Transitioning Our Digital Communication Strategy for a Streamlined User Experience

Featured in the University of Tennessee Division of Student Life Impact Report published in January 2025.

Over the past few decades, as with everywhere in our society, the amount of content on UT websites exploded exponentially. This rapid growth kept pace with our competitors and was best practice at the time. But as more and more engagement with campus audiences has shifted, UT websites are now the university’s primary marketing tool. In spring 2022, UT communications professionals across campus began a digital transformation that would recast overwhelming and fragmented website messages to a streamlined content strategy with current and prospective students’ needs at the forefront of the conversation.

Today, web users expect to find the information they’re looking for in one quick search, within the top few search results, and within one click. To meet these expectations, we need to whittle down the amount of information into digestible, targeted messages that support our marketing strategy.

To do this, UT laid out a multi-year plan involving three key tactics: move content for faculty and staff into internal spaces, simplify web content and build stronger connections between various UT sites, and use what we know about audiences to share relevant information with them directly.

Intranet

An intranet is a private network used to store information internal to an organization. At UT, we’re building multiple levels of intranet spaces, including spaces for all UT staff as well as spaces for individual divisions and departments. Within the Division of Student Life, Student Life Communications is leading the effort to move information and resources that are intended for employees into these intranet spaces.

Removing internal-facing content from public-facing websites means less information for web visitors to comb through, producing site architecture that is tailored to prospective and current students and their families. This means it’s easier for all Vols to find answers, get enrolled, and stay enrolled at UT.

Multisite

A multisite is a collection of websites that share common features and functionality. Behind the scenes, sites on a multisite are connected like branches to a tree trunk. If UT is the trunk, then the Division of Student Life is a large bough extending out from the trunk, and Student Life departments are twigs extending from the bough.

While it is slightly more complex, this analogy demonstrates why transitioning web content to this model improves the user experience by building connections between our sites that make them easier to find. When all of the individual departments across the university are linked together, search engines can more easily recognize that the information within them is related.

Building these connections between sites improves UT’s domain authority, taking the burden off of the user to know where they need to navigate for answers. An organic search is far more likely to produce the desired information with a multisite approach.

An example of how this plays out may be if a user searches “UTK Housing.”

Marketing Cloud and Salesforce CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms help large organizations manage interactions with their customers or clients. For many years various areas of UT have used CRMs to organize data about students and reach out to them for many different purposes. This decentralized approach, however, can contribute to a disjointed experience for the student.

UT is now working to centralize all student data into a CRM called Salesforce, one of the largest companies in the world. This centralized approach will allow all data about a student to be considered as a way to identify target audiences, enhancing the ability to craft messages that are customized for individual students. Rather than broadcasting messages to large groups of students who may or may not be interested in the topic, UT communicators will be able to identify students who have expressed interest through prior engagement with related programs or by self-electing to receive more information about the topic at hand. This approach will reduce the information overload of the general student population and elevate the relevance of messages students receive.

There are many reasons a student might choose to attend UT: for the championship sporting experience, the nationally-recognized academic programs, or the small community feel in a diverse metropolitan area. We have an opportunity to make the best of a first impression by providing a simple, easy, rewarding digital experience to prospective students and their families. By reducing the amount of information on our websites, building stronger connections between our sites, and tailoring the messages we send out, future Vols can find what they need when they need it.