KGI Earns Four CASE District VII Awards of Excellence

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District VII awarded Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) with four Awards of Excellence in early February. KGI has won 14 CASE awards since 2017.

The 2021 awards include two silver awards for “Digital advertising increases summer enrollment” and a bronze each for “kgi.edu v2.0 improvements” and “New CRM implementation and team training.”

“CASE awarded KGI four awards for our teams’ impressive work and results during the past year,” KGI Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Kelly Esperias said.

“I thank our team for their daily commitment to hard work and excellence.”

KGI’s submission “Digital advertising increases summer enrollment” won silver in two categories: 1. Marketing—Marketing on a Shoestring and 2. Digital Communications—Social Media—Student Recruitment.

After KGI decided to shift its summer programs online for 2020, the marketing team collaborated with admissions to launch an extensive marketing and outreach plan to expand the summer enrollment. Digital advertising served as the primary channel, while the two groups also put additional resources in direct mail, email campaigns, and referral marketing. Of the 858 summer students, 97 found KGI through digital ads on Facebook and Instagram. Within that group, 73 students will be part of admissions’ future pipeline (graduation year of 2021 or later).

KGI’s bronze award for “kgi.edu v2.0 improvements” was in the category of Digital Communications—Websites (Institutional). KGI’s website received enhancements that included more streamlined navigation, consolidation of the navigation menu layers, design updates to pages, and improved search engine optimization.

The bronze award for “New CRM implementation and team training” was in the Advancement Services—Advancement Services: Improvement category. KGI’s advancement team migrated to a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. This transition and successful training program were created in partnership with KGI’s corporate partnerships department. The new training program made it possible for everyone on the team to be at the same knowledge base. In contrast to before, only one person on the team knew the database well enough, which resulted in the team relying on that one person to do everything for the department.

CASE District VII annually recognizes excellence in the district, including California, Arizona, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands, and Utah. The CASE District VII Awards of Excellence showcase best practices in alumni relations, fundraising, advancement services, special events, and communications.