Influence the Future of the Higher Education Marketing Community
The American Marketing Association invites you to add to the conversation and engage with your community as a conference presenter at the 2024 AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. The symposium is an opportunity, first and foremost, for marketers to connect. In addition, attendees increase their knowledge to build and advance strong brands, improve reputation, achieve enrollment and fundraising success, improve competitive positioning and maintain financial strength.
Joining us as a conference presenter is an opportunity to present new content to strengthen the profession of higher education marketing, expand your network through an audience of peers and raise the visibility of your institution or company. Sessions focus on the practice of higher education marketing, provide ideas and examples to inspire peers, and offer solutions participants can apply at their own institutions.
All sessions will be in-person November 10-13 2024, in Las Vegas, NV.
- Call for Proposals Due: Friday, April 19, 2024
- Decisions Sent: Week of June 24, 2024
Shaking Up the Higher Ed Marketing Industry: Your Proposal’s Role
Address critical conversations
Inspire leaders
Drive change
Encourage practical application
Engage with your community
Suggested Topics by Track
Strategies for defining brand promise, value proposition, messaging and approach to content delivery.
- Strategic brand development and evolution
- Internalizing the brand and utilizing brand as a catalyst for institutional change
- Brand identity management
- Ensuring brand alignment or co-development with strategic plans or capital campaigns
- Licensing, sponsorship and merchandising
- Branding for diverse audiences, populations
- Incorporating and sharing the student voice
- Aligning strategies for crisis and brand
Tactics and best practices for leveraging tools, technology and resources to deliver content and execute brand promise and value proposition.
- Tactics and execution of brand development, launch and evolution
- Innovative storytelling through visuals, messaging, media, experiential marketing and more
- Engaging copywriting
- Social media marketing
- Campaign and automation
- Creative use of technology
- How-Tos (CRMs, social media calendar, video strategies, etc)
- Branding for diverse audiences, populations
- Incorporating and sharing the student voice
Delivering marketing messages whether in physical, digital or omnichannel spaces for attracting and converting students to drive enrollment growth.
- Development of data-driven marketing communications efforts
- Disrupting traditional models of enrollment marketing
- Reaching and engaging prospective student audiences and their influencers
- Advertising to drive enrollment – traditional and digital
- Prospect marketing
- Innovative use of traditional or digital channels for enrollment
Delivering marketing messages whether in physical, digital or omnichannel spaces for potential funders and partners including alumni, donors, granting agencies and government as audiences.
- Development of data-driven advancement marketing efforts
- Disrupting traditional models of marketing
- Reaching and engaging specific, strategic audiences
- Advertising – traditional and digital
- Prospect marketing
- Innovative use of traditional or digital channels
- Building board, stakeholder, volunteer, donor, and/or alumni engagement, affinity and participation
Strategic efforts for student, employee and stakeholder retention and delivering exceptional experience.
- Student-focused content marketing: planning, creating, distributing and evaluating
- Internal communications: planning, creating, distributing and evaluating
- Social media management: engagement, monitoring and analysis
- Use of emerging technologies for audience engagement and sharing
- Use of channels that align with and showcase the student voice
- Student mental health marketing
- Employee communications and engagement
- Inclusive audience engagement
- Developing a student experience-focused mindset
- Building stakeholder engagement, affinity, and participation
Using tools to understand audience needs, assess efforts, refine execution and apply learnings.
- Measuring marketing performance
- Dashboards and analytics
- A/B testing and optimization strategies
- Market research best practices or innovations – qualitative or quantitative
- Market identification or segmentation
- Competitive analysis
- Refining marketing tactics based on research or assessment
- Diversity and inclusion metrics
- Metrics to capture student voice and perspective
- Use of data for decision-making
Developing emerging leaders and leadership skills. Best practices for managing “up, down and across.”
- Leading change
- Crisis communications
- Issues management
- Building marketing collaboration, buy-in and consensus on campus
- Garnering support of marketing from your president, cabinet and board
- Organizational and funding structures
- Insights into recruitment and retention
- Advancing an equitable and inclusive culture
- Fostering incremental and radical innovation
- Doing more with less – people, budget, time
- Marketing yourself: Advancing your career
- Listening to and valuing student views
- Cultivating a free speech environment
- Making the case for the value of higher education
Exploring cutting-edge trends, innovative approaches, and best practices shaping the future of higher education marketing.
- New/updated institutional policies that have a marketing impact
- The evolving role of marketing and communications professionals
- Ongoing/evolving response to societal issues
- New efforts in and effectiveness of DEI initiatives
- Embracing and amplifying the student voice
- Strategies for thriving in an evolving landscape
- Disrupting traditional models of marketing
- Pioneering innovative approaches
- Equipping your institution for a rapidly changing environment
- Elevating marketing’s influence
- Taking risks
Proposals Must Include…
- A clear and engaging session title (8 words maximum)
- All presenter names, titles and affiliations, with contact information, a headshot and a bio (100 word maximum)
- A 100 word summary encapsulating the session and its takeaways. (If selected, this description will be used as the session description.)
- A full session description (400 word maximum) describing the goals and objectives of the presentation and demonstrating your mastery of the subject matter. This description should be very clear regarding the value to conference participants and include key learning outcomes or takeaways from the session.
- 3 clear learning objectives or takeaways with specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound language.
- Selection of a topic category/track
- Identification of content level
- If you have previously presented or will be presenting the submission’s content, including when you presented and at what event. Note: Our preference is for submissions to be new/original content when presented at AMA.
- Please ensure you are available to present on Sunday 11/10 for workshop formats and Monday 11/11, Tuesday 11/12 or Wednesday 11/13 for all other formats submitting.
- All speakers will need to be registered for the conference. One complimentary speaker registration will be provided per session. Additional speakers will be required to register through the AMA website.
Submitted Proposals Timeline
- Friday, April 19 at 11:59 PM ET*: Submissions closed
- Week of June 24: Selected proposals will be notified
*Due to the number of submissions received in 2023, we do not anticipate extending the proposal deadline beyond Friday, April 19.
Selected Proposals Timeline
- Friday, July 12: Final abstracts and speakers are due
- Friday, September 20: Presentation drafts are due for review to the committee
- Friday, October 25: Final presentation decks are due
Ready to Share Your Voice? We’re Seeking Stellar Speakers
Speakers can be…
- Marketers and communicators of all levels at colleges; universities; and graduate, professional, and specialized schools
- Diversity and inclusion leadership/subject matter experts
- University leaders and policy makers
- CMOs and CCOs at colleges and universities
- Research and planning specialists
- Industry experts who can lead or facilitate engaging discussion
- Agencies, consultants, and solution providers with experience serving higher education*
*Presenters with primary employment outside of an institution of higher education must have a co-presenting institutional partner who is actively involved in the content and presentation. Not having an institutional partner included in the submission will result in rejection of the proposal.
Formats Accepted
Breakout Sessions will be 60-minute presentations with up to three speakers for presentations, and up to three presenters and a facilitator/moderator for panel discussions. These should include a presentation/panel and time for Q&A.
Workshops will be 120 minutes with up to 4 facilitators. These should be focused on skill building with a clear focus on learning takeaways.
FAQs
Each proposal is peer-reviewed and selected by members of the planning committee with a primary responsibility to curate high-quality content. No more than one proposal from the same organization will be selected, but multiple submissions are permitted.
The primary author on each submission will be notified by email, sent through the Ex Ordo platform, if their submission was accepted or declined. You will also be able to log into the platform to view the status of your submission after June 24.
Yes, you will receive an email notification, sent through the Ex Ordo platform, if your submission was not selected. You will also be able to log into the platform to view the status of your submission after June 24.
You can see the full list of requirements here.
Yes, you can submit more than one proposal. However, given the volume of submissions received and the desire for a wide variety of content, we will only select a speaker/institution once per programming format.
No. All sessions will be presented in person at the conference in November.
The AMA works in partnership with the event hotel to program each room for optimized seating. In general, breakout sessions and fireside chats will be set theater style. Workshops will be set classroom style. Subject to change.
AMA will provide standard A/V setup in each room, including a screen, projector, slide advancer, one PC/Windows laptop and microphones. If you wish to present from an Apple laptop, you must provide your own and supply the necessary dongle.
Yes. All speakers will need to be registered for the conference. One complimentary speaker registration will be provided per session. Additional speakers will be required to register through the website.
Presenters are responsible for the concept, creation and execution of their presentation. Presentation decks will be provided to conference attendees through the conference app. Please ensure you are prepared to share the content of your presentation.
All presentations will be reviewed and approved by the planning committee prior to the conference start.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Christine Lucenta, Manager of Professional Communities at the American Marketing Association at clucenta@ama.org.