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Book a DemoOur New Partnership with mStoner: Kicking Things Off at CASE III in Orlando
February 23, 2015 - by Peter Evans
When I look back on the past year, it’s exciting to see the progress we’ve made in the higher education market. We now have a growing roster of universities and colleges throughout North America using ExpertFile to better promote their faculty experts.
Last spring at SUNYCUAD, the annual SUNY marketing conference, we sat down with one of our advisors, Mark Greenfield to brainstorm potential partners for higher education. One name that was at the top of Mark’s list was mStoner. Based in St. Louis and Chicago, mStoner has developed brand strategies for some of the most prestigious schools in the world. Their digital teams have also designed and implemented hundreds of university and college websites sites – many of these are highly complex projects involving leading CMS (Content Management System) platforms with over 10,000 pages. mStoner is undisputedly a market leader in strategy, technology content and digital design work for higher education. In short, their “Kung Fu is strong.”
When the firm’s Founder & President, Michael Stoner, walked over to our booth in Portland at the Higher Ed Web Conference last fall it marked the start of something wonderful. It all started with a demo. Michael carefully checked out the ExpertFile platform from the front-end design to the back end content editing and analytics. We talked about customer requirements in the higher education market in the context of key departments such as marketing, recruitment and advancement. We also talked about how we could work together to improve the way schools promote their faculty experts, driving brand reputation and online engagement with a range of audiences such as media, alumni and prospective students. It was obvious that his comments on the design of our product and business model suggested there might be a wonderful opportunity for us to join forces.
Since that first meeting, Deanne Taenzer, our head of Business Development and myself have kept the conversation going with Michael and his team over the past few months at a range of meetings across the globe in Vermont, Austin, Chicago and Dublin. I also had the pleasure of presenting to the entire mStoner team at the company meeting in St. Louis. It was there I met the firm’s other principals, Voltaire Santos Miran and Rob Cima. Their collective insights and enthusiasm about ExpertFile solidified our mutual excitement in working together.
Our two companies have already begun to work together, starting officially at CASE III in Orlando last week where we announced our partnership and jointly hosted a breakfast session for a number of higher education marketing and advancement professionals. It was a great start to what promises to be another exciting year.