SimpsonScarborough is the data-driven partner for higher education marketers. 

Editor's Note: Our ongoing series about the Future of Higher Ed MarComm is focused on all of the topics that we believed were important pre-pandemic, but in a world permanently transformed by covid, have evolved to imperatives.  Few topics are more important to us as an agency than empowering the leaders of our industry with the most insightful, relevant, and actionable data. That's why we're in the field again for our 2021-22 Higher Education CMO Study — and it's why we've made some substantive changes to how that data will be made available to those who participate in our study. SimpsonScarborough launched the first Higher Education CMO Study in 2014 to provide higher education marketers with essential benchmarking data on staff size and marketing budgets. Prior to the release of that study, higher education marketers had no way of knowing if their team or budget was larger, smaller, or on a par with peer institutions. Of course, it's evolved since then. We replicated our study first in 2016 before expanding the scope in the most recent version, published in December of 2019.

Sometimes our greatest learnings aren't found in our successes or even apparent in the moments we experience them. It's a life lesson that comes with age, wisdom, kindness, heartache, humility, success, and failure.

We've had an embarrassment of riches at our agency between some well-deserved promotions and some incredibly talented new people joining our team. Read on for the updates and be sure to reach out to congratulate everyone on their new positions. 

We're excited to announce a new research study on the State of Higher Education Website and Marketing Technology in partnership with Pantheon and Siteimprove. This study — the first of its kind — is a complement to our Higher Ed CMO Study and will be instrumental in helping to benchmark,  inform, and advance your institution’s Website & Marketing Technology strategies, initiatives, and priorities.

Editor's Note: Our ongoing series about the Future of Higher Ed MarComms is focused on all of the topics that we believed were important pre-pandemic, but in a world permanently transformed by covid, have evolved to imperatives. Web accessibility may not immediately come to mind when thinking of the future of our industry. But as many institutions are redesigning their digital strategies to meet rapidly shifting consumer behavior, it's all the more important to consider how those assets ensure your institution remains equitable, inclusive, and accessible to all. More than ever before, a significant portion of our lives are experienced, managed, organized, or accessed online. From work emails to Netflix binges, paying bills to staying connected to old friends — we're online, almost constantly. But for users with physical and mental impairments, some barriers prevent the web from being totally accessible. While there are some helpful methods, tools, and devices that help eliminate some of these barriers, in order to maximize their effectiveness, websites need to first be built with web accessibility in mind. Building an inclusive and accessible website from the outset is not just a strategic and ethical choice — it's also pragmatic, as it's far easier than trying to remedy a site built without accessibility standards.

A competitive usability evaluation is a user experience (UX) research method we use to quantify how a site functions relative to its competitors. There are different ways to conduct this type of study: the competitive review can be holistic, scoring targeted, high-value pages by overall site-usability metrics, or it can be more focused, comparing features or global elements across sites.

The Higher Education CMO Survey is officially open for data collection!

We're thrilled to introduce three new members of the SimpsonScarborough team: Dempsey Ewan, Osmond Curtis, and Scott Smith. Beyond their obvious talent, experience, and passion for higher education, they all bring what makes them unique — their curious nature, strategic thinking, and palpable enthusiasm. They're remarkable additions to our team's culture and have already hit the ground running on a myriad of new client work. 

In-person visit days for admitted students have long been considered the anchor of the spring recruitment event lineup. Many students make their final college choice immediately after attending these deal-making or deal-breaking events. Just three years ago, I remember going with my son to back-to-back 'admitted student days' at his top two institutions. Just an hour into the event at the second campus, he decided he wanted to attend the school we had visited the previous day, Franklin & Marshall College. He couldn't explain why — it was just a gut feeling.