Enrollment Marketing for Higher Education

Cathy Donovan [00:00:00]

Hello, and welcome to the Innovating Enrollment Success podcast, where we talk about trends and tactics in higher education marketing so that we can all be better connected and hopefully create better outcomes. I’m Cathy Donovan, Agency Marketing Director at Paskill, a higher education enrollment marketing firm and longtime supporter of the annual CUPRAP Professional Development Conference.

The 2024 Conference, Addressing the Future Together provided a forum for more than 200 higher ed marketers and communicators to evolve their practices and networks. I know we are all still inspired by the ideas shared there, especially from the keynote Paskill sponsored, Tomorrow’s Narratives: Leveraging AI and Storytelling and Student Search for Higher Education.

Accomplished higher education marketer, Jennifer Umberger is on the board of CUPRAP and is involved with the conference planning committee.

This year’s conference featured more shortened sessions, a strategy spearheaded by Jennifer, so folks can better retain ideas to bring back to their institutions. As Kettering University’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Jennifer leads the Michigan institution’s marketing and communication strategy, and oversees all marketing efforts to attract top students, motivate alumni and donors, and recruit high-quality faculty and staff.

She has more than two decades of marketing experience, including serving as a VP of Marketing at Commonwealth University, the combined trio of Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield Universities. Welcome, Jennifer.

Jennifer Umberger:

Thank you, Cathy. It’s a pleasure to be with you today.

Cathy Donovan:

So let’s start by learning a little bit about your role at Kettering University.

Jennifer Umberger:

Great. I’ve been here at Kettering for just about 18 months, and it’s been a wonderful opportunity to create a brand new division for this institution. In the past marketing and communications, as with many institutions across the nation,  has spent time within the enrollment or advancement,  but really deserved to be a standalone function to support the primary goals of the institution.

So that being enrollment and fundraising, et cetera, as you had mentioned. And so it’s such a privilege to be here and stewarding our brand, helping to build a new brand identity for Kettering and to be able to showcase that to the world.

Cathy Donovan:

So talk about your role with CUPRAP. What inspired you to get involved?

Jennifer Umberger:

Funny enough, my involvement with CUPRAP actually directly aligns with a move to Pennsylvania and joining the team at Kutztown University. I believe it was Camille DeMarco, our graphic designer there that encouraged me to get involved with CUPRAP. I know many of the folks there have been involved for many, many years.

And so the value of having a more local opportunity for professional development was really exciting. So the more people I met, the more relationships I built. I couldn’t help but be inspired and excited to take on a role that was presented to me. Joe Master and Paul Redfern had asked if I would join the conference and programming committee with them.

Now, several years ago, and from both kind of transitions of each of them in leading that committee.  We really were able to build some incredible programming that has continued now under the leadership of most recently Jamie Yates and Mark Cunningham. And so super excited to keep that involvement. And as I was asked to join the board, keeping that strategy in place and really making sure that we’re keeping things at the forefront of our industry and bringing to discussion about what’s new and next, that’s really our mission and where we can be most effective in that space.

Cathy Donovan:

Great.  So what were some of the standout moments or highlights from the 2024 conference?

Jennifer Umberger:

Yeah, AI and strategy seemed to be some of those key themes. And working smarter too with sometimes limited budgets or limited teams. So we had fantastic keynotes as the one that Paskill sponsored, including an outstanding joint presentation by Will Reynolds and Seer Interactive, and Volt Miran with Carnegie as well. Highlighting for many, though, were the roundtable discussions Friday, which gave people a chance to really discuss and learn from each other on key topics that aligned with the week’s sessions.

And that was a really intentional part. You mentioned shorter focused sessions.  But the ability to call that back into a forum where people could actually spend a minute and say, well, how do you do this or how are you using AI or what’s the key topic you’re finding useful for grad marketing? Some of those things really came to life on Friday in those discussions. And those are discussions that are continuing for sure.

Cathy Donovan:

That’s great.  So it sounds like a positive experience for all. What kind of feedback from attendees did you get regarding the conference?

Jennifer Umberger:

People loved the breadth in a variety of topics this year. It’s always a challenge knowing that our teams kind of like I described, sometimes live within different units of a college or university, but also span the breadth of marketing and communication. Sometimes it’s advancement, sometimes it’s enrollment. And so for that sheer fact of, shorter topics being able to be offered, you could actually wind up getting more sessions in over the course of those conference days.

So that was a huge piece of that discussion. I had experienced that at a conference I attended for the automotive industry. And not only does it help us to attract more campus-based professionals to present, especially when they have maybe a 15 or 20-minute presentation that they have to build as opposed to a 45-minute to an hour one. It’s a lot less daunting.

And we found that because there were more panel opportunities, people were far more, I guess feeling able to devote that time to sharing with their colleagues.  But we also heard that sessions from some of the powerhouse presenters like Mallory Willsea and Jaime Hunt could have benefited from more time.

So as the programming and sponsorship committee starts their work ahead of next year, that’s going to certainly be a consideration and making sure that we are listening to that feedback and understanding what people are looking for.

Cathy Donovan:

So what do you think were innovative enrollment strategies discussed at the conference? And how do you think schools will start to implement them?

Jennifer Umberger:

It’s so interesting because what may seem innovative to one might be something that people have had into practice for others. And so, I think specifically strategic use of technology, to better reach those prospective student audiences was, and from the YouTube session with the creative team at Swarthmore to web discussions with Georgie Cohen from OHO to the graduate marketing session that featured campus-based practitioners from Drexel and Kutztown and Lehigh, those sessions were able to hit on a number of enrollment audiences and how to best reach them with practical tools and ideas and concepts that that you can apply even just a little bit all the way through kind of full-scale reimagining of how you’re leveraging those strategies.

Cathy Donovan:

So how about some networking successes from the conference? Obviously, there’s this one we got to chat and now you’re here, have you heard of other collaborations that emerged from the conference? I think that’s always such a highlight is being able to meet other like-minded people and give you some ideas and inspiration.

Jennifer Umberger:

Absolutely. Conversations like this are exactly that piece. And I know, even in his podcast, Shane Baglini, has been working with Mallory and the team there, really focusing on some of the topics and continuing the conversations that began in not only the networking sessions or the roundtables, but just by way of, of meeting each other over the course of those few days.

But as far as the collaborations, we often hear from those sponsors that their book of business certainly expands with the partners that they’ve met or folks that they’ve connected with at CUPRAP. And that’s one of the best pieces of this. You know, the partners that we wind up getting to spend our week with see a lot of value in the close-knit structure of how we build this conference. This isn’t a massive, you know, all-call ballroom-style event where you may get to say hello to everyone, but not have a meaningful conversation. One of my favorite parts is to kind of between sessions, take a look at sponsor row and see who is deep in thought with how can we solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity with a partnership like that.

Cathy Donovan:

Great.  So we talked a little bit about areas to improve for next year. How about topics? Can you predict what kind of topics might be relevant for the conference in 2025?

Jennifer Umberger:

Funny enough, we are having a board retreat later this week to start to dive into exactly that. But I’m really excited Carina Sitkus from Lehigh University is going to be co-chairing the Conference and Sponsorship Committee with Mark this year. So, Jamie Yates has spent many years on the Programming Committee and is taking her Leadership over to the Communications Committee and then Carina is joining to make sure that we keep everything fresh and making sure that we’re doing our research about what topics are being covered at other higher ed or other higher ed marketing conferences specifically and making sure that if it is a topic that really requires further exploration that we do make space for that.

But also we want to make sure that we’re talking about things that not everyone is,  and things that are really mostly focused as much as we can be on sharing those best practices from the campus-based professionals.

Cathy Donovan:

Fair enough. Well, Paskill’s tagline is Innovating Enrollment Success, which is also the name of this podcast. And just wanted to close out by asking what enrollment success means to you and what kinds of innovation you think is needed to make that happen.

Jennifer Umberger:

We talk about that constantly, as you would imagine, and in a world, for Kettering University, we’re a STEM-focused institution, primarily engineering, computer science, and business programs, and so we really are charged to stay as up-to-date and relevant with curriculum and how can marketing and enrollment help to shape that to make sure that we are partnering with the academic side of the house to keep people excited about the types of things that they’ll learn here in such a hands-on environment.

We also have industry partners as part of our co-op program that we’re constantly in touch with to make sure that we are as relevant to them as partners as possible, producing wonderfully talented individuals.  That can be an asset to their workforce. So those are some of the stakeholders beyond your traditional students and families, and, even those in the high schools, but to really showcase that college can be affordable in a time that even the question of, is college relevant, we are really focused on making sure we’re telling the story that yes, it really is.

And that there is a strong return on your investment of the time and the financial resources. To set yourself up for future success, but we also live in a world that you can customize every aspect of a tennis shoe and have it delivered to your front door. And so for higher ed, it’s been a little bit of a building year, especially for us here at Kettering.

We focused a lot on the infrastructure because you need the data to be able to showcase how to personalize even better. And so that’s been a focus of ours.  As we’ve been rebuilding our brand over this last 18 months or so.

And we’re just so excited because we see all of those lightbulb moments with those young people and their families as they’re talking about, well, what, what does my future look like?

And, oh my gosh, I can start it right away here. That becomes an incredible selling point for getting to that innovative enrollment success for us.

Cathy Donovan:

Fantastic. Well, CUPRAP has yearlong events and community for folks working in higher education, marketing, and communications, which I know Paskill and other partners value.

So thanks to Jennifer for joining me today and making CUPRAP such a welcoming and inspiring group. For more about Jennifer, see our show notes or find her on social. And if you’d like to hear about ways Pakill can help you innovate, let’s connect. The higher ed community is all about building good relationships and great ideas.

Jennifer Umberger:

Thank you.

Cathy Donovan:

Thank you.