Speakers' Corner - Day 3

Day 3, Friday, May 28, 2004
How to catch them

Wolfgang Tischer

Wolfgang is head of Iternet/IT Services at the MFG Agency for Media and IT Development in Stuttgart, and works as a consultant for the design of complex internet portals. He is a member of the faculty of the Department of Media Science at Tübingen University and publisher of www.literaturcafe.de, a site that has won many awards and is recognised by IT and media professionals as one of the best worldwide. Succeed online: How to Catch Them Your website is there to let the whole world know about your business. But how does the world get to know about your website and how will new customers be able to find it? To make sure your site gets noticed, registration in search engines and publishing paid links or free links are only two options from a variety of choices to be considered. Wolfgang will discuss recent developments in search engines. He will present guidelines enabling you to position your website to maximum advantage. Wolfgang will also discuss the present situation of online advertising. Do newsletters still make sense now that there is so much spam mail? To complete the review, current developments in methods of electronic payment will be evaluated.

Cor Vink

Cor is Managing Director of Thomson Education Direct Europe, with branches in the UK and the Netherlands, and acts in an advisory capacity in Australia. In late 2003, Cor worked in an advisory capacity with U21G (an online MBA partnership between Thomson and 16 Singapore-based universities); he also advised the US branch on the 2004 strategic plan. Boost your business with incentives 10,000 additional enrolments just by offering incentives! That's just not on. Or is it? Could it be that if you gave away a useful, low-cost, desirable modern article, you'd get more leads and a better conversion rate - and so more students with lower marketing costs? Cor will give real, practical examples of what Thomson Education Direct use in the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia to enrol more than 350,000 students per year.

Bernd Schachtsiek , M.LL.

Bernd studied law at Cologne University and law and business administration at Münster University. From 1977 to 1999 he was Managing Director of Studiengemeinschaft Darmstadt (SGD) and from 1984 to 1999 President of the German Association for Distance Learning (DFV). From 1996 to 2000 he was Chancellor of the Darmstadt Private Distance College of Higher Professional Training and has been President of the European Association for Distance Learning EADL (formerly AECS) since 1991. How to increase enrolments in your main market. Multibranding - a case study Giving new brand names to the same courses in the same market can help companies grow. Bernd will explain how and why this works, and what results can be achieved, as well as the risks and limitations. His experience is based on one of Europe's largest distance learning operations, working in Germany under nine different brands.