00:00 Hello and welcome to Higher Thinking on Higher Ed. I am Charlyn Carrington of Content Strong Communications, the fractional communications and marketing Leader of choice for universities, colleges and nonprofits. Today, I am excited to continue diving into the trends, challenges encountered by communications and marketing leaders in higher ed. And I am honored today to welcome JP Rains to the hot seat. JP Is the director of Digital strategy and Communications at Laurentian University. He also runs Rains Media, a consultancy for education and business. A community leader, a published author. He's also the founder of Golf Marathon Sudbury, which has raised over $600,000 for children's health. That's wonderful. Thank you again so much for bringing your expertise to this conversation. How you doing? 02:43 JP Rains I'm doing great. It's my pleasure to be here. So just really excited to talk about the challenges we're all facing these days and talking. Talk about how we're getting by. I guess that's good. 02:54 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's amazing. Well, I love how you said that. Talk about how we're getting by. That's. I mean, that's exactly what I want to know. Like, how are you? How are you getting by? I like to start a little bit with, you know, context, essentially. I mean, I spoke a little bit about what it is that you do, but if you can give us a sense about, you know, your role, you know, you lead digital strategy and communications at Laurentian, and we know this is a time of major transformation, I think, for just about everybody across the board. How does your role kind of contribute to rebuilding institutional trust and shaping the university's current and future direction? 03:28 JP Rains Yeah, for sure. Our team plays a big role. So we, you know, are really focused on public perception. The. Our context is Laurentian University went through a significant insolvency period in 2021, 2022, that we had exited recently. And while we still have a few things to be able to fully exit that process at the end of November of 2025, it's been a real exercise in rebuilding confidence in the communities that do join the university and send their students to the university. So full transition in terms of our entire board of governors, our entire senior leaders, all of those have really transitioned over the last year and a half to two years. 04:17 JP Rains And so our teams play a significant role in bringing forward those changes to the communities that trust us and showing the new leaders and what they're accomplishing over the last, like I said, year and a half or so, and then bringing those ideas forward even further and saying that, what are we going to accomplish soon? We're going to launch our strategic research plan and academic plans, which are derivatives of the new strategic plan. So it's all those things that we're doing, trying to introduce the community that we have new leaders, new ideas and a new vision for what Laurentian University can be. And we'll use the tools at our disposal from a communications perspective in public relations, but also leveraging the tools on the digital strategy side in terms of the website, social media and our digital advertising platforms. 05:10 Sharlyn, Content Strong I think, you know, there are a lot of things I want to ask you based on what you just said. I mean one of the very obvious things is, you know, almost rebuilding reputation, I feel like has to be a big focus on your mind. But I don't want to start there. I want to start with the shifts, kind of the shifts you're seeing in the industry. You talked just now about, you know, using kind of all the tools at your disposal. I'm thinking about, you know, what emerging trends in digital communication or in student engagement are you seeing in the sector right now that you're really the most engaged in. And you know, how are those shifts influencing your strategies at Laurentian now? 05:47 JP Rains Yeah, our biggest strategic pillar I guess is really about being personal. And so that doesn't necessarily mean CRM personalization and hyper targeted marketing and advertising. It really means just being personable more than anything. And so it's about finding our voice and speaking to people kind of in a one one setting and doing our best to get people to those settings because that's where we feel like we can be successful. And it's kind of opposite of trying to do things at scale and trying to understand that our success, our ability to succeed will be in one one conversations. And so we want to foster those one one conversations as much as possible. 06:37 JP Rains So a lot of our efforts and strategies will lead to that, which I feel like is a, I feel like it's a strong play right now in the sense that everyone's trying to make things feel personal but doing them at scale. So we're going to try to make things feel personal by being actually personal and trying to get, you know, the one one conversations. And so it's less about making our, you know, email marketing or social media look dazzling and more about making it look authentic and you know, dry, thriving one one conversation. 07:16 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's really interesting that you say that because this is not a question that I had planned but as you were talking about it made me think about it. This idea of, you know, we're using all these new AI tools, we're using not even AI, just tools in general. We're using to exactly as you said, to talk to as many people as we possibly can. But there is a shift. We, we know when we're being spoken to by a bot. We know when we're, you know, we're getting those automated responses. We know when we're not having that conversation one to one. And there is more of a Dr. From all of us to find opportunities to have those conversations one one. And I wonder how are you doing that? So you said, you mentioned social media, you mentioned email marketing or email. Sorry. 07:56 Sharlyn, Content Strong And I wonder, you know, I think about the resource limitations around that, like it takes people to be there and to do the back and forth and to have the one one conversations. What does that look like for your team? What does that mean for your team right now? 08:11 JP Rains Yeah, well, first of all, I, I have to give a lot of credit to the student recruitment team that is the one, you know, the team that having these direct conversations. Right. We try to funnel them into those teams but they do the bulk of the heavy lifting there. And I think it's about choice, right? I think it's about choosing to, you know, filter through some of the challenges that exist in terms of the mass amounts of emails that we might receive and picking the ones that are really valuable conversations. Right. And picking the ones that we're going to invest in and have, you know, a one one personal conversation that takes energy rather than trying to respond to all of the requests and saying, you know, a blanket response or generic response to some of those really important questions. 09:01 JP Rains So it's a little bit about identifying the strength of a prospect in a sense. It's also about, from a social media perspective, funneling the right types of students into the right areas. 09:14 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 09:15 JP Rains So one of the things that we know we have to do is really continue to increase our market share within domestic students at the, you know, sort of expense of not being able to do that at the international level. So it's about really choosing to have really great conversations with the domestic students and just investing more time and energy there. And it's limited. Right? Like, like to your point, there's only so much you can do. So it's about choosing the best opportunities to do it. 09:45 Sharlyn, Content Strong And that leads to a million other questions that I have, but I think you'll answer them naturally and organically, you know, so we talked about that and really choosing the right person or choosing the person that you think will kind of have the best outcome at the end of the day, really investing time into them. And I think about metrics, right? I think about, I think, you know, you're known for more of a data informed approach being focused in digital marketing. What Digital metrics or KPIs are you are most critical to you right now and how are they kind of guiding your decision making across and recruitment and even all the things you just mentioned? 10:22 JP Rains Yeah, definitely relying a lot on Google Analytics to give me a high level sense of that. It's definitely something that I've spent a lot of time in GA4 to be able to develop the sort of infrastructure that should give us the information that we need to be able to see how we're doing really. And so we do have a particular metric and set of metrics that we point to and say okay, this is successful if. But it really comes down to engagement. Right. And so to make it a little bit more meaningful to listeners in general, it's about identifying the action or actions on our website that we find the most significant and then building the tracking infrastructure into those and then allowing us, our teams to be able to implement that tracking across all marketing initiatives. 11:18 JP Rains So it's not necessarily about having these big powerful dashboards and automated reports and all these kinds of things. It's really being able to have a defined set of actions on your website that you feel are really valuable that you can say okay, if our marketing campaign does these three things it will be successful. And sometimes that'll mean just honestly page views, sometimes it'll just be measured by cpm, but sometimes it'll really be measured by okay, how many people actually click to sign up on the open house form. Right. Like so depending on how far down the funnel we're choosing to target an initiative then there'll be different metrics, right. But it'll span from like I mentioned something that's just an impressions awareness play all the way down to a specific sign up for an event or even an action that we want mid funnel. 12:13 JP Rains Like for example having a someone who entered using a non branded search term on Google Search who spend you know, an engaged session of five minutes or more exploring our programs and university as a whole on our website that would be exceptional, right for a first visit to see that kind of engagement and then from there we want to see other actions. But it's really about for me looking at the funnel, identifying what stage of the journey this particular prospect might live in right now and then trying to figure out what the optimal conversion might be for them. 12:51 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. And that's I mean, I talk about this all the time when I have these conversations is how hard that is in this sector because the lead times are so long. A student could visit, you know, your site a year before they press that Apply now button. And then, you know, it takes, however, some several months after that to get everything in order and then to, you know, to go through the full enrollment process and then to actually get there on campus or online, depending on what it is. Yeah, I think I always. I always try to ask that question about how are you drawing that line back to, you know, what it is, what your outputs are necessarily to what you want your outcome to be. 13:28 Sharlyn, Content Strong And so, I mean, it's really interesting in your case, in the case of Laurentian, because you're almost in the. You're in this renewed transformational state where you're, you know, trying to renew your reputation, rebuild it. And I think about, you know, drawing that line between, or really trying to identify figuring out what kind of your metrics are in terms of you're looking at enrollment, I'm guessing, is a. Is a big thing. Is there anything else, like, in terms of how you gauge what you guys are doing on the reputation side and how that's helping, how what it is you guys do actually help on that front? 14:00 JP Rains Yeah, we have metrics on the public relations side of things. So we have, you know, a quarterly scorecard that we're looking at in terms of, you know, public perception and those kinds of things. And they're influenced by also things that we can track individually. Right. So if we issue a particular news release that we want to grow awareness for, well, we might couple that with a social media ad and then really, you know, just have the sort of engagement on that particular web page as. As being the metric there to be able to say, okay, let's see if we can, you know, have 500 people from our local region read this article on our website. Right, right. In addition to, hopefully, them reading it in a local, you know, earned media space. 14:44 JP Rains But it's a combination of those two, I think would be the most important. But certainly reputation and student recruitment are the two that are most of focus. And yeah, there's, you know, specific initiatives that might exist around nurturing donors or what have you or, you know, events and that kind of stuff. But really the most important things that we'll do in the year are to influence reputation first and then hopefully have that as a driver for recruitment. 15:10 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. Good answer. Very interesting. I think about all the stuff you're doing, and I Mean, you talked really wonderfully about some of the, obviously your metrics and some of your drivers and some of the context within what you're working within right now. And I think about or I wonder about what's working and what's not, what's been surprisingly effective in your digital efforts recently. Where are you still kind of encountering barriers, whether it's tools, whether it's team capacity, whether it's institutional alignment, whatever. 15:42 JP Rains Yeah. What I would categorize as surprisingly effective would just be like a lot of mid funnel initiatives. So again, kind of looking at how we bring people back to our website right after they visited a couple times and might have us on their short list, but not really sure of the institution or not sure they might have some sort of mental blocks about specific things. So kind of thinking about, okay, what are those things that we know students have some concerns about and then trying to put pieces of information in front of them that respond to some of those concerns. And so this is very unusual that an institution would be thinking about. You know, okay, the student's interested, but they're worried about the financial future of the institution. 16:34 JP Rains Well, maybe we should show them, you know, some information about how solid that future is. So I think that may be a challenge that other institutions are starting to think about over the next year or two. But it's something we've had to be thinking about for a couple years because we have a significant number of applicants that kind of say, well, I'll apply to Laurentian, but I'm not really sure if the institution is financially sound or what have you where we've been able to really turn that corner and have some of the best financial outlooks of universities in Ontario. One of the few institutions that doesn't have a deficit right now about informing against some of the objections that our prospects might have. 17:17 JP Rains And so we're doing, I would say, that's successful in the mid funnel part of it and to be able to take our existing, you know, applicant base which had been lost to a certain extent, our market share in our region was, has had decreased substantially. So we're trying to get that back and working hard to get that back. So it's about making sure that people in our backyard know the positive things that are taking place and view the successful long term future. But at the same time there's some things that are definite challenges. Right. So the, we're starting there but then expanding beyond that. There's, there's folks that had only, you know, parents or what have you that had only heard about Laurentian financial difficulties four or five years ago and don't really know anything new since. 18:01 JP Rains So it's about educating them and it's about, you know, trying to do that at scale across such a large area can be a challenge. So that's where the elements of one one conversations can go a long way. 18:18 Sharlyn, Content Strong I mean, you've likely tested a wide range of strategies post restructuring, many of them you've mentioned. What other solutions come to mind have you tried so far to kind of re. Engage stakeholders and rebuild Laurentian's digital brand? And what's been the most, I don't know, helpful or instructive maybe? What have you learned the most from? 18:36 JP Rains Yeah, and I'll say like greater than digital brand is just like the institution as a whole. And it's really partnerships that's been the biggest one. Partnerships with whether it's our, a local organization, whether it's with a local school board, whether it's with other institutions, other universities and colleges, both domestic and international, kind of enabling those partnerships to be a talking point for wherever we might be or wherever we might be, you know, sharing a piece of information digitally. So it's really about using the existing network of other organizations to remember, to allow people to remember that, you know, there's a lot that exists here in terms of partnerships. There's a lot that exists here in terms of strength of research, collaborations with industry. All of those things, you know, are greater than the digital brand. 19:34 JP Rains And so we've, what I have to say that benefited our area is that our institution has enabled like our researchers or academics and all those folks to be able to go and create those new partnerships, renew partnerships and forge new ones. That has allowed our digital brand to be the mouthpiece for those things. And so I don't know to what degree it's really been truly successful. I think it's a piece that we have to measure over time. We're starting to see the positive steps that are like resulting in, you know, an increase. We're talking about, you know, maybe a 15%, maybe a 20% increase to our domestic numbers. Those are very optimistic numbers right now as we think about that, you know, going forward into the fall. 20:22 JP Rains But you know, that's as a result of a lot of that hard work that exists across the institution. So it's really, you know, it's not just us, it's really the institution working really hard at developing those. And then we benefit from being able to tell that story in a news release or in a digital story. 20:42 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's a, that in itself is a good story. Right. This idea of institutional alignment driving it forward, and then this idea of like, almost brand ambassadors that you have through your partnerships that are helping to propel, you know, keep you guys going. What's coming up for you guys and, you know, like, looking ahead the next six to 12 months, what are kind of the biggest priorities for your team? Whether it's like we talked about brand clarity or, you know, tech integration or content strategy, student conversion, whatever it is. What are the, what are kind of your big ticket goals? 21:12 JP Rains Yeah, so the biggest one would be launching a new website. So we have, we're in the, let's say, last 10% here to be able to put forward a new website. We're targeting the fall, so we're working really hard at that. And it's been a few years in the making. So that's the big tool that we're spending a lot of time and energy on. And then once that's done, we're going to be shifting our focus to supporting likely a new institutional CRM. So that's the next big piece. So that's actually part of. We have, we have a transformation plan at the university that has essentially established, you know, what we're looking to achieve over the next. 21:54 JP Rains We're in year two of five right now, so over the next three years, essentially some of the things that we're looking to transform in terms of our systems and processes and all those kinds of things to really become more efficient and effective. And so luckily that plan is resourced. And so we have about $7 million annually that goes toward this plan. And one of the things that's going to be, well, both of those elements are being funded through that plan. And it's going to be really transformational for sure to be able to put forward new technology in a website and then do the same on the CRM side of things. Because we're doing a lot of it manually right now, so that we're trying to build the competencies and essentially internal strategy and mechanisms to then be able to leverage the CRM. 22:48 JP Rains Because a lot of institutions that I've worked with where we're, you know, we help bring in a CRM, the practices aren't there to be able to, like, leverage it. And, and at first it becomes this underutilized tool and then pockets start to utilize it and you try to foster interdepartmental information exchange on how the tool is being used and that to continue to grow the sort of digital IQ within an institution. But it really starts with understanding what you're trying to do with that tool. So we're doing everything we can to start to build some of those competencies now and then when the tool comes in, it's just a better way of doing it without changing the what you're doing, essentially. So that's my hope. I don't know how it'll go. We'll see when it actually happens. 23:38 JP Rains But that's one of the things that we're trying to transform right now is just the way that we interact with some of the data that we have. And even though we don't have a great way of housing that data and manipulating it or leveraging it, just being able to understand how we can do that in a future state has been a really good conversation across campus. So in summary, yeah, I would say the website CRM are the two big things. And then maybe also playing a part in both of those is just how we can leverage AI to continue to do the personal things that we want to be able to do, maybe a little bit quicker, but still in a very one one way. 24:20 Sharlyn, Content Strong I, I think that's, I think first of all, I think that's a good strategy. Inter. I mean, you didn't ask me, but I think it's a good strategy just in terms of getting almost getting your ducks in a row, right. Having the strategic thinking in the background and setting up everything. Because I mean, all the tools we have at our disposal are changing so rapidly, so quickly. You want to be able to have the right foundation to almost plug and play. Right. That's really interesting. My last question is some people find it really easy, some people do not find it easy. But my last question is always the magic wand question. 24:54 Sharlyn, Content Strong Like if I were to give you the keys to the kingdom right now, give you that magic wand and say, let's wave it, snap your fingers and remove one persistent challenge in your world. No budget, no limits, no silos, you know, what would be the first thing that you fix and why? 25:12 JP Rains Great question. 25:13 Sharlyn, Content Strong See, some people find it tough for sure. 25:16 JP Rains Yeah, yeah. I think, I think for me the biggest thing that I would change immediately or you know, in this sort of dream scenario is that I would probably get students much faster to be on campus. So. 25:37 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 25:37 JP Rains So how would we be able, like talk about infinite resources, but getting students to truly understand the value of the institution much more quickly by having them physically here. And so that's. That's one of the things that once they are physically here, we do really well. We have a really high conversion rate in terms of someone that physically steps foot on campus relative to other institutions. So if we're able to sort of unlock that a little bit. So I immediately went to that thinking of, like, you know, gearing as many resources as possible to getting somebody physically here, that would probably be it. The other thing that I thought of as you describe this, it's not necessarily like. Well, it is removing a barrier in the sense that we have a pretty good understanding of what our student journey is. 26:29 JP Rains We're doing a new student journey map right now, but I would love to be able to do that on a per program basis. So, yes, I understand the student journey for the institution and the prospect and the way that they're coming in, but I'd like to be able to, you know, infinite resource territory, be able to do a student journey map for every program and understand that when we are doing institutional advertising and institutional messaging, that we can use the, you know, Personas and journey map that exists at the institutional level. But then if we're doing specific program initiatives, really understanding the drivers and Personas that exist on a program level, you know, that would be super valuable. So I would, you know, be very happy to spend my time analyzing the student journey of many different programs, exams. 27:21 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's such a good answer because it's so. It will. Any insight you get from that student journey will impact your strategy so significantly in. In, you know, really tailoring and targeting some of the different markets per program. I think that's huge. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you're like, Charlyn, I really wanted to tell you this, but I. I forgot or I didn't get a chance to. 27:41 JP Rains Yeah, no, it's. It's just really the, like, that. The. The student journey piece because, like, when you actually get to talk to students one one about what their challenges were and then, like, get the qualitative side of it, but then also have the quantitative side of, you know, a big survey or what have you, and interviews with administrators and comparing what administrators believe as the biggest challenges and then hearing what the students say are as the biggest challenges, it's really eye opening. Like, so a couple months ago, I was speaking with a student who described it was an international student coming to Canada, and they described their challenges of the first, like, 12 hours of being here. And I didn't, like, really think of it that way. But they didn't have a credit card so they couldn't get into a hotel. 28:27 JP Rains So they went from hotel to hotel until one would accept like a cash deposit for the night so that they can go apartment hunting the next day. And these kinds of things, right, where you know, this was taking place in August and we have a bunch of residence rooms that are sitting empty and they could have easily just, you know, come to residence for a few days to be able to do apartment hunting. So it's things like that. Until you hear it from a student you feel like are outliers. And then when you hear that story and then start asking others, was this a challenge for you? 29:00 JP Rains You start to realize that sometimes those outliers represent a significant percentage of the student population anyway, those are the types of things that I hope for everyone to be able to have the time and energy to do is getting the true qualitative data for your own institution and not simply just having to rely on, okay, this is, you know, a trend in the industry or here's what we see from students, you know, across the country. So that's my hope for the industry. More information, more first party data and a deeper understanding of their student journey. 29:35 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's a really robust answer. And I say that because so many things came to mind even when you did, even in that one story. Just thinking about one, the storytelling possibilities around that. Right. Really being able to change the process and how you support how all instit. But in this case yours, support international students utilizing some exactly as you said. You have your residences there that are not even being used. It's not even that much of a stretch to be able to support international students during that small journey. And just how much that would, that truly would impact your ability to even contact or communicate with prospective international students. Right? That's huge. Thank you. Thank you. It's been such a wonderful, generous conversation. Thanks for your time, your experience, your perspective to our listeners. 30:21 Sharlyn, Content Strong I hope this episode sparked ideas, affirmed your own experiences, or helped you see a challenge in a new light. If you are a communications or marketing leader in higher ed or a leader in higher ed in general and you want to contribute to this evolving conversation, I'd love to hear from you. Because we know the truth is these conversations are more than just talk. They're ideally the start of a road map for the future of our field. So let's get to work. Thanks so much again, jp. 30:45 JP Rains My pleasure.