Linda Emma, Author at Cloud Control Media

What Is Programmatic Display Advertising?

Linda Emma on May 14, 2025

Programmatic advertising is an automated ad buying system that uses advanced algorithms and AI to purchase digital ads across the internet. It allows advertisers to target in real time the most relevant audiences for what they sell and place ads in front of users at the right time, in the right place. Instead of manually negotiating ad placements, programmatic advertising uses algorithms to bid on available ad inventory across websites and apps; the process is completely automated. It’s rapid, precise, and laser-focused on the users who matter most to individual advertisers.

How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?

For sure, you’ve already been targeted through programmatic advertising. Whether you were searching for a new grill for that backyard barbeque or a sleek new pair of designer shoes, you left a trail. And the internet knows.

When you visit a website, data about your behavior, interests, browsing history (i.e., those searches), location, and device are collected. In milliseconds, an ad auction is triggered, and the data are sent to an ad exchange where advertisers bid to show an ad to you—for that grill or pair of shoes or anything else that fits your profile. Algorithms evaluate that unique profile to determine how much the ad impression is worth to an advertiser. Then the system selects the highest relevant bid. Faster than a camera flash—or the time it takes to load the page—an algorithm has already analyzed you and your actions, initiated an ad auction, received relevant bids, chosen a winner, and delivered an ad to your device. Voila! You see ads for grills and shoes everywhere you go online.

AI is at the core of programmatic advertising. Through machine learning, advertising campaigns are automatically and continuously optimized over time. Every impression, click, scroll, and conversion is tracked, creating a massive dataset about what works and what doesn’t. Millions of those data points are then analyzed to identify which combination of copy, creative, users, times, devices, and websites, lead to the best results. Machine learning looks for patterns in user behavior, ad engagement, and conversion trends over time. And based on the data, the algorithm adjusts bids, targeting, and placements to predict which users are most likely to take an action (like clicking or buying), so the system bids more aggressively for those impressions to prioritize high-performance. And as long as ad campaigns run, the system learns, optimizes, and improves, constantly testing, adapting, and reallocating budget where it’s likely to be most effective.

Programmatic Digital Advertising Is Fast

Before programmatic advertising, manual ad buying was a time-consuming, multi-step process that took days—or longer—to execute. Advertisers had to set up ad campaigns, select individual websites and publishers, negotiate rates and placements, submit insertion orders, execute contracts, and then build out copy and creative assets for approval. Publishers would then manually place ads onto their sites. And data was collected and reported over time. The entire process was labor-intensive and long.

Programmatic changed all that.

With programmatic, publishing effective and well-targeted ad campaigns takes milliseconds, without lots of back-and-forth and paperwork. Advertisers can participate in real-time bidding and win a top spot before a page is fully loaded. And since they’re likely bidding against dozens of other advertisers, speed is critical. The advertiser using the fastest way to feed you ads for shiny new grills is more apt to be the one that gets you to purchase theirs. And remember, you’re busy and your attention span is short. The internet knows this and so do advertisers. Using programmatic is fast, automated, effective, efficient, and scalable.

Can Anything Slow Down Programmatic Advertising?

So if speed is essential for programmatic advertising, can anything mess it up? Yes, from slow internet connections and overloaded servers to communication glitches between the demand-side platforms (advertisers) and the supply-side platforms (publishers), there are several factors that can slow even the lightning-fast programmatic methodology. Programmatic can also get tripped up if there’s poor or incomplete data or if targeting is so hyper-specific that the filtering limits available ad impressions. And just like with other internet advertising, new campaigns go through a “learning phase” where algorithms need to collect enough data to make accurate predictions.

Does Programmatic Advertising Rely On 3rd Party Cookies?

If you’ve been reading about the on-again-off-again concern of 3rd party cookies, you may be wondering where programmatic fits into the equation. Like most digital advertising systems, programmatic relies heavily on 3rd party cookies. Third-party cookies have long been used to track users across websites, build audience segments, retarget, and measure ad performance. And while browsers like Safari and Firefox have already deprecated 3rd party cookies, Google keeps moving its self-imposed deadlines. Plans for a 2025 end to 3rd party cookies for Chrome were recently shelved.

Even if 3rd party cookies go back on the chopping block, it’s likely that programmatic advertising will find a way to adapt. The systems will need to rely more on 1st party data, using AI for cohort-based and contextual targeting and finding privacy-friendly ways to connect with consumers.

Are you ready to leverage the power of programmatic advertising for your organization? The experts at CloudControlMedia combine programmatic advertising built on artificial intelligence with human intelligence to get the most out of the systems. Our digital savvy, years of experience, and data-driven mindset assure that automatic campaigns are never set to autopilot. If you want to find, engage, and convert more users at scale, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to find out how you can best reap the rewards of programmatic display advertising.

By Linda Emma April 16, 2025

Performance Marketing in 2025: What’s in Store?

Linda Emma on January 21, 2025

From its earliest days more than 30 years ago, to its advertising dominance today, digital marketing has become a critical component to business growth across the globe. Today, digital makes up more than three-quarters of advertising spend in the U.S. dwarfing traditional media. And with AI’s plunge into the pool, the transformation of digital marketing is likely to reach tidal wave proportions in the coming decade. From advanced analytics that create more personalized customer experiences to automations that allow for unparalleled scalability, AI will be at the forefront in 2025 and far into the future. But it’s not the only component to effective performance marketing this year. To find out what’s around the bend, we asked a few of the experts who work behind the scenes at CloudControlMedia to weigh in.

What’s Happening in Social Media Advertising in 2025?

Benefiting from AI capabilities and bolstered by consumer expectations, social media advertising is more dynamic and personalized than ever. To compete effectively on social media platforms, you need to focus on the channels your audience uses most and send them messages that resonate with where they are in the sales cycle. As to the demise of social media giant TikTok, Paid Media Manager Kelsey McCreary says don’t count the channel out yet. Since the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding a TikTok ban and the more recent stay of execution promised by the incoming administration, there may be uncertainty around the platform, but Kelsey is watching closely.

“The future for TikTok may be murky,” says Kelsey, “but I have a feeling it won’t be going away completely.” And Kelsey suggests that marketers keep their eye on YouTube opportunities. As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube is already an obvious choice for advertising. Even though Kelsey says many creators are exiting the platform to create their own outlets, YouTube is an important advertising channel. She warns, though, that YouTube needs to keep up.

“YouTube needs to continue to evolve,” says Kelsey. “It cannot stay stagnant or something else new and shiny is apt to swoop in and steal market share.”

PPC Search Advertising for 2025

Whether on YouTube, Google, or Bing, search should remain a critical component to your digital strategy. It allows you to reach an audience actively looking for what you offer. And even as the behemoth Google fights the Justice Department attempts to break up its monopoly, it still holds a market share of more than 90 percent. Google isn’t going anywhere in 2025 or 26 or 27. The engine continues to expand, evolve, and scales its use of AI.

According to Associate Director of Digital Media Larry Harrington, AI in search is a given this year. He expects that AI ad units will soon become more widely available and Larry suggests that organic AI overview results will soon be accompanied by ads.

“They might be designed as what else to consider, in addition to the SEO-based AI overview,” says Larry. “My guess is that targeting for these ads will be keyword based.”

As to Google search in general, we already know that the search engine does quite a bit to keep you from leaving the search engine –pulling information directly from websites so you never need to click to the website. Larry predicts even more of the same.

“Google’s own results will take up more space above the fold,” says Larry “with the search engine prioritizing ways to keep you from clicking off the search engine. Quality Score will matter more than ever in 2025 with advertisers not only vying against competitors, but also Google.

The Evolving SEO Landscape in 2025

One important way to improve Quality Score is to leverage search engine optimization. It’s not enough for your paid landing pages to be well-optimized; your entire online presence needs to send a consistent message of authenticity, quality, and relevancy.

With the cataclysmic changes to search algorithms in 2024, Director of SEO Joseph Colarusso says SEO is more important than ever. The SEO landscape is ever evolving and is expanding far beyond owned media properties.

“With users prioritizing social media platforms as search engines, businesses need to expand the way they think of SEO,” says Joseph. “It’s not enough to have an optimized site. You need to think of all the ways prospects might find you online—including places like YouTube and Reddit—and make sure your presence across the internet is optimized for search.”

Joseph notes that AI has also changed the way people conduct searches. Instead of relying solely on a search engine like Google, users may be having conversations with ChatGPT or Claude.

“Leveraging how people actually speak focusing on user intent and using long-tailed keywords will become increasingly valuable, especially considering how AI overviews show up in search,” says Joseph.

Cultivating Organic Social Media in 2025

Brand authenticity has always been at the foundation of a good internet presence, but its importance is critical in 2025. And active social media engagement is one way to stay relevant in front of the stakeholders you most want to attract. According to Director of Social Media Marcy Ansley, 2025 social media needs to be a multifaceted conversation. Organizations need to speak, engage, and above all listen.

“Brands that want to truly be successful with social media need to be listening to what’s going on – and not just in their own industry,” says Marcy. “Some of the most iconic social media brands aren’t necessarily creating trends but often they’re trend jacking; they’re tapping into trends and making them their own. Finding a creative way to make these movements their own can be hugely beneficial. And while doing it successfully can be a challenge, thankfully, there’s a new team member to help jumpstart those creative trend jacking: AI.  Artificial intelligence can help brainstorm campaigns, develop content, and so much more.”

There’s a lot to keep up with in performance marketing this year. Don’t have time? We do! Reach out to any one of the experts at CloudControlMedia or check out our services and find out where we can fill in the blanks on your team. Contact us today.

~Linda Emma leads the owned media team at CloudControlMedia

AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education: What We Learned

Linda Emma on November 21, 2024

In a record-setting event, more than 1800 people attended the annual AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education held in Las Vegas this month. The 2024 conference provided attendees with knowledge and strategies from keynotes, sessions, panels, and workshops. There was also plenty of time to share coffee, drinks, and business cards. Most importantly, there were helpful insights gleaned from experts and peers alike:

5 AMA Key Takeaways about Higher Education Marketing

1. Is It Time to Rebrand Higher Education?

With the majority of Americans no longer believing that higher education is worth its big-ticket price tag, there was a lot of discussion at the AMA Symposium about how to better position the value of a degree. From keynote speakers to fireside chats, the message was the same: it is time to reshape public perceptions.

To that end, Utah’s Board of Higher Education launched an initiative to reeducate the public about the benefits of higher education. In their presentation, Amanda DeRito of Utah State University, Nikki Koontz of Southern Utah University, and Chris Nelson University of Utah shared their campaign to emphasize their institutions’ affordability, along with the individual ROI and overall economic impact of a college education.

2. How to Differentiate When Schools All Say the Same Thing

As difficult as it is for the sector to raise its brand, it can be even more challenging for individual schools to appear truly unique. The affordability factor that the Utah system raises is used by hundreds of schools. But so are claims of innovative programs, passionate faculty, state-of-the-art facilities, diversity and inclusion, vibrant campus life, and high job placement rates.

The dilemma isn’t easily solved but you can start from a foundation of authenticity. Sessions provided suggestions about how to do a photo shoot that makes your university look and feel uniquely yours and how to use current student stories so future students can picture themselves at your school. Keynote speaker Steve Robbins, Ph.D., emphasized the social-neuro science behind the critical need for inclusion—so make students feel like they belong. And Rohit Bhargava offered up five secrets to differentiate your higher ed brand:

Stand for something
Share the unexpected truth
Find workarounds
Embrace the conversation
Expand your audience

3. Students Crave Personalization in Marketing

It can’t come as a shock that kids who were told how special they are for a generation don’t feel very special when they’re targeted with generic messaging. Director of Content Strategy at the University of Rochester Brian Piper noted that less than 18 percent of students feel like messaging is personalized to them. And that’s a problem.

But there are plenty of solutions that can make students feel like they’re your top priority. Piper noted that it’s not just the message, but also the messenger that matters. Whether it’s an email or text reminder, your communication with students should be personalized to them and coming from an actual person. And all of your content should be relatable, conversational, and written in the second person.

4. Artificial Intelligence for Higher Education is Here to Stay

Although AI no longer headlines the news every day, it remains at the forefront of higher education marketing. Sessions delved into how AI can enhance personalization, streamline operations, and improve student engagement. Whether you use AI tools to help bid and optimize digital campaigns, create outlines and personas, or repurpose, retarget, and redistribute content, it’s no longer a nice-to-have. You need to use AI or you will lose out to the competitor institutions that do.

5. Using Digital Marketing Data to Compete for Online Students

Saving the best for last: CloudControlMedia General Manager Christopher Roberts and long-time CCM partner Steven Rutt from Abilene Christian University Online provided more than 100 AMA attendees with a well-defined roadmap to attract and enroll online students using data. Highlighting the success the partnership has achieved for ACU Online—more than 20% year-over-year growth for three consecutive years—Chris and Steven shared actual data and the methodology that has fueled those double-digit enrollment increases.

Among the points the pair stressed were the need to:

Allow the agency to be an extension of your institution’s marketing team
Set achievable enrollment goals
Translate goals into detailed plans
Build effective and efficient digital media strategies
Test, adjust, and improve digital media for ongoing success

“It absolutely is a partnership,” said Chris. “Steven and his team are savvy about the data and how the process works. The results we achieve are due in large part to the partnership we have.”

What seemed to resonate most with the audience was the detail of the data ACU Online and CCM rely on to make decisions. Using a feedback loop generated through the CloudControlMedia Platform and connected directly to the ACU Online CRM, the two teams use down-funnel data to make media-buying decisions that have the potential to yield the best results. Equally important, they can continually test and adjust plans and campaigns.

Are you looking for a digital marketing partner that can drive growth? CloudControlMedia is a performance marketing agency maximizing results for our clients. And the great example we shared at the AMA conference? We’re happy to share it with you. Contact us today to sign up for our upcoming whitepaper.

How to Use PPC Campaigns to Enroll More MBA Students

Linda Emma on September 11, 2024

In the competitive space of MBA enrollments—particularly for online programs—you need to effectively leverage every weapon in your digital marketing arsenal to find and enroll new students. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns can help, but only if you comprehend the multidimensional layers of strategic PPC management. From immersing yourself in the higher education PPC ecosystem to mastering the art of ad crafting for maximum engagement, you need to explore the options that will provide the most promise to enhance your campaigns’ performance. What role does audience segmentation play in optimizing your ad spend? How can analytics drive smarter, data-informed decisions in real-time? Check out our comprehensive guidelines to a better PPC for MBAs.

Analyze Higher Education Keyword Competition

MBA keywords are competitive and expensive. To launch effective campaigns, you need to conduct a thorough keyword competition analysis. Pinpoint keywords that are valuable without being adversely competitive and prohibitively costly. That means you need to examine search trends, investigate competitor strategies, and consider the search intent of prospective students. For example, targeting specific phrases like “part-time MBA nearby” or “executive MBA courses” could yield more qualified and affordable leads than the broader “MBA programs.”

Review PPC Cost Dynamics

Cost dynamics play a significant role in shaping PPC strategies. The cost per click (CPC) for education-related keywords is on the rise, making optimized spending essential. Implementing strategies such as dayparting (scheduling ads to run during optimal times) and geo-targeting, while enhancing your Quality Score can help manage costs effectively. By diligently connecting ad relevancy to your landing pages, you can improve your Quality Score and lower bid costs.

Segment Student Audiences for Tailored PPC Campaigns

Audience segmentation helps you understand the diverse needs of prospective students so you can craft campaigns that cater specifically to those needs. For example, the student who continues straight from a bachelor’s degree to an MBA would be one segmented audience. Another might include professionals seeking executive MBA programs. Still another might target international students interested in specific accreditations. Effective segmentation leads to more personalized ad campaigns, which are more likely to capture the interest of the target audience and get the results you want.

Craft Strategic MBA Ads for Maximum Engagement

Your ads need to stand out from online clutter. Compelling ads are essential for successful higher ed PPC campaigns. You need visuals that conform to institutional brand guidelines but also push the envelope. And the copy needs to grab user attention with a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA). Your message should also effectively communicate what differentiates your MBA program from all others. Is it your institutional reputation, distinguished faculty, unique curriculum, or program flexibility. And what is the end goal of your prospective students? Consider their aspirations and challenges and how you can help them overcome obstacles to achieve their goals.

Produce Stellar Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns

A well-designed landing page improves brand reputation, user experience, and conversion rates. It should succinctly provide all necessary information about your MBA program, differentiate your offerings, and include strong CTAs. Visual elements like campus images, student testimonials, and infographics about program outcomes can further enhance engagement.

Refining PPC Campaigns with A/B Testing

A/B Testing is a data-driven technique to optimize your PPC campaigns. By testing different versions of ad copy, visuals, and landing pages, you can determine what resonates best with your audience. Some key elements to test include:

Headline variations
CTA wording and placement
Button colors, size, and shape
Images and video content
Landing page layouts

Set Goals and Leverage Analytics for PPC Campaigns

You can’t produce great results if you don’t set goals, measure conversions, and adjust campaigns based on analytics. By establishing specific conversion goals, such as form submissions, brochure downloads, and virtual or on-campus visits, you can better pinpoint which ads generate interest, applications, and enrollments. Your data facilitates a detailed analysis of campaign performance and offers insights into user behavior and preferences.

Conduct ROI Analysis for PPC Campaigns

ROI analysis connects your PPC campaigns directly to the tuition revenue they generate for the programs you promote. By calculating the cost-per-acquisition and comparing it to the lifetime value of a student, you can determine whether your PPC spend leads to tangible enrollment increases. A full analysis can prove the value of PPC for MBA enrollments and can justify an increased digital marketing budget, that in turn can produce more enrollments.

Optimize PPC Campaigns to Improve Enrollment Yield

Based on your data and analysis, make real-time optimizations to sustain the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. Continuous campaign monitoring lets you adjust to performance fluctuations or test new opportunities. On any given day, you may reallocate budgets toward high-performing keywords, pause underperforming ads, swap out creative, or modify ad schedules based on user engagement patterns.

Explore Alternate Targeting with PPC Campaigns

Because many MBA programs have geographic limitations, such as in-person classes or residency requirements, geo and local targeting can help you better attract right-fit students to your programs. Even online programs tend to attract students within a certain geographical location. Tailor your messaging to very specific regions, using colloquial language and local references. The more personalized and relevant your messaging, the more likely it will resonate with your intended audience and get them to respond in the way you want.

Integrate PPC Campaigns with Other Digital Marketing Efforts

PPC campaigns perform particularly well when they are part of an omnichannel approach. Use PPC with other digital marketing strategies to ensure brand consistency, cohesive marketing, and maximum ROI. When you align PPC with SEO, for example, you can better optimize spend. Because MBA-related keywords can be so expensive, having your SEO team target longer-tailed keywords that answer user queries can augment your paid efforts. Also, insights gathered from PPC campaigns, such as just which keywords are the most expensive, can help you optimize spend across channels. It’s a win-win.

Navigating the complexities of PPC campaigns in the competitive field of MBA enrollment requires strategic, data-driven tactics that are innovative and client-centric. CloudControlMedia takes that exact approach. If you’re ready to enroll more students into your MBA programs, contact our paid media team today. We can start with a complimentary audit of your existing campaigns and then explain the potential we see in your future. Reach out today.

~Linda Emma, Storyteller-in-Chief

Combating Summer Melt: How Digital Marketing Can Stop the Drip

Linda Emma on July 3, 2024

Summer melt is one of the most frustrating phenomena that colleges face in today’s competitive recruitment landscape. You accept students, they submit their deposits—and then they don’t show up. Not at orientation, and not at the start of fall semester. With estimates of its occurrence ranging from 10 to 40 percent, summer melt presents a significant challenge that can negatively impact your enrollment yield and your institution’s financial stability. But strategic use of digital marketing can mitigate the effects of summer melt, particularly among Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha.

Why Do Accepted Students Melt Away?

After a student says yes, accepts their financial aid package, and makes the final deposit that secures their spot, time passes. And between the gap of acceptance and attendance, a lot can happen. For some students, your institution just wasn’t ever their first choice and when they get what they consider a better offer, they grab it. And often, they don’t bother letting you know. Or sometimes, financial reality hits and a student and their family simply decides they can’t afford the cost. But for many students, not showing up in the fall is more nuanced. Particularly for students who are the first to attend college, the runway to a start date can be paved with potholes. Nothing about the process is familiar to the student or anyone in their family. And the guidance counsellors who were so helpful when high school was in session are off for the summer. The documents that are routine components to the admissions process from your perspective can be daunting. Financial aid info, housing applications, placement exam signups, health insurance forms, and other paperwork can be an overwhelming barrier to entry.

Targeting Gen Z and Gen Alpha Students

To effectively combat summer melt, it’s crucial to understand the characteristics and preferences of Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and Gen Alpha (born 2013 and beyond). These generations are digital natives. They grew up with the internet, smartphones, and social media and they expect seamless, personalized, and instant communication. Digital marketing can meet these expectations, keep students engaged, and ensure that they remain committed to their educational journey.

5 Digital Marketing Tactics to Prevent Summer Melt

Strategic digital marketing provides numerous assets, tools, campaigns, and methodologies to keep prospective students engaged and committed and prevent summer melt:

1. Short Message Service Marketing

SMS marketing is an opt-in service that allows you to text students and stay in touch the whole summer. With an incredible open rate of more than 95 percent, SMS allows you to send personalized messaging that welcomes students to your institution and the college they’ll attend. Let them know about deadlines, documents, and upcoming events. Invite them to log into their student portal. And be sure to include relevant calls-to-actions to keep students engaged.

2. Email Nurturing

Email is another way to communicate and nurture students throughout the summer. Develop segmented email campaigns that provide personalized information and reminders about important dates, financial aid, housing, and orientation. Personalized emails help students feel valued, supported, and part of their new community.

3. Website Chatbots

Your website is your virtual campus and chatbots can be your students’ personal tour guides. Leverage AI-powered chatbots to provide 24/7 info to students who don’t want to call and speak to an actual human. Especially for first-generation college students, they may feel embarrassed to ask questions about financial aid, housing, and course selection. By leveraging data from interactions and applications, chatbots can personalize responses based on the student’s interests, academic background, and preferences. Chatbots give students an easy way to ask questions and stay in touch and offer you insight into what obstacles they may face. Georgia State University implemented chatbot “Pounce” and reduced summer melt by more than 20 percent.

4. Content Marketing

Create personalized, engaging, relevant, and informative content, to build and maintain strong connections with incoming students, address their concerns, and build excitement for the upcoming academic year. From news items and blog posts to videos and virtual tours, tell the story of your institutional brand and remind students why they said yes in the first place. Just a few forms of content to consider:

A series of personalized welcome emails from the college president, deans, and student ambassadors
Blog posts that highlight student life, campus traditions, and various student organizations
Tip list infographics that provide checklists for such college-readiness realities as packing, preparing for academics, and making new friends
Virtual video tours of campus that introduce students to the lay of the land
Live chats with faculty, advisors, staff, and students that can be the start of personal connections
Financial aid webinars explaining financial aid packages, payment plans, and scholarship opportunities
Student success stories and alumni spotlights that help your future student aspire to greatness
Parental newsletters to keep mom and dad in the loop

5. Social Media Marketing

Build an online community that your future students will want to join by using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Create engaging and relatable content for students and their parents that showcases student life, campus events, and testimonials from current students. Interactive content such as Q&A sessions, live streams, and student takeovers can foster a sense of belonging. You can also use social media to build out a countdown clock or send out reminders for key dates like orientation, move-in day, and the first day of classes.

Measuring and Adapting Summer Melt Strategies

A key benefit to digital marketing is its measurability. Monitor the level of engagement your efforts produce by tracking metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, social media interactions, and website traffic. Collect feedback through surveys to identify the needs and concerns of prospective students and help you refine communication strategies. Adapt and adjust campaigns that aren’t working well and always be willing to try something new.

Do you have a problem with summer melt? CloudControlMedia has strategies for engagement that help you reduce its occurrence. Contact us today and we can discuss customized campaigns for your institution.

~Linda Emma

How to Unbundle from Your Online Program Managers (OPM)

Linda Emma on May 1, 2024

Once considered a salvation and growth engine for colleges and universities across the country, online program managers (OPM) have fallen out of favor and are under increased regulatory scrutiny. Particularly as some of the biggest players in the space show signs of their demise, warnings abound that it may be time to disengage from your provider before their abrupt exit wreaks havoc at your institution. But if you are ready to take the management of your online programs in-house, it’s likely not just the programs themselves that you will need to manage. Because OPMs were encouraged to “bundle” services, your team not only needs to build and develop programs and course materials; it may also need to consider a multitude of other services including recruitment, nurturing, enrollment, lead management, marketing, and data analytics. Are you ready? Find out how to make a seamless transition away from your OPM.

The Rise of Higher Ed OPMs

In the 2000s, with declining enrollments, tightened budgets, and dwindling federal and state subsidies, institutions of higher education were desperate to find new students. They needed to expand their offerings, protect their brand, and bring in tuition and financial aid dollars—fast. For many schools, online programs were a panacea. Tiny New Hampshire College was transformed into a behemoth as Southern New Hampshire University with more than 170,000 students thanks to online programs. But unlike SNHU, most schools did not have the foresight, staff, infrastructure, or expertise to build out full-scale online programs on their own. They needed a partner willing to do some heavy lifting, especially from a financial perspective.

“It made sense at the time because colleges and universities didn’t have the technology to run, service, proctor, instruct and market online programs,” says Christopher Roberts, General Manager of CloudControlMedia. “OPMs brought in new students through what we now know as lead generation and the schools just did not know how to do this. OPMs also bore all the upfront costs so it seemed like a good arrangement.”

For stressed-out and risk-adverse school administrators, OPMs offered the fastest and easiest way into the online market. OPMs were the easy answer to a complex question. Because OPMs assumed the risk, provided upfront capital, and had the mechanisms in place to bring new programs to market, they allowed schools to quickly build and scale online programs. Schools saw the opportunity to bring their brand and mission to a larger audience and increase revenue without adding staff or making a financial investment.

While institutions often enter public-private partnerships with vendors for services (e.g., food, custodial, IT services), OPM arrangements are distinct in that they are central to the university primary function of education. There has been much recent conversation about whether an outside, for-profit agency should run what’s core to the nonprofit higher education business model. Moral dilemma aside, the popularity of online program managers soared. OPMs grew by more than 130 percent from 2011 to 2015. And in 2016, up to 80 percent of the institutions delivering online programs relied on OPMs.

Online Program Manager Contracts

For all their perceived benefits, OPMs came at a steep price. Although schools weren’t paying upfront costs, many agreed to revenue sharing that could be wildly expensive. Some payment structures allowed for the OPM to pocket up to 94 percent of tuition and fees. Contract features also were decidedly structured to the advantage of the OPM and not the institution. For example, some included indefinite clauses that had no set termination date, and many were long-term with auto renew clauses. Even contracts allowing termination often required schools to give notification far in advance of the stop date, some as long as a year before the desired end of the contract. And if a school canceled early merely to switch to a new OPM, it might be held to a quasi-noncompete clause whereby it would be prohibited from signing on with another provider until after the original termination date. There were even contracts that gave OPMs a “right of first refusal” so institutions couldn’t launch programs that might compete with any of the programs originally developed by the OPM. And contracts were not consistent across clients. An OPM offering services to several university partners would often have very different terms, conditions, and payment structures with each of the schools.

Another layer to the OPM contract imbroglio is the tendency toward expansion. Let’s say you sign with an OPM to deliver an online master’s program in data science and analytics. It goes well so you add an MBA, and then later maybe a master’s in nursing program. All have been set up with different contracts, having different terms and dates. Pulling away from a single contract can be difficult, but disengaging from multiple contracts can take years.

“Really as the contracts wore on, universities began to realize they’d gotten into a long-term lopsided deal,” says Chris. “And then when COVID hit, that was a genesis for a lot of these schools to become more self-sufficient and embrace online higher education.”

OPMs On Rapid Decline

Despite the hurdles of contract extrication, schools across the country are finding ways to flee. And giants in the sector are feeling the impact. Pearson sold its OPM business in 2023, Wiley divested from its University Services, and 2U is barely hanging on.

But colleges and universities didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to reexamine their contracts. There were plenty of warning signs that the landscape had changed, from OPM consolidation to shifting regulatory winds that could cause a tornado of repercussions. Those same institutional leaders who didn’t like the risk of going online alone are now afraid of what new guidelines from the Department of Education might mean for third-party servicers like OPMs.

New government regulations and oversight expected in 2024 could dramatically change how and whether universities and online program managers continue to work with one another. Many of the features that made OPMS the darlings of venture capital and private equity, such as revenue sharing and near invisible audit trails, are bringing about increased scrutiny. Even the bundled service exception that was meant to prevent colleges from paying OPMs based on how many students they enrolled, fell far short of its mark. Now considered a loophole that allowed OPMs to flourish—and gain even more of a stranglehold on the institutions they served—it could be obliterated under new guidelines.

Breaking Up with Your Online Program Manager

Before you cut ties with your OPM, look at your existing contracts. Where do you stand and how can you move forward without disrupting the online foundation you’ve already built? Especially for bundled services, it’s time to think a la carte. You don’t need to rely on your OPM for multiple services such as marketing, recruitment, lead-nurturing, enrollment, program design and management, academic support, and student success and retention. What can you take in-house and where will you need a new partner?

7 Benefits of Unbundling Higher Ed OPM Services

Severing your relationship with your OPM and figuring out how to handle all the tasks they once did may sound daunting. It can be. But for many institutions, the decision has become easier as the pros outweigh the cons. Among the benefits of unbundling:

1. Save Money

Whatever your arrangement with your online program manager, wouldn’t you rather keep your tuition dollars to yourself? Unbundling also allows you to reevaluate the services you actually need without the add-ons that helped OPMs evade the spirit of the bundling exception.

2. Protect Your Brand

Unbundling from an OPM gives you back control of your institutional brand. Because OPMs often handled the recruitment process, some companies—and the schools they represent—have been accused of aggressive tactics to enroll students.

3. Embrace Transparency

Among the criticisms of online program managers is their opacity. Those long-term, difficult to get out of contracts are only part of the story. Many students voiced concern about recruitment practices that left them unaware that they were speaking to a second-tiered representative of the college and not people from the actual college. Unbundling allows you to be your authentic self while insisting that other service providers do the same.

4. Tap Internal Resources

While the pandemic may have given OPMs a big boost when desperate colleges flocked to them for an easy fix to the online tidal wave, many other schools figured it out. Whether they wanted to or not, instructional designers quickly got courses and programs online. If your team learned how to design and run online programs, now’s the time to give them the power and autonomy to do so.

5. Customize to Your Needs

Although online program managers often touted the customization they offered clients, who knows your institution and programs better than you? Especially in saturated programs like online MBAs, your differentiators are what attract students to your school instead of a competitor’s. Unbundling lets you decide how you build and market programs based on your values and goals.

6. Adapt to the Market

Once you pull away from the bundled services of an OPM, you’re apt to discover how much more quickly you can adapt to the changing needs of your students and your institution. Whether it’s to bring a new program online, modify existing curriculum, or discontinue a program, you can quickly pivot when you need to.

7. Improve Efficiencies

Unbundling allows you to take a more agile and streamlined approach to online program delivery. You internalize the functions that make the most sense for your university, while tapping external partners for their experience and expertise. Choose the service provider that specializes in what you need. And when you pay per service, you eliminate costly extras.

How to Handle the OPM Breakup

Many schools are ending their contracts with their OPMs today because they fear their partner may not be here tomorrow. The transition is likely to take longer than you hope, so the earlier you begin, the less rocky the road will be. According to Chris, there are several factors to consider before you make the move.

“Look at the length of the contract and how well you can proctor the courses on your own,” recommends Chris. “What can you do and where would a partner be a benefit? In the wake of OPMs, many schools have warmed up to trade school marketing techniques like lead generation, speed-to-lead, and target digital marketing. But even though they see the benefits, they need help with the performance-based marketing piece for new student acquisition and nurturing. That’s where a digital marketing partner makes sense.”

If you’re ready to move away from your online program manager, follow these 5 steps to break up with your OPM:

1. Review Your Contracts

Before you can break a contract, you need to revisit its terms and conditions. And the more contracts you have, the more complicated it can be to terminate them. But if you’re approaching an auto renew date, act quickly to notify your OPM before you miss the opportunity.

Another reason to review your contracts is to have a clear understanding of exactly what services your OPM currently provides. Most, if not all, of those services will need to be provided by another vendor or internal department.

2. Determine Who Will Control Unbundled Services

Determine the most important services you will manage in-house. For the others, research which partners might possess the appropriate knowledge and skills to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Which of these will you handle, and which will you contract out:

Market Research
Curriculum Development
Instructional Design
Course Presentation
Program Admissions
Academic Services
Student Success
CRM Administration
Enrollment Marketing
Student Recruitment
Lead Management
Lead Nurturing
Data Analytics
Website Development

3. Tap Your In-House Resources

Once you decide which functions your team will perform, provide them with the resources and support they will need to be successful. Look for gaps in skills and personnel and either fill them or reconsider what you can handle.

4. Develop Vendor Agreements

As you transfer contractual services from one provider to others, make sure to put in place contracts that are fair and clear, with well-defined terms, conditions, start and end dates. Create policies, processes, and communication channels on how to work with multiple vendors and set clear and realistic expectations with each provider.

5. Demand Analytics

Whether it’s a nurturing or digital media campaign, a landing page or site development, make sure to examine the results through comprehensive analytics. If you can’t determine how and when a lead becomes a student, there’s a problem. If you can’t connect your early actions to their down-funnel results, you won’t be able to determine a reliable lead flow, your cost-per-acquisition, or your return on investment.

Are you ready to extricate yourself from your OPM and unbundle the services they provide? CloudControlMedia can take on all your digital marketing needs. Contact us today for an exploratory call.

Linda Emma heads up content at CloudControlMedia, assists with partnership development, and still works in the higher education space.

How to Leverage AI for Content Marketing

Linda Emma on February 1, 2024

From brainstorming sessions to in-depth research and synthesis, AI can be a gamechanger for digital content creation, increasing volume, improving quality, and operationalizing tactics. When you leverage large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard, you can increase productivity and free up time for more strategic initiatives. Are you using the tools for content marketing? Check out these 7 ways to use generative AI to create digital marketing content:

Use AI to Brainstorm Content Marketing

Particularly if your team produces a significant amount of content each month, coming up with new ideas can be a daunting task. You want to find a new spin on an old topic, but for the last decade or so, you’ve marked calendar milestones with some unintentionally trite messaging. After all, there’s only so many ways you can say New Year, new you.

But what if you had a team member whose sole job was to come up with new ideas? To be creative, fun, to push boundaries, while still staying true to your brand? With a clear objective, some general info about your company, and specifics about your audience, generative AI can quickly produce tons of topics. Whether you’re considering a new product launch or just want to write a blog post that connects your products or services to relevant searches, AI can help.

Simplify the Complicated Content Marketing Tasks with AI

It doesn’t matter the vertical, to someone somewhere, something that you do is very difficult for them to grasp. You’re in it every day so you don’t see the barriers to comprehension. After all, it’s not rocket science. On the other hand, if it is, AI can translate even that high tech science into the kind of English that almost anyone can understand. Just paste the techno jargon into the tool and ask: Can you please explain this to me as if I were a fifth-grader?

Use AI to Summarize Content

Sometimes you have the great idea, plenty of relevant resources, and the ability to craft the content. What you don’t have is time! Use AI to turn 30-page documents into 500-word summaries with the most saliant details encapsulated into easy-to-read format. This isn’t just a great content creation tool; it’s also a great tool to use for sales pitch prep or new vertical exploration. Imagine becoming an expert at what a prospect does without spending a week reading every industry article ever written about them?

Create AI Content Marketing Outlines

Generative AI can produce bulleted outlines from long-form resources and academic writings that can help you organize your thoughts and prioritize what you need to say. Connect those outlines with goal-driven content and an overarching strategy, and you can produce content that will perform well in search, social, email, and paid media campaigns. And it literally performs the task in seconds.

Home In on Your Audience with AI

No one knows more about your customers than you do. Whether you sell them roofing, bathtubs, or an advanced degree in biometrics, you know your audience better than anyone else. But teaching everyone in your organization exactly who they are and what they like and why it matters can be a painstaking process. Give them proof and personas. AI can gather real data and anecdotal evidence to create personas that will help you better target, locate, and engage with people who are most likely to be a good fit to the products or services you provide. AI can be an unbiased barometer of the real world and what really matters for your organization. And you can use its insights to better customize content.

Optimize for Search with AI

Imagine two robots talking to one another in their own robot language. When you ask an AI tool to consider keywords, search intent, and ranking in a review phase of your content, you increase the likelihood that what you produce will check the boxes of the Google algorithm. AI can help identify and analyze relevant keywords for a particular topic or industry. By understanding user search behavior, AI can incorporate keywords that are more likely to drive traffic and improve ranking. Paid AI tools that are connected to today’s internet can also keep up with search engine algorithms, allowing your SEO strategy to evolve in response.

Analyze Results and Improve Content Marketing Performance

AI can also be an important tool for analysis and optimization. At a core level, AI can examine existing content and make recommendations for improvement. But because AI allows you to produce more content, it’s also easier to generate variations for A/B testing on such metrics as engagement and conversions. Generative AI can also scan comments, reviews, and social media mentions to analyze user sentiment and help you adjust your content to better satisfy the needs of your audience. And generative AI can analyze large datasets to identify patterns and trends that you can’t see through your own analytics and create predictive models for what might work moving forward.

Are you using AI to help with digital content? It only works if you combine artificial intelligence with human intelligence. Every action we take at CloudControlMedia leverages the most cutting-edge digital marketing technologies, but we never set what we do to autopilot. Our talented human team is always in the driver’s seat. Find out how we can help you create content that produces results.

Linda Emma has spoken on AI for higher education at institutions and organizations such as the EduData Summit, UPCEA, AMA Higher Education, San Francisco, and Endicott College.

What To Do in a World Without Cookies

Linda Emma on January 24, 2024

Whether you’re partial to chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, Girl Scout or Keebler, the thought of a world without cookies may be terrifying. Oh wait, that’s not the kind of cookies that are crumbling. Rather, it’s those snippets of code that get placed on your browser when you land on a website. Once at the very foundation of digital advertisers’ targeting strategies, the use of third-party cookies has been in decline for years due to privacy concerns. And now that Google has joined the trend, you need to prepare for their full demise.

What Are 3rd Party Cookies?

First-party cookies are set by an individual website—the one you visit. Second-party cookies are not common but are used in data-sharing agreements, where a website you visit has a specific data collection partnership with another entity. And third-party cookies are set by a server other than the one you access. In practice, that means when you go to a favorite brand’s website, it first uses first-party cookies to optimize your experience there. It may save your contact info, login, credit card info, and even your product selection and buying preferences. That website may also allow third-party cookies. Through an arrangement with outside advertisers, these cookies can track your browsing across other websites.

Advertisers will tell you third-party cookies allow them to provide you with an optimized user experience and personalized ad content; they serve you ads for products and services you most likely want to see. What advertisers may not tell you is that third-party cookies have been the lifeblood of what they have done almost since the dawn of digital marketing. Third-party cookies and the targeting and personalization they build help increase engagement, conversions, and sales. What they deem good for you is even better for them.

Why Are 3rd Party Cookies Going Away?

Driven by privacy concerns and legislation like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act, browsers have been phasing out the use of third-party cookies for years. Apple blocked their use in 2020, but Google and its stranglehold on search was more reluctant. It delayed plans for the phaseout twice before hitting the go button this year. In January 2024, it began the deprecation beta for 1 percent of its Chrome users (if you were part of the test, you would have been notified). If that sounds like a miniscule effort, consider that the behemoth holds 65 percent of search and that one percentage represents 30 million users. And Google promises that the full deprecation will be complete by Q3 of this year.

What Will Digital Marketers Do Without Cookies?

If you advertise online, you use third-party cookies. And if they’re going away, you need to plan a new way of doing business. Now. Particularly with programmatic advertising that relies heavily on those third-party cookies, if you do not prepare, you could face a swift loss of inquiries and income.

But there are ways to target users, customize content, and produce solid leads and results without third- party cookies. Consider how you can best transition away from third-party cookies:

Leverage 1st Party Cookies

It was no accident that Google rolled out GA4 before it began phasing out third-party cookies. GA4 uses first-party cookies, and its new events and parameter metrics allow you to pull granular insights from your website that help you get to know your users really well. In this way, first-party cookies can be a win-win. They give users who visit your website the best experience possible. The data you save on individuals help you build stronger relationships, serve customized content, and deliver better customer service.

You can also use first-party cookies to track user interactions and behaviors on your website to create profiles of user preferences, interests, and actions. Those profiles can then be used to segment your audiences, hyper customize your content, and serve ads where your customers are most likely to roam on the internet. Personalized ads enhance the user experience, improve engagement, and increase conversions.

Another way to use first-party data is through contextual advertising. Among the most obvious contextual platforms are Google Ads. Your ads target specific keywords that match user intent. So, if you know your most likely customers love red hats and red shoes, when you bring on a new product line of red belts, you should definitely highlight those red belts in your ads. Users search, your keywords are right there, and voila! Search reveals the red belt nirvana they’ve been looking for.

Don’t Forget AI

You use AI alllllllllll the time. If you think you don’t, you’re not paying attention. It’s time to go all in on its exponential potential for digital marketing. Just a few ways AI can fill in the gaps for what you think you might lose without third-party cookies:

AI Search Algorithms
- AI-powered search algorithms can help understand the intent behind user searches and deliver relevant ads based on the context of the search query. This helps you align better with user intent without tracking individual user journeys.
Predictive Analytics
- Imagine if you could take all the historical data you have hidden away in CRMs, campaigns, and old-fashioned Excel spreadsheets and turn them into futuristic insights. AI can create predictive models for user behavior that help you detect patterns and trends that will help you target, personalize, and engage users without the use of third-party cookies.
AI Lead Scoring
- AI-driven lead scoring models can identify your best prospects by analyzing buying signals such as website visits, content engagement, and historical data. Once analyzed, the model can assign scores so your sales team works the leads most likely to convert. AI models also continuously learn and adapt, improving over time.

What About Zero-Party Data?

Zero-party data are willingly shared with you directly from the consumer. There’s no need for cookies because you simply ask your users for information. Examples of zero-party data include:

1. Settings

By simply setting up an account with you, users share important data. Their name, contact information and location are only the start.

2. Survey Responses

By gathering user feedback about product preferences, insights, and expectations, you can better customize how you interact with users—and even how you build your offerings and run your organization.

3. User-Generated Content

When users contribute reviews, ratings, and comments, it’s considered zero-party data—even if it does not occur on your site.

4. Interactive Content

Information you acquire through quizzes, polls, and games is zero-party data. When users willingly engage and provide information about themselves, it’s a treasure trove of data that you can use to segment lists, refine messaging, and personalize the content you send to them.

5. Customizations

You likely ask questions of users all the time. How do they prefer to receive communications from you? How often? Do they want to subscribe to your newsletter? What topics interest them?

What To Do Right Now About the Demise of 3rd Party Cookies

Digital marketing moves quickly and lots of businesses, advertisers, and agencies miss the train. Unlike Google’s daily algorithm updates that can wreak havoc on organic traffic and results and for which you receive exactly zero notification, you’ve been given fair notice about this whole third-party deprecation whatchamacallit. The Google gods have spoken. Ignore them at your peril. It’s time to develop pristine first-party data so you’re ready when third-party data disappears. Not sure how to start? Contact the experts at CloudControlMedia. We set our clients up for success long before the first rumblings of third-party deprecation. Contact us today.

Linda Emma is head of marketing at CloudControlMedia. With more than two decades experience in digital marketing, she helps clients tell their unique stories while driving performance metrics that translate to results.

7 Important Paid Media KPIs to Measure in 2024

Linda Emma on January 9, 2024

From its inception, digital marketing has enabled its users unprecedented insight into the campaigns they run, the results they achieve, and their impact on the bottom line. But the mountain of available data can be overwhelming to the uninitiated. And its rapid evolution often leaves novice digital marketers in a constant catch-up mode. Particularly since Google decided to sunset Universal Analytics in 2023 and roll out GA4, there has been simmering panic. Universal Analytics was friendly and familiar. Now, in one fell swoop, all its historical data was gone, and a new tool was put in its place. Users had no choice but to switch to GA4 last summer.

Whether you’re still reeling from the GA4 switchover or have never really had a handle on the data you measure, there are some key performance indicators you should keep track of in 2024 as you chart the success of your paid media campaigns. And while what you measure will depend upon your industry and the individual campaigns you run, here are the KPIs you’ll probably want to pay attention to this year.

1. Measure Impressions and Reach

Search and display campaigns can help get—and keep—your brand at the top of your prospect’s mind. They can increase awareness of your company and the products and services you offer. So, it’s important to measure how many times your ad is displayed and the number of people who likely saw it. Reach tells you how many times an individual user saw your ad and impressions tell you how many times your ad was seen, even if by the same person more than one. Both are important metrics to consider for paid media. You should also look at your cost-per-1000 impressions (CPM) to keep track of your budget and campaign ROI.

2. Click-Through Rate

Most of your campaigns are designed to have users take an action that gets them closer to a purchase. Impressions are good for branding, but clicks can be higher value actions. The user that clicks on an ad is engaged and interested in what you have to offer. When they click through to your landing page, you increase the likelihood that they will fill out a form or make a purchase. That’s why the click-through-rate (clicks your ad receives/number of impressions) is one determinant of a campaign’s success.

3. Cost-Per-Clicks

Another important KPI is your cost-per-click (CPC). CPC helps to understand how well your ads perform in auctions, where you place against your competitors, and how your budget is being consumed. Paying attention to CPCs can also help you fine tune campaigns to produce better results. But it’s important to note that cheap clicks that don’t convert further down funnel can quickly drain your digital marketing budget without producing results.

4. Measure Events

Specific to GA4, you can customize what you measure through “events.” You choose what is worthwhile in your customer’s journey. Whether a click or a page load, a download or a purchase, you determine what matters and track it through Google. You can see how far a user scrolls in a blog post or the engagement users have with your video. Because events can measure virtually any interaction and data point a user has with your site, page, or app, you garner a fuller picture of the actions that lead to sales. You can even assign a monetary value to specific events using parameters.

5. Conversions

All the events you chart in GA4 can lead to a conversion. You can customize conversions, but they are often a request for information where a user fills out a form. In doing so, to some degree they’re saying: sure, let’s keep in touch. That direct customer engagement is one of the true benefits of digital marketing. When the user gives you the nod, you have the privilege of providing them with customized messages and content that keeps them interested. They’ve converted from a stranger into a true prospect.

6. Cost Per Acquisition and LTV

If you’ve ever been tempted by an offer of cheap leads, buyer beware! What should matter to you far more than affordable leads that fill the top of your sales funnel are those that make it further along the customer journey all the way to a sale at a reasonable CPA. Those $50 leads that waste your team’s time and attention can be astronomically more expensive than they appear. Follow them down-funnel and determine which turn into clients, how long it took, and whether they come back time and again. For example, the savvy car dealership knows that a $500 lead may sound expensive at first blush, but if it converts to a buyer who comes back for a new car every few years and brings along family and friends, it represents a windfall in profits.

7. Digital Marketing ROI

Especially if you’re in charge of answering up the food chain on marketing results, the ROI you can prove may be critical to your budget, your department, and your standing within your organization. Calculate return on investment by dividing the profits you saw from a particular campaign against its costs. For example, if you invested $5000 in a campaign and your profit was $20,000, you divide the $20K by $5K to get a 4:1 ROI ration. For every dollar you spent, you got $4 in return!

At CloudControlMedia, we are frequently astonished by how few of these metrics new clients have been paying attention to. We get it. There are a lot of moving pieces in digital marketing and when you run multiple campaigns for several products, programs, or services, it’s a lot to keep track of. But we have a secret weapon! The CloudControlMedia Platform busts down digital marketing silos and lets campaigns, platforms, channels, and even keywords compete to see which produce the best results, by tying directly into a client’s customer relationship management system. We know when a click is a bargain price or a waste of money. We know when the dollar you spend produces one or ten! Find out more. Request a demo today.

10 Dangers of Duplicate Leads

Linda Emma on September 13, 2023

Bad data cost US businesses more than $3 trillion each year, with individual companies often paying to the tune of millions of dollars for the errors. Among suspect data are leads that serve as the very lifeblood of many organizations, fueling sales, growth, and expansion. But it is estimated that nearly 40 percent of sales leads are invalid. And a major contributor to invalid leads are duplicates. Duplicate leads can cost time, money, customer satisfaction, and even your organization’s hard-won reputation. Make sure you avoid these 10 dangers of duplicate leads:

1. Duplicate Invoicing

Duplicate leads mean you have more than one record for the same person—and they’re much more common than you may realize. Nearly half of all records entered into a CRM is a duplicate. When partners provide leads, you rightly pay for the first lead, but duplicates mean you also pay for all subsequent records for the same person. With deduplication, you save real and immediate dollars.

2. Inaccurate Personas

You can’t sell to customers if you don’t know who they are. Duplicate leads give you multiple versions of a single customer and may hold conflicting information. For example, if your intent is to target a particular individual based on their educational status or job title, and they’ve now advanced in either, you may pursue a lead that will never come to fruition. Your team wastes time going after irrelevant leads at the expense of those that might more readily convert into sales.

3. Fragmented Sales Funnel

Having multiple records for the same lead exacerbates existing silos and leads to fragmentation in the sales funnel. Instead of working many leads, your sales team works the same lead over and over again. Your potential customers don’t like it and neither do your sales reps. Their time is wasted, productivity sapped, and sales results negatively impacted. And when different members of your team and automated systems communicate with prospects with inconsistent and sometimes conflicting messaging, even successful sales may come through multiple avenues. Without the ability to follow leads through a repeatable and scalable sales journey, you cannot effectively allocate resources, detect patterns, replicate successes, or predict for the future.

4. Misaligned Messaging

Today’s consumer expects personalized messaging from ads and certainly from sales reps calling on the telephone. Imagine getting a call from someone trying to sell you something and they get the fundamentals wrong—wrong gender, age, location. Or hearing messaging totally out of alignment to where you are in the sales funnel. You were ready to commit, and they treat you as if you’re brand new. It makes for an awkward call. The prospect is frustrated but so is your sales agent. They can’t properly work leads when the info is out-of-date or wrong—and it often is. Customer data degrade at a rate of 2 percent per month, so without automated deduplication in place, your sales team is probably sending the wrong message to their prospects.

5. Manual Data Pulls

When sales reps doubt lead quality, they take it upon themselves to manually check data accuracy and perform manual deduplication. The process is time-consuming, arduous, and likely outside the wheelhouse of your salespeople. Even using automation, it can be cumbersome. The typical means to find, requalify, and merge duplicates is a multistep process.

Open lead list
Activate the find duplicate feature
Select duplicates to merge
Perform initial lead merge
Choose a master lead
Finalize merge

Every minute your sales rep spends on deduplication is a minute they’re NOT selling!

6. Duplicate Sales Collateral

Do you create offline content for sales leads? Consider the cost to print and mail slick flyers with great branding and imagine how diluted the messaging gets when the same prospect receives them multiple times. You waste money and the brochure that should have wowed appears wishy washy and redundant. You also waste time and money online when you serve the same ad multiple times to the same prospect. Ad fatigue occurs sooner, and you pay for digital marketing that is ineffective and unengaging.

7. Data Storage Cost Increases

Lead duplication can result in increased costs for data storage. Not only do you pay for additional storage infrastructure or cloud services to accommodate excess data; you also pay for additional manhours to manage, process, back up, and retain duplicates. Any updates, patches, and repairs to software systems include data that are redundant causing all the tasks that your team performs to take longer. And many CRM systems are priced based on the volume of data stored. Duplicate leads unnecessarily inflate the price you pay.

8. Poor Analytics

Duplicate leads can both inflate and deflate your results. When the same lead is counted multiple times, it can make your marketing efforts appear more successful than they are. It looks like you’re producing more leads, but many are dupes. But duplicate leads can also artificially lower your conversion rates. You’re not converting as many leads because many are the same leads. And dupes can also affect the calculation of your return on investment (ROI) for marketing campaigns. If leads are not deduplicated, the cost associated with acquiring those leads may seem higher than it actually is, which can result in a deflated ROI. Without accurate information, decision makers cannot properly allocate resources, build effective strategies, spend efficiently, or plan for the future.

9. Lower Staff Morale

Working leads that do not move through the funnel and result in sales means commissioned salespeople make less money, even though they exert the same effort they always have. Spending time performing deduplication is time wasted. And being fed data that cannot be trusted is disillusioning. It’s all a frustrating scenario that can lower morale, decrease productivity, and increase employee churn rate. From an organizational level, it means you must do more with less and spend time on training new employees instead of helping your team grow and advance in a rewarding career within your company.

10. Tarnished Brand Reputation

For many organizations, brand value translates to real dollars and cents and long-term profitability. And while a good brand reputation can take years to establish, bad customer service can tarnish your image in an instant. Particularly in a culture of heightened consumer expectations, online reviews, and viral posts, the negative impact of poor customer service due to duplicate leads can result in irreversible harm to your brand.

Have you paid for the same lead multiple times or spent hours tinkering with deduplication to make sure you don’t? The CloudControlMedia Platform can help block, scrub, reroute, and dedupe partner leads so you only work the leads that are likely to turn into sales. Request a free demo today.

Linda Emma is Head of Marketing at CloudControlMedia. She has more than two decades of experience in marketing and journalism and frequently presents on how AI is impacting digital media.