0:00:09.5 BROOM: Hi, I'm Cheryl Broom, CEO of Graduate Communications. The Higher Education coffee and conversation podcast is dedicated to exploring issues of importance to staff and faculty who work at community colleges and universities. This month, I spoke to my friend and colleague, Daniel Ramirez, who is the Director of Public Relations and Marketing at South Texas College. Daniel has an enviable marketing department that he operates like an agency, which leaves him the time to do amazing work around data analysis and predictive analytics. This past year, he finished a massive research project around adult learners and what attracts them to community colleges and services that can keep them retained and engaged. Daniel shares the results of this research project and also talks about why so many college marketers have missed the mark on of recruiting adult learners, how we can make better informed decisions when it comes to recruiting the non-traditional student, how to use social media and other digital tools to keep older students engaged, and the types of data-driven research that institutions should be doing right now. This is one conversation you don't want to miss, and I'm sure you're going to learn just as much as I did enjoy.

0:01:24.3 BROOM: Well, I'm ready to get started. If you're ready to get started. Yes, absolutely. So I'm really excited to talk to you. It's always great to talk to you, always good to catch up, but I was particularly excited to learn about your capstone project and all the amazing work that you've been doing to raise awareness of your institution for adult learners in your region. And thought, Wow, what an amazing capstone project for you to have done that I think will help a lot of other marketers and rethink the way they approach communicating to and the tactics and techniques they use when trying to reach adult learners. So, I got the great opportunity to read your capstone, so thank you for sending that to me and congratulations on graduating as well. Whenever I talk to anybody about you, I always brag that you went to MIT! Let's start off, tell me a little bit about your capstone work and also refers to and deals with South Texas College. So, tell me about the college that you work for and your role as well.

0:02:39.2 RAMERIZ: My name is Daniel Ramirez, the Director of Public Relations and Marketing at South Texas College. So, we're a community college. And deep down, south Texas serves 30,000 students every semester. We offer certificates, Associates, and also five Bachelor degrees as well, so really, we're relatively young, a little bit over 27 years, but in that time frame, we've really turned this area into a college-going to culture for the region. Our department is pretty much a full in-house agency, we do work with an agency of record and other agencies as projects to rise, but we provide marketing, PR, video, social media, web services for the entire institution. I've been at the institution over 18 years, been director for over eight years. It was funny, it was my son, my oldest son graduating from college that finally got me off of my butt to pursue a Master's. I always knew I wanted to... It was really focused on them and their needs and getting them through school and seeing him graduate and then move on to law school. I finally said, You know what? Now is the time. So a little over a year ago, I had been exploring programs for some time, but settled on a program at Arkansas State University, they had a Master’s of Science in digital and social media management, so really it's a communication degree with a lot of the focus on the elements that I was using already, digital marketing, media buying, audience understanding, research, integrated marketing communication. So a lot of the stuff that I had been working with and had learned over the years, actually putting it together in a formal program, and so as you mentioned, a big part of the research that I was working on with stuff that I was directly working on at the college, which is adult learners, and that's something that I've been really passionate about for many, many years, because not a lot of people know, but I was an adult learner, not only in my master's program but with the college. I moved over from the traditional student to start in a family, getting married, and now of balancing life, work, family, and of course school, just to try to finish my bachelor's and so walking in that path and seeing how things changed, it was always something that, especially once I settled in the higher ed realm, was really just passionate about trying to help support others who might find themselves in similar situations like myself, to kind of show that you can do it, and how can we as an institution do a better job of not only create an awareness and marketing, but also supporting them from application other way through graduation and beyond

0:05:42.7 BROOM: For adult learners, and you define adult learners, and I think most institutions define them as non-traditional age students who are 25 years or older. And I really enjoyed the beginning of your Capstone project in which you kind of set the stage for the importance of this research where you're justifying why colleges need to pay more attention to how they market to this population, because in fact, they make up more than a quarter of the nation's undergraduate student population, and yet it seems that most universities focus their messages and their tactics almost exclusively on recruiting students right out of high school and tend to overlook this large segment of student population. And I was wondering if you had any idea why you think that is... Why do we tend to ignore them, these students...

0:06:31.4 RAMERIZ: I think a large part of it is because that's the way it's always been. For the most part, if you look at the pool or the applicant pool, you had high school students, it was sort of this never-ending and sort of constantly growing polar perspective students. It's kind of like if you're going to go fish and you go to where all the fish are, for the most part, higher education has been fortunate that the high school age student populations have continued to grow over the years. Recently, you've started to see this decline in a lot of areas where there aren't as many high school students out there, is there one where... That isn't necessarily our case, where South Texas College is. We're still fortunate that we have a large pool of that perspective student segment, but in other parts of the country, not so much. So, you start seeing these colleges that are faced with the decision of, we need to attract more students, we've spent years developing awareness and brand and marketing and support services aimed at this group, and it's a bit overwhelming to try to say, we need to shift.

0:07:52.6 RAMERIZ: So, they start sort of extending their reach into other counties or regions or states, but as you have more and more colleges doing similar or taking similar approaches, you eventually get into a point where there aren't as many fish in the sea, to kinda use that fishing analogy. One of the things, and I don't think I mentioned ut in my capstone, but the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, they do a report called “Knocking on the College Door, and that's just knocking dot W-I-C-H dot edu, and it has projections of U.S. high school graduates through 2037, and so they just released their recent report this December, and it really kind of shows the decline in this high school population, and you can filter and segment this by region and by state, so you can really see that while the numbers are still high, they're declining, and I think it's forcing a lot of schools who have relied on this sort of long held pattern of targeting these students to really rethink who their audience is going to be. I'm not saying it's going to go away, you're always going to have high school students, they're always going to be sort of your bigger pond, but with that declining, you're going to have to explore other audience segments. And as you mentioned with the non-traditional students making up over a quarter of the nation's undergraduate student population, it only makes sense to kind of look at that segment because there's a handful, more than a handful of these students out there that know they need to come back to school, that are driven to return to school and maybe just don't feel like they have the confidence of the support necessary to get in and to be successful.

0:09:39.6 BROOM: Yeah, I remember reading some research last year about high school, the high school population, which is particularly declining in large urban areas where I am on the West Coast, and part of it is that people just stop making babies for a while during the... During the recession in the 2000s, so like, yeah, I think we're not going to have kids, and now we're starting to feel that in our colleges because the high school population has declined, and I think that you're right. I think your department is such a testament to what can be done when you actually have a fully staffed communications department because you are able to do segmentation and data analysis in a way that a lot of college marketers just dream about doing... You're able to pay attention to that and then your own institution see some trends that others might miss it because they don't have the time to dig into the data.

0:10:35.3 RAMERIZ: I think a big part of that, and it's taken us years to get there, really has... And there's still struggles that we have, but it's really about bridging the gap between marketing and Student Services, so that way they understand where we're coming from, we're understanding where they're coming from, and nobody feels like we're trying to step on each other's toes. We really make a conscience effort to kind of talk about these things, have the discussions, debate openly about what we think will work and what will, and then ultimately have the confidence to say, You know what? You've made your case, I understand where you're coming from. Now, let's commit and moving forward in that direction, so way, it never seems like while we may not agree with it, we understand and we realize it's in the best interest, and so we have to then send that message to our teams so they don't feel like we're just doing this because we're being told to do it. But yeah, having that team size certainly helps, it gives me the ability to take some time to really look at that data and not have to worry so much about some of the day-to-day tasks that other parts of my staff do, but even if you have a smaller team, there's still ways where you can take some time to look at the data that you feel is going to help you, and just trying to stay on top of the research and these reports, they've come out there, we'll give you some insights and some ideas on how you might be able to, as they say, it's sort of lights to fire and under you to explore more and want to try to figure out how you can maybe start making some of these changes and your institution and

0:12:11.3 BROOM: You have a pretty advanced marketing program, you're able to have distinct messages for different target populations, and I really like that portion of your capstone, and I want to ask you a lot about the tactics that you explored, because you did a lot of research around what adult learners are listening to and reading and how they're using social media, but before we get into those tactics, I really liked the interviews that you did with some of your students in which you ask them what brought them back to college, and there were so many different reasons and the one, I think it was one of the women you interviewed, reminded me of what you said in the beginning about seeing your son get his college degree and thinking, Okay, it's now time for me. One of the women you interviewed had said that she wanted to make her children proud, that that was really important to her, it wasn't just about making more money, but it was setting an example, and there were so many interesting stories that you uncovered in your research and I was wondering how that impacted you and the way that you look at your marketing at your institution.

0:13:21.7 RAMERIZ: It's funny you bring that up because a lot of times when we have these larger conversations, not only with our marketing team, but with college administration and executives, you sometimes tend to have your blinders on, you think that people come to college to make more money, they come to college to get better jobs, and while that is always going to be a factor, they hope for them... I think with these interviews really uncovered was that, as you mentioned, there's a lot of students that their decision to return or to continue is very personal for those with families. A lot of them felt that they were getting to a point with their kids where they were starting to have the conversation about the importance of education, they felt hypocritical saying, You have to go to college, it's important, yet they themselves hadn't finished or didn't have that too, and so there was this desire to be that role model to say, You know what, this is important, it's important to me, and I want you to see that it's important to me, but it's also I want you to understand it. While this may be difficult, if I can do it with the family, you can certainly do it when it's just you by yourself. We’re really trying to be a positive role model to their kids and to their families to show them that they were able to do this, so that way when they have those conversations... It's not just do what I say and not what I do, it's really about showing them that they themselves value what it is they're telling you to do, and so that was really interesting because like you said, a lot of times we think... It's all about the money, it's all about the jobs... Some previous research that I had done, it was focused on... I've done a lot of research or interviews with adult Border Patrol agents, males, and their reasons for continuing was because they were very driven by goals, they had set a goal at one point in their life to complete a degree, and so they were making more money than I was making in their current occupation and they were happy and they were fulfilled with life, they felt they still felt that something was missing, that that commitment and that promise that they made to themselves to finish an Education, and that's what was driving them... I love doing these interviews because it really shows that the reasons why people decide to pursue continue an education are really personal, and those are important for us because it can help us craft better messaging, it isn't just about the low-cost, the quality education.

0:16:01.2 RAMERIZ: They know those things, it's something more personal, something more deep within them, and if we can highlight similar stories or similar messages to them, then that can hopefully inspire them to look closer at us and feel that we're the right choices they decide to sort of attain that education that they wanted for so long.

0:16:24.4 BROOM: When you said earlier that marketers tend to do the same thing over and over again in terms of the high school audience because that's the way you've always marketed and may be the way that people have always marketed is to talk about cost and how much money you can earn from a degree, which is really important, but it is also just as important to talk about those aspirational goals that students have in particular adults, adult students, because they're giving up a lot... I tell this to college presidents all the time when they want to put more money into marketing, and they kind of think of marketing as this transactional occurrence, like buying a car, like you're going to see an ad for a really cool college, you're going to visited and then you're going to sign up like you bought a car, like I saw a Subaru... I'm going to go buy it. Like, I'm going to get a loan, I going to go buy it. And it's not, you're not buying a car or even a house, you're investing time and energy, and for a lot of these adult learners, for most of them, they're working and they have families, so they're giving up a lot to go to your institution, so there has to be something that really is motivating them, and a lot of times it's not saving money, it's something deeper.

0:17:40.3 BROOM: Yeah, no, absolutely, and I'm glad you brought up that the transactional aspect that a lot of people look at with marketing, I often tell our board that we're not selling a 5 pizza a year. This isn't something that somebody can just dig in through their pocket and say, I'm going to go and get that because I don't want to cook dinner... It's true varies, a lot of sacrifice, there is a lot of giving up, there's a lot of things that they will lose moments with their family, friends, loved ones, but they realize that they're doing this not only for their own improvement in their own betterment, but for that of their family. And that's something that can't be overlooked, and that's why I think it's so important to talk to these students and have these opportunities to listen and learn for them, because it's really about their desires, their interests, their goals, that's going to help you really determine the language you're going to use when you're marketing to them and how to reach them, so it's not... It's important to understand why they're coming back, but it's equally as important to understand why they left, because I sometimes look back at that and say, somebody left because of child care costs, does our institution offer an opportunity that could have helped them earlier on where instead of leaving college, we could have intervened earlier and maybe supported them better. And so always trying to improve on your messaging, but also taking a step back to say, well, what services do we have that maybe they weren't aware about? What opportunity that we have to sort of intervene? We have all these intervention services when students are doing poorly in class, but there should also be those intervention services for life, if students are struggling with family, child care, different sorts of things.

0:19:33.1 RAMERIZ: Are there things that the college can do to support them so that way they don't stop their journey or maybe they take a step back and only take one class instead of four, so that way they keep going to and they're still seeing small successes because in a way it isn't just about that graduation, they know that that's the end goal, but sometimes that's many years down the road, so you want to give them hope and sort of the small wins that keep driving them towards the bigger goal at the end.

0:20:02.6 BROOM: That was a great part of your research too, was recommendations on how to remove some of those barriers for students. But before I dive into that, what you said, I think is so important in knowing and understanding what might have made students drop out when they were younger, and I think that a lot of institutions would really benefit from doing research around their stop-out population and asking them, asking these students, why did you leave? What could we have done better? How could we have better supported you. And I've done research for different institutions around this, and it's really insightful to talk to former students and to really understand what barriers and challenges they were up against, and it can inform the type of student services that you offer to older students and can help your current students be more successful. So I think that's really insightful and a great thing to invest in this new year is as asking your stop-outs. Why did you leave? What could we have done better?

0:21:09.9 RAMERIZ: Absolutely, absolutely, and... Or sometimes you'll find that you're always going to find those that are in prepared or that life happens, but sometimes it could just be the customer service, they were having problems and nobody would pick up the phone or somebody wouldn't respond to their email, things that you think are so minimal that don't impact, but it's that pebble that has that sort of resonating effect on those students... This was one of these things where I was talking with one of our students, and he was mentioning that he had a call later on that afternoon, and it was just a call with somebody from the college who was going to walk him through the application process, and he said that he was so excited to have somebody reach out to him and say that they would speak to him, and you could tell that that was one of those defining moments that if that person doesn't call, you could tell that he was going to be defeated and deflated and that could impact how he proceeded because that was what he needed, I was sort of the nudge that helped to support the reassurance that was going to take him to that next step, and you think How could that be that one thing.

0:22:20.4 RAMERIZ: But it meant the world to him, because that's what he needed to be comfortable to continue in his journey, so I agree with you, and that's one of the reasons why we're currently doing stop old research right now. I generally will try to allocate about 10% of my budget to research because it's important even before the pandemic to understand whether it's media consumption, stop-outs, brand attributes, and you want to make sure that you're constantly keeping a pulse to what's going to on out there, because as you mentioned it's going to help you make more informed decisions, not only from marketing, but just for the institution, the pandemics, a perfect example of that. We were doing geo-fencing up until the pandemic, and then we stopped that, and if we would have continued on that track, how much money would we have been spending to try to reach audiences that were not in those places anymore because of shutdowns or school closures and going to into online. So, you really have to realize that the research is an investment, it's about understanding, and if you can continue that research year after year, you're just going to be able to get a better line of insights into where your students...

0:23:37.7 RAMERIZ: What they're doing, where they're moving towards what kind of media they are consuming, and that's beneficial to me as a marketer.

0:23:45.0 BROOM: And your story reminds me of a similar situation that I had it when I was student-teaching at CSU Chico. When I was getting my master's degree, it was right when my Rate My Professor came out, and I remember going to on to my professors rate my professor, so the professor who was supervising my student teaching, and I wanted to see what students have said about him, and one student had written that she had missed maybe two classes in a row, and that he had reached out and emailed her to make sure that everything was okay, and what an impact that had made it actually made it so that she decided to stay in school because she'd been thinking about shopping this one email to a student who was thinking of dropping out from a professor changed the trajectory of her education, and I think that personal connection, what the institution is paramount and getting some students to stay, especially adult learners, who need some extra support. So, I have that story that you told really resonated with me, because that stuck with me my whole career is you can spend all this money and all this time getting people to see your ads, but if you don't treat them as human beings with challenges and treat them with respect and compassion then you're going to lose them.

0:25:14.2 RAMERIZ: Yeah, no, absolutely. And a couple of years ago, we had done some secret shopper research because we wanted to understand... I always look at our marketing is we're making a promise, our current brand is “Experience Exceptional,” and that is, I just exceptional education and exceptional faculty, but it's exceptional in every touch point where you have with the institution, whether it's somebody picking up the phone, responding to an email or even how we have our parking lot is organized, and one of the things we found from that is that, especially with adult learners, if they're working for a time coming to the campus isn't easy, so imagine that an adult learner finally has some time to make it to campus one day at lunch drives and then the visitor parking is filled because students are parking in there instead of buying a permit. So now they're driving around trying to find parking, and then when they finally do, they don't know where to go because either maps are in set up, our instructions weren't given to them, and so that whole experience right there, even though they're not directly interacting with somebody from the institution, it's still an interaction with the institution and things like that.

Parking or maps could be oversight, but if we can provide that insight to the institution to re-evaluate things like parking to make it closer to where they need to be, maybe to monitor it a bit better, so students stop abusing it and taking away spots from those that might need it in those times, or even something as simple as saying, we've confirmed your appointment, here's a map on how to find this in an email. You little things like that can go a long way to removing the friction in these processes because it doesn't take a lot to really take somebody who is already maybe not as confident or discouraged, is hesitant about returning to college, so like I said, a lot of different things that research and insights can provide it, that's why I... With marketing, I always look at it is I'm doing marketing to help me, but I'm really trying to do it to help understand and support the college as a whole, because there's a lot of insights that can be applied outside of marketing and help support the student journey.

0:27:27.4 BROOM: Yeah, and you're really lucky that your institution gives you the authority and the permission to be able to take these deep dives and to make these recommendations, because sometimes there are institutions that are working in silos and to have the director of communications in doing some research into different areas might ruffle some feathers, I think it's a testament to how well your college works together and the respect that they have for your department. Yeah, no, absolutely. So, I actually remember doing a research project, a secret shopper research project, and the researcher who I was working with came on campus and could not find out how to get the parking permit machine to work, so he just decided to run inside and get what he needed for the research project. And he got a ticket. It was as he was like, “I gotta ticket, and I've been doing this for 10 years and was the first one!” I can't believe they gave me a ticket, I was inside for five minutes, and so it was fun presenting that project to the President where I was like, Well, you don't have visitors parking, and the permit machine was not working, he was only on campus or five minutes and he got a ticket.

0:28:42.0 BROOM: Let's talk about how that impacts people who are looking to come to your campus for information... Yeah, secret shopping of... It's a lot of fun and it covers... It's just a snapshot in time. Right, because you can uncover somebody having a really bad day that treats you poorly as a secret shopper, and so it's a snapshot, but then if they treated an actual potential student poorly, then that impacts that student's life-long perception of your college... Every interaction is so important. And since we're on this kind of thread of supporting current students, and then we'll get back a little bit to talk about recruitment, but I noticed you had some recommendations about using social media to build community with adult learners, and I found that really interesting and thought, especially during COVID and the pandemic, were some of your recommendations were very timely, so I'm wondering if you could cover some of what you recommend that colleges do to keep those adult learners engaged with the college community.

0:29:52.1 RAMERIZ: Yeah, yeah, one of the things that they say, Man, through this is that, as I mentioned, sometimes adult learners really just need a little bit of a confidence boost, they need somebody to reassure them, somebody to kind of provide some guidance and just kind of make sure that they're on the right track, and it doesn't have to be somebody from the institution, it can be a current student, it can also be an existing perspective student as well, and so in talking with them about sort of the options and opportunities that existed out there. There was a large group of those that I interviewed that really took to this idea of leveraging things like Facebook groups as an opportunity to connect with others, and it wasn't only just because of the pandemic, certainly that's more highlighted now, because that seems to be the way a lot of us have moved over the past couple of months, but it's really when somebody needs help with a question on the application process of who they call to touch base on financial aid, or what is open in admissions, and does that mean I'm accepted by just submitting, so they're looking for answers to some simple questions that maybe aren't found directly on the web or maybe hit in on the web, and by turning to others who have maybe been to the situation or had similar questions, are even those on the journey themselves.

0:31:20.5 RAMERIZ: That's something that I think a lot of colleges overlook, especially with the adult learners, I have... Like I said, one of my son is a freshman and he's got his own Facebook group for Rice University, my daughter is a senior in high school, and all of these colleges are talking about connecting through their online groups, but you don't really see that as much with the adult learner groups are opportunities where they can connect with similar students such as then, so a lot of them were open to this idea and felt that it would be an opportunity to remove some of those confidence barriers that they have to help them feel like they're making progress without having to send emails or take calls or leave messages and play phone tag, it's just a way for them to connect, but also feel like they're sort of realizing that there are other students like themselves. I think that's one of the biggest fears that they have is that they're going to be the older student in the classroom, if they're going to be the only older student on campus walking around, and that they're going to be in a sea of younger students who are...

0:32:30.0 RAMERIZ: They sometimes perceive to be better equipped to be successful, so having these opportunities is great for them, they also expressed things like chats where they could get some questions answered relatively quickly without having to wait. I think that was the biggest thing is there's frustration when they send an email or try to schedule a call, because you have to remember, as you mentioned, an adult learner has other commitments, they're working, they have family, they may not be able to get to this until 9-10 are later at night, and so the idea of calling somebody at 9 at night, college isn't open, sending an email at 2 in the morning, nobody is going to be there to respond, and by the time that person gets into the office, that email is going to be hidden under a pile of other emails that have come in afterwards, so things like automated chat bots that can provide some quick and easy answers to a lot of common questions or things that students are open to utilizing, and I think social provides a great place to do that because they're there, they can get things answered, and if they can't answer, then it's routed to somebody that will be flagged to reach back out to the...

0:33:44.7 RAMERIZ: One recommendation that I thought would be better received was this idea of pre-recorded video, like webinars, and while they like the idea, I think for them, because it didn't have the interactivity, it was just them listening and watching and not able... And if it had the information that they were looking for, that's great, but in a lot of cases, they don't have the time to sit through 45 minutes to get two minutes of their questions answered, and... So those are things where I certainly thought that they would be more open to get behind, but they really liked the idea of more of the live sessions because then it would give him a chance to jump in, get a question answered, and jump out and get on to the whatever else they need to do. So I think those are things that colleges can be more mindful of creating these opportunities, but furthermore using paid advertising to further market them, so it's not just about saying, Here's our social media ad, but maybe take some of your ad buy and actually promote those efforts in those initiatives to these students, so that way it's not just seeing a commercial or seeing a graphic, but it's actually knowing that there's something coming up that they can sign up for and schedule in their calendars, so that way they can, once again, manage their time more effectively and get the things they need answered, you give them advance notice and they'll do their best to be there, and I think that's one way where you can use that pain and these online services to really complement one another.

0:35:20.6 BROOM: We see research that shows that students and cohorts tend to perform better or stay more engaged with their education, and so there's no reason not to assume that approaching adult learners as kind of a cohort would also be successful, and particularly giving them opportunities to join a Facebook group or serve them in some other way where they can connect with one another and also connect with the institution would really help keep them in the institution and help with your retention efforts. It actually, I taught at a college for years, and forgive me, this is totally off-topic, Daniel, but as you're talking... This pops in my head. I had the most interesting class one semester, I had a 15-year-old student, I taught... I was taught evening classes 6 to 9:20 p.m., it was a very long class Wednesday night, and I had a 15-year-old student, and then I had a man in his 60s, so very big, diverse group of students. I had a couple of active-duty marines, a veteran, I had a mom of four kids in that same class, so just this amazing class, and a lot of the students had said...

0:36:40.8 BROOM: What you had said earlier was that they were kind of fearful of being... Of being the oldest student, and it was such a diverse group, but one of the youngest... It was a persuasion class, and one of the youngest students decided to do his persuasive speech on restricting driver's licenses for the elderly. So he wanted to take away the elderly’s ability to drive, and we always would give our thesis statement and then people would ask questions to help guide what students needed to defend in their speeches. And one of the questions was, well, what do you define as elderly? And the student was like, I don't know, 50. And the 60-year-old student was like, “Dude, I'm 60, I'm sitting right next to you and you want to take away my driver's license.” And we laughed so hard. And the student was 17, 18, and he had befriended the 60-year-old student, he had no idea that he was 60, I don't think he really knew age yet, when you're young, you don't understand, and it was just such a funny moment, I've thought about it over and over throughout the years, just what an amazing classroom. And this is the beauty of community college, what an amazing interaction in this classroom between adult learners and traditional students, and just the ability to connect and learn from one another is something that you know, we don't showcase a lot in our marketing, and I think it's a really beautiful thing about community colleges.

0:38:17.6 RAMERIZ: Yeah, and I think that's important because you just mentioned that we don't showcase that enough, and that was something else that came up when we talk about messaging, I'm not just thinking about the copy, I'm thinking about the delivery of that message, and this was something that came that's come up, and I've done about four different research projects as part of my Master's, so different segments of adult learners depending on the class, but you know, the thing that came back time and time again was they see a great message, but if the ad doesn't have students that look like them, they're turned away because once again, it reinforces that misperception that you have to be young to be successful in college. And so we make a point that if we're going to talk about family, that we're bringing on an actual student and his or her family for the photo shoot, we're going to feature a adult learners in ads that really are targeted at adult learners because that's what they need to see, that's what they want to see, and that's going to help them see that there are students like me on campus. And we're showing that so that's something that always has to be remembered because it can sometimes be over and look, because in my design team, my designers are a bit younger than I am, and so they tend to say, this picture looks great, this is a great shot. And sometimes they forget who that audience that the ad is for, and that can sometimes be a simple overlooked thing that can mean the world to somebody that's looking at that ad because they want to see themselves in that ad, and not necessarily somebody who is 30 years younger than them, and that can go a long way. And just making them feel comfortable in learning more about that institution.

0:40:08.9 BROOM: Do you think it would be so much easier to market like a pizza? Just look at how many different populations and different goals and different services and different programs, I think that community college marketers have to be so sophisticated. You're not just pushing a pizza, it's really difficult.

0:40:34.5 RAMERIZ: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And even we work a lot with persona and having our adult learner personas and we're trying to refine those, but even with those refined personas, we still have to be mindful that that persona doesn't represent everybody in that statement, and so you still have to have this fluidity that comes in what you're doing, because there maybe... Like I said, when you talk about and learner, you're talking about somebody that... It's 25 and older. Yet, from my own personal experience, I was 22 with the family going to college, so I considered myself an adult learner, but if somebody was hyper-targeting me at that point, I wouldn't see any of the adult learner market messaging at that point because I would still be considered a traditional student. Yet my mindset, my desire is my reasons for wanting to finish, were completely aligned with that of the adult learner, so you want to have these sorts of starting points when you're talking about adult learners, but you also want to be fluid enough that it's not so rigid, because you could be missing out upon a segment of the population that could still benefit from that message, just because they're a year younger or two, are been older than the in-cap might be.

0:41:51.1 BROOM: Now, I notice your paper had... We talk a lot about messaging, and we've talked a lot about retention, but you had a lot about tactics and some of your research you had done showed, and this is no surprise to anybody listening, that students, even adult learners weren't reading the newspaper. Were reading magazines, but not that much, but they were also said they weren't paying attention to social media ads. So then I was less like, what are you going to do? What's left?

0:42:21.2 RAMERIZ: You know, I think... And this is something that we're always trying to within, do research, and when we do research is we always have to remember or keep in mind that I am a child of the 80s, so when I see an ad, I think of TV ads, I think of radio ads, and as a marketer, I'm aware of Facebook ad types, carousel video in your news feed, but the average user is... And so sometimes when you say, do you pay attention to social media advertising, their mindset or their frame of reference may be completely different than what you're asking about. And so we always have to keep that in mind because especially in social media advertising, it's designed very natively that you don't even know that it's an ad, unless you know what to look for, the little Sponsored tag are just little elements like that, unless it's just a full-blown commercial, and it's kind of like if it looks like an ad talks like an ad, it probably is an ad, but nowadays, we're trying to be so sophisticated because the consumer knows they're being marketed to, but with social media, I think what the research really showed is that it speaks to the passive nature of social media advertising where it's small, subtle, native, it doesn't overwhelm that person that they don't even realize they're being advertised to, so people will say, I recall seeing something, but I didn't click on it, but it was enough that was top of mind that it reminded them or nudged them to go to our website just because they aren't clicking directly, or they can't remember it, doesn't mean that it doesn't have an impact or that you shouldn't leverage it, but that's where your insights and your data and your marketing will really tell you how well it's performing or not.

0:44:09.8 RAMERIZ: I think it's important that people really do regular media consumption surveys of their students to understand what is the... What is it they're watching? What platforms are they on? What do they do? They prefer how long are they there, because if you can build this year after year, now you have this sort of insight of what your current students are using, and those current students represent the type of students you want to attract, so it'll give you a foundation by which you can sort of build your advertising spend, so you've got to have that to understand where they are, but it's also important to think about what existing data sources do you have at your institution? So, when thinking about adult learners, you probably had an institution have three, four, five, if not more, streams of perspective learners that you can target, your stop-outs is one. So, these are students who have attended your institution and left, if you cross-reference that to a clearing house to see if they went elsewhere, you can identify a segment of the population that hasn't gone anywhere after they left you, and if you further refine that by maybe credit hours, academic standing, you'll still have a very nice list of perspective students now you've got to be careful because sometimes when I ask for total, I shut my institution now give me 27 years’ worth of stop out, you know that I don't need that much. 

So, you want to maybe look back, set some initial parameters, see what that audience segment size looks like, and then kind of refine from there, the other would be your RFIs on the web or request for information, if you're asking for date of birth is a data match. Now you have a great way to identify students that are a certain age range, and maybe they can be filtered to a more adult learner-specific recruiter, their messaging can be tailored through a CRM that's more relevant to them, you can also even look at past graduates, we offer certificates, which are then stackable to associate, which are stackable to Bachelors, so if you have a list of certificates, once again, cross-reference with the clearing house to see if they went anywhere else, you now have some very unique data sources with perspective students, you can also look at your industry partners. In our region, we have a lot of call centers, T-Mobile, Spectrum, Ticketmaster. These are places that employ a lot of students. A lot of our perspective students that are adult learners, they need a job, they pay well, they give them the hours that they need, but they're also looking for from something more...

0:46:48.1 RAMERIZ: School districts is another place. Paraprofessionals that maybe need to get an education to move up a step or to move into different positions, so there's all these different industry partners where you may be able to create tailored cohort-driven learning modalities, so that way they feel comfortable and confident, and you can kind of get them into your institution, and then of course, you can leverage databases, and this is where you purchase list from vendors for direct mail purposes. But the challenge that we found with using this is that they primarily only focused on demographics and not a lot about intent. And so this year we started using a database that's built on the L2 national commercial file, and so L2 is kind of the industry standard in the world of analytics research consumer contact, this is the database that wins people presidential elections, that the movie industry uses to determine how to market, and so there's a company, it's called the college app, they apply predictive analytics to ask questions about college intent, affinity towards community colleges. So, we're not only able to define very specifically perspective a coder is in our region, be using predictive analytics, we can see how likely they are to pursue a higher education in the next two years, and how likely they are to do that at a community college or a trade school.

0:48:16.8 RAMERIZ: So, this really allows us to kind of take direct mail, and you can also pull that list for email, and apply it to digital and social media target audiences, so it really allows us to not only identify that audience, but layer on intent, which is something that we've never been able to do before.

0:48:36.4 BROOM: I'm sure you don't have a lot of results yet because you just started this, but have you seen any results from this work or had any good feedback on your efforts? 

0:48:45.8 RAMERIZ: Well, we primarily used it initially for our two segments, one now because the database is focused on adult learners, like the college app, they really focus on the adulteration, so you're not going to be able to pull students under 18, you can tie in family sizes, so we can find individuals who have students that are maybe of high school age, so we actually did two different postcards that we sent out right before the break, and one was focused on perspective adult learners, trying to get them to get enrolled, and then the other was trying to build our database for prospective high school students, because since we don't have face-to-face recruitment, how do we get in front of students that we may not see on a daily basis like before, so we haven't gotten the data results yet, we haven't been able to kind of run, but just initially you're seeing... That goes... When you kind of monitor the baseline of the websites that they're going to, it's kind of flat, and then right around delivery, you do see a peak in terms of people visiting the website, so probably by early January, we're going to run the report to see how many leads where we're at visits and tracking, but it gives us a starting point to be able to refine and to better, I guess, to use our direct mail budget a bit more effectively.

0:50:12.4 RAMERIZ: Other plans that we have for it are going to be to take that and then turn those and apply those to social media advertising, so really take those lists, create some custom audiences from them, and then be able to do a better job of tweaking and tailoring messaging to reach these audiences. So, a lot of unique opportunities we're going to be using it to sort of attract the sort of... We're working on another grant that is focused on non-traditional genders, so females into CTE programs, males into nursing... So, what's unique about that is that we can also filter by, for example, males who have family, males who are single, so that really gives us granular messaging, sort of focusing on the more family role model aspect with one masters is the single that may be focused more on the career opportunities and aspirations, and the same goes on the female side, so you could really tweak and tailor messaging more specific to resonate greater with those segments that you want to reach. So, like I said, we just started using it this past year, but just the refinement of the lists that we've been able to pull are far better, it's a higher quality of list as opposed to the quantity, and at this point, that's what we really want to focus on...

0:51:30.7 BROOM: Well, it sounds like I need to give you about a year and then have you back on the podcast, so we can talk all about how that list and those efforts have come to fruition, because I see great things from this project.

0:51:46.1 RAMERIZ: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And there's just a lot more things that we can do in some of the opportunities. We still leverage out of home, we so do billboards, but... And it's not that I'm not a fan of Billboard, but sometimes people just think the billboard is magically going to drive enrollment, but I could see a point where if you can identify for a large segment of the students maybe live, and if there are out of home opportunities around those areas, it might make sense to populate or to position one of those billboards in that area, so like I said, the opportunities are endless, and that's... I think what excites me the most about it is that it's not just a matter of pulling lists and sending spray and pray, it's really doing it data-driven and intent, and can be used in a lot of different projects that aren't just marketing-related. I talked about it and a couple of other webinars in the past, because I see the potential that it can bring to myself as a marketer and to others that find themselves in similar roles and positions.

0:52:53.6 BROOM: Well, and I just love, not just with your capstone project, but just this example with this other company that you're working with on list generation, I just really admire how you're constantly trying to take a fresh look at data at your marketing efforts, and you're not just relying on what's always been there, and that's what's so exciting about in the communication field is it's constantly changing, evolving, we're learning more about people who are learning more about intent or improving our institutions, and I think you're just a great example of how you can take that kind of entrepreneurial forward-thinking approach to refine and get closer to perfecting your marketing strategy. So I always learn something talking to you, and I think we're wrapping down on time, because I try to keep these podcasts under 50 minutes, and I think we're over Daniel, we could probably talk another couple of hours, which means I have to schedule you on again, so let's give it a year and we'll see how this new approach that you're taking is working, but I think... I love your capstone. If anybody is interested can they contact you? Do you share it, do you have a hand out anything that people can learn more from the research?

0:54:20.7 RAMERIZ: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it doesn't just have to be on the capstone. If anybody is interested in learning more about, for example, the college app or maybe just wanting to get a better sense of what we're doing here at South Texas College, I am always available, easiest way to reach me as the email: Daniel Rameriz at South Texas College dot edu and South Texas College is all spelled out. That edu, I'm more than happy to. If anybody reaches out to you, Cheryl, and they want to get in contact with me, feel free to give them my cell phone, my email, because this is so... I always tell people my Bachelors in mathematics, and so how a mathematician fell into marketing is a whole other podcast, but I am here in large part because somebody took the time to help answer questions and to guide me and to give me insights, it always made themselves available, and I'm constantly picking on people's brains to try to improve myself, and for me, I love to do the same, so if there's something that I can share, somebody just wants to have a conversation about marketing, I'm always open to those kinds of things because as you mentioned, I will always learn something from someone and hopefully they can learn something from you as well.

0:55:38.3 BROOM: I also... Before we wrap, I want to congratulate you on finishing your Master's degree as an adult learner and running a large marketing department for a very large college during a pandemic, so besides helping other people, I hope you take a couple of minutes to give yourself a pat on the back, because it's a great accomplishment, and who knows what's next for you? Maybe it's going to be Dr. Ramirez.

0:56:07.7 RAMERIZ: My wife was telling me that exact same thing, we were steaming my gown to take some photos, and she's like, What does a doctor at down look like? And so, I showed you some pictures that she goes on, you'd look really good in this, and I was like, Okay, well, give me a little bit of time.

0:56:23.2 BROOM: Take a little break, but... Yeah, we expect it. We expect... That's what's next for you. Tell your wife she’s right and I'm on board. Alright, Daniel,  thank you so much. It's the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and I know that you are enjoying yourself, and I hope you have a really happy new year and thank you again for your time and your invaluable insights. 

RAMERIZ: Oh no, likewise, it's a pleasure and always available whenever you need it. Thank you for listening to the Higher Education Coffee and Conversation podcast. If you like the podcast, please leave me a five-star rating and to discover more great higher education-related content, make sure to visit us at graduate communications dot com, and with that, I'm going to say thank you for listening, thank you for the hard work you do for students, each and every day.