Joshua Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation – VisionPoint Marketing, is one of the 12 presenters of the 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference.
In this 4-question interview, Joshua 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?
As an industry, we still haven’t connected all of the right pieces of data so that we can have a solid and holistic perspective of what is happening in the higher ed space. Some schools certainly are able to see the downstream impact of their overall enrollment marketing efforts, but most still have not connected all of the dots.
This is the next big thing in higher ed analytics — and it isn’t just a fad, either. Comprehensive data literacy will soon be a requirement to stay competitive in a very crowded higher ed market.
2) Tell us about your biggest analytics success story!
After running a recruitment marketing campaign for a while, we were able to use data on spend by marketing channels and leads to create a predictive model that enabled us to see how we could make specific budget changes and get a lot more leads for the same amount of money.
This enabled us to make better recommendations and decisions for implementing the best media mix possible. This is a powerful technique to use when you need results with a limited budget. It is important, though, to keep in mind that you have to have historical data to make this type of analysis work.
3) What’s the data analysis technique (or trick) you’ve found the most helpful?
This isn’t a specific trick, but what I find to be most helpful is to rely on actual statistics to make sure that what I’m saying is accurate.
It is easy to “measure” things and conjecture that one thing is performing better than something else, but have you run a chi-squared analysis to make sure that it is statistically better? It is important to take analysis to the next level to make sure that we can back our claims — not just with data that “looks” good, but with data that is verifiably accurate.
4) What are the top 3 points higher ed leaders should “get” about analytics?
- Resources tend to be limited and there is a need to make the most of the resources that are available.
- It is impossible to know if you are getting the most out of your marketing dollars if you aren’t measuring the impact of your marketing efforts.
- Marketing isn’t just an art — it’s also a science. Many schools are realizing that and the ones that recognize and act upon it will be the ones who have the most success moving forward. That approach is what produced many of the big names we see now, like SNHU and others.
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