Siena’s director of digital strategy threw out the book on college enrollment management marketing and wrote a new one – which led to an award from the Albany Business Review.
Allison Turcio ’06 was named one of the business weekly’s “40 Under 40” honorees. The annual awards listing recognizes young business and community leaders in the Capital Region.
This year's class of honorees was selected by Business Review staff and an advisory committee from more than 250 nominations.
“It's an honor to have been chosen as a '40 under 40.' What's even more important to me was the fact that my colleagues nominated me for it,” said Turcio. “I can't think of a bigger compliment than that, and I am grateful for this opportunity to represent Siena and our team.”
Turcio manages Siena’s marketing campaigns, web and social media strategy, a digital content team and the execution of an integrated, data-driven communications plan.
“She instinctively understood the impact digital media would have on student recruitment before most other colleges even had it on their radar,” said Ned Jones, vice president for enrollment management.
Jones said that thanks to Turcio’s efforts, Siena is registering more potential students than ever before at admissions events such as open houses, design your own days, overnights, and major-specific meet-ups.
Turcio develops content for a variety of platforms, and works in tandem with Siena’s partner agency to create marketing collateral material. She created Siena’s first Facebook page and thanks to her selection of content and visuals it has more than 35,000 regularly engaged followers, exceptionally high for a liberal arts college of this size. She played an integral role in relaunching Siena’s website in 2014 and again in 2018.
“She is a thought leader not only at Siena and in the Capital Region, but in the entire industry of digital marketing for higher ed,” said Jones. “Fellow digital marketers in her field reach out to her for advice and input on a regular basis. Her presentation with a colleague last fall at a national higher education marketing conference received rave review from attendees, with evaluation comments such as, “This made me realize why I got into marketing in the first place.’”