Alright, I think we can go ahead and get started. I just want to welcome everybody to our District 3 Grand Gold highlight. This is a session I'm really excited about because if you've been involved with CASE for a while, you'll know that Grand Golds are not always something that is awarded when they're going through some of the different categories. And so we, within District 3, had four, and we wanted to give you a quick overview of those today, let you hear a little bit about them, see some of the materials, and some of those type of things. And so we're really excited to walk you through them today. I'm really excited to have our group here and really appreciate their willingness to share so that we can learn from some really great examples of work being done in our industry. And so we're going to start off. I'm going to share my screen and we are going to start with FSU. All right. Thank you, Adam. And thank you, everyone, for joining today. My name is Alice Maxwell and I am the Senior Director of Marketing and Communications at the Florida State University Division of Student Affairs. And my team and I, the FSU DSA MarCom team, and I help our senior leadership within our division with their marketing communications needs, including internal communications for our 600 plus employees, as well as we support our 17 departments and their sub departments with engaging with our 46,000 students. So our team offers creative strategies to build engagement across our campus community. And our grand gold award through CASE was earned in the student engagement marketing category for Hello FSU. And this is an integrated marketing communications student success campaign that shares information with students to help them both have fun and be successful at Florida State. It helps connect students with resources, events and ways to get involved in our campus. And then on the next slide, you'll see a little bit about our backstory. We have formed an undergraduate student experience strategy group that started in spring of 2022. And this is truly a collaboration. We have departments from across the university, including our DSA MarCom office, undergraduate studies, campus rec, care for our first gen students, the student union, library admissions, a whole variety of campus partners. We meet monthly to collaborate and compile a schedule of programs and services and activities and events that we feel are important for our students to know about. And we discuss issues that are relevant to a broad section of undergraduate population. We also have a teams group that that is where we share information on a regular basis. We started out by having a giant spreadsheet of events and important deadlines. And we've more recently moved into Smartsheet to help keep us more organized. Together, we develop a slate of prioritized activities for each week of the academic term to highlight in communications with students. And our office, the DSA MarCom, leads the marketing efforts for this initiatives. And together, we created Hello FSU along with a lot of feedback from students. And this is a vibrant communications campaign. On the next slide, you'll see the five subcategories under the Hello FSU campaign umbrella. So first off, on Mondays, we produce materials with our weekly top five. Every Monday around 10 a.m., we put out a weekly top five list that has important events, deadlines, and ways to socialize on campus. We also have how to FSU. And this connects our students with online guides and resources to help them navigate campus life. FSU is a large school, and sometimes kind of breaking things down into short format video or quick social media posts really helps explain and demystify some of the bigness of the university. I See Why Am I helps call out more attention to important information that was sent in another format, such as important announcement emails. And if you guys are like us, there are a lot of important announcement emails sent out to students. We like to follow them up with a social media post through this campaign titled I See Why Am I and just send the student back to that important information for things like the student handbook or deadlines. We also do spotlights through this campaign. And this is really for anything that's deemed as needing more attention to it. So this could be an event. It could be a resource, a program and service. And then we also offer up success tips through this campaign to our students because we want our students to have a great time while they're here at Florida State. But we especially want them to excel academically and personally while they're here. So here through this part of the campaign, our success tips allow us to provide some academic resources and life management tips to help them succeed in and out of the classroom. On the next slide, you'll see some examples of how we share these subcategories on social media. As I mentioned, every Monday we top five. Our students know that they can keep an eye out for that list of what's happening that week. And then we also post this in a variety of other ways, including marquee graphics and also on the Hello FSU website. You'll see an example there of our In Case You Missed It, a countdown to graduation. And then also a how to FSU. And again, a lot of times we do videos for this content. We also like to spotlight some of those big events on our campus. On the next slide, you will see how we have actually developed content that is shareable with other departments, whether they have a marketing person to jump in and help or not. So our team builds this content out in Illustrator and then places it in Canva with animations. It's also stored in our digital asset management tool brand folder. And so we share these templates with the uses committee as well as others across the university. Just a little while ago, Alicia, our creative director, and I received a post from our national mag lab who was going to do a spotlight using our templates. So also, we encourage everyone who uses the templates to use the hashtag Hello FSU. And this actually populates on our hello.fsu.edu web page where we have a hashtag aggregator. So it pulls together all that content in one place. So students and the campus community know that they can always go to that page for more information. The following slide includes just a brief list of the different communications channels that we utilize. There are actually more, but just as a quick summary, and I'm going to show you just a few examples of this wheeling very heavily on social media because we know that's where our target audience is. So we've seen a couple of those examples. We also have an excellent working relationship with our new student and family programs that hosts our orientation for our families and new students. We also utilize stickers as a great way to get information in front of students. And we make that a strategic tool to help share information by placing QR codes to more information on the back of the stickers. I'm going to share a few print materials with you in just a moment. We also table at events where new students are going to find out information about the campus and how to get involved. We have marquees across campus where we place information about the campaign, and we update that on a weekly basis with the top five. We also are big believers in personalization, and we'll show an example of some indirect mail that we do as well as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud email journey. And we also use our internal announcements for students tool to push out information on a regular basis to our students. And because we believe of the power of the family, we use our Family Connection newsletter to update parents on a regular basis about all of the things happening on campus through the Hello FSU campaign. Also, as I mentioned, there is that great web page, hello.fsu.edu, that has the hashtag aggregator on it. So on the next slide, we'll take a quick look at some of the pieces of print materials that helped win this grand gold award. You'll see on the far left side, this is an example of one of our sticker sheets. And I will tell you, our creative team has done a fabulous job because everybody loves these stickers. They are well sought after. And again, we use those as a creative marketing asset. It's not just stickers. It has more information on the back with the QR code on the back. These are passed out at orientation as well as throughout the semester at student involvement events. Up above in the center, you will see one of our direct mail pieces sent out in between the time of orientation and when a student starts their academic career at Florida State. We wanted to make sure that our students know that we want to stay in touch with them. And so we sent this out and this has personalization on it. So we get a lot of positive feedback about this print piece and a lot of students keep this because it has their name on it. Below that, you'll see some door hangers and these go up in our residence hall. Specifically, we've done this during the summer terms when we have brand new students who start with us in mid-June. This would go up, letting them know about all the events happening throughout the summer during our summer beat session. During the summer, we also post a good number of posters around campus. You'll see an example of that on the screen as well. So this is an important way that we get information in front of our students. On the next slide, you will see one of our email journeys that we have set up in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So, not long into the time that a student starts at Florida State, they'll receive this beautiful new Hello New Knoll email that goes into their FSU email account. And then as the student engages with the email, they'll receive subsequent emails based on the information that they clicked on in the message. So this gives you a quick look of what that journey might look like. And again, keeping that branding consistent with those beautiful graphics. On the next slide, you'll see a quick look at what this campaign has meant for our social media metrics. We have experienced a 229% growth since the start of the campaign in June 2022. And actually, I believe that number is more related to when we submitted this, the information about the campaign for the Case Excellence Award. So it's actually gone up since then. But you'll see results of some of the many different marketing things that we have done throughout the time and how that has impacted the growth of our Instagram account. And of course, we know that social media following is important, but engagement and shares also helps tell the story of impact. And most importantly, we are seeing students are more aware of our events, our services, and our resources. And now our group is starting to review the events that have been publicized and track their participation so we can better understand the campaign's reach and impact. On the next slide, you'll see a little bit of information about how we're sharing things about this campaign. When we started this back in 2022, it was purely for the benefit of getting our students more aware of what was happening on campus, and also synergizing our staff to come together and work together and plot out things for our student success. But as time went on, and the more we kept working on this campaign, the more we saw that there was actually some great benefit in sharing this model with others. We've had a couple of different articles inside of Inside Higher Education. There's a QR code for one of them there. The campaign has also been included in a couple of different Salesforce e-books, one about using data for student success and another about using AI. We also have a couple of additional academic articles that are coming out in the next couple of months or so, and those are focused on student success communications. We have also had the opportunity to present at a couple of different case district conferences. We've also presented at a conference that was specific to communications with students and an AMA conference. We'll have some more conferences coming up in a few months. Just a quick plug, too, I am serving as faculty on the Marketing and Branding Case Conference, and I would imagine there will be some discussion of Hello FSU there as well. That is us and a little bit about our Hello FSU campaign. If anyone has any questions, we're happy to take those. Well, thank you so much. Just an amazing campaign and excited for that, and we'll just pause for one more second before we jump to Auburn. All right. Thank you. So next up, we have Auburn. Hey, everybody. My name is Kendra Carter. I'm a Communications and Marketing Manager on the Philanthropy Communications Team at Auburn University. So to give you a little bit of context, Philanthropy Communications is housed within Auburn Advancement, and our team is charged with creating fundraising-specific communications, strategy, and collateral that maximizes philanthropic giving to the university. So, Adam, if you can go to the next slide. I just put together a little bit of information so you can see, like, the context of our team. There are five of us. We support more than 60 fundraisers, when you include our senior leadership as well. Last year, we completed 256 projects that represented $225 million in asks for the university. Now, we all know that sometimes you ask and the answer is not right now or talk to me again in a year, but so this just represents the asks that we made last year in materials that our team created. So, this Grand Gold Award came from the Fundraising Case Statement and General Cultivation, and you'll see on the next slide. So, we were asked to come up with a brochure highlighting a strategic renovation of a building that's in downtown Birmingham. So, if you know anything about Alabama geography, which I'm guessing some of you on the call might but most of you probably don't. Birmingham is squarely in central Alabama, and Auburn is about 110 miles southeast of Birmingham. Really being able to think about highlighting why we're doing this in Birmingham, which is a chunk away from our campus, wanting to honor the history of the building, recognizing that we are going to be working with different partners. So, this was a partnership between our development directors in the Harvard College of Business, Auburn's College of Architecture, Design and Construction, and the University Provost's Office. Plus, our colleagues in Corporate and Foundation Relations would also be using this. So, we needed to think about making something that could be used across those areas, and we wanted to keep in mind a few key considerations. So, we were going to have multiple fundraising teams using it. It's a six-story building, and so it was going to be a permanent home to a program in the College of Architecture, the Urban Studio, and plus some new initiatives for the Harvard College of Business. So, we wanted to make sure that we were giving equal real estate in the brochure to both of the colleges, and that there were some details that were still evolving while we were being asked to create this material. So, thinking about ways that we could keep things high-level enough so that a print brochure would not become obsolete very quickly. And then also, there are naming opportunities across the building's six floors. And again, when you're thinking about a printed material, how do you navigate when spaces become claimed, and you don't want to make something that's printed obsolete very fast? So, on the next slide, you'll see just kind of how we thought through some of it. So, we knew we wanted to create a compelling case for support that shows how this renovation of this legacy downtown building is going to create new opportunities for students, and we wanted to really be able to highlight some of the recognition opportunities for donors. So, showcase Auburn's role in the city's revitalization over the past 30 years through our faculty involvement and through the influx of our alumni who end up in Birmingham being business leaders and city leaders. Showing how these new programs are going to cement our university's role in the city's continued growth and figure out a way that we can make something where our development offers can share floor plans and naming opportunities with interested donors, but they don't necessarily have to if the donors are not interested in them. So, on the next slide, you'll see what we came up with. So, this is the cover and the first spread, so pages two and three here. You'll see that our designer made this composite on each side of the spread, so you see kind of the An older photo of the building juxtaposed with a photo of the exterior while it is undergoing construction. That was another challenge that we had. This was ongoing construction, and so we had to rely a lot on renderings or some not stellar photography. You can see here the dumpster in the foreground of this photo, if you look very carefully. But on the next slides, we'll be able to see how we dedicated a spread to each college, and we worked with our development officers to identify with their deans and leadership three spaces that they wanted to be able to highlight within the print brochure. So, we talk about the colleges themselves, and then we have strategic fundraising opportunities for each college. So, if you go to the next slide, Adam, we'll see what we did for the Harvard College of Business. So, same thing. And specifically with the photos, we wanted to highlight not just photos from the business school, but ones where they have partnerships with the College of Architecture. Because while there are new initiatives that are going to be happening in the building, it's also going to be a home for permanent programs that are collaborations between the two colleges, like the Master of Real Estate Development and other real estate institutes. And so, that was really important when we were considering the photography and then we have here you'll see how we format a back cover I just took out our development officers information, but if you're interested in making a gift to Auburn University I'm happy to connect you with any of our development officers. And so, if you go to the next slide so, in addition to the print brochure so we only printed 250 I believe of the. printed professionally printed piece, so that our development officers could be. i'm so sorry, so that our development officers could share it pretty broadly with whomever might be interested, but if they had a donor who was really. wanted to see the detailed floor plans or really wanted to understand all of the naming opportunities we created a complimentary PDF that we saved and shared with them via box, so that they could print it out as they needed it. So we were able to save money. With. The initial print cost because we only printed so many of the. The the glossy printed brochures and then our development officers could print out the PDF as needed. And they kept up with the information about if something had been claimed or not so again, that was a way that we could make sure that information stayed current in this material, but it was not on our team to own that because that's not information that we have access to as it changes pretty quickly. I just put the first two floors here because it is six pages of floor plans and all four plans sort of look very similar, but if you're interested in it i'm happy to share it with you. And I think the last slide is just if anybody has any questions. Totally I will say that again with things like this. The numbers change, but the last I heard about it this directly. Now, that was a few months ago so i'm not sure if those numbers have changed, but I do know that. But i'm really pleased with it, our development officers were able to print out the PDF as needed. And they kept up with the information that we had so that was a way that we could make sure that information stayed current in this material, but it was not on our team to own that because that's not information that we have access to as it changes pretty quickly. Now, that was a few months ago so i'm not sure if those numbers have changed that's not data that I have easy access to get to. But i'm really pleased with it, our development officers and the leadership were very pleased with it. And we're going to be looking at using that model moving forward thinking about how do we make sure that we're making the best use of our resources and making sure that our development officers have all of the materials that they could use to answer donors questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll keep moving along and next we have our guests the Raiders campaign from Everglades school. Hi everyone i'm Erica Valdez i'm the associate director of annual giving and volunteer management at Ransom Everglades school in Miami, Florida. And we're excited to share our guest orator which was a submission for a digital campaign, we have had a great time with this so we're really happy to see it get some recognition, so this was a social media game that was thought up in 2023. To increase the engagement on our social media account so through our office we run the alumni Instagram account, and so, although we do have the opportunity to post sometimes on the main school account, I would say the flexibility is higher on the alumni Instagram account. So we want more followers in that account, and this was a good way to start pushing more content through there the week of our giving day. So if you go to the next slide I can give you an overview of what the game was we called it guess the Raider and it's basically think of like charades we had our school mascot. pretend to be different people on campus so people that were well known so since this is our alumni Instagram. Our first year especially we tried to highlight faculty members that have been here a long time or staff members that would you know that alumni who graduated, a while ago would know who they are as well as current parents or current students. And so we filmed everything in one day. Luckily we have a videographer on campus that was able to help us and so we look at all the teacher schedules, we coordinate between our upper school or middle school campus, and in one day we get all of the filming done it's they're very short. I would say each clip is about maybe five to 10 seconds long so we get a lot of content throughout the day we get pictures videos that we're able to use for additional content. And so the first year we introduced it the week before our giving day so we had I want to say maybe 10 to 12 faculty or staff members that were highlighted and so we had a whole week to release about two to three rounds, each day, leading up to our And, again, apart from highlighting our faculty and staff. It was, it was great because, you know, different faculty and staff members represent different designations so we were able to tie it back to giving and back to the different opportunities of why you're supporting the school on our giving day. Go to the next slide. This gives you just some of the statistics for our Instagram account of the highlights we you know we had a 55% increase in our accounts reach there was so much more engagement within the account. And each year so we did it in 2023 we've done it now in 2024 we're going to, we're getting ready to do it again this year, and each year in that week we increase our followers we get higher engagement. It's now turned into something that everyone looks forward to this year we've even had faculty requests to be highlighted so we're really excited about the popularity that it's gaining. You go to the next slide. This is just kind of showing you how we release this so we have a teaser video that's the first post that we made before the game even starts we post that now as a real and then we share it to our stories to kind of get people excited. Last year, we even had so we had our Raider had a change in look, and so we use that to our advantage. Also we were able to our first email for Raider Day of Giving was sent as the Raider, saying that he was back and the game was back to make sure to follow us so it was a soft ask, letting them know that it was coming in. And if you go to the next slide. This is just to give you an idea of what the stories look like each day. And so, since everything is in stories are 24 hours, every round will post the same first two images showing the rules, and one of the rules are you have to follow us in order to be able to win one of the prizes. So, each round has a short video, then we post a clue where everyone can make their guesses. And then on the next day will announce the actual answer of who the Raider was, and then we announced the winner with that too. So again, just because one of the things is to follow us they have to follow us to be able to be eligible for those prizes, and the prizes, again they weren't it was nothing major was just swag from our school so it could be a mug, a t shirt, things that we already had on campus or first year our bookstore donated a lot of the prizes so we tried to involve different areas as well. So if you go to the next slide and I included this QR code in case anyone would like to see our stories and you scan this it'll take you to Instagram. And you can see our, our stories from last year so you can get an idea but what we really think is great about this idea is that it's really easy to replicate, even if you don't have again we're lucky that we do have a videographer on campus who's been able to help us he helps put together the teaser video, but it's something that you can do with your phone. Canva is great for, you know, helping you put those stories together and getting them ready to just post. And so, this was we've just had a really good time with this. Thank you. Any questions. We'll now go over to Guilford. Thank you. And hello everyone. My name is Dina Marshall. I am the advancement operations finance manager here at Guilford College. We are a private liberal arts school in Greensboro, North Carolina, roughly about over 1000 students or so. And so in 2023 Guilford College's Office of Advancement Alumni Relations developed a new approach to the college's traditional annual giving day, which we entitled Guilford madness. This idea was to be a span on college basketball's March madness marketing plan. And so our giving day which is normally just one day we extended it to a three day campaign. And that encouraged all of our guild argue 40 and says we call them and friends to inform invest in involved. And so allow me a moment, as I forgot to share my slide. We were nominated for our videos in the work that we did and so basically just to kind of hype everything up, we went ahead and it was a team of three of us that came up with it myself, Stephanie Walton and Sarah sequence. And we partnered up with other people on the campus to come up with this whole concept of Guilford madness. And so just to kind of show you. To accomplish this we focused on the potential angles of March madness to entice Guilfordians and the rest of the college to kind of increase our participation in designing this video. We made conscious efforts of just making sure that we pulled in marketing for both March madness, as well as the interview themes and broadcast and just kind of made it like a real March madness feel to it. And so I have prepared for you I have some of the videos that we showed just to kind of give you a feel of the different things that we did and I'll just kind of talk you through as we go through them. And so the very first one that we did was just kind of a teaser which we put out. This was our save the date but just showing you the video work that went along with it. So, that was the teaser graphic that went along with it. Everything that you're seeing as far as the design work and the videography and everything. All of that was done in house. We had a very small budget to work with. And so it was just pretty much a lot of the people on the team that work with it to make it happen. And so the video that I will play next. This is our first official. This is the full video. In this where we kind of explain to people how the overall Guilford madness works and once you see the video you just got to see everything that goes with it. Thank you so much for all your support. Guilford Madness is quickly approaching and it's important for all Guilfordians to rally together like never before on March 27th through the 29th. Can we get some questions? Yes. What is Guilford Madness? That's a great question. Guilford Madness is a spin on March Madness and Guilford's annual day for Guilford. That's awesome. Who all can participate in the madness? Are we going to be able to support our favorite areas? Definitely. All Guilfordians can participate and we have some amazing teams competing for your support. Let's talk about the madness that's sweeping the nation. All right, Stephanie, walk us through. No problem, Craig. So Guilford Madness is made up of three divisions. The Nathan Hunt division represented the college's annual funds. The Levina Curry division represented some of Guilford's current initiatives and the Levi Coffin division represented the people's choice. Now, unlike March Madness, no team will be eliminated. However, we are encouraging friendly competition and counting on Guilfordians to support the areas they value most. Not only will teams benefit from your generosity, but so will the college. Each team has a goal. We'll also be working together in the division building. Guilfordians can donate to their favorite teams and help by spreading the word. Now, once a division reaches its goal, they will unlock a challenge that will be divided equally amongst all the teams. Talk about a nice reward. Now that's Guilford Madness. It's all about Guilfordians coming together, giving together, and supporting the college they love. It's a gift. We owe it all to our fans. Yeah! I've just never seen them that engaged before. That's crazy. Guilford Madness! 72 hours, baby! That's right, Craig. 72 hours. So how much do you really think Guilfordians can raise? Well, I've learned never underestimate a Guilfordian. What? So like 300,000? 500,000? Stephanie, 1 million? Oh, this is so much fun. Thank you guys for giving. I cannot wait for Guilford Madness! So as you can see, we tried to just make it very light, and it was just a change. Pretty much all of our other giving days up until then have been more traditional, you know, when we're sending out emails and everything. So we wanted to just try to change it up some this year. Also incorporated with it, we partnered with our Rachel's, this is a shop that we have here, excuse me, here on our campus. Whereas we had a signature drink, we had a signature burger as well, and those were all included in challenges. And then we also had where we were, I'm sorry, I'm trying to get my presentation up. We also had where we were also making sure that it was service as well. We didn't just want it to be all finance focused, we wanted to increase overall engagement. So we had certain service projects incorporated with it. That was also something that helped make it different from before, whereas before it was just all, you know, focusing on finance. So we incorporated other videos to go along with those, which are short as well. And I will just show a few of those that we have here. This is Deja Washington and the Quaker Man reporting live from Rachel's Rose Cottage here at Guilford College. Guilford Madness is March 27th through 29th, and we have some cool things happening on campus to get Guilford into the spirit. Make sure to stop by Rachel's to purchase the Guilford Madness Red Velvet Frappe drink. It will only be available March 27th through 29th, so don't miss out on this limited time special. This is Steve McQueen reporting live from the Grill here at Guilford College. And for Guilford Madness, we are introducing a burger like never before. Stop by the Grill on March 27th through 29th to purchase the Guilford Madness Burger topped with jalapenos, hot sauce, and pepper jack cheese. It will only be available March 27th through 29th, so don't miss out on this limited time offer. This is Elizabeth Fries reporting live from the Quaker Cupboard here at Guilford College. From now until March 29th, as a part of Guilford Madness, we are encouraging Guilfordians to help support the Quaker Cupboard and Quaker Closet on campus by donating food items, hygienic products, clothing, and shoes in good condition. Donations can be dropped off at Founders Hall and Hendricks Hall. You will see designated bins for each donation option. We look forward to your support and hope you join us in making an impact during Guilford Madness. This is Logan Weaver reporting live from the Grill here at Guilford College. If you can't tell already, we're getting ready for an epic event happening tomorrow. On Wednesday, March 29th, we'll be hosting our final countdown event from 1130 a.m. to 330 p.m. Join us as we celebrate the final day of Guilford Madness. We'll be having games like Hoop Fever, Skee-Ball, Air Hockey, snacks, giveaways, and much more. Trust me, you don't want to miss out on this event. Nice! And so, the response to it was great. It definitely, we saw the whole spirit of the college just kind of pick up. This was just a little summary, instant replay as we called it, as far as what happened for us. With the overall amount that we raised and the involvement, it really picked up here at the college for all of this. As you can see, over a thousand gifts, 39 percent alumni. 183 first-time donors, faculty gifts, student gifts. And all of this was a huge increase from what we had seen previously. So, we received a huge response to that. And it's been something that we've been able to continue going forward. The following year, we just kind of, we just keep building off of the theme going forward. The following year, the Madness returns. It was less video intensive. This go around. But we did incorporate other videos with it. We did a campaign, whereas we had some of our alum parents and friends of the college to submit their own videos, to which we had this on our social media as well. This one went well also. As you can see from the initial year that we started, our numbers are increasing. This Guilford Madness theme, we have been able to see a huge response from also Guilfordians as well as the friends of the community. And so, this year, we're getting geared up. We're kind of leaning towards an AI feel of it. We're kind of tapping into that using some AI-generated graphics. This is an AI-generated graphic of our gym, actually. And so, just kind of building off of that, and that will be more of the theme, but still keeping the March Madness theme. Concept going. And so, this concludes. I'm open for any questions. Thank you so much. Paul, let's see if there's any questions for any of our presenters today. Hearing none, I just want to thank everybody for joining us. I want to thank our presenters that we showcased four really amazing projects submitted and were awarded, of course, the Grand Gold Award with District 3, or with KACE, excuse me. Thank you all so much. I hope to see some of you in Orlando for the District 3 conference, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

education campaigns

student engagement

integrated marketing

philanthropic support

social media engagement

fundraising strategies

digital platforms

strategic communication