SPEAKER_02
You're listening to The Higher Ed Marketer, a podcast geared towards marketing professionals in higher education. This show will tackle all sorts of questions related to student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and so much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where the industry is going, this podcast is for you.

Let's get into the show.

SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast, where weekly we explore ideas and insights from marketers we admire. I'm Troy Singer, here with a marketer I admire, Bart Kaler. And Bart, we get to talk to exceptional marketing executives in the bluegrass state today.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Troy. And thank you. I really appreciate working with you too.

This has been a great journey that we've been on. When we first started promoting the Higher Ed Marketer podcast, had someone in the media department at University of Kentucky reach out and say, hey, we've got a great story about how marketing and enrollment are working together at UK. Would you mind if I pitched you on that? And so we listened and heard them out and thought, boy, this is going to great story.

Let's hear about this. And so really looking forward to having this conversation today. And it's so much so that it's going to end up being a two-parter.

SPEAKER_00
Yes, it is. And as you know, a common theme among some of our previous interviewees has been how marketing and communication departments are customarily known for aligning with their alumni offices and how that is changing for some schools. And at the University of Kentucky, they are aligning more marketing communications with enrollment.

And we're going to hear more about that and the success that they are having.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's a fascinating conversation. And I think it'll be really worth everyone's time to listen to both episodes. And I'm so excited about it.

SPEAKER_00
Well said. Let's get into the conversation. I'm excited to introduce Julie Baylog, Chief Marketing Officer for the University of Kentucky and Christine Harper, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management of the University of Kentucky.

Welcome to the both of you to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast.

SPEAKER_04
Thank you. Thanks so much for having us. Really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_00
As are we. And I know that we agreed to talk about some wonderful things, including how to best align marketing and enrollment. But before we get into it, could you both give us a little bit of a background or at least what your roles entail? And we'd love to know your path to that because I happen to know they are unique paths.

SPEAKER_03
Julie, you want to go ahead and start?

SPEAKER_04
Sure, I'll start. So I am the Chief Marketing Officer here at the University of Kentucky. I've been in that role since December of 2018.

So fairly new to that role. Prior to that, I was in a similar role down at the Academic Medical Center down the street for UK healthcare, which is part of the university system. In addition to that, I've worked in the nonprofit realm, and I have often also worked in a place called Keeneland, which is a major sporting and horse racing and auction, horse auction venue.

And so I do have a varied background, always been in marketing, proud graduate of the University of Kentucky. I tell the story that I came here on a full academic scholarship, first gen, I feel very fortunate and came here, thought I was going to study medicine, thought I was going to study pharmacy, something like that. And then I really did not enjoy all of those sciences that go along with that.

And I remember my advisor saying to me, well, why don't you try something different, just a seat? I said, all right. I took a business class over at the Gatton College of Business. And as I like to say, it was like a little competitive and went off in my head and I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to do.

And so I've been in marketing ever since then.

SPEAKER_00
Thank you, Julie. Christine?

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so I have been in enrollment management in a number of different forms for over two decades now. I started just a couple of months before Julie in my current role, July of 2018 in the Chief Enrollment Officer for the university. Prior to that, I had come to the University of Kentucky in 2010 and worked in professional and graduate admissions.

So I was the student affairs officer as well as the admissions director for the College of Dentistry. So dental professional admissions, a little bit different. Prior to that, I worked at another large public institution since I started there in 2001 and worked in enrollment management and undergraduate education for a number of years.

Interestingly too, I think it's funny how you start down one path. When I started my collegiate degree, I was between molecular genetics and ceramics. And I remember my father saying, just do what you love and the rest will come.

And it certainly has because I don't think many people think that they are going to go into higher ed administration. But it was so formative. I had a great academic advisor and I was a student athlete.

I had a great academic advisor that got me thinking about the opportunities in working with college students. And so admissions was where I fell. And the statistical side and the art and the science of this work really melds with my ceramics degree that I actually have as long as well as a master's in working on my doctorate right now.

SPEAKER_00
Melds into it. I see what you're doing.

SPEAKER_04
Nice play on words. That's great.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah. That's great.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And one of the things that we talked about earlier was when you both started your roles back in 2018, the way that each of the offices, marketing and enrollment management worked with one another was really different than it is today. And I know that the way it is today is being touted and seen as a very successful story.

So maybe tell us a little bit about the journey that where it was and the reason or the decision to change that and why it's working so well now.

SPEAKER_03
I think we can jump by by saying that it's working really well now for a couple of reasons. Julie and I partner really, really well together and she's got a great team. I think that we also benefited from coming in at the same time to a brand at the university that was pretty done out and didn't really have much identity.

We struggled with how does this really talk about who UK is? And so through the uncovering of a new brand strategy and that work, we worked so closely together and really saw such value in what each of us brought and all the data we uncovered and kind of grew into it and then just kind of clung to each other thinking about like this could be really great and we need to continue this and how do we make it stronger?

SPEAKER_04
And I don't think I realized how much of a unicorn we were. I think that was a surprise to me for a couple of reasons. One is I outlined my background.

I actually also worked at an agency for a few years as an account manager. And when I came in here, and this is also what I did down at UK Health Care, is set it up as an agency model. And so what we have are two people devoted to enrollment management from our team.

I have another one who's devoted to housing and dining, one who works only with the current student population. The way we view this is Christine is our client and we actually almost practically embed those account managers in Christine's team. And there's a great deal of trust.

Those account managers that we have in EM are pretty much just seamlessly part of that. They go to Christine's meetings. She works with them very directly.

And she tends to work more with them on the more tactical implementation and then she and I work on the strategic side. When she was referring to the brand strategy development, that was one of the reasons that I was brought down here was to develop and put a finer point on what is the University of Kentucky's program and what is our brand promise. And what I like to say is that you can come to the University of Kentucky and you can do anything and you're going to achieve it in a community that both challenges you and supports you.

And I think it's that unique tension that is what makes us special. And Christine was very instrumental as we developed that brand strategy. We really did have the student population in mind.

And so as we developed that out, then we developed the creative expression of that brand, which is what we call wildly possible. And so we talk about you can come here and anything is wildly possible. We like to lean in on words like dream boldly and achieve greatly.

And so as we collaborate, she and her team were so much a part of that brand strategy development, it's not like we had to educate them. They walked the path. And so the words they use, the way they represent us, it's authentic.

And I think that's the key to a strong brand strategy implementation is it has to be both aspirational and it has to be authentic.

SPEAKER_01
That's great. It almost seems like you're even living out that brand promise internally with your own offices. I mean, the fact that you're collaborating and doing some bold things with that, I think that's really good.

I think it's interesting too, whenever I talk with different enrollment leaders or marketing leaders, so many times, I think in higher education, especially more so than maybe in some other industries, it's so siloed. I mean, all the different areas of the university are siloed. And many times marketing has kind of been born out over the years out of the advancement office.

I mean, the alumni magazine is really what drove a lot of the need for any creatives on campus. So I find that even some of the schools that are still struggling a lot of times, that alignment between enrollment and marketing is sometimes still wanting because of the priorities of being under the advancement arm. I mean, have you guys kind of witnessed that or maybe at some of the other organizations that you're a part of?

SPEAKER_04
I think for me, the way I approach it, I don't necessarily see it that way because I've always felt like marketing is a strategic enabler. We need to have a seat at the table when the strategy is being developed. And it's so much better to understand what is the strategic goal because then we can develop the tactics.

The example I use is I don't like to have people call and say, I need a billboard. Okay, well, you may need a billboard. What are you trying to do? And at the end of the conversation, we'll determine whether a billboard's the right way to do it or another way to do it.

The fact that Christine is very data driven and so am I, I think really lends itself well because we have our brand strategy, but we also have a strategic marketing plan that again, we developed. And one with her team in mind, and strategies one and two really focus on enrollment and how we build the esteem of that brand among prospective audiences. And so when we developed that strategic marketing plan, we had to know numbers.

We had to know, what are we trying to reach? Because if it's a huge stretch, then that tells you how you need the resource and do we have the right people in the right spots? And so I'll kind of let Christine speak to that because I think when she came in, what she was challenged with is she was really asked to stretch those numbers. And so a lot of times she's telling me, well, this is where we're headed. And then together we figure out how we can get there.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, absolutely. I think the push and the push and the pull, it's really our brand strategy. As you mentioned, Bart, we really do live it out.

And Julie mentioned the embedding of her team members, particularly Katie Bennett on our team, on her team, in not just one meeting, but multiple meetings where the data is provided. So just because, you know, if we're talking about events and what's going on, what wire events lagging, having Katie in the room is so critical because we can not only respond to the data, but then react to it. She's also in our broader recruitment meeting where we have our college recruiters come in.

So then we have the intel there. We will look at our social media and hear things happening. And so this brand strategy is also a living breathing thing that the tactics shift based on the winds of what we're going through in the pandemic is a great example.

But to Julie's point, when we started, I was charged with growth and growth in different ways and needing to be able to do that in a very strategic way of where are we going to put our funds? Where are we going to put our recruiters? Where are we going to launch our digital assets? Where are we going to physically mail versus who gets a phone call? And so this ability to have so close a tie is really critical. And the push and the pull of it, you know, Julie brings information based off of what they're seeing in the response rates, in the open rates, in the clicks, in the digital. We're talking about what we're seeing in the high school, not now in the high schools, but in the Zoom rooms.

But then what are our high school counselors saying? Where is it that a lot of times we'll have meetings because we see behaviors in the data that then make us think something's not quite clicking? And then how can we communicate differently or how is somebody reading what we're doing? And sometimes it's because a change is made in a college or like the honors college. And maybe the way that it's being, the information is being received is not what we intended. And so that ability to really go back and forth is so critical.

And, you know, wherever marketing is housed, I think that it's the... It has to be the onus of the enrollment management, chief enrollment officer to say, hey, come with me, partner with me. Because if not, you're not going to make the strides that you need to.

You're not going to be able to look at data and have that inform and really move things forward in the way the institution wants to. Whether the goals or growth goals or the goals are selectivity or the shape of the class, those are, you know, it has to be a very close relationship for it to be successful.

SPEAKER_01
That's great. I love the collaborative language and the ways that you're talking about that. I know that your comment, Julie, about, you know, people come to us and say, we need a billboard.

Well, why? And Ethan Braden from Purdue University, he was guest on episode one and he kind of talked about that, you know, we're not short order cooks. I mean, the idea that the marketing department is not just here to take your order and go fulfill it. I mean, we need to be, like you said, at the table.

We need to be talking about things. We need to understand the data, asking the why's, the how's, the when and the what questions, just to be able to be able to really kind of speak and talk and make strategic decisions, not because, you know, by bringing all of our strengths to the table, rather than just saying, oh, well, you guys are creative, just go do what I want you to do because this is the creative I need that I have. Now we're all coming to the table to kind of bring all that together.

And I think that, you know, Troy, you talked a little bit about, you know, the agency model and Julie made a comment about that. Maybe you can kind of pick up on, ask a few questions about that.

SPEAKER_00
Yes, Julie, you gave a great example of how that works with enrollment. Are there other relationships or how does that agency model work with other departments as you relate to them?

SPEAKER_04
Yes, we've extended it beyond enrollment. We did mostly start with enrollment initially, but I also have an account manager who works mostly with housing and dining because we do have a lot of opportunity. All of our dorms or, excuse me, residence halls are at least, they're all quite new.

And but with that comes the obligation to make sure that they're being used and that we market them. And so one of the things that she did, for instance, is she figured out that students who live on campus have a higher GPA and are more likely to graduate in four years. So suddenly that became a real compelling proof point when we're talking to families about this is why you want to live on campus.

There's a real factor there. We also have somebody who is completely devoted to the current, the student success stream working with current students. So she is embedded with that particular group and she helps do everything from text reminders to students who need to get their advising appointment going to, she runs the editorial with some other folks on the PR team for a newsletter that we do once a week called Wildcat Rundown that has all the great information that a student needs to know.

And the open rates on that thing are through the roof. And so, you know, she's really good about keeping a pulse on what do we need to know? Because, you know, I like to say at the end of the day, you know, marketing is getting the right message to the right person at the right time. You're really when you can most influence them.

And so everybody knows their, their, their piece. And then we have, I'm a big believer, I'm a big believer in the daily huddle. And I believe they should be short.

That they cascade. And so, for instance, one of the things we do in them every morning at nine o'clock, we huddle. And it doesn't take us more than 15 minutes.

And it's all of my direct reports. And then my counterpart, Jay Blanton, who's the chief communications officer, his direct reports, we get on there, we do a round robin. We share out with them anything that they need to know.

They share with us any barriers to success, anything that we need to do. And then what happens is then those people then meet with their direct reports at 10 o'clock. And that we, and it should never take more than 15 minutes, but everybody is aligned that way.

And there's no surprises. And so that those are all the ways that from an agency standpoint that we're trying to do it. We also have a creative director who works in the role of making sure that we're assigning graphic designers to, they're also aligned with account managers.

So the same graphic designer works on a lot of the same accounts so that they understand and become part of that embedded team. We have videographers, photographers, and all of that works jointly with the PR team. And so we're just in every college has a communicator.

And then we meet with the college communicators once a month to share with them anything that we need to share from the university level.

SPEAKER_01
That's great. And I'm sure, Christine, that you maybe even feel the residual as one of the agency clients. But certainly if something's going on in the housing and on campus realm, obviously some of that data that they're hearing that you're learning, I mean, is going to help with transfers, it's going to help with the way that you're selling the university and maybe even retention to degree.

I'm not sure that's part of your, you know, part of your purview, but certainly those things are going to make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think that it really does. All of the weights, I feel, I just said this last week, I feel like we're really hitting on all cylinders because of the way that the agency model works and the kind of tentacles going out and then coming back in and then feeding one another. It's amazing how much intel and information we have and how that information then helps inform everything else.

Some people think, well, I'm only focused on this population and this is really what my goal is. But that population then becomes our current students. And so there has to be this seamless process of what are we telling our students from the time that they're early college? Like, you know, when we're out in middle schools, what are we telling them? How are we sharing just how do you get to college and that UK could be an option or just college in general can be an option.

And then as they get closer, what are we sharing with them that then hopefully becomes part of what they experience in their first year into their second as they then graduate and become alums. We've leaned into our alumni for that very reason. We want them close.

We want them to know what we're telling. We want to hear from them so then we can see how is it going? How have we changed and what is this experience like? So to that point, when we have meetings, a retention meeting, which is a huge broad table, we have our first time freshman meeting, huge broad table, housing and dining. We'll give reports if we see things that are happening in terms of our LLP applications.

So all of these things inform the students across the life cycle through to graduation or whatever their career plans or life plans are. And the agency model has really, I think, sped up that knowledge base. I think Julie, you can agree with me that when we both started, we knew we had gems and stories on this campus and we had real hard time surfacing those.

We knew, oh, this student over here and this faculty member over here, that is because of a lot of Julie and her team's work and also the way that they're embedded. This college will say, I have a student that you really need to connect with before it would just go off into what do we do with this and get lost in the ether. And now, like I said, it just feels like we're hitting on all cylinders.

And a lot of that has to do with that alignment and embedded nature and then that idea that we really are trying to keep that brand promise and who UK is, is this. And we want you to experience it. And for the right student, it's going to be a great experience and you will do things that you didn't think you could do.

And so that piece is really critical for us. And I think that the way that it's aligned right now has been extremely helpful in getting us in a very short period of time, very short period of time, two places. I think we thought it could be five, six, seven years before we got to this.

And now we're easily readily surfacing some of this.

SPEAKER_01
That's great. Great. Thank you. Wow.

SPEAKER_00
We are at the time that we try to keep it to for every episode, but unfortunately, we're only halfway through what we wanted to cover with the both of you. So we're going to divide this into a two part episode and Bart. We're going to continue on next week for everyone else.

But for us, it's just going to be about five minutes from now. So Julie, Christine, thank you. And we look forward to everyone joining us next week on the second part of our conversation with UK.

The higher ed marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer solutions and education, marketing and branding agency. And by think patented a marketing execution, printing and mainly provider of higher ed solutions. On behalf of my co-host Bart Kailer, I'm Troy singer.

Thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_02
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