In this webinar, SilverTech’s Higher Education experts discuss the findings from our 2017 State of Digital Marketing in Higher Education Report.

1. The 2017 State of
Digital Marketing
in Higher Education
© SilverTech, Inc. 2016

2. Introduction
Welcome to The 2017 State of Digital Marketing in
Higher Education from SilverTech. We are a digital
marketing & technology company. We specialize in
helping our clients create valuable digital experiences
for their customers.

3. Introduction
Website & Mobile Development, Digital Marketing &
Strategy, User Experience (UX) Design, Salesforce
Development & Integration, Marketing Automation,
Application Development, and Managed Services &
Hosting - all united by our Lead to Loyal™ approach.

4. Agenda
01. About the 2017 State of Digital Marketing
Report
02. A Look at Key Findings in Higher
Education
03. Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities
04. The Technology & Strategy Practices of
Effective Marketing Teams
05. How to Become a Highly Effective
Marketing Team

5. P R E S E N T I N G
MARKETING COORDINATOR
Melissa Woelflein
With a background in journalism, event planning, sales,
and social media, Melissa landed at SilverTech as a
Marketing Coordinator. She is primarily responsible for
strategically placing SilverTech at market-focused trade
shows and events around the country.
CONTENT STRATEGIST
Ian Hughes
As the main content writer for The SilverTech Blog
and the host of the Lead to Loyal™ podcast, Ian
aspires to create content that resonates with
SilverTech’s diverse audience of marketers and
technologists.
YOUR HOSTS

6. P R E S E N T I N G
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER
Jeff McPherson
For more than 15 years, Jeff has helped businesses
connect with their consumers by seeking out trends to
attract, engage, and retain customers, ultimately driving
profitable customer relationships. His areas of expertise
include e-commerce, financial institutions, and the
healthcare space, with a focus on strategy, customer
communications, systems and workflows, and enterprise
system strategy.
VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL COUNSEL
Paul Creme
With over 30 years of experience practicing law, Paul
utilizes his extensive legal knowledge as
SilverTech’s Vice President, General Counsel. With
a primary focus on business and corporate matters,
Paul works with senior leadership to ensure that
SilverTech is consistently pursuing strategic goals as
well as provides day-to-day contract review.
SILVERTECH’S HIGHER EDUCATION SPECIALISTS
PRINCIPAL STRATEGIST
Samantha Maltais
Samantha is a seasoned digital strategist, marketer,
and project manager that has the innate ability to
combine marketing and operational requirements
while integrating SEO and SEM as well as UI and UX
to deliver top-notch strategies for clients. Her ability
to create personas that align with individual client
needs make her a unique and invaluable member of
our strategy team.

7. P R E S E N T I N G
DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Sean Howe
Sean is a seasoned digital marketer with expertise in
content strategy and development, SEO, social media,
and analytics. SilverTech relies heavily on Sean to utilize
his knowledge of lead generation, blogging, and social
media to develop strong digital marketing strategies.
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Griffin LaFleur
Griffin is an expert communicator and thrives on
finding unique and modern solutions. Working
closely with clients to determine ideal digital
strategies to accommodate both business goals and
budgets, Griffin always delivers the best digital
solutions.
SILVERTECH’S HIGHER EDUCATION SPECIALISTS
SENIOR DIRECTOR, TECHNOLOGY
Derek Barka
Derek leads the team that helps businesses create
profitable relationships throughout the entire
customer lifecycle, from Lead to Loyal™. As a
pioneer in the field, Derek helped create many of the
tools marketers use today to manage websites and
digital marketing campaigns.

8. P R E S E N T I N GSILVERTECH PARTNERS

9. P R E S E N T I N GSILVERTECH CLIENTS

10. .01
About The 2017 Report

11. About This Report
CRM
For our second annual “State of Digital Marketing” report, SilverTech surveyed nearly 200 marketing
leaders, including 27 directors of marketing, 19 marketing managers, 10 Chief marketing officers, and a
variety of social media managers, IT directors, and digital marketing managers from 147 unique
companies headquartered in 28 different states.

12. CRM
Marketing teams, both large (10 or more marketers) and small (less than 10 marketers), from B2B,
B2C, and B2B2C companies were surveyed. Teams responsible for all marketing efforts (both
traditional and digital), primarily traditional marketing efforts (TV, print, radio, events), primarily digital
marketing efforts (social media, ppc, seo), and Information Technology (IT) were also surveyed.
About This Report

13. CRM
Respondents shared what marketing-related activities their teams are responsible for as opposed to
using outside partners or contractors to execute.
About This Report

14. .02
Key Findings in
Higher Education

15. Key Findings
In this constantly evolving digital ecosystem, if you
aren’t looking ahead you are already behind. The most
effective marketing teams are using customer journey
strategies, personas, and technology roadmaps to
plan, execute, and measure digital marketing projects
and ensure that those projects support the strategic
goals of their organization.

16. KEY FINDING
Large Marketing Teams (10 or more marketers)
are 2.1x more likely than Small Marketing
Teams (less than 10 marketers) to identify brand
awareness as very important to how they are
measured for effectiveness.

17. KEY FINDING
Large Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to
utilize personas, 1.4x more likely to utilize a
customer journey strategy, and 1.4x more likely
to utilize a technology roadmap than Small
Marketing Teams.

18. KEY FINDING
Marketing teams that rate their website
performance as effective are 1.5x more likely to
have redesigned their website within the last
year than marketing teams that rate their
website performance as ineffective.

19. CRM
Focus on Your Core Audience
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Griffin LaFleur
DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Sean Howe
You want to create a unique experience for each of those people at different steps in their particular
journey.

20. KEY INSIGHT
“It’s really hard to develop a strategy, content,
information architecture if you are trying to be
all things to all people.”

21. KEY FINDING
Marketing teams that rate their inbound
marketing as effective are 1.5x more likely to
utilize a marketing automation platform than
marketing teams that rate their inbound
marketing as ineffective.

22. KEY FINDING
Marketing teams that rate their email marketing
as effective are 1.4x more likely to utilize a
customer relationship management (CRM) tool
than marketing teams that rate their email
marketing as ineffective.

23. KEY FINDING
Effective marketing teams, both large and small,
are using what we at SilverTech call the
Lead to Loyal™ approach.

24. CRM
The Lead to Loyal™ approach couples marketing technology pillars with strategic cornerstones to
ensure that marketing teams can create valuable digital experiences for their leads so that they
continue the journey all the way to loyal.
What is Lead to Loyal™
?
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER
Jeff McPherson
PRINCIPAL STRATEGIST
Samantha Maltais

25. THE LEAD TO LOYAL PHILOSOPHY
Valuable, relevant digital experiences lead to loyal
relationships with your audience.

26. Digital
Marketing
Strategy
Application
Development
Web &
Mobile
UX Design
Salesforce
Integration &
Development

28. .03
Resources, Challenges, &
Top Priorities

29. CRM
Small Marketing Teams more often rate budget and team resource constraints as major challenges
than Large Marketing Teams. While Large Marketing Teams are more likely to identify “ability to keep
up with latest trends” as a major challenge.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities

30. The Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA)
1990
The ADA gives civil rights protections to
individuals with disabilities similar to those
provided to individuals on the basis of race,
color, sex, national origin, age, and religion.
2018
The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act
(ADAAA) was signed into law and became effective
on January 1, 2009. The ADAAA made a number of
significant changes to the definition of “disability.”
The DOJ to issue
regulations regarding
website accessibility
2008
“The Americans
with Disabilities
Act (ADA) is a civil
rights law that
prohibits
discrimination
against individuals
with disabilities in
all areas of public
life, including
jobs, schools,
transportation,
and all public and
private places that
are open to the
general public.”

31. CRM
“It is a certainty that at some point you may want to make your website ADA
compliant.”
ADA Website Compliance
VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL COUNSEL
Paul Creme
ENGINEERING & UX MANAGER
Andrew Eddy

32. CRM
Large Marketing Teams are increasing their website budgets in 2017 despite going through a website
redesign in the past year. Perhaps indicating an eagerness to deploy the more advanced capabilities of
their CMS such as personalization and contextual marketing.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities

33. PARTNER INSIGHT
“Most B2B sites don’t get refreshed as often as they should. We
should probably be thinking of it as often as we update our
phones. Every year and a half to two years; you want to get the
most current software underneath and you want to take
advantage of the hardware upgrades that go along with it.”
Kevin Cahill, Regional Alliance Director, Sitecore

34. CRM
Governance Recommendations
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Griffin LaFleur
DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Sean Howe
Everyone is fighting for real estate...align who owns what and reflect back to your institution’s goals.

35. KEY INSIGHT
“It’s important to always reflect back on the goal
of your website.”

36. CRM
Top priorities for Large Marketing Teams in 2017 are personalization and one-to-one messaging.
Small Marketing Teams are prioritizing social media effectiveness.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities

37. KEY INSIGHT
“If you don’t have a really smart, user-friendly
website on your mobile phone, you are going to
be in trouble...if you’re not ready to go in a
mobile environment...you may lose prospective
students.”

38. CRM
In our first State of Digital Marketing report, it was clear that marketing efforts could be clearly
measured and their effectiveness determined. In 2017, organizations have clear expectations that that
their marketing teams will perform as drivers of revenue rather than cost centers.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities

39. KEY INSIGHT
“Overall, we’ve broken down the focus areas or
silos that we’ve always been stuck in and we
focus more on lead cultivation or lead generation
as a whole to get us to that end goal of increasing
enrollment.”

40. INDUSTRY INSIGHT
“The realignment of, or new investment in,
technology and business models to more
effectively engage digital customers at every
touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.”
Definition of Digital Transformation:
Brian Solis, Altimeter (@briansolis)

41. CRM
As primary end-users of the core marketing technologies, marketing teams, both large and small, are
often at the vanguard of driving digital transformation within their organizations.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities

42. CRM
Large Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to utilize personas than Small
Marketing Teams.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities
Large Marketing Teams Small Marketing Teams

43. CRM
Large Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize a customer journey
strategy than Small Marketing Teams.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities
Large Marketing Teams Small Marketing Teams

44. CRM
Large Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize a technology roadmap than Small Marketing
Teams. With more resources, Large Marketing Teams are able to plan ahead while remaining flexible
enough to adjust as priorities shift.
Resources, Challenges, & Top Priorities
Large Marketing Teams Small Marketing Teams

45. .04
The Technology & Strategy
Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

46. The Technology Pillars of Lead to Loyal™
DIGITAL
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE
MA
CMS
CRM

47. CRM
It’s important that before beginning your search that your organization has a
thorough understanding of exactly what you’re looking to get out of your new
CMS.
How to Choose the Right CMS for Your College or University
SENIOR DIRECTOR, TECHNOLOGY
Derek Barka

48. KEY INSIGHT
“To achieve Personalization...segment users
based upon explicit or implicit data.”

49. Introduction
Website & Mobile Development, Digital Marketing &
Strategy, User Experience (UX) Design, Salesforce
Development & Integration, Marketing Automation,
Application Development, and Managed Services &
Hosting - all united by our Lead to Loyal™ approach.
We have
partnerships with
some of the most
recognizable and
reputable CMS
providers on the
market.
Our goal is always to
empower clients to
make informed
decisions based on
individual business
needs – and unite
this with strategic
and educated
assessments of
available platforms --
before ever
committing to a
solution.

50. The Strategy Cornerstones of Lead to Loyal™
MACRM

51. The Strategy Cornerstones of Lead to Loyal™
MACRM
Personas: Since there are a number of customer
groups, or personas, interacting with an organization,
each with their own set of user requirements, it is
essential to understand who these personas are. The
creation of well thought out personas will help you
identify the problems you are hoping to solve for your
customers.

52. The Strategy Cornerstones of Lead to Loyal™
MACRM
A customer journey strategy enables you to map your
customer’s journey to create appropriate click paths,
provide strategy and workflow for both internal and external
audiences, and develop interactive prototypes for iterative
user testing and validation -- all to create a seamless
experience to the end-user. A customer journey strategy is
critical to creating an optimized user experience (UX), one
that removes barriers and heightens usability.

53. The Strategy Cornerstones of Lead to Loyal™
MACRM
In order to leverage technology to support and scale
customer and partner success teams, it is critical that
organizations use utilize a technology roadmap. This
document is adaptable and intended to act as a roadmap
for planning, executing, and measuring customer service
and digital marketing projects. All successful roadmaps
contain the following: goals, milestones, gaps and barriers,
action items, and priorities and timelines.

54. CRM
Personas help you identify needs, motivations, pain points, expectations, and goals.
The Value of Personas
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Griffin LaFleur
DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Sean Howe

55. KEY INSIGHT
“Personas help set up the ideal path for your
users.”

56. KEY TAKEAWAY
A persona-based website saw a 210% increase in
website traffic, a 97% increase in website
generated leads, and a 124% increase in website
generated sales.
(MarketingSherpa)

57. PARTNER INSIGHT
“When businesses think about customer journeys, they need to
think about it from an outside-in perspective. This means moving
away from the idea that the customer journey is a controllable
process. Customers are ultimately in charge of the interactions
they have with a business.”
Pat Coyne, Thunderhead, VP of Sales for North America

58. Effective Marketing Teams
In our analysis of the survey responses, it quickly became clear that
effective marketing teams are those that integrate the marketing
technology pillars and utilize the strategy cornerstones.
The application of the pillars and cornerstones, what we at SilverTech
call the Lead to Loyal approach™, gives marketers dramatic insight
into the buying habits and needs of their customers.

59. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

60. CRM
Website Presence: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to utilize
personas than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
Website Presence is
mostly or very effective
Website Presence is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

61. CRM
Website Presence: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize
customer journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Website Presence is
mostly or very effective
Website Presence is ineffective or
only somewhat effective

62. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Website Presence is
mostly or very effective
Website Presence is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
Website Presence: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.2x more likely to utilize
technology roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

63. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

64. CRM
Inbound Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.2x more likely to utilize
personas than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
Inbound Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Inbound Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

65. CRM
Inbound Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.1x more likely to utilize
customer journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Inbound Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Inbound Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective

66. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Inbound Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Inbound Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
Inbound Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.2x more likely to utilize
technology roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

67. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

68. CRM
Email Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize
personas than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
Email Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Email Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

69. CRM
Email Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.3x more likely to utilize
customer journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Email Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Email Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective

70. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Email Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Email Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
Email Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.7x more likely to utilize
technology roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

71. CRM
SEO: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize personas than
Ineffective Marketing Teams.
SEO Marketing is mostly
or very effective
SEO is ineffective or only somewhat
effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

72. CRM
SEO: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to utilize customer
journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
SEO is mostly or very
effective
SEO is ineffective or only somewhat
effective

73. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
SEO is mostly or very
effective
SEO is ineffective or only somewhat
effective
SEO: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.3x more likely to utilize technology
roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

74. CRM
Digital Advertising: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to utilize
personas than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
Digital Advertising is
mostly or very effective
Digital Advertising is not or only
somewhat effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

75. CRM
Digital Advertising: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to utilize
customer journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Digital Advertising is
mostly or very effective
Digital Advertising is ineffective or
only somewhat effective

76. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Digital Advertising is
mostly or very effective
Digital Advertising is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
Digital Advertising: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.2x more likely to utilize
technology roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

77. CRM
Social Media Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to
utilize personas than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
Social Media Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Social Media Marketing is not or
only somewhat effective
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams

78. CRM
Social Media Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.4x more likely to
utilize customer journey strategy than Ineffective Marketing Teams.
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Social Media Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Social Media Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective

79. CRM
The Technology & Strategy Practices of Effective Marketing Teams
Social Media Marketing is
mostly or very effective
Social Media Marketing is ineffective or
only somewhat effective
Social Media Marketing: Effective Marketing Teams are 1.5x more likely to
utilize technology roadmaps than Ineffective Marketing Teams.

80. .05
How to Become a Highly
Effective Marketing Team

81. Key Findings
Large Marketing Teams and Effective Marketing Teams
collaborate with the engineering/development side of their
organization or partner with an agency to ensure that their
core marketing and sales technologies, CMS, MA, and CRM,
are fully integrated to allow a free flow of data that facilitates
of full understanding of the customer and their journey from
Lead to Loyal™.

82. CRM
Personas are key to creating a “good” user experience.
User Experience is Paramount
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Griffin LaFleur
DIGITAL STRATEGIST
Sean Howe

83. KEY INSIGHT
“It isn’t enough to just have a website anymore,
the experience needs to be immediately valuable
and relevant to visitors or they will leave to
find one that is.”

84. KEY FINDING
Effective marketing teams, both large and small,
are using what we at SilverTech call
the Lead to Loyal™
approach.

85. P R E S E N T I N GSILVERTECH CLIENTS

86. SILVERTECH HEADQUARTERS
The Ash Street Schoolhouse
196 Bridge Street
Manchester, NH 03104
CALL US: 603.669.6600
EMAIL: info@silvertech.com