From orientation to alumni events: event strategies across the student lifecycle

Stacey Sheppard:

I think a lot of times when we talk about the student experience, we think about the traditional student experience, that on-campus student. But what we've seen today is that the definition of a student could be a variety of things. We've got adult learners, we've got folks that don't live on campus. We've got those who are taking courses online and are really operating as a virtual type of student.

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.


Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hi everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa and I will be your host for this week's episode. We're going to step a little bit out of my kind of traditional comfort zone on this episode today. Usually I am the host who comes in, is talking the business of events, very heavily rooted in our corporate customer conversations.

I just chatted with Morningstar, who's a financial services customer, a few weeks ago. All that talk about counting beans and revenue and the growth objectives, and you name it. I feel like a TikTok skit right now. Cvent does have customers that run the gamut beyond the corporate sector. And so today I am going to interview my colleague here at Cvent to talk about one of those other segments, which just so happens to be the higher education space. Whether it be campus tours, orientation, student services during enrollment, you name it, events are pretty critical to the student experience. I feel like I have a little bit of experience as a student having gone to Virginia Tech and participated in some of those events, but I really wasn't cognizant of the events as I was participating in real time. So we're going to kind of unpack that student journey, that student experience with my colleague, who I'm proud to introduce to the Great Events Podcast, Stacey Sheppard. Welcome, Stacey.

Stacey Sheppard:

Hi. Thanks so much for having me. This is so exciting. My debut appearance on the Great Events podcast.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah, it's awesome. This is a week of many firsts. We have a lot of newcomers to the podcast this week, and I'm very excited to introduce not just the conversations to our listeners, but also new guests to the podcast because it's always nice to have fresh perspectives. And certainly you bring a unique one with the higher education kind of subject matter expertise here. So can you tell the audience just a little bit more about what you do at Cvent and how that pertains to higher education?

Stacey Sheppard:

Sure, yes, would love to. And happy to bring you into the other side, the other side of opposite of corporate-

Alyssa Peltier:

[inaudible 00:02:44] The dark side, but this is probably the light side, right?

Stacey Sheppard:

Yes, this corporate light side. Absolutely. But yes, so a quick overview of my background and my role at Cvent. I am currently the senior manager of our industry solutions marketing team. So what does that mean when we say industry solutions? Well, we are the solutions marketers between our product marketing team, our demand generation team. They're very focused on the key industries where our customers sit. So you mentioned financial services. That's absolutely one that my team is passionate about as well. But on the other side, we have unique industries like the higher education space, where our customers have seen great success implementing the Cvent platform and technology across campuses to do exactly what we're here to talk about today, which is engage their students in unique ways with unique lens. And I'm excited to dig more into that.

Alyssa Peltier:

Let's do it. Okay. So when we were prepping for this podcast, we talked a little bit about this kind of notion of the student life cycle. Now usually, I'm having conversations or we're having those corporate conversations, we talk about the attendee lifecycle. So we're going to see where there's commonalities and where there's differences, where these events have a unique opportunity to engage a particular human type, the form of a student in this scenario, across their life cycle with their university experience. So can you talk to me a little bit more about what is the student life cycle? What are those key milestones, and then how do events play a role?

Stacey Sheppard:

Yeah, absolutely. And when we talk about defining these different stages of the student life cycle, we do see that it does vary across universities. For those that are listening today, you might want to take what I'm saying and apply it into the setup and the spread of what it looks like on your campus.

But typically the way we think about this is starting from the admissions experience, the exposure and the reach that you're hoping to have to reach prospective students, hopefully have them apply, then go through that experience of experiencing the campus, experiencing student life, and then transitioning into that orientation into the first year of the student experience. From there, we think about those four years on campus or potentially more or less depending on the type of programs and all of those different engagement touch points that happen throughout that experience. And then from there, commencement, graduation is certainly a significant milestone and piece of that student life cycle. And from there, we think about how to create lifelong students in the form of alumni or advancement and how to keep those students engaged past graduation.

Alyssa Peltier:

Interesting. So it looks like we have two life cycles here, right? The life cycle of the individual event, but then the life cycle with, I don't want to say the brand, but kind of the university experience at large, right? So you're talking pre during post-campus life or post-university, but we're also talking pre during and post each of those event experiences too. So it sounds like a lot to juggle as a planner within the university space. Is that accurate?

Stacey Sheppard:

Yes. And what we see frequently as a higher ed planner, a lot of these lives within one department, one team where you're managing a robust event calendar for one of those types of programs. But what I'm hoping to do here today is really widen that lens and that view to think about the events and the student experience in the form of this life cycle where it's not just this piece that you might be owning or in charge of and able to contribute to, but it's really the entire process. And hopefully, this gets your gears shifting and thinking about ways you can engage with other departments and bring these pieces of the life cycle together.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah, it sounds like they really are kind of like a core function of that student engagement, that overarching student experience. They are not just their own unique moments, they are part of a bigger picture, right?

Stacey Sheppard:

Definitely.

Alyssa Peltier:

Let's talk about some of the individual events and the role that they play. I like to talk about the event objective or the event purpose. Let's talk a little bit more about the campus tours kind of thing. I know I did that. That was very fun. It was very much part of my experience. I probably went to the wrong school for what I needed. Maybe I should have had a better event experience as part of my student life cycle. But let's talk a little bit about that and what their aim is to do.

Stacey Sheppard:

Yeah. And that world has really transformed since our experience of touring campus. There was probably some paper forms involved back then where you're signing up or sending an email to someone saying, "Hi, can I reserve this time and meet you at this location on campus and then hopefully take a guided tour?" And today we're seeing our university customers thinking way outside that box and looking to, I know we're going to get into the event technology piece, but looking to how can we provide this experience both online and in person. So we've got those folks that are coming to campus and touring in that traditional way, but what can we provide online in a virtual format that gets them even more excited to be on campus and really kind of tease that campus environment and really try to showcase your campus and your brand through all of those means?

Alyssa Peltier:

Is there also a need to engage virtual students as well through these event programs? I know this is a little bit something off script here, but is this something that is of importance and a value? I recognize that certainly post pandemic, there are a lot more students who are seeking out virtual academia opportunities.

Stacey Sheppard:

Absolutely. And even past that, I think a lot of times when we talk about the student experience, we think about the traditional student experience, that on-campus student. But what we've seen today is that the definition of a student could be a variety of things. We've got adult learners, we've got folks that don't live on campus. We've got those who are taking courses online and are really operating as a virtual type of student. It's really opened up the bounds of what a campus can be. And with that virtual aspect, really your campus could be everywhere and you've got the potential to bring in students of many different types.

Alyssa Peltier:

And effectively, events could be everywhere as part of that experience too so you're having to accommodate in both of these universes, both on campus and outside of campus or in the virtual campus setting, if you will. Let's talk a little bit about some of the people and the players that are involved in this. I'm saying very, very ambiguously the planners, right? I'm not very well versed in the higher ed space, who are the core event planning? Where does that sit? Who does these things?

Stacey Sheppard:

It's a very interesting question that you're asking there, and I'm sure those listening are like, "Yeah, I'm curious to hear you're going to answer this." But really the event planner type of role as we think of it can live in a lot of different places across a university system. That means that it could live in the office of the president, which is much more of the executive branch of a university that's hosting some of those larger visibility events like commencement.

But then we've also got those student services groups that are much more focused on campus. And really a lot of those folks could take the role of event planner regardless of your title and your job description and your role because your role there is to engage students as they're experiencing their education. And so what we've seen is that because they're such a vast department structure at a university with different departments hosting their own events, that those planners and those folks taking that role can really vary across department and across teams. Some might not even know that there's folks in another department actually executing events because of the way that either their title is, their job description, their role. And we're really seeing that the role of the event planner is very flexible as it relates to education.

Alyssa Peltier:

That's good. I like that. Flexible. It's a nice term. So it sounds like there really isn't this kind of governing body or connective tissue to that overarching student experience. It really is the responsibility of a lot of decentralized players, if you will, who are supporting one broader mission, which is to engage the student pre, during, and post experience.

Stacey Sheppard:

Yes, and that's a lot of the types of conversations that our teams are having with our customers, is that there are those universities that say, "There has to be a better way to do this," or "How can we bring these groups together, create a type of process and really start to standardize across different departments on the way they're executing events?" And I think that comes back down to the student experience too, right? So that no matter what department you're attending and experience with or registering for, you're in person, you're off campus, that you're really keeping that experience consistent with using one tool to do that. And whether that tool is mandated by your IT department through procurement, through other teams, it really does vary across universities in the way that they're structured, but more and more we are starting to have those conversations.

Alyssa Peltier:

Perfect segue to my next question because I did want to talk a little bit about the event technology. Obviously, this is a Cvent hosted podcast, so we've got a little bit of something to say in that matter. Can you talk to me about the role of event tech that can power all of these programs? Again, it sounds like we have a decentralized model in a lot of university systems. Does that mean oftentimes we're talking about different technologies for each, not only phase of the student life cycle, but events within each phase themselves?

Stacey Sheppard:

Absolutely. And we kicked off this conversation talking about some of the differences between more of our corporate segments versus education, what we're here to discuss. And we find that the event tech that is powering these types of program also differs from the more corporate environment to our university systems. And with that, it's a really interesting story of seeing how they're taking technologies, using them in unique ways and really customizing it for their programs to deliver what they need for their students or for really any of their audiences depending on where that event fits in that life cycle.

Alyssa Peltier:

How are they garnering that type of success? Is there more of a centralized way to deploy technology across the university system?

Stacey Sheppard:

We have seen with the concept of digital transformation over the past few years that typically some of these more legacy programs that were not first to adapt or adopt technology are starting to think about, "Okay, how can we do this in a different way? How could we use a tool like Cvent event registration across events regardless of the function of this event, but really understanding the importance of capturing that data, keeping it in one central system, and understanding who is attending and how we can continue to engage them?"

Alyssa Peltier:

It's one of those perfect case scenarios where disruption through the pandemic has actually bred a lot of opportunity and has exposed gaps in what was and potential for what could be. Is there any university or college that's doing this well today or do we have some good case studies for success?

Stacey Sheppard:

Yes. I'm not going to name them on the podcast. I wish they were here to join us, but-

Alyssa Peltier:

We'll save them for another podcast because we do want to [inaudible 00:13:58]-

Stacey Sheppard:

Exactly. I'd love to do a part two and bring them on here, but we recently have been working with one university and featuring them in some of our content. One of the most fascinating statistics that they shared is that they found that if a student participated in an event as a student, they were 80% more likely to be an active, engaged, and philanthropic alumni. It was truly a fascinating way to look at this student life cycle. And their goals being advancement and alumni retention really started before these students even set foot on campus.

Alyssa Peltier:

At recruitment, right?

Stacey Sheppard:

Yes.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yes.

Stacey Sheppard:

They were thinking about this the same way we think about marketing campaigns and programs, right? Fill your funnel at the top. And hopefully when you get down to the bottom, you've got these engaged alumni. And it was a fascinating way to look at this type of program and their approach to using event tech to do this, have these insights and understand if this many students attend these events, what does that look like down the line five years from now in terms of the number of active and engaged alumni that we have?

Alyssa Peltier:

I love that. That's so enlightening honestly. I'm just drawing all the parallels to the customer journey and yeah, to a traditional marketing funnel. Anyone else worth mentioning before we wrap things up for this week?

Stacey Sheppard:

I do have one more thought that I wanted to share on that same type of story. A lot of times we talk about metrics and insights as it relates to event tech and your event programs. I think the education space is very unique because yes, this lean into digital transformation and data and insights is so important, but there's also this factor of sort of the intangible experience and results from your events program that is, "How do we quantify a smiling, happy student?" Right? Someone that feels connected to their campus, connected to this brand. We think a lot about the student experience and that experience for four years, but you're an alumni forever, right? Once you graduate, you're connected forever. And I think it's important to think about some of the intangibles too even though we talk a lot about the tangibles and the data.

Alyssa Peltier:

The magic of events, right? The magic of in-person, but really what that means for a business, for a university, for an association. There is inherent goodness that comes from events, and it is hard to quantify, but we all know it's the reason why we keep investing in them, right? No matter what segment you're in, we know that these are important and we will continue to do them in the absence of heart metrics, right? We value human connection, human experience that powers us forward in whatever segment we're in.

I think that's a perfect way for us to wrap this week, Stacey. I really, really appreciated this conversation. And honestly, I enjoy learning from my peers within Cvent, where I may not have that depth of expertise, but certainly willing and open to explore new territories. So thank you for joining me this week. As always, listeners, we appreciate having you and we will see you next week.

Thanks for hanging out with us on great events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

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Felicia Asiedu:

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Rachel Andrews:

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Felicia Asiedu:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.