Operation Connect: A Seamless Approach to School Enrollment Management

1. Operation Connect: A Seamless Approach to School Enrollment Management Use of Technology in Enrollment Management Technology is Just Another Tool for Building Community A presentation by the Institute of School & Parish Development

2. Technology Related Areas to be Covered Today! • Enter – The iGeneration • Website – Home Base of Operation • Email – Losing Ground • Social Networking – No Going Back • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

3. Technology as our story telling tool in 2010 Elements of the Story… • Infuse passion • Describe the hero • Paint the picture of what the hero is up against • Create pivotal moments • Close like the Gospels with the Resurrection

4. Your school’s website should provide… • Meaningful content • Easy navigation • Ways for them to interact with you Bottom Line: Attempt to guide the experience of the visitors to your school’s website!

5. Invest in your website • Visitors equate quality of the site with quality of the school. • You must spend time analyzing the hits to your web site and its pages to understand what is most important to your visitors.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • There is no defined algorithm to use in positioning your site. • Start by searching for your school using the big 3 search engines…Google, Yahoo, and MSN. • Understand that relevant key words are one of the most important things that drive search engine placement.

7. SEO Tips Continued… • One way to surface key words is by conducting a paid search for a given period of time. You will receive ID report of key words. • Your design should focus on: title, metatags, Alt tags, heading tags, italicize, and bold words. • Title the page…name each page in the blue bar of the browser, something meaningful, not as you often see, the word "Home Page" or something like that.

8. SEO Tips Continued… 8. Link IN, Link Out…High Schools should have a web page with URL’s of their feeder schools web sites. Elementary Schools should have a web page with URL’s of high school web sites that their students attend. 9. Keep Your Site Fresh…Otherwise, the search engine spiders will interpret your site as inactive during their once a month visit to your site. Keep it updated . . . even if it means moving text and images around on the page.

9. Finding Key Words for SEO You type in the words related to private schools and find out popular key words that have been used to reach sites related to those words. Here’s a site that offers you some suggested key words… http://www.addme.com/keywordsuggest.htm

10. Writing Content for the Web The following principles for writing copy for the web incorporate advice offered to colleges and universities by Bob Johnson, a nationally recognized higher education enrollment consultant and leading authority on writing copy for the web. • Blocked copy helps the reader scan. • Save more lengthy text for hard copy pieces. • Web visitors look for words that evoke caring emotion. • Personalize the copy and write it as you would in direct marketing.

11. Writing for the Web Continued… • Use on-line forms (where appropriate and with appropriate “fire wall” protection) – work at reducing the number of PDF’s. • Your website is a series of mini-online magazines aimed at… Prospective Students/Families Current Students Alumni • Drop down menus or some sort of navigation bar should run throughevery page

12. Writing for the Web continued… • Fill your pages with testimonials – • Tell your story through those who are most believable – • YOUR students, parents, alumni • Insert prompts to take action such as “click here to learn about St. John’sstudent test scores”

13. “I Need You to take My Place at St. Michael’s!” Meet John – 2007 Graduate of St. Michael John attended St. Michael School from kindergarten through 8th grade. Arriving early for school each day, John took care of raising our American flag each morning. John played CYO basketball and was a member of our academic team. Typical of our students, John performed well academically. He just finished hisfreshman year at a local Catholic highschool. Here’s what John has to say about his experience at St. Michael School… “Even though I have graduated from St. Michael School, I have great memories of that experience. You are not just a student at St. Michael. You are a member of a school family. From Mr. Stein’s home-cooked pizza to school dances, you will feel like everything is done especially for you. Welcome to the St. Michael School family!”

14. “St. Michael’s is a Gift for Your Child’s Future” Meet John Cooper Current St. Michael School Parent John has had one child graduate from St. Michael and he currently has two other children attending the school (1st grade and 7th grade). John is typical of the wonderful parents who send their children to St. Michael. During our Lenten Fish Fry, you will find John volunteering for the clean-up crew. He is an active member of our PTO. Here’s what John has to say about his parental experience at St. Michael School… “I knew that I had a free option down the street in our public school, but I was wanted to invest in my children’s future. A future that was God centered, academically challenging, and family-like was what I wanted. And that is what I got at St. Michael!”

15. Web Site Navigation – Home Page 5 Doors for your private school audience • Prospective Families • Current Families • Alumni & Friends • Parish schools – Link to parish High schools – Link to an events page • Contact Us YOUR FRONT PORCH Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

18. Prospective Student/Family • Welcome Page • Inquire On-Line • Who We Are Page • Benefits Page • Admission: Next Steps • Financing Tuition • Hear from Our Students • Hear from Our Parents • Hear from Our Faculty • Standardized Test Scores • Day in the Classroom

20. Conduct a Web Site Focus Group • Who: Invite parish or community members who have children but are not yet of school age. Also, invite a couple of current prospects. You can also invite current school families and alumni if you have a need to determine their level of comfort with your web site. • What: An opportunity to ask questions about your school and watch participants navigate and find the answers on your school web site. • When: As often as you think it would be helpful to know the reaction of visitors to your web site. Definitely conduct a focus group if any significant changes are being implemented on your site. • Where: Computer lab at school or any room with multiple computers. • How: Tape record and take notes on the entire session. Ask a question such as, “You are a prospective parent and you are concerned about the cost of tuition. Find information about the school’s tuition. What was your experience in finding that information?”

21. How To Use Email in Recruitment • Email is a great relationship builder. • To build the relationship you must ask for and collect email the email addresses of your prospective families. • Most of the principles that apply in creating quality direct marketing text for other media also apply to writing good emails. • Email can do the following… 1. Communicate with prospects in the way they like to communicate. 2. Share new information or updates at a moments notice. 3. Drive prospects to more in-depth information on your web site (to do this, you have to include web page URL’s). 4. Push out URL’s that ask for action from the recipient such as “click here to apply today.”

23. How To Use Email in Recruitment • When possible, personalize the email using the name of the recipient. • Test launch each email before you send it to your audience. Check to make sure how it looks on various types and sizes of computers. • Always “blind copy” (BCC) your email lists so that you protect the privacy of their email addresses. • Always include an opt-out instruction at the end of your email. Keep an opt out list and make sure to respect it in each subsequent email campaign. • You must include your organization’s name and address at the end of each email you send out.

24. Social Media – Advice • Get in the game • Move slowly • Listen closely to what’s being said • Realize that this is nothing more than online relationship building • Facebook is the major player • Twitter appeals more to adults • Goal is to get “positive viral” story telling out there!

25. Monitoring Your Social Media • Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. www.google.com/alerts • Sign-up to manage your alerts using Google Reader • Doesn’t interface with Facebook

26. Facebook and Twitter • Synchronize them • Create official sites – Encourage everyone within the school to stop creating their own pages relative to the school – You want ONE site! • Work from the inside-out getting people to become “fans” • Run contests to encourage people to become “fans”

27. Facebook and Twitter • Twittering often will increase traffic to your school’s blog • Encourage people to feed you content to post • Encourage people to comment • Link your posts to web-based stories and articles – your alumni will appreciate your highlighting stories that are written about them • With that thinking in mind, encourage students, faculty, staff and alumni to reference their affiliation with your school

28. You Tube and Video • Presents opportunities to visually tell your story, but potential for a story to be told that is out of your control • Create an official YouTube site for your school…where you control which videos get posted there • Have fun with your video…making sure that you portray the school’s authentic story to the public – people today appreciate reality.

29. iPhones for the iGeneration Cell Phone Communication • Education related Apps are becoming the new thing in iPhone related marketing • A new level of permission based marketing • If you don’t create an App for areas of your marketing, try to create marketing-oriented web material so that it is iPhone friendly

30. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) HIGH LEVEL Available Software: ACT (ACT.com) Costs minimal amount of $ but enables letter and envelope merges with great ease MID LEVEL Microsoft Access Database Microsoft Excel Costs less than vendor software and enables letter and envelope merges BASIC LEVEL File Folders

31. QUESTIONS & ANSWERS • Questions, Comments, Issues

32. Contact Information John Cooper has new contact information… Catholic School Enrollment SolutionsDivision of ISPD(937) 392-4113 home office(937) 618-0487jcooperispd@aol.com