Don Akchin

A colleague who markets for a university complained the other day about a hard-to-please internal constituency. Last fall, with a significant marketing budget for the first time in a decade, she launched an online campaign. So far, inquiries have doubled, applications have doubled, quality is higher – yet some members of the faculty (the difficult constituency) want empirical proof that marketing deserves the credit. Here’s some proof from a survey by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Lipman Hearne, a fundraising consulting firm. The key finding is that colleges and universities that invest more than 0.5 percent of their operating budgets (excluding salaries and benefits) in marketing get good returns in quality applicants and higher enrollment yield. But that won’t satisfy my colleague’s inquisitors. These faculty understand cause and effect, but that’s not their issue. The real issue is that marketing got a budget increase.

A colleague who markets for a university complained the other day about a hard-to-please internal constituency. Last fall, with a significant marketing budget for the first time in a decade, she launched an online campaign. So far, inquiries have doubled, applications have doubled, quality is higher – yet some members of the faculty (the difficult constituency) want empirical proof that marketing deserves the credit. Here’s some proof from a survey by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Lipman Hearne, a fundraising consulting firm. The key finding is that colleges and universities that invest more than 0.5 percent of their operating budgets (excluding salaries and benefits) in marketing get good returns in quality applicants and higher enrollment yield. But that won’t satisfy my colleague’s inquisitors. These faculty understand cause and effect, but that’s not their issue. The real issue is that marketing got a budget increase.

A colleague who markets for a university complained the other day about a hard-to-please internal constituency. Last fall, with a significant marketing budget for the first time in a decade, she launched an online campaign. So far, inquiries have doubled, applications have doubled, quality is higher – yet some members of the faculty (the difficult constituency) want empirical proof that marketing deserves the credit. Here’s some proof from a survey by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Lipman Hearne, a fundraising consulting firm. The key finding is that colleges and universities that invest more than 0.5 percent of their operating budgets (excluding salaries and benefits) in marketing get good returns in quality applicants and higher enrollment yield. But that won’t satisfy my colleague’s inquisitors. These faculty understand cause and effect, but that’s not their issue. The real issue is that marketing got a budget increase.