This document appears to be a summary of a Merit webinar for their customers. It provides an overview of Merit's services for connecting student achievements to key audiences like hometown newspapers, high schools, and state legislators. It highlights new features like an automated clipping service, a newsroom for targeted press releases, and tools for student profiles and athletics departments. The webinar thanked customers and showcased success stories and new partnerships. It concluded by announcing new AI capabilities through a partnership with IBM Watson.

1. 2017
MERIT ANNUAL
CUSTOMER
WEBINAR
#MeritPages2017

2. JASON FOX
Founder, Head of Technology
Merit
@jfoxny
AMY MENGEL
VIce President, Marketing
Merit
@amymengel
#MeritPages2017

3. THANK YOU CUSTOMERS!
“Merit is quickly becoming a
critical strategy for how we tell
the story of our institution. Our
students are doing amazing
things and we want to ensure
that our most important
audiences are hearing about
their accomplishments.”
Jim Stellar, Interim President,
University at Albany

4. THANK YOU CUSTOMERS!
“By using Merit, in just one year
we reached more than 1,800
newspapers. We couldn’t have
imagined doing that before. Just
34 Merit stories generated
6,500+ press releases and let us
publicly recognize tens of
thousands of students.”
Andy Ellis, Director of University Relations,
Troy University

5. THANK YOU CUSTOMERS!
“Merit helps us build
relationships with our students.
The students get the sense that,
‘Oh, LMU cares about me because
they sent me this notification.’
It’s gratifying to look at the
reports and see how many local
newspapers I’m reaching.”
Kate Reagan, Senior Director of Marketing & PR,
Lincoln Memorial University

6. WELCOME NEWEST MERIT CLIENTS

7. Copyright © 2016 Merit Pages, Inc.
ON THE ROAD 2017

8. TELL A
FRIEND…
OR
SEVERAL!

9. “I am trying the Contributor Form in full
force! It's really helped me streamline the
process of granting achievements. I find I
am getting information quicker from the
deans and program coordinators.”
Valerie Welsh
Illinois Central College
Engage your peers in storytelling with
CONTRIBUTOR
FORM

10. More than 65 story contributions
featuring 668 students have
been sent in via Merit’s new
contributor form feature since it
launched!

11. Put faces to your Merit stories with
STUDENT
HEADSHOTS
“The great thing about Merit is they listen
to or needs and react effectively. We took
almost 700 individual photos at
orientation. Merit automated the process
of bulk-uploading them. From day 1, all of
our incoming students had a great-
looking Merit profile.”
Judy Curran
Western New England University

12. MORE AUTOMATION OF DATA IMPORT
Automate student imports each term, so
that you don’t have to format a spreadsheet
of students each semester. Very simple,
lightweight integration with your SIS
Launched ability to integrate with platforms
like OrgSync/CollegiateLink, so that you can
add student organization participation and
leadership to student Merit pages easily and
automatically.

13. We are fanatically dedicated to
CLIENT
SUCCESS
Work with our talented CSM team and
take advantage of Merit’s new
achievement calendar to plan your
strategy each year.
Danielle
Valenti
Jenn
Connally
Erin
Mark
Debbie
Brosen

14. MORE COMING SOON!
Overhaul of Merit’s user interface, aimed at
making it easier to use and easier to locate
the information you need within the app.
Adding more visibility to what your peers are
doing in Merit to give you ideas to try
Changes to reports. Making it more clear
the impact that your efforts have in reaching
stakeholder groups.

15. FEEDBACK DRIVES OUR ROADMAP
“You guys are awesome! We
were just talking about what
great customer service you give
and how you run circles around
other companies. Can't thank
you enough!”
Mona Prufer
Coastal Carolina University

16. Hometown Newspapers
High Schools
Students & families
State Legislators
Merit reaches critical audiences by connecting every student’s story to…

17. Merit connects every student’s story to
HOMETOWN
NEWSPAPERS
"When a Merit email pops up in the
inbox, it is immediately copied and
pasted into the next week's 'College
News' column of our paper."
Cynthia Prairie
Publisher and Editor
Chester Telegraph

18. IN BETA: MERIT CLIPPING SERVICE
Crawls RSS feeds of newspapers in Merit’s
database looking for mentions of student
names and school names based off of the
acheivements you’ve published
Returns links to the online articles right in
your Merit account to demonstrate pick-up
Estimated soft-launch in fall 2017
Will be available to ALL customers who
want it at no additional cost

19. Introducing our newest product…
NEWSROOM
A robust new platform right within
Merit for targeting local news media
with press releases about institutional
programs or announcements.
Announce new academic programs,
major donations, awards and honors
earned by your institution, events and
lectures, and more!

20. “MERIT IS MY ANSWER”
“Merit’s Newsroom is a very
intuitive platform, making sending
a press release very easy, while still
giving our college a professional
look. Merit's Newsroom helps you
build lists in all different news
markets and makes it easy to add
your own contacts to those lists.”
Julie Long
Nazareth College

21. Newsroom is powerful and
FEATURE-
PACKED• Select or deselect media outlets based
on geography
• Add your own personal contacts
• Save custom media contact lists
• Target broadcast outlets, too
• Include multi-media with your releases
• Specify the sender’s email address
• Schedule releases for the future
• Releases are posted to your Merit page
• RSS feed available
• Delivery tracking right within Merit
• Easy correction management

22. Newsroom will be available
starting March 1 as an add-on to
your annual Merit contract.
Newsroom includes unlimited
use and unlimited users.

23. Merit connects every student’s story to
HIGH SCHOOLS
"Getting notifications of awards for
alumni is a valuable aspect of Merit -- it is
hard to rely on alumni to share their good
news with us. Merit has a clean look, it is
easy to navigate, and receive updates.
We pull the information and put it into
newsletters or other communications."
Darren Price
Principal
Houston Christian High School

25. HIGH SCHOOLS LOVE MERIT
"Merit is an invaluable way for our
school to follow and promote the
achievements of our alumni.
Sharing these stories of alumni
success can inspire our current
students to achieve, and it helps
our school demonstrate our role in
positive outcomes."
Ben McMurray
Principal, Ottawa Hills High School (OH)

26. AN EXPANDING HIGH SCHOOL NETWORK
More than 6,000 internatinoal high schools
now in the Merit network, including 2,300 in
Canada.
Pilot programs with select high schools for
promoting student achievements and
connecting them to colleges.

27. Merit connects every student’s story to
STATE
LEGISLATORS
“I am very impressed with Merit. It
provides a wonderful way to learn about
the achievements of students in my
district. Thank you!”
Senator Randall Hardy
24th District
Kansas State Legislature

28. when their elected offiicials use Merit’s
new legislator portal to send
congratulatory messages to their
constituents for their collegiate
achievements.
Students can choose to make each
legislator’s congratulatory message
publicly visible on their Merit page.
Students can now receive
LEGISLATOR
CONGRATS

30. LEGISLATORS LOVE MERIT
"If you're an elected official and
you're not using Merit, you are
missing an awesome tool to
congratulate students in your
district on a job well done."
Senator Jimmy Higdon
14th District of Kentucky

31. UNIVERSITIES LOVE MERIT
"My phone is ringing off the hook
from legislators who have received
Merit emails about students in their
districts. I LOVE getting our student
accomplishments in front of
lawmakers, especially in the face of
dwindling support for education."
Gwen Larson
Emporia State University

32. Merit connects stories of success to
STUDENTS &
FAMILIES
"I come from a family where college was
not the goal in life. I had to teach myself to
be who I am today. My Merit page shares
my college academic achievements and
when I forget my goals I can go to the
page and see how much I’ve really done.”
Katiria Rivera
Student
Goodwin College

33. IMPROVING THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
Will be adding ability for students to add
media (photos, videos) to acheivements on
their Merit pages (not just to activities).
Will allow students to link out to portfolio
sites like Behance and Github to show their
work in key disciplines.
New option for student login lets them login
via their email right from their public page

34. Make mom and dad proud and
ENGAGE
PARENTS
“Merit allows some of our most rapid fans
— parents of current students — to spread
the good word about their student, but
also about the great things happening at
Carleton College.”
Eric Sieger
Director of Public Relations
Carleton College

36. Merit sub accounts for
ATHLETICS
ACHIEVEMENT
Kevin Beattie
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
“We have increased the number of media
hits and placements about Rensselaer
student-athletes since ramping up our
outreach to each student’s local commu-
nity with Merit.”

37. We’re proud to announce our
new partnership with
A L E A R F I E L D C O M P A N Y

38. 900+ SIDEARM SPORTS is the official digital partner of more than 900 schools

39. Stories &
Press Releases
Photo
Galleries
Mobile
Apps
Infographics
Game Day
Services
Design
Services
Schedules
Support
Services
Live Stats
Responsive
Websites
Ads &
PromoAons
Mobile
IntegraAon
Streaming
Video & Audio
Social
Media
Rosters
Signing Day
Services
SIDEARM
CMS
modules available in a best-of-breed CMS with custom design100+

40. Direct integration available for
your SID, so that they can send
out hometown news stories via
Merit’s distribution engine from
right within their SIDEARM
content management system
+

41. A powerful partnership
MERIT +
SIDEARM
Academic achievements published via
Merit about student-athletes will also
show up on their SIDEARM profile
Athletics news articles published to your
athletics website via SIDEARM can be
automatically tagged for Merit distribution
to student-athletes’ hometown
newspapers, right from within SIDEARM

42. ONE MORE THING…
WATCH YOUR EMAIL IN THE COMING
WEEKS FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT
WHAT WE’VE ANNOUNCED TODAY

43. Merit now comes standard with
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
powered by IBM’s Watson!
Your media relations efforts can now
be smarter than Ken Jennings…

44. INTRODUCING MERIT AI
Merit AI, available immediately for all
accounts, now automatically:
• reads the RSS feeds of your website news
• identifies students in those stories
• creates story drafts for you to approve
Merit AI turns existing news content you’ve
already published into Meit updates,
hometown press releases, high school and
government connections, and more.

45. by extending them to new audiences with
the power of Merit AI.
Make your storytelling efforts
MORE
MEANINGFUL

46. TELL YOUR PEERS ABOUT MERIT
SHOWCASE YOUR RESULTS
CONNECT WITH YOUR CSM
GIVE US FEEDBACK!
Keep being awesome customers:

47. THANK YOU!
Contact us:
schools@meritpages.com
www.meritpages.com
518-429-2800
@merit_pages