Data-Driven Decisions - Measuring What Matters in Higher Ed Marketing
Higher education institutions face the constant challenge of persuasively marketing themselves to prospective students, finding new ways to optimize their resources, and building a strong brand identity. To do this the most effectively, higher education institutions need to identify what metrics matter and how to best track them so they can gather the data that is going to help them find actionable insights. Below are some suggestions on metrics that can help gauge the success of marketing efforts.
1. Measuring Campaign Effectiveness
Campaign engagement sits at the heart of every successful higher education experience. It directly affects enrollment, retention, and alumni, making it one of the core metrics to track and improve upon. With Lytho, you can create effective campaigns and projects that will attract and engage students. Using Lytho’s Review & Approval software, your institution can gather feedback from stakeholders and create marketing materials that highly resonate with current and prospective students.
2. Measuring Communication Efficiency
UCAS conducted a recent study on students at university age, called Project Next Generation. Their study revealed that students ranked effective communication by the institution during the application process as a major factor in their decision-making process when selecting which university to attend. According to the latest report on Marketing and Enrollment Management Benchmarks 2024 by Education Dynamics, students seek concise and practical information like tuition cost and fees, scholarships available, course listings, and career outcomes over campus life videos. With such demanding stakeholders and many communication channels to choose from, it can be quite challenging for higher education institutions to strike the right chord at the right time.
This is where Lytho’s Creative Operations Platform comes in to empower institutions by helping them streamline communication and content creation and measure the effectiveness of their efforts. Lytho is your central hub for project management, internal communication, and stakeholder feedback. Our consolidated technology stack can empower your institution to track communication volume, response times, and overall efficiency.
Lytho enables institutions to set their own clear deadlines, track project progress, and identify potential bottlenecks. Our reporting features offer comprehensive data on communication activities, including project completion rates, turnaround times, and stakeholder engagement levels by providing the right data for improving workflows and organizational inefficiencies.
Purdue University‘s marketing and communications team had a bumpy road ahead when they sought to merge their departments. By tracking key metrics like reach, engagement, and sentiment, institutions can measure the impact of their branding efforts on awareness, perception, and ultimately, their bottom line. Their review versions currently stand at an average of 1.4, with an industry average of 3-5 rounds.
3. Measuring Brand Consistency
Branding is the make-or-break of higher education institutions – good branding takes a lot of time, effort, and resources. Most importantly, it takes consistency. Branding is directly tied to an organization’s reputation and, as such, it is crucial to make sure there are accessible, easily maintained, brand guidelines distributed throughout all departments. You need the perfect tools to build, keep, and constantly measure the consistency of your brand identity:
- Digital Asset Management (DAM): Lytho’s DAM solution offers secure storage and easy access to approved brand assets, helping you prevent unauthorized use and ensure brand integrity. By tracking how your stakeholders download and use assets, your department can measure the impact of its branding efforts and find areas for improvement.
- Brand Center: Lytho’s Brand Center houses all your brand guidelines, assets, and templates, to ensure your marketing materials are visually consistent. This tool offers institutions the ability to track the usage of brand assets and measure whether brand guidelines are adhered to or not.
- Tempo: Lytho’s templating solution lets you create and publish brand-approved templates that people in your organization can use to create the kind of assets they need – the best part about it? You no longer have to worry about maintaining brand integrity and checking every single thing before it goes out – Tempo does the job for you!
The University of Kentucky Athletics Creative Services Office used Lytho to manage their #CrownHer campaign, which aimed to elevate the recognition of a star basketball player. The campaign’s success, evidenced by 3 million social media impressions and increased attendance at games, underscores the power of using Lytho to keep a consistent brand while executing creative campaigns. Using Lytho, they handled the work and completed their merger-related projects on time without sacrificing quality.
4. Measuring Resource Optimization
Marketing and creative departments in higher education institutions run on notoriously limited budgets and resources. Timelines are tight, deadlines are many and looming, and higher ed marketers wish they had more hours in the day. As such, there is a dire need to make every dollar count and continuously reevaluate people and processes to see where improvements can be made. It is truly survival of the department with the best resource allocation plan. Lytho’s tools support institutions in allocating their resources with:
- Team workload management: Lytho’s workload management tools enable institutions to distribute tasks evenly among team members, preventing burnout and ensuring optimal resource utilization.
- Reporting and analytics: Lytho’s comprehensive reporting and analytics suite provides data on project completion rates, turnaround times, and team member productivity.
Purdue University made use of Lytho’s reporting capabilities to identify and prioritize projects, better allocate resources, and improve project completion rates. Their experience highlights how data-driven insights are the key to helping higher ed institutions make the best decisions.
Conclusion
With a target audience that has grown more demanding and selective than ever before, higher education institutions must leverage data to fully optimize their marketing efforts and achieve their enrollment goals. It is when your institution measures the right metrics and uses a full set of software tools to turbocharge its operations that it can build a strong brand and engage students meaningfully.
Ready to unlock the power of Lytho’s Creative Operations Platform in your higher education marketing efforts?
At Lytho, we help enhance your creative workflows and unify your brand collateral under a single, uniform platform. Schedule a demo to explore how our solutions can elevate your brand narrative, bringing stories to life with impact and authenticity. We look forward to connecting with you on this storytelling journey.
