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AMA Virtual Conference: Marketing in Higher Education

Learn from the top marketing thought leaders on what the future holds for higher education, and how marketing can play a role in decision making. Join us for this free event as we dig in to answer these questions and more. This virtual event is a chance to spend time with those who share your challenges, questions and goals.

You’ll also have the chance to network with fellow marketers and talk with solutions providers.

Registration is free for this event.

By attending this event, you can earn continuing education units (CEUs) toward maintaining any AMA Professional Certified Marketer ® credential. To learn more about pursuing certification or to claim your credits, click here.

DAY 1 | 10AM - 3PM | ALL TIMES CT

Keynote: Effective Higher Education Marketing: The C.A.R.E. Component

Drawing on nearly three decades of experience as a scholar, marketer, and higher education practitioner, Shanita B. Akintonde will unpack time-tested strategies for attracting, retaining, and measuring successful higher education marketing tactics.

Shanita Baraka Akintonde

Professor, School of Media Arts, Columbia College Chicago

Content Strategy - Leading With Your Brand While Maximizing Efficiency

Higher Education organizations are increasing their advertising and marketing budgets across the board, but how do you ensure that your school makes an impression and stands out from the crowd? Learn how to bring your institution’s unique story to life, and how implementing a content strategy that prioritizes distinctive assets and brand management will lead to more efficient content workflows for your marketing staff, and increased brand awareness amongst prospective students.

Join Jenna Johnson, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at Charleston Southern University, and Ariana Keil, Marketing Manager at Canto, as they guide you through how to develop your school’s branding, build a functional library of creative assets, and maintain your brand through content workflows that keep your team on message without sacrificing creativity and authenticity.

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Jenna Johnson

Executive Director of Marketing and Communication, Charleston Southern University

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Ariana Keil

Marketing Manager, Canto

Redefining Higher Ed Events for Optimal Audience Engagement

For higher education event leaders and marketers, March 2020 will be forever etched in stone—the month when life as we knew it stopped and colleges and universities scrambled to move recruitment events, reunions, alumni weekends, and other gatherings online. Amidst all the uncertainty, innovations emerged as you reimagined and tested new strategies to reach and engage a broader audience and create “boundless” experiences. The result? New event formats support a multitude of event types and audiences that have been tested and proven two years later. Enter our new normal. College campuses are open, and event leaders are reshaping their programs to include virtual, in-person and hybrid events, which combine in-person and virtual programming and delivery. But what does “hybrid” really mean? And what types of events should be hybrid? As face-to-face gatherings become a reality again, it’s time to take a step back and look at what we’ve learned—with the added benefit of being able to put event goals and audience needs back at the forefront of planning. This session will discuss key themes to support as you redefine your event strategy with a focus on audience engagement.

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Rob Vignali

Regional Sales Vice President, Cvent

Chat with Exhibitors!

Session details coming soon.

DAY 2 | 10AM - 3PM | ALL TIMES CT

Keynote: Modern SEO for Higher Ed: How Google’s AI Changes the Game

Search engines are evolving. Specifically, Google is deploying increasingly sophisticated AI to power its rankings. This shift will impact your university’s organic visibility. But, how do you optimize content for modern AI search engines?

Join Dale Bertrand, a 20-year search marketing veteran with graduate-level training in AI, as he details specific organic visibility strategies that leverage our new understanding of AI search engines. This session will help you develop a rudimentary understanding of Google’s AI to increase online awareness of your university’s activities and boost enrollment.

Dale Bertrand

Dale Bertrand

Founder & President, Fire&Spark

Reactive to Proactive: A Wrike-Inspired Journey of Continuous Improvement

Is your marketing team stuck in a cycle of constant reaction? Take a deep dive on a continuous improvement journey with Mitchell Bausch PMP from Texas A&M University. In addition to his professional journey, this presentation demonstrates how strategic project management, intentional process improvement, and structured collaboration helps higher education marketing teams become more organized, productive, and proactive. With teams consistently being asked to do more with less, the importance of the process must be communicated to leadership and our peers to drive positive change and prepare for the future of work in higher education.

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Mitchell Bausch

PMP, Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications, Texas A&M University School of Law

Panel Discussion with Industry Experts: Enrollment Marketing Strategies

This is your chance to ask questions from our panel of industry experts!  Moderated by our very own AMA Vice President of Professional Development, Molly Soat, she will be leading our panel in a discussion on Enrollment Marketing Strategies.

Using Private Sector Marketing Techniques to Solve Challenge of Recruiting Adults

Data analytics pioneered about a decade ago during sophisticated national political campaigns can help solve higher education’s challenges of finding and engaging prospective adult students. Learn how CollegeAPP has harnessed the power of person-level predictive modeling to help colleges and universities find adults with high intent of seeking education or retraining to make marketing more efficient. This session will include a live demo of our database and the models we use to predict behavior.

andrea shaw

Andrea Shaw

VP of Strategy and Client Services, CollegeAPP

DAY 3 | 10AM - 3PM | ALL TIMES CT

Doing More with Less! Tools and Tips for Institutional Marketers to Drive Enrollments without Big Budgets

Old ways of engaging with and communicating to prospective students aren’t delivering results like they used to.  And your marketing budget probably isn’t going up anytime soon.   How can you rethink your marketing tactics, teams, and skills to better engage student prospects without breaking your marketing budget?  In this interactive session, Shannon Denton, Co-Founder and CEO of Wripple and the former Global CEO of Razorfish, will explore the future of marketing for institutions with a focus on tools and tips for building high-performance, agile marketing teams.

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Shannon Denton

Founder & CEO, Wripple

Reaching Digital Natives: How to Create Meaningful Youth Engagement

Youth audiences can be particularly difficult to connect with: privacy regulations are constantly changing, youth are exposed to more than 6,000 ads each day and their online habits are evolving. Compounding those challenges, higher education institutions often have unique process, compliance and branding needs.

Backed by decades of youth advertising experience, John Reid and Jamie Pragnell will demonstrate how to develop a messaging strategy that resonates, analyze the most effective channels to create impact and provide real-life examples to tie it all together. The time is now to take your youth advertising strategy to the next level.

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John Reid

President, Glacier

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Jamie Pragnell

Account Manager, Glacier

Breaking Down Website Barriers: Strategies To Boost Student Recruitment

Your website is the most important digital asset for your higher education institution. In fact, it’s often one of the first interactions that a prospective student may have with their future college or university. So what barriers does your website journey present? And where are you losing prospective students along the way? Join Jillian Als, VP of Marketing and Jasmine de Guzman, Manager of Revenue Marketing from Monsido, as they dig into strategies that can ensure your website is making a good first impression for prospective students and their families, and that your content is optimized, on-brand and inclusive for all.

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Jillian Als

VP of Marketing, Monsido

Jasmine deGuzman

Jasmine de Guzman

Manager, Revenue Marketing, Monsido

Chat with Exhibitors!

Dale Bertrand

Dale Bertrand

Founder & President, Fire&Spark

Dale Bertrand has been an SEO specialist to Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups around the world for two decades. His clients include global brands such as Citizen Watch, Nestle, Raymond Weil and Bulova. He applies his graduate school work in artificial intelligence to search engine marketing. Dale speaks at industry conferences, leads corporate training events and serves at Entrepreneur in Residence at the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs Organization. He has trained marketing professionals from TripAdvisor, Microsoft, HubSpot, Digitas and Proctor & Gamble. Dale has BS and MS degrees in Computer Engineering from Brown University.

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Shannon Denton

Founder & CEO, Wripple

Shannon is a Co-Founder and CEO of Wripple and the former Global CEO of leading digital agency Razorfish.  Wripple, co-founded by Shannon and two other Razorfish executives Bonny Block and Ray Samuels, is a talent marketplace and freelance management system for finding expert, on-demand marketing talent (including ready-made project teams as well as individual freelancers).    In only 18 months since launch, the Wripple platform has been adopted by over 100 clients and thousands of freelancers as the premier platform for top-quality, on-demand marketing work.

During his 16-year career at Razorfish, Shannon was a key executive leader that helped Razorfish grow to a large, $800M business serving top brands worldwide.   During Shannon’s tenure as CEO, the company received numerous industry recognitions including multiple appearances on Ad Age’s A-List and top rankings in high-profile analyst reports such as Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Services and Forrester’s Wave’s for Digital Experience and Commerce Consultancies.  During his tenure, Shannon gained extensive experience as a speaker and panel cost at top industry events including the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Forrester’s conferences and several Digiday marketing events.

Shanita Baraka Akintonde

Professor, School of Media Arts, Columbia College Chicago

Shanita is an author, educator, AMA Chicago board member and host of McGraw Hill’s Marketing Insights podcast. She has over two decades of experience as a brand specialist for organizations like Burrell, BBDO, Porter Novelli and DDB. Shanita is also the Immediate Past National Chair of The Public Relations Society of America Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

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Jillian Als

VP of Marketing, Monsido

Jillian Als is the VP of Marketing of Commercial and International Markets at Optimere, heading up a global team focused on digital, brand, product, and channel marketing for its suite of SaaS solutions for digital governance and compliance. Jillian has over 15 years of international B2B marketing experience from startups to Fortune 500 and is passionate about data, technology, customers, creativity, and where they all intersect.

Jasmine deGuzman

Jasmine de Guzman

Manager, Revenue Marketing, Monsido

Jasmine de Guzman is the Manager, Revenue Marketing at Monsido. She has a background in the website builder and SaaS space, and she’s all about sharing her knowledge to help others improve their website and marketing initiatives. On a daily basis, Jasmine leads the Revenue Marketing Team for Monsido’s Commercial, International and Partnerships team, and focuses on sharing insights via Monsido’s webinars, blog posts, partner channel and more.

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Rob Vignali

Regional Sales Vice President, Cvent

As Regional SalesDirector at Cvent, Robert oversees Cvent’s event solutions sales team supporting colleges and universities. For more than 15 years, he has helped implement technology solutions for events teams at major universities, including NYU, Harvard, Boston College, Columbia, Cornell, UT Austin, Purdue, and many others.Robert graduated from the University of Virginia.

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Jenna Johnson

Executive Director of Marketing and Communication, Charleston Southern University

Jenna Johnson joined the Charleston Southern University Marketing and Communication team in 2017 and oversees strategic marketing initiatives and serves as the executive director of marketing and communication and chief communication officer for the university. Johnson’s career began in media relations for political camps and continued on in both the private and nonprofit sector. She has unique perspective and experience in brand management, marketing strategy, grant writing and public relations.

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Ariana Keil

Marketing Manager, Canto

Ariana Keil is a marketing manager at Canto, where she oversees both North American demand generation and ABM programs. Since joining Canto in 2020, she has focused on developing marketing campaigns which resonate with Canto’s target markets in Higher Education, Retail, the Non-profit sector, and Manufacturing. Prior to that, she cultivated experience in both marketing and sales roles in the Finance and Agency industries.

mitchell bausch

Mitchell Bausch

PMP, Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications, Texas A&M University School of Law

Mitchell Bausch PMP is the Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications at the Texas A&M University Law School. In the five years, he has worked at Texas A&M, he has served in a number of roles and has learned to utilize technologies like Wrike to improve himself, his colleagues, his teams, and the university. Continuously building his skillset year after year, he has credited Wrike with inspiring him to acquire his PMP and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt to help his organization develop stronger Marketing Operations best practices to break down siloes and barriers to collaboration.

andrea shaw

Andrea Shaw

VP of Strategy and Client Services, CollegeAPP

Andrea Shaw is an education advocate, passionate about the power of learning to transform lives. She brings over 25 years of strategic leadership across public, private and for-profit higher education institutions driving marketing, admissions, career and student programs and curriculum innovation with an eye toward change. Andrea has also held executive positions at global educational publishing organizations such as Pearson, Cengage and Houghton Mifflin. She holds an Economics degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of Virginia.

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John Reid

President, Glacier

John Reid has nearly a decade of experience in the youth advertising space, developing and executing innovative digital media campaigns of all sizes. John has had the pleasure of working with prominent higher education institutions such as Columbia University, Dalhousie University, and many others.

In his role at Glacier, John oversees concept development and strategic direction. He utilizes his experience and Glacier’s heavy investment in research to understand the best way to reach youth while conveying values they identify with. Whether it is an open house promotion or a top-to-bottom organizational rebrand, John understands the tactics and strategies required to deliver the best results without breaking the bank.

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Jamie Pragnell

Account Manager, Glacier

Jamie Pragnell has worked in the higher education marketing space for over 5 years. During that time, she has had the opportunity to strategize, build and execute marketing campaigns for some of North America’s top institutions. In her role at Glacier, Jamie works directly with over 40 higher ed institutions annually, running a multitude of campaigns with goals ranging from increased enrollments to brand lift. Jamie utilizes her experience and knowledge to deliver customized campaigns for any objective.

Molly Soat

Vice President of Professional Development, American Marketing Association
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Tanya Pankratz

Sr Director - Brand & Creative Strategy, Collegis Education

Tanya is a passionate advocate for all elements of brand experience. In the course of her career, she has created a diverse range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer campaigns in a broad cross section of industries, including service retail, food retail, industrial manufacturing, nonprofit, membership acquisition, and digital media through a fundamental belief that every successful campaign begins by leveraging audience, research and historical performance data. This diverse background has helped Tanya bring fresh thinking and guidance to both in-house and agency creative teams across various media platforms, such as TV, print, digital, social and content. Tanya earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Graphic Design from the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

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Mike O’Brien

CEO, Conext.me

Michael (Mike) O’Brien is passionate about innovation. He is currently the founder and CEO Mingle, LLC whose properties include Conext.me & Postings.com. Postings.com enables companies to distribute job postings and manage candidates in the cloud, while saving up to 60% on their recruitment advertising. Conext improves business insight and electronically streamlines communication with students, graduates and employers.

In 2012, Mingle was recognized as the 6th fastest growing company in San Diego and 673rd fastest growing company nationwide by Inc, 500|5000. The company also made Inc 500|5000 list in 2013 and 2014.

Mike is an investor and advisor to Understand.com, RehearsalVRP and LawVeritas.com. Mike is currently a Board Member of the Pacific Southwest BBB. Mike is an advisor and investor to crypto asset fund Luna Capital, LLC.

Prior to Mingle, Mike was a co-founder and the CEO of financialaid.com, a pioneer in providing college finance solutions online. Founded in 2000, financialaid.com became one of the most successful student loan companies in the U.S., capitalizing on Mike’s direction and innovative Internet marketing strategies. financialaid.com funded more than $1 Billion in student loans each year. At financialaid.com, Mike conceptualized and created CampusDirt.com (at the time, the number one online college search engine), RateYourCampus.com (online feedback community) and CampusClix.com (a college social networking website). In October of 2004, Mike sold financialaid.com and properties to Education Lending Group (now Student Loan Xpress) which in turn was purchased by CIT (NYSE: CIT) for $400MM in January 2005.

Utilized as a media expert in higher education finance and Internet marketing, Mike has been interviewed by numerous national television and print news media — including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, NBC Nightly News, Fox News Network, the Chicago Tribune and Kiplingers.

Mike received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from California State University, Fresno. In 2006, he was recognized as Entrepreneur in Residence in 2006 at his alma mater. In 2007, he was on the Fresno State Alumni Association Board. In 2015, Mike was recognized as a finalist for the Most Admired CEO’s in San Diego by the San Diego Business Journal.

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Gene Lewis

Co-Founder, Chief Creative Officer, Digital Pulp

Gene began his career in digital marketing when the blink tag was still popular. His fascination with the experiments and puzzles of the early web bloomed into an obsession with digital media. It’s a focus that is fundamentally driven by his love of technology, a passion for clarity in communication and the power of engagement. Gene is a founding partner of Digital Pulp and now leads the agency’s creative force – and is celebrated as a thought leader by his peers in the industry. Gene studied English at Vassar College, and emphatically insists that there aren’t two spaces after a period. Dedicated to learning his client’s professional language and adapting to their needs, he balances concerns of marketing, design, branding, technology and content to communicate with precision and transform ideas into experiential realities.

 

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Login & Registration FAQ’s

I’ve already registered. Where can I find the link to log in to the conference?

24 hours before the conference begins, an email will be sent out to all registrants with a login link for them to access the conference platform (also known as the Attendee Hub). A link to log in will also be made available on this event page and in the trending bar of ama.org.

When I try to log in, the platform asks for a verification code. Where can I find this?

A verification code will be sent to the email address and/or the phone number used during registration. It should appear within a few minutes. You may want to check your spam or junk folders for this as well. If you have any problems finding your verification code, please reach out to our customer service team for help.

 

On-Demand Content FAQ’s

Will conference presentations be available on-demand?

All conference material, including presentations, will be available on-demand in the 2022 AMA Virtual Conference: UX Design & Strategy Attendee Hub within 24 hours, if not sooner. The Attendee Hub is the same platform you used to watch if you joined us live, and you will use the same link to log in and view on-demand sessions.

How long will I have access to the 2022 AMA Virtual Conference: Marketing in Higher Education Attendee Hub?

The Attend Hub will remain open and available for on-demand viewing for the next 6 months.

 

Technical Support & Recommendations

What browser works best?

We recommend using Chrome or Firefox.

How can I see the attendee list?

Click on the Community tab at the top of the page, then Attendees. Here you will find a list and can message attendees who have opted to be visible in the Attendee Hub.

How can I communicate with other attendees?

Methods of communication include session chat, direct messaging, Sponsor appointments and Sponsor virtual booths.

How do I schedule an appointment with a Sponsor?

Visit exhibitor booths during the conference to schedule appointments with sponsors. You will also have the ability to meet with someone from their organization immediately or send a message to be followed up with later in the Sponsor virtual booths.

How do I change my visibility settings?

Click on your initials and view your profile in the top right corner.  Your account is automatically set to visible, if you would like to be hidden you can change that setting on this profile page.

 

AMA Virtual Conference: Marketing in Higher Education