the digital initiatives that should be implemented at your school? In this session, Todd Gregory will show you how to prove the true value of your proposals by leveraging digital analytics and some basic business modeling techniques. You’ll also learn about one specific framework for value and ROI modeling he used at Penn State to build a case for additional funding.
How to Show the Financial Value of Your Website Conversions
Alan Etkin, Senior Systems Analyst – Web Analytics – BCIT
What’s the contribution of your website to the bottom line of your institution? To answer this (hopefully!) million dollar question, you need to put a dollar value on each of your key conversion events – everything from contact forms submitted to program applications paid. In this session, Alan Etkin will share the steps he took to identify the value of each site conversion. You’ll get details about the process, lessons learned and examples of the resulting reports demonstrating the real value of a web conversion for the institution.
Showing Impact by Predicting What Could Have Happened: This was the Result of That Campaign… Really!
Joshua Dodson, Digital Marketing Strategy and Optimization Manager – EKU
Getting the metrics is not the hard part. Knowing what caused the results can be more challenging. By using intervention analysis, it is possible to see the overall impact of a campaign or initiative. In this session, Joshua Dodson will show how you can use Google Analytics data to perform an intervention analysis to determine campaign impact. He’ll also explain why this kind of analysis can be used to make positive changes within higher education marketing and enrollment. You’ll learn this technique to improve your analysis and add value to your institution.
2014 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
If you previously registered and paid your registration fee, LOG IN
Before You Measure: How to Identify the Right KPIs for Your Unit or School (10-min session)
Stephanie Hatch Leishman, Social Media and Email Marketing Specialist – MIT
Not sure what you should measure? Don’t count on your analytics tool – or crystal ball – to tell you. In this session, Stephanie Hatch Leishman will explain why only *you* can define your key metrics (or key performance indicators as there are also called). She will take you for a quick back-to-basics: before reporting, before measurement, all the way back to strategy: priorities, audiences, and metrics selection. Starting right can change how you change what you measure and how your report. This will be the bird’s eye view of how to think strategically and how to define metrics that are uniquely important to your unit or your school.
Cross Domain Tracking 101: How to Get the Full Story across Your Web Ecosystem (10-min session)
Philippe Taza, Web Analyst – Higher Education Marketing
Higher ed institutions often have very complicated web ecosystems that include multiple domains, subdomains, microsites and 3rd party applications that students must navigate across to find the information they seek. Without cross domain tracking a visitor’s path from source (ie Facebook campaign) to final destination (ie registration page) is often broken by leaps across these related but separate domains. In this session, Philippe Taza will explain how cross domain tracking works, provides examples of cross domain tracking code, and highlights the benefits of cross domain tracking data at work in Google Analytics reports.
Why & How to Switch to Google Tag Manager(10-min session)
C. Daniel Chase, Lead Web Administrator – The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Are you still tracking your campaigns the old way? Google Tag Manager (GTM) is the new method for ‘tagging’ pages for tracking general analytics as well as more advanced tracking that previously required marking up the tracked page very specifically. GTM allows you to replace a lot of previously embedded code with one for GTM, and then manage all tracking externally. Once the GTM code is in place, you will be even able to track those elusive items like PDF downloads! In this session, C. Daniel Chase will explain Why you should use GTM, and what your need to get it up & running for basic analytics.
Optimize Landing Web Pages with Google Analytics Content Experiments (10-min session)
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
Wouldn’t it be nice to take the guesswork out of web page optimization by comparing the performance of up to five different versions of a web page? That’s exactly what Google Analytics Content Experiments allow you to do by testing content, design and interactive features with a random sampling of your site visitors. By comparing goal conversion rates on each page, you can rapidly and effectively optimize your landing pages using data driven decisions. In this session, Tatjana Salcedo will take you through the steps necessary to set up and run an experiment in Google Analytics so you can get started and optimize your landing pages.
Lessons Learned Using Analytics to Drive Web Usability Testing Efforts(10-min session)
Rachel Johnson,Web Content Developer – Case Western Reserve University
Do you think analytics data is where the puck stops? Not always. It can also be what can get you buy-in for web usability tests — and ultimately better websites. You meet with a department to discuss their web analytics and how to improve their content strategy. You show and interpret the numbers, you make recommendations, and then comes the big question: “How do we know what our users are thinking?” In this session, Rachel Johnson will share lessons learned from her experience using analytics to start the web usability talk with clients at her institution.
Using Dashboards to Get to Know International Visitors (10-min session)
Michelle Tarby, Director of Web Services – Le Moyne College
Who doesn’t want to attract international students now? To support a new campus efforts to increase international recruitment, Le Moyne College needed to find answers to some fundamental questions: are recruiting initiatives with external partners driving traffic? What countries are reached? Do these visitors connect with the school? What information are they interested in? In this case study, Michelle will explain how she used the power of dashboards to answer these questions and will walk you through how to create the dashboards, the advantages of using segments vs. filters and see the information you can use on your campus.
Picture your Twitter Data! How to use Netlytic for Text and Network Analysis (10-min session)
Adrian J.Ebsary Online Community Manager – University of Ottawa
How do you make sense of the Twitter data for your school account? You make it more visual! Despite the increasing availability of Twitter data, there are still relatively few tools for digital marketers to visualize and interpret this data. Netlytic, a free web application developed by Prof. Anatoliy Gruzd’s Social Media Lab out of Dalhousie University, offers an easy-to-use interface that guides would-be data scientists through the process of creating their own visualizations in minutes. In this session, Adrian Ebsary will walk you through how to transform spreadsheets of Twitter conversations into coloured reply networks or showcase popular keywords in a timeline format.
When Data Doesn’t Mean Numbers: Content Analysis to Bring Help and Happiness to Your Audiences (10-min session)
Tim Nekritz, Director of Web Communication – SUNY Oswego
Not a number person? It doesn’t mean you can’t based your decisions on data – qualitative data is also part of the analytics approach. At SUNY Oswego, one newer and successful venture is content analysis — tracking and measuring user content — and even interacting with it to discover the kinds of social media and web content that can bring help or happiness to our audiences. In this session, Tim Nekritz will share an interesting case study on how to use content analysis. From having student creators posting videos or blog entries addressing questions and popular topics to extensive use of Tweetdeck and Webstagram to stay on the pulse of current and prospective students, qualitative and quantitative content analysis can bring you closer to your audience. You will see how it can result in user-generated content you can leverage to meet strategic goals.
How to make sure your stakeholders see what they need in Google Analytics(10-min session)
Alan Etkin – BCIT
What do you do when you have keen but untrained university staff asking for access to Google Analytics? Once you’ve logged in, it’s easy to get lost in the reports, even when you know what you’re looking for. But, when you don’t, it’s downright intimidating, especially for complex sites. In this session, Alan will share a useful model for creating views populated with custom dashboards, reports and segments for specific work units. This approach will help focus staff efforts, and reduce the time you spend guiding them though the reports.
Making Your Data Matter – Really: How to Present Analytics Data to Upper Management (10-min session)
Colleen Clark, Marketing Analyst – Ithaca College
Are you still trying to persuade upper management to make data-driven decisions? Does your boss still ignore your great reports and beautiful dashboards? In this session, Colleen Clark will explain how higher education analysts can present (yep, a presentation is the secret weapon!) data in a digestible yet actionable format to senior management. You’ll understand the different types of best practices to use with upper management and which data sets will make the greatest impact. You’ll also learn how you can best put the pieces together even when your story takes an unexpected turn.
How to Make the Case to Hire a Web Analytics Staff Member (10-min session)
Shelby Thayer, Director, Web Strategy and CRM – Penn State – Outreach and Online Education
Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and optimizing your website presence is becoming more and more important. Depending on your needs, a full-time web analyst is becoming a necessity. Find out some tips on selling the idea of a web analyst and attributes to look for in your new hire.
Not Your Regular Google Analytics: Level Up in Your Analysis (20-min session)
Joshua Dodson, SEO & Web Analyst – Eastern Kentucky University
You’ve covered the basics. You know all about Bounce Rate and Goal Conversions, but want to go deeper. In this session, Joshua Dodson will discuss some new tactics to help you reach the next level in your data analysis. You learn about advanced demographics, content calendar planning with data, and predictive analysis with time series data from Google Analytics.
2013 Higher Ed Analytics Conference Recordings
If you previously registered and paid your registration fee, LOG IN
Harnessing the Power of Google Analytics Goals (10-min session)
Seth Meranda, User-Experience Architect – University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Can’t do much with Google Analytics without setting up goals, right? As the most important feature in Google Analytics, they provide immediate context to clickstream metrics. In this session, Seth will help you go back to the (very important) basics. You will explore the importance of goals, when to use each type and review examples of reporting enhancements from goal tracking.
Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Efforts: Setting Your Integrated Tracking Management Plan (20-min session)
Colleen Clark, Marketing Analyst – Ithaca College
Imagine (or remember?) you’ve been asked to provide insights to drive decision making for all online and offline channels. Where do you start? In this presentation, Colleen will explain you the importance of tracking every marketing effort around all medium channels including print, banner, social, and search engine. She will show you how an integrated tracking management plan can make a difference to streamline the communications process across all higher ed clients. You will review how to properly implement tagging, note the main issues you may encounter and the types of engagement metrics you should evaluate.
Analytics Case Study: Homepage Automated Click Event Tracking in Google Analytics (10-min session)
John Mills
In November 2012, Emory added automated, categorized click-event tracking for Google Analytics as part of a ground-up rebuild of its main university web site launched. John will explain how this was implemented, the results in Google Analytics and how they are used.
Extending Your Reach with Customized Dashboards (20-min session)
Alan Etkin, Senior Systems Analyst – Web Analytics – BCIT
You’ve definitely heard about Google Analytics reports, but customized dashboards might be one of the best kept secrets of web analytics professionals. Google Analytics dashboards are perfect for keeping key perfomance indicators (KPIs) top of mind. You can customize them for specific departments or functions, and you can even automate their delivery. In this presentation, Alan will share an advanced strategy – and specific configuration tips – for making the most of Google Analytics dashboards.
Actionable Analytics with Email: 1 project to get you started (10-min session)
Tatjana Salcedo, Web Strategist – University of Vermont
With so much data it’s often difficult to know where to start your analysis and generate meaningful and actionable reports. In this presentation, Tatjana will detail one basic but useful Analytics project to get you off and started gathering data. You’ll learn what you can do to make improvements in your institution’s email marketing efforts.
Infiltrating Social Media Influence Metrics: Badly in Need of Better Benchmarking (10-min session)
Adrian Ebsary, Online Community Specialist – University of Ottawa
How do you justify all the work done on social media? Choosing the right metric to quantify return on investment is challenging with social media. While a number of big name companies such as Klout and PeerIndex offer comprehensive dashboards with content analysis tools for multiple social networking sites, their score algorithms lack transparency. Adrian will examine some social media metrics that provide unique takes on online influence. He will share concrete examples and the strategies for benchmarking effectiveness in online communities used at his school.
Anayltics Success Story: Data-Driven Redesign (10-min session)
Mardy Wilson, Web Content Strategist – Maricopa Community Colleges
Analytics can help you make data-driven decisions, but what if you’re not the person making final decisions? In this presentation, Mardy will share her analytics success story featuring the reports created for management in an effort to show the traffic generated to the site through search engine optimization and the usefulness of the site based on event tracking after a redesign. She will explain how analytics demonstrated the importance of the website in her school’s paper reduction campaign and its role in meeting students needs by offering direct email contact to all instructors.
How Analytics Solved my Information Architecture Headache (10-min session)
Michelle Tarby, Director of Web Services – Le Moyne College
We’ve all gotten that call asking for one more call-out button on an existing landing page. The client’s eyes tend to glaze over when the dreaded words “information architecture” or “user experience” are uttered. In this presentation, Michelle will show you how she used Google Analytics to inform changes to her college’s admission landing page. You’ll see how visitor flow to under-performing areas has improved as a result of these changes.
What’s Missing in Your Web Content? Site Search Analytics 101 (10-min session)
Amy Pizzolatto, Multimedia Content Specialist – The University of Chicago
Before embarking on a recent homepage redesign project, the University of Chicago studied its Site Search Analytics to understand what content users were searching for once they came to uchicago.edu. Amy looked for prominent patterns—and gaps. In this presentation, she will share a practical example of how to make a site search inventory and group findings into categories to recommend new web pages and navigation changes. Amy will also show you how to set up Site Search Analytics on your Google Analytics account and gives you useful tips to get started.
Sleuthing with Analytics: Using Analytics to Help Pinpoint Challenges (10-min session)
Rebecca Bernstein, Digital Strategist – University at Buffalo
We often think of analytics as a “how did we do/how are we doing” process losing the opportunity to use analytics to help us identify lost opportunities – things we did not even have on our radar screen. In this presentation, Rebecca will guide you through a “sleuthing” case study. She willl give you a peek at how she used analytics up front to inform the strategic approach to developing the UB International Admissions site and to influencing changes in UB’s top level website. You’ll see a concrete example how to pin point opportunities to better leverage the traffic you already have.
Meet the Analytics Profiler: Profiling Your Actual Audience (20-min session)
Joshua Dodson, SEO & Web Analyst – Eastern Kentucky University
Who is your audience when you work for a higher ed institution? We all use similar labels for them: propspective or current students, alums, parents or donors. But, really who are the people who visit your institution website? In this presentation, our Higher Ed Analytics Prof, Joshua Dodson, will show you how to become an Analytics Profiler – not to catch serial killers, but to understand who your actual web visitors are. He will explore how to utilize a combination of Google Analytics data as well as other external tools to profile your actual audience and make sure your website addresses their needs.
