Posted by Carlyn Foshee Chatfield on January 11, 2012

Marketing IT Services

Thanks to Bert Desimone at the University of Georgia for the comparison of marketing and communications (see Word document attached to bottom of this page). Written as a draft in 2003, the terms and descriptions are still relevant to our jobs as IT Communicators today.

As Bert says, "While the main focus of communications is to inform, there is a promotional aspect to providing information. Similarly, the main focus of marketing is to promote, and there is an informational aspect to marketing....Essentially, marketing has two major objectives: to raise awareness and to sell a product."

Discussion notes:

• • Q: Carrie - Struggling with metrics, how do we know what is working?

  • A: Wendy - please recap what you are doing to track analytics

  • A: Chuck - track bitly links, launched a university-wide shortening service, can track like that; weekly (bi-weekly when classes out) with plain-text (going rich-text this year), will use click through tracking as well. Newsletter and news site. Difference between the "hey look what's going on" group and the user support group. We've split, regrouped, split again but have a new director now and may be regrouping again.

  • A: Stan - similar, sending Twitter, Facebook, etc. doing some metrics tracking, it is new for us. A high investment of time and energy though.

  • Q: Return on investment - how do you track?

  • A: Chuck - dashboard for social media, haven't commited to any just yet.

  • Q: Develop own shortening service - did you make your own?

  • A: Chuck - yes

  • Q: What about the problems with shortened links changing a bit as they are sent out?

  • A: there is a little bloat, but we haven't found a way to eliminate it just yet. Still evaluating - anyone else tracking analytics?

  • A: Sherri - first look (log on to wireless) page has a lot of hits when you track analytics - so can you say you get a lot of hits because you are forcing them to a page or because it is a popular service?

  • A: our news mailing goes out on Wednesdays, the same day that social media stats are pulled,

  • A: Sherri - bus ads, screen savers on public computers, portal (everyone has to go there)

  • A: Connie/Jan - some of the things we have tried, QR codes on our bus ads - trying to pull analytics on that

  • A: Jan/Connie - Google Analytics, tie in with our main university Google Analytics, will tag to social media account when we release a campaign

  • Q: do you change the way you market by the campaign?

  • A: Melanie - faculty rarely see the digital signage promos, but students see it. Email works best to reach our (UTEP) faculty. Students also have to be able to read it on their iPads and smart phones. Test every message to see how it looks in the digital format.

  • A: Chuck - matrix used at Indiana - audience, channel, message predetermined so they knew the formula that worked best for the marketing campaign. Consider one-time blasts, recurring reminders.

  • A: Stan - when are we communicating and when are we pushing (marketing) - like Google Apps

  • A: Sherri - try communicating with parents, yes we've got those helicopter parents, too, so use them, particularly in orientation

  • A: Wendy - we've been working with our first year center; we know students don't pay any attention to technology advice so we go straight to the parents. Parents very appreciative and point their students in the right direction.

  • A: Cathy - we used to do that but our current first-year group has pushed us into a smaller role, now we get 5-30 parents coming to a session and we don't have the kind of direct link to parents we used to when we had a slot on the parents' agenda where we did a 20 minute presentation. We also went to a coffee hour where we answered questions one-on-one.

  • A: Melanie - we don't really involved the parents but we do work with the student/alumni group. We only work with parents when the students coming in dual-college/high school programs (and under age 18) are the parents we can work with. As a parent, I'd really like someone at the college to include me in on a dialogue.

  • Q: what are you marketing?

  • A: Melanie - moving students from hotmail to Outlook Live mail and upgrade for wireless printing in labs. No individual paper, just the 6-foot-tall standing posters! everything is digital: staged email, digital signs, posters, service catalog pages, video, rotating wall paper on computer. And the wireless has it's own page. Look at Camtasia for quick do-it-yourself videos.

  • A: Sherri - Tech-palooza - afternoon event, big IT fair. Twitter account for the event, screen savers, posters, opportunities to promote in other venues (faculty senate newsletter, etc)

  • A: Melanie - Union open house, don't have a campus-wide back to school event here; have IT open house in fall but we miss students who start in the spring.

  • A: Chuck - similar events over the years, decided in the last year to abandon due to overhead of expense, work not really paying off - we would get a lot of foot traffic for the freebies but didn't get a lot of engagement.

  • A: Stan - we have been in the same state where we had an annual info/learning tech fair focused mostly at faculty and staff; students marketing was mostly during orientation, welcome week. Walk the street with student booths on each side - is where we marketed telecom and cable TV. That is where we do most of the marketing for students. We got out of the info fairs as well due to the low return on investment - a great collaborative investment but not done it recently.

  • A: Melanie - we just schedule it for three hours at our existing computing center and the regular employees work it plus a few more employees scheduled to work in the center...and we give really good prizes for people who attend...did cut it down from 5 to 3 hours, though.

  • A: Melanie - the best way to get students to our one-hour workshop is to send a 30-minutes before message to all public computer screen savers in lab saying "hey we're having this workshop in 30 minutes" and it packs the room. For faculty/staff, of course, you have to send it earlier so they can put it on their calendar.

  • Q: Linda - do you find a time that is better for students?

  • A: Melanie - we have more morning classes than afternoon classes so it is easier to get students in at noon and also at 2pm. Noon works because you can eat in our space in the library.

  • Q: is that the first or the reminder blast?

  • A: it is the only blast.

  • Q: sounds like you have your own physical space.

  • A: yes! Easier to accomodate since we moved into library - there was a space being abandoned and we were under the same VP so we had a chance to move in and create a real student-centered space.

  • A: Moved some office staff out and freeing up space for collaborative spaces - since students have laptops, don't have to have as many monitor/CPU stations. We have been incorporating more large 56" screens with 4-5 hook ups for laptops. Collaborative work stations.

  • A: yes, we also created collaborative work rooms where up to 4 people can do the same thing in a private space...of course we have our IT wall paper announcements on those computers.

  • Q: how to reach faculty?

  • A: Connie - we meet with faculty in the fall, trying to tell them about all the services they will have access to...I challenged my team, "I don't want to give out another notebook" and so my team came up with a business-card size piece. Branded with IT on front and contact info on back, then laminated this really colorful piece. Becuause it is laminated, all of a sudden, everyone who comes in and sees them asks for one.

  • A: Melanie - we also give faculty members a new notebook - they get it for free; IT pays for it but to pick it up, they have to come to a 2-hour IT workshop (we also invite HR, key people, parking, etc) and put them in collaborative space before the faculty arrive - the auxilary booths get 30 minuts of the 2 hours. It's been really great and we do it here in the center so they get to know where we are.

  • A: Stan - we also have a faculty orientation and then we partnered with HR for their quick-start program and IT gets a 1-hour block in that orientation about our services and how they tie in, the program has waned here of late but it was very helpful in getting message out to new hires.

  • Q: how are you reaching your upperclassmen? We're good at reaching new people, but when how to reach upper classmen and grad students?

  • A: We've identified a void with the grad students - there are a lot of little orientations dept by dept.

  • A: Linda - for our returning students, we work through the student government. Those groups talk for us. We also have a residential computing consultant in each hall. Oddly enough, table tents are very effective for us. We leave them up only for a few days. Avoid over-communicating; use just-in-time. We are a strictly residential campus.

  • Q: how do you measure student workers?

  • A: Linda - our help desk us open 24 x 7 and they manage the student workers in the residence halls.

  • Q: text or graphics? What do you use?

  • Q: Can we talk about service catalogs?

  • A: Great Idea: return to service catalogs in May and the group that will (hopefully) be giving a presentation in the annual conference in the fall can either try out some idea on us or collect more information for their presentation.

  • Carlyn notes:

  • We REALLY need an annual conference presentation on Marketing IT services and one on Service Catalogs (LSU, Indiana, UTEP). If you can present a panel on the marketing IT services, email Carlyn@rice.edu, who can coordinate the proposal.

Chat notes:

• • ITCOMM CG Leader 1: Service home - http://unicom.iu.edu/IT News example - http://uitsnews.iu.edu/2011/11/09/take-full-advantage-of-ius-unified-communication-service/Recent news about availability of new mobile clients for this service - http://uitsnews.iu.edu/2012/01/11/mobile-apps-for-unicom/

  • Carlyn - Rice U: Links above, thanks to Chuck Aikman at Indiana U.

  • Carlyn - Rice U: I usually scribe these session; it is hard to scribe and facilitate at the same time. Do I have a volunteer to keep the discussion going while I type?

  • caikman@indiana.edu: I'm a decent scribe, but I fail to do so when I talk

  • Carlyn - Rice U: General housekinping, remember to mute if you aren't talking, please.

  • Carlyn - Rice U: MUSIC?

  • David Stack, UW-Milwaukee: Sounds like we're getting some music on hold because someone put their phone on hold

  • Stan - NC State: ah, that's better.

  • Sheri - LSU: We market with ITS ads on the portal - https://mylsu.apps.lsu.edu/web/mycampus/home

  • Sheri - LSU: as well as screen savers in classrooms/labs - so almost everyone sees them at least

  • caikman@indiana.edu: we also list IT news headlines on our central IT page http://uits.iu.edu

  • Melanie Thomas - UT El Paso: Carlyn - I emailed my samples to you

  • Melanie Thomas - UT El Paso: Also - sample at http://my.utep.edu

  • Linda - Princeton: We send an IT Resources publication to new students along with their University netID information. It is available online at: http://www.princeton.edu/oit/oitpubs/TechResources.pdf

  • caikman@indiana.edu: Yes, busses! We did mus wrappers to promote our IU Mobile service m.iu.edu, we also place smaller ads inside the bus, but we have an option to totally wrap the busses in huge ads

  • caikman@indiana.edu: Our IT policy office doesn't allow us to use Google analytics, :-(

  • Linda - Princeton: We also heavily distribute a student edition of our newsletter in the fall, which markets our services.

  • Stan - NC State: Linda, we also have a paper newsletter that we push out to students, especially new students, during orientation and fall start up

  • Stan - NC State: http://oit.ncsu.edu/computing/computingnc-state

  • Carlyn - Rice U: Yes! we want to see the matrix even if the group isn't using it now

  • Stan - NC State: Yes to parent communications, especially at orientation.

  • Debra - Georgia Perimeter College: We are working on a IT communication plan for organization. It has been a challenge to engage everyone in IT. We are very interested if anyone has developed a communication plan.

  • Nicole Kegler/Georgetown Univ.: We have a communications plan for our IT dept. I would be happy to share it with everyone once it's cleared for distribution.

  • Debra - Georgia Perimeter College: Thanks Nicole!

  • Carlyn - Rice U: captasia?

  • Connie-Liberty: yes, we've loved it too

  • caikman@indiana.edu: camtasia

  • caikman@indiana.edu: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

  • Cathy - Miami: We moved from Blackboard to Sakai over the past year - initial communication was to faculty. We had a web site http://community.muohio.edu/sip/, we sent a series o f postcards to faculty, articles in the Univeristy online faculty.staff newsletter, Twitter, Facebook etc.

  • caikman@indiana.edu: we also use Adobe Connect for easy recording demos

  • Jan Dervish - Liberty University: We use Camtasia extensively as well - it really is quite powerful for how easy it is to use. We will make demo videos for nearly all major product/service announcements

  • Randy Jobski - LCC: FYI ... Jing, by the same company - TechSmith, is free and allows one to make videos up to 5 mins lomg ... likely long enough for most comms...

  • Valerie - UChicago: Our computer store sponsors study breaks for students.

  • Debbie - Moody: Debra, I posted materials for our communication plan on the Educause wiki (http://www.educause.edu/wiki/Campus+Tools)..

  • caikman@indiana.edu: we laos have NU2IT@IU, introduced once a student is admitted, and it's a persistent site, tailored per campus, and we've gone to a series of videos with pertinent information - http://nu2it.iu.edu/

  • Linda - Princeton: A few more marketing samples to share: http://www.princeton.edu/oit/oitpubs/iT4U@Princeton.pdf

  • caikman@indiana.edu: sorry - laos = also

  • Cathy - Miami: We were having lots of complaints about wireless (not enough bandwidth, difficulty connecting, etc) so last fall we did what we called the MU WIRELESS Tent Event. We have a tent and set up at a variety of high-traffic locations on campus. The tent is staffed by networking staff and support desk staff who can provide immediate help. We have gotten great response.

  • Linda - Princeton: http://www.princeton.edu/oit/oitpubs/StaffQuickStart.pdf

  • Debbie - Moody: We are promoting our migration from Bb 8 to Bb 9.1. We are doing monthly newsletters to faculty focusing on a new feature or two each month. What is fun is that we have highlighted the "9" theme by beginning each newsletter with a Sesame Street video clip on the number 9. We have gotten some good response from that. We also created a print ad for the student newspaper as well as different videos.

  • Stephanie: I like your quickstart guide, Linda! Here is ours (for students): http://www.brown.edu/cis/guide/bts2011.pdf

  • Linda - Princeton: Sorry I seem to be having trouble getting links in the chat.

  • Linda - Princeton: One more time for the new student newsletter:

  • Carlyn - Rice U: youc an send the links to cchat@rice.edu

  • Linda - Princeton: Thanks Stephanice, and athanks for sending your sample, too.

  • Cathy - Miami: We use a "door hanger" that we put on door handles of the residence hall rooms that gives first year students the basic info they need from a tv channel guide to how to connect to Wireless. A version from a couple of years ago is still on the U. Comm wiki.

  • Nicole Kegler/Georgetown Univ.: Had to sign off a little early but thanks for a great meeting!

  • Randy Jobski - LCC: Who indicated that they scroll adds/marketing items over their PC screen savers? Can I talk to you about how that was accomplished?

  • Linda - Princeton: Thanks so much! Great to meet with you all!

  • Debra - Georgia Perimeter College: Thanks everyone...good information

  • Connie-Liberty: thanks all! Pokie Machines

  • Melanie Thomas - UT El Paso: Thanks for setting all this up again, Carlyn.

  • caikman@indiana.edu: Thanks everyone, good meeting!