Why Higher Ed Needs Conversational Marketing Now: An Interview with Mark Kilens from Drift

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About the Episode

There's a problem with the way we've been taught to market and sell-it no longer matches how buyers actually buy things.

Think about it-when you're not talking to someone face-to-face, where do most of your conversations happen?

Yup, that's right-they happen over messaging channels like iMessage, Messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, etc.

People love communicating with messaging because it's fast, easy, and actually feels like a conversation-but most business (and enrollment teams!) are still forcing people to jump through endless hoops before a conversation can ever take place (looking at you, inquiry form!).

Enter chatbots and conversational marketing.

On this week's episode, Zach sits down with Mark Kilens, the VP of Content and Community at Drift (the first ever conversational marketing platform), to discuss how colleges and universities can attract, engage, and delights prospects, applicants, and students with conversational marketing strategies.

Tune in for an incredibly inspiring and insightful chat about the future of student recruitment and strategic enrollment marketing - and why conversational marketing is especially pertinent for this next academic year.

People in this episode

Host

Seth Odell

Seth Odell is Founder and CEO of Kanahoma, the fastest growing digital marketing agency in higher education, and host of The Higher Ed Pulse.

Mallory Willsea

Mallory Willsea is a strategist and consultant working at the intersection of higher education.

Interviewee

Mark Kilens

Mark Kilens is VP of Content and Community at Drift where he leads the blogging, editorial, social, and events teams. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP and founder of HubSpot Academy. As an enthusiastic former customer, Mark joined HubSpot in 2010 as an Inbound Marketing Consultant, where he spent two years working with thousands of HubSpot customers to scale their inbound strategy. From there, he went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, and in doing so, educated millions of people and created a best-in-class hub for marketing and sales content and training. When he’s not at Drift, Mark enjoys plenty of steak and lobster, a round of golf or two, and loves being on snow or in the ocean.

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