A

• A/B Testing: A testing scenario in which two variables are tested against one another to determine which is more effective.
  • Testing two subject lines with a percentage of your audience to determine which is more successful.
• Abandonment Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website prior to completing a desired action.
  • Some websites have a high abandonment rate when visitors are required to provide a phone number.
• Admissions Connect: A UCCS-specific Salesforce implementation that supports recruitment and admissions activities.
• Average Session Duration: Formerly known as Time on Site, this measures the average amount of time that visitors spend on a website.

B

• Backlinks: This measures the number of links pointing to a website from external sources. From a performance measurement standpoint, backlinks for online.cu.edu is an indirect performance metric because backlinks are based on links to the root domain (cu.edu), and a subdomain simply inherits the root domain’s backlink profile. The same is true for Domain Authority, a common web performance metric – online.cu.edu does not have its own domain authority as it inherits cu.edu’s domain authority.
• Bounce rate: This measures the percentage of visitors who leave a website after only viewing one page. his metric is now known as engagement rate, and is essentially the inverse of the bounce rate. Instead of Google Analytics measuring bounces, they are now measuring engagements. Per Google’s documentation, “An engaged session is a session that lasts ten seconds or longer, has one or more conversion events, or has two or more page or screen views.”
• Brand Search Volume: This measures the total number of searches for a brand name across all search engines.

C

• Calendly: Calendly is a scheduling platform that provides meeting coordinator availability from which attendees select a time.
• Call-In Source Channel: Direct phone call to the Enrollment Team without completing an RFI form on the CU Online website.
  • i.e.: Calling the enrollment team from a phone # listed on the website
• Call to Action: Any device designed to prompt an immediate response or encourage an immediate sale. A CTA most often refers to the use of words or phrases that can be incorporated into sales scripts, advertising messages, or web pages, which compel an audience to act in a specific way.
  • An ad with a link to Learn More that goes to a landing page with an RFI form. The CTA is 'Learn More' and it compels the audience to complete an RFI.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) : The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns. This measures the percentage of visitors who click on a website's search engine listing. 
  • Of the 100 people who saw an ad, 5 people clicked on the link in the ad. 5/100=.05 or 5% click through rate.
• Contact Rate: Contacts / Valid Leads = Contact Rate. Valid Contacts are all leads dispositioned as a Success or Failure.
  • Contact rate between 30-40% is considered good.
• Conversion Rate (CVR): The percentage of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors. Conversion rate for ODE Marketing campaigns means a click through and form submission.
  • Of the 100 prospective students that clicked on an ad, 5 completed the lead form. 5/100=.05 or 5% conversion rate.
• Cost-Per-Click (CPC): The actual price you pay for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns. Cost per click is the performance metric for the pay-per-click advertising model.
  • A website that has a CPC rate of 10 cents and provides 1,000 click-throughs would bill $100 ($0.10 x 1000). The amount that an advertiser pays for a click is usually set either by a formula or through a bidding process.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): Online advertising payment model in which payment is based on the number of qualifying leads generated. Total Marketing Spend / Total New Leads = Cost Per Lead (CPL). What defines a 'good' or 'bad' CPL depends on various factors. Cost Per Lead differs for different industries, different campaigns, and leads at different stages of the buyer’s journey.
  • Spending $1000 on a program campaign that generates 10 leads. 1000/10=$100 cost per lead.
• Collegis: Collegis is a vendor that provides qualification and transfer activities for leads.
• CRM: Constituent Relationship Management
• CMS: Content Management System

D

• Dashboard: A data visualization tool in Salesforce that allows for creation of charts and graphs along with various filters to drill down into the data.
• Data Dictionary: A summary of and definitions for key fields that exist within a Salesforce implementation.
• Detailed Targeting (DT): Detailed targeting is a targeting option available in the "Audience" section of ad set creation in Facebook that allows marketers to refine the group of people ads are shown to. This can be done with information such as additional demographics, interests and behaviors. These detailed targeting options may be based on: Ads they click; pages they engage with; activities people engage in on Facebook related to things like their device usage, and travel preferences; demographics like age, gender and location; the mobile device they use and the speed of their network connection.
  • Using detailed targeting to show ads to prospective students with similar demographics, interests, and behaviors of students who are already in the program.
• Drip: A series of emails sent automatically to people who complete a specific action.
  • Leads can be launched into drip campaigns when they inquire about degree programs.
• Drupal: A website content management system.

E

• Engagement Rate: This is essentially the inverse of the bounce rate. Instead of Google Analytics measuring bounces, they are now measuring engagements. Per Google’s documentation, “An engaged session is a session that lasts ten seconds or longer, has one or more conversion events, or has two or more page or screen views.”

F

• Field: Fields contain content from database columns in Salesforce.
  • First Name: Bernadette
  • Last Name: Mortensen
• First Touch Attribution Model: The Source Channel credit is assigned to the first marketing touchpoint.
  • Our Salesforce instance currently uses the first-touch attribution model, meaning that credit is assigned to the first marketing touchpoint that brought the prospective student to the CU Online website. For example, a record with the source channel SEO may have come through to the CU Online website through an organic Google Search but the student may have also clicked on an ad after this first touch that ultimately assisted in converting the lead into a student. ​
• Five9: A vendor that provides live call transfer for leads.

G

• GA4: Google Analytics 4
• Google Looker: A Google-based data visualization tool

I

• Integration: A connection/flow of data between two distinct source systems.
• Invalid Rate: Invalid leads / leads received = Invalid Rate
  Per Unbridled: An invalid lead is a leads that is dispositioned as SIT (Operator Intercept), Fax, Test Call, or Wrong Party.
  • CU’s Facebook lead population does tend to perform better than most. For invalid rates, we would consider anything north of 15% as high, but it’s not uncommon for this metric to land in the 10-15% range from social channels.
• IOS: Integrated Online Services; the name of the Salesforce org that supports CU Online activities.

K

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.
  • Cost per lead, cost per click, conversion rates, these are all examples of ODE Marketing KPIs.
• Keyword Rankings: This measures where a website ranks for specific keywords in search engine results.

L

• Landing Page (LP): A standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It's where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in an email, or ads from Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar places on the web.
• Lead Form Ad (LFA): Facebook lead ads makes the lead generation process easy. People can simply tap a company's ad and a form pops up—it’s already pre-populated with their Facebook contact information and ready to be sent directly to the company. With just a few taps, they can get the information they want, and the company generates a qualified lead for their business.
  • Prospective student clicks on an MBA ad and completes a lead form in Facebook that is sent to CU Online's Salesforce org.
• Lead Quality: One way is to monitor leads through the pipeline...i.e.: RN - BSN has a very high lead volume but very few apply and enroll. Another way, is by gathering what the ENs or call center are hearing on the phone - invalid phone number, non-English speaking. Additionally, lead quality is associated with contact rate. If we're below the 30 - 40% range, than we know there could be something wrong.
• List View: A Salesforce-based data view that allows you to view and filter on the data to which you have access.
• Lookalike Audience (LAL): A lookalike audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your best existing customers.
  • Say you create a Custom Audience of each person who has enrolled in CU Online MBA in the past year by pulling that data from the customer relationship management (CRM) system and importing it to Facebook Ads Manager. When you create a Lookalike Audience based on that list, Facebook finds people with similar demographics and interests to those of your existing customers and uses them as the target audience.

M

• Marketing Cloud: An email marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce.
• Mogli: A text messaging tool that integrates with Salesforce.

O

• Object: Specific sets of data that are connected to one another in Salesforce.
  • Contact object, education object, enrollment object
• ODI: Online Degree Inventory
• OED: Online Educational Directory 
  • U.S. News and World Report
• Org: A Salesforce implementation
• Organic Conversion Rate: This measures the percentage of organic visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.
• Organic Traffic: This measures the number of visitors coming to a website from search engine results.

P

• Pages Per Session: This measures the average number of pages that visitors view on a website during a single session. This metric is now known as views per user.
• Paid Search Source Channel: Lead from any paid source (ie: Google search, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Pardot: An email marketing tool housed in Salesforce.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): An online advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. There are different types of PPC ads, but one of the most common types is the paid search ad. These ads appear when people search for things online using a search engine like Google. In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”
  • Google 'online MBA in Colorado'. The first few results show "Ad" next to the result. These schools are running ads and will only be changed when a user actually clicks on the ad. Pay-per-click ads can also be the ads you see on social media.
• Pipeline: Also known as the lead pipeline, this is how leads move through various stages of engagement from inquiry to enrollment.
• Program Page: A webpage that contains specific information about a CU program. 
  • online.cu.edu/program/online-masters/criminal-justice-mcj
• Prospect Clearinghouse: Definition coming soon

Q

• Q&T: Qualification and Transfer (mostly used in reference to Collegis)

R

• Referral Source Channel: Potential student coming from another source (i.e.: prospect on CU Boulder program page and completes an RFI form for online program)
• Report: A list of data in Salesforce based on specific data filters and criteria.
• Retargeting (RT): Retargeting is the strategy of serving advertisements to customers on external websites based on their previous browsing history on the firm's website. It's a powerful way to re-engage customers who have previously interacted online with your brand. The goal of most retargeting campaigns is to call on a prospective to take an action they did not take on their initial visit—known as a "call to action."
  •  Showing a prospective student an ad for MCJ because they visited the MCJ program page on the CU Online website.

S

• Salesforce: A Constituent Relationship Management product.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business. Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query.
  • Optimizing content on CU Online program web pages so that when a user searches for online degrees in XYZ program that CU Online offers, CU Online will show up in the top searches on Google. Example: Search 'online criminal justice degree Colorado'. CU Online comes up in the top 6.​
• Slate: a Constituent Relationship Management system that some campuses use to manage application data.
• Source Channel: The way in which a lead comes into contact with CU. Generally two types: paid, where leads arrive through advertising, and organic, in which potential students navigate to the CU Online website and complete an RFI form without responding to a marketing effort.
• Sprint: A two-week work period in which teams commit to completing certain work items from customers.
• Stealth Application Source Channel: Potential student goes directly to program application
• Swish: A social media marketing vendor.

T

• Ticket: A customer request that is submitted online and distributed to the appropriate team member(s) for resolution.
• Time on Site: This measures the average amount of time that visitors spend on a website. This metric is now known as average session duration.
• Thoughtspot: A Collegis-based data visualization tool.

U

• UIS: University Information Services
• UTM Source: A method in which specific text is added to the end of a URL to assess the origin of website traffic.

V

• Views Per User: This measures the average number of pages that visitors view on a website during a single session. Formerly known as pages per session.