What higher ed can learn from e-commerce

Higher ed has been borrowing the wrong lessons from e-commerce for years. "Buy Now" becomes "Apply Now." Single-page checkout becomes a stripped down landing page. Friction-free browsing becomes a simplified nav. On the surface it looks like progress, but underneath, these are cosmetic transplants from an industry that looks nothing like ours. E-commerce sells low-cost, low-commitment products to impulse buyers. Higher ed asks people to make one of the most expensive, emotionally loaded decisions of their lives. The tools, tactics and mindsets that work for one don't automatically transfer to the other. This session peels back the curtain on how e-commerce and enterprise marketing teams actually operate, not what their sites look like, but how they think. You'll see real marketing plans, real measurement frameworks and real engagement strategies, then we'll work through how to translate that methodology into higher ed contexts where it genuinely applies.