Measuring the Value of Communications

Measuring the Value
of Communications
2016 AASCU Communications Conference
29 March 2016

#AASCUcomm
How do we
measure
our value?
flickr.com/photos/dhanu/252328361
Good afternoon, everybody. Today, we’re going to talk about how we measure value as communicators and how those metrics can be used in a variety of
ways.
I know, this is not exactly the most interesting topic ever. Trust me, I’d almost rather do anything in my office than work on monthly reports and establish
goals for the achievement of greater metrics in the future.
However, measuring what we do - especially in the age of increased digital communication - has become critical for us as marketers.
After all, we’re a spending unit in a business, right? We don’t teach the classes, and we don’t maintain the facilities, and we don’t take the checks from
donors. We don’t actively make the widgets that are sold - if you’ll allow me to compare higher education to a business.

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By keeping track
of what we do
and the results of
those tactics
But we do help bring in students and donations. We help sway hearts and minds. We put butts in seats. Our work is every bit as important as that of a
revenue-producing unit on campus.
Metrics help us prove that worth. So if you aren’t putting your calculators, spreadsheets and tools to work every so often - and then passing that
information up to your leaders - you’re doing your office and your university an injustice.

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Agenda
▪ Pleased to meet you
▪ Metrics, or you’ve come a long way, baby
▪ What are appropriate metrics?
▪ Processes and tools, with a cost-effective
twist
▪ Planning, allocation, strategic planning
So today, we’re going to learn a little bit about one another, and then we’re going to dive into the serious business of measuring our worth. Throughout
the presentation, we’ll have activities. I have prizes for answering questions, simply because this presentation is not mine alone. Put your thinking caps on
and I hope we’ll all enjoy this ride.

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Who am I?
@marleysmom
@hendersonstateu
@highedweb
#shoes
#positivity
#behuman

#AASCUcomm
Who are you?
flickr.com/photos/highedweb/2922852848

#AASCUcomm
What exactly IS a
metric?
First, let’s talk about what metrics are.
We’re really not going to talk about what they aren’t, because I believe that every bit of information - numerical or anecdotal - that we can pull in about
what we do in the Office of Marketing and Communications is valuable to someone somewhere.
Strictly speaking though, metrics are a method of measuring something and the results of that something.
See? Anything is a metric.

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Metrics are
▪ Measure of performance
▪ Measure of progress
▪ Support for processes
▪ Support for partnerships
▪ Reinforcement for behavior
For our purposes today…

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The soul-crushing
nature of metrics?
So…. boring…. soul-crushing even.

#AASCUcommflickr.com/photos/stefnoble/83110037
Times have changed
Now, if you have been in the communication business as long as I have, you know that the measurements we use to define the success of our campaigns
have changed dramatically. They will continue to change as we follow our audiences into new communication channels.

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Old-school metrics
▪ Number of releases
▪ Inches of copy
▪ Donation amount
▪ Advertising inches
▪ Number of postcards, brochures, etc., produced

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New-school metrics
▪ Number of posts
▪ Views online
▪ Shares
▪ Comments
▪ Opens
▪ Likes
▪ Downloads
You see a difference between these two lists?
I do - one is very concrete. The other is pretty virtual. But that doesn’t mean that any measurement on either list is less valuable than another.

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Metrics are not
soul crushing.
They are empowering.
#reframe

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The metrics that matter most
are those that tell you if your
communications strategy is
helping you meet your
organization’s overall goals.
- Nonprofit Times, 2014
In fact, the metrics that matter most - to any organization - are those that help us know that we’re moving toward achieving our goals.
This realization was not quick in coming for me. It took a while to understand that sometimes - to leadership - metrics that matter are different than the
ones that matter to my staff. And some of the metrics that matter to one member of my staff make no sense to other members of my staff, but they help
that individual determine that he or she is making an impact toward achieving our goals.

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Often a mix of old and
new styles - depending
on your audience - is
the best set of metrics
for your office.
So, we come back to this reality. The metrics that I’m going to talk about might not work for you and your audiences. Each group of stakeholders uses
different channels and languages, and that’s great. That makes us human.
In short, metrics are a vast grey area for all of us, but I’m here to help nail down a few important ones in this day and age.

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Appropriate metrics
▪ Activity
▪ Reach
▪ Engagement
▪ Impact
So, let’s go into talking about the kinds of measurements that we can do in marketing and communications.
Activity Metrics. These metrics can help you better understand what you’re doing to implement your communications strategy. Activity metrics can help you evaluate your process of producing and sharing your messages, and
whether you’re following through on your work plan and best practices.
Reach Metrics. These metrics can help you assess the size of your audience and whether it’s the right audience for your messages, so that you can understand who may potentially hear your messages. Be careful of putting too much
emphasis on reach metrics, as on their own they don’t show a complete picture of your effectiveness.
Engagement Metrics. These metrics can help you understand the effect your communications messages are having on those that hear them. Engagement metrics are a measurement of when and how others engage with you.
Audience interaction is required in these metrics.
Impact Metrics. These metrics are all about what you are really trying to achieve. Impact metrics help you measure the behaviors and attitudes you’ve shifted, the wrongs you’ve righted, and the actions you’ve inspired audiences to
take.

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Activity break
Now, we have an activity. Write down one of each type of metric:
Activity
Reach
Engagement
Impact

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Appropriate metrics
depend on:
▪ Audience
▪ Goals
▪ Budget
▪ Channels
▪ Deadlines
Ditto for
measurement tools.

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Flashback
I’m going to tell you a story now, of an office that was using no metrics at all.
When I joined Henderson State, only one individual in the office was maintaining metrics. Those measurements were only used to determine how much
advertising was placed in any given year. There was no centralized reporting of activity in other areas of the office.
One hand didn’t know what the other was doing, so maintaining coordinated messaging was so hard.
So we had to build a metrics program from the ground up.

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Building metrics reporting
from the ground up
▪ Timeline
▪ Messaging
▪ Processes
▪ Planning
▪ Tools
I won’t say that this process has been simple, but it’s been necessary. It has also helped us gain buy-in from the rest of the campus for our work.

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Timeline
and Messaging
▪ Communication brief
▪ Key messages
▪ Deadlines
Flexibility is integral
The Communication Brief is intended to serve as a concise statement of what our
organization is trying to communicate to our various audiences. As such, it serves as
the foundation for the creation and execution of all messaging.
Subject:
Date:
Prepared By:
Communications Objective: (What is the main idea you want to convey?)
Business Objective: (What is the anticipated business result/impact?)
Target Audience: (Who are you trying to reach/influence?)
Action: (Specifically, what do you want the target audience to do?)
Single Benefit / Point of Difference: (What’s in it for the target audience?)
Features or Supporting Facts: (What are the two or three reasons why the benefit will
occur?)
Mandatories: (What must, or must not, be included?)
Timing: (When does the communication need to begin and/or end?)
Evaluation: (How will success be judged?)
Timeline
Date Action
Communication Brief

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Processes
▪ Define goals
▪ Tie into strategic plan
▪ Determine messaging
▪ Determine appropriate channels
▪ Produce communication
▪ Measure results
That communication brief also helps us design the process we follow to get to the important measurements for each campaign.
We sit down with each of our clients - yes, they’re clients - who wants our help. It’s the most consultative and comprehensive and productive way we can
do our jobs.
The comm brief helps us get to the point where we can determine which of the metrics matter and make sense for each campaign, so we really can’t
accomplish the measurement without the planning beforehand.

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Planning
▪ Communication brief
▪ Brainstorming sessions
▪ Focus groups
▪ Budgeting
So after - or maybe in connection with the comm brief - our office will engage in brainstorming sessions - with or without our client for the project.

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Tools
▪ Meltwater
▪ Tweetdeck or Hootsuite
▪ SM-channel-specific metrics
▪ Google Analytics
▪ Campaign Monitor
▪ Spreadsheets
▪ Narrative
▪ Klout. Yes, Klout. (There’s a story.)

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Meltwater
Meltwater is the tool that we use to monitor our media coverage, but it’s more than that. We also use it to connect with media contacts all over the
country - working to specialize our pitches to their interest areas.
We can use Meltwater to monitor our competition - to see how they’re getting coverage, as well as to see what the main topics are for our coverage.

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Meltwater
In addition, Meltwater allows us to maintain a record of the media interviews our professors have conducted and how far those reports reach. It helps us
maintain with the dollar value of each portion of earned media. The tool also allows us to compare the sentiment of our coverage and the locations for
that coverage with the media that other universities get.
Overall, Meltwater is worth every penny we spend on it just in terms of being able to get reports easily and then turn those reports over to our leadership.

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Social Tools
Tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow us to maintain a hold on sentiment among our stakeholder groups. In addition, just about every social media
network has gotten better and better about keeping up with metrics and helping us maintain a grasp on what people are saying about our university.

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Google Analytics
While the majority of the tools I’ve discussed our office using thus far have been ones we’ve had to pay extra for, Google Analytics is perhaps one of the
best free tools possible. We use this tool to monitor our web traffic and special web campaigns we set up. In fact, we’ve used this tool to save us money
on ad campaigns when we use it in combination with specific URLs to determine if an ad does in fact deliver the ROI that media claim it does. We also use
GA to monitor the results of targeted search ad campaigns we do online.

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Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a tool combined with a service - sending enewsletters. Everyone wants to communicate with a newsletter, right? I mean, how many
times do you have a program or department come to you wanting to establish a newsletter? I have them all the time. With Campaign Monitor - and
numerous other email marketing services - we can empower units to send their own newsletters and emails on branded templates. At the same time, we
are able to determine who, when, where these messages are written and what our audiences are most interested in. We can accomplish all this with a
small fee and be assured that we don’t violate Do-Not-Email lists or send more than once to an individual email address.

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Spreadsheet and Narrative
Finally, knowing all these metrics doesn’t help if we’re not able to report them to the folks who matter - our university leadership. Each month, staff
members in the Office of Marketing and Communications are required to report such measurements as visits to the website, time on site, number of
posts, engagement of those posts, number of press releases and the results of those releases.
In turn, I compile the information on these spreadsheets into a narrative that is presented - through my vice president - to the university’s president and
then to our Board of Trustees.
Through this reporting process, our leaders are able to see that we are working toward achieving parts of the university’s strategic plan as well as seeing
that we are utilizing our budget appropriately. The reporting shows that we are being effective stewards of our time, talent and resources in the Office of
Marketing and Communications.

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Activity break
So now, it’s time for another activity. What tools do you use? Some of the same as the ones I’ve mentioned here? Different ones? Which are free and which
are paid?
I’d also like to ask a question of you all - who is responsible for compiling metrics in your offices?

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Caveat:
When you start from ground
zero on metrics, the going
is slow. Getting funding for
tools is slow. Establishing
buy-in is a process.
Continuing the process of reporting can be tedious for your team and you, but you can use these numbers to reinforce what you are doing and to stop
doing things that don’t produce the return on investment that you need.

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Reporting up and
down can make this
process smoother.
I also ask my folks to report on how well they work together to combine messaging in different channels. I ask them to tie their work to our messaging
points in the strategic plan, and when they focus on working together, our integrated marketing communications plan comes together. That itself is one of
our priorities in the strategic plan for the university.

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Planning, allocation,
strategic planning
▪ Planning - content, channels, deadlines
▪ Allocation - hiring, assignment, spending
▪ Strategic planning - execution, reporting, adjustment
Finally, keeping up with metrics can help us plan. They let us know when things work and when things should be adjusted. Watching when stakeholders
respond to content can tell us when we should produce certain types of content and push it out. It can also tell us what different audiences like or dislike.
When audiences engage with content, that tells us we need to hire a videographer or restructure the job description for our old school media relations
person - which we did at Henderson last year.
And there’s nothing better than having solid proof that ads don’t work in one channel - but do in another - to help us stop having to buy legacy
placements that don’t make sense with a new generation.
Finally, metrics helped Henderson State tremendously when we approached strategic planning. By focusing on statistics for incoming freshmen - about
their media consumption and opinion leaders - we were able to focus on integrated media and new media as opposed to declaring our intentions on
producing more press releases. We also allow the metrics that we work toward in the strategic plan to guide our adjustments in our work flow.

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Priority
Six:
Enhance
Henderson’s
Regional,
State,
and

Na:onal
Proﬁle

▪ Traﬃc
to
Henderson’s
website
has
increased
in
quality
and
quan7ty:

▪ Each
month,
there
are
100,000
visits
to
the
site.

▪ Average
7me
on
site
has
increased
to
3
minutes
per
visit.

▪ Henderson’s
Klout
score
and
other
social
media
engagement

indexes
are
in
the
top
25%
among
peer
universi7es.

▪ Dona7ons
from
alumni
have
increased:

▪ The
number
of
alumni
giving
annually
is
25%.

▪ 10%
of
alumni
have
designated
Henderson
for
a
planned
giK.

▪ ALendance
at
select
student
events
has
risen
10%.
Strategic Priorities Defined

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Priority
Six:
Enhance
Henderson’s
Regional,
State,
and
Na:onal

Profile

▪ At
least
75%
of
alumni
update
their
contact
informa7on
on
an
annual
basis.

▪ US
News
and
World
Report
peer-‐assessment
score
has
increased
to
3.4
out
of
5.

▪ The
style
manual
and
standards
for
conveying
Henderson's
standards,
values,

vision,
mission,
and
goals
are
in
place
and
used
across
the
university
and
by

Henderson
alumni.

▪ The
number
of
students
who
ask
for
applica7on
informa7on
averages
150
per

month.

▪ 25%
of
applica7ons
are
submiLed
from
students
outside
Arkansas.

▪ Number
of
mee7ngs
with
key
external
stakeholders
increases:

▪ One-‐on-‐one
mee7ngs
or
calls
with
key
opinion
leaders
and
influencers
in

the
community
is
one
per
month.

▪ Group
mee7ngs
with
regional
and
state
reporters
on
campus
are
four
per

year.

▪ Stories
promo7ng
Henderson’s
iden7fied
areas
of
excellence
are
placed
in
news

media
five
7mes
per
week.

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▪ Strategy 1: Develop Branding Guide
and Educate Campus on Standards
▪ Strategy 2: Redesign the Website
▪ Strategy 3: Launch an Integrated Media
Campaign, Incorporating Elements for
Each of the University’s Key
Stakeholder Groups
▪ Strategy 4: Strengthen Relationships
with External Audiences
And for each of these actions, we’ve started with our known metrics. In order to find a baseline - especially when we didn’t have one - and to see how far
we had to go. Actually finding the metrics, purchasing tools to measure, and maintaining pace with industry standards in those areas - they’re all a part of
our strategic plan.

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Rewind
Takeaways:
Metrics have changed a lot, but sometimes we need to stick with the tried and true.
The best metrics are the measurements that help you get to what your strategic plan wants to get to.
Metrics can differ depending on the audience you’re speaking to.
You have to invest - either money or time - into the right tools that can help you deliver the measurements that you need.
Planning, allocation, strategic planning can be impacted by your measurements, but you have to have the measures to start.

#AASCUcomm
Tonya Oaks Smith
@marleysmom
smithto@hsu.edu
501.352.8505

#AASCUcomm
Thanks so much for talking with me about metrics and why they matter so much to our jobs.

Measuring the Value of Communications

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