Kris Hardy, Director of Web and Digital Marketing at Messiah College, is one of the 12 presenters of the 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference.
In this 4-question interview, Kris tells us about higher ed analytics in 2020, a success story, a data analysis technique and what higher ed leaders really need to understand about analytics.
1) What’s next in 2020 for higher ed analytics?
With the recent signing of the California Consumer Privacy Acts (CPPA) this October, it’s clear that data privacy will continue to play a big role in analytics in Higher Ed.
Understanding these types of laws and being proactive in ensuring our data collection methods and web privacy statements are compliant will be at the forefront at my institution.
2) Tell us about your biggest analytics success story!
During a recent project, I was working with the enrollment team to optimize their portion of the website. Knowing that there was likely an abandonment issue on the RFI form due to the number of fields, I wanted to run some tests.
I started by tracking the completion rate of the current form, it had a 41% completion rate. The enrollment team was hesitant to remove any fields, so we agreed to run a test for 60 days and temporarily remove a number of the fields. During the test period, the completion rate jumped up to 64%. That ended up resulting in about 77 additional inquiries each month. After providing the data the admissions team agreed to permanently remove the additional fields.
3) What’s the data analysis technique (or trick) you’ve found the most helpful?
Creating reports and presentations that help stakeholders visualize the data has made a huge difference. Using scatter plots, treemaps, ribbon charts (among others) along with heat and scroll maps can really help bring the data to life.
I use Power BI (a tool by Microsoft) to develop these visuals. It’s only $9.99 a month and is pretty easy to use.
4) What are the top 3 points higher ed leaders should “get” about analytics?
- Using goal values in Google Analytics can help you better understand the ROI of paid digital campaigns. Don’t just use any number for the goal values, work with the finance office to better understand the net tuition revenue generated by a new student, then use that number to calculate the goal value based on historical yield and/or conversion rates from that enrollment form.
- Using year-over-year data in Google Analytics (if configured correctly) can be used as a real-time indicator of how enrollment is looking for upcoming cohorts.
- It’s not just about having access to analytics, it’s about investing in staff members who can help interpret the data and make it actionable.
A conference focusing on higher ed analytics?
The 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference (#HEA20) is a must-attend event for higher ed marketing professionals and teams looking for inspiration, ideas and best practices to step up their analytics and measurement game in 2020
Read below what your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Analytics Conference said about their experience.
Tags: HEA20, Higher Ed News