Closing the Loop on Marketing for Higher Education. How to understand your prospective students entire conversion journey.

Transcription

1 C Closing the Loop on Marketing for Higher Education How to understand your prospective students entire conversion journey.

2 The Importance of Closing the Loop Digital technology has changed the rules of engagement with prospective students and redefined the college experience. From high school seniors to underemployed adults, students prefer technology over human connection when researching their school of choice. The traditional buying funnel of awareness, consideration and decision has become difficult for marketers to accurately track. Its possible for the purchasing funnel to look shortened from awareness to decision, leaving marketers with unanswered questions and knowing little about all the touch points during their journey. The digital age has forced higher education marketers to not only have an online presence but to accurately justify budget allocation. Therefore, marketers need to have a clear picture of the entire online and offline enrollment journey. This is where closing the loop comes into play. Closing the loop refers to connecting online and offline activities together for a holistic view of marketing activity. This is crucial for many industries, and unfortunately, it is still an issue plaguing the higher education landscape.

3 Understanding the Journey of Prospective Students Colleges have changed the way they interact with prospective students online. Through the use of strategies like content and inbound marketing, search engine marketing, and social media, colleges are creating content and digital experiences in an effort to drive more engagement with prospective students. The goal for this digital marketing effort is to drive conversion activity by increasing the amount of prospective students in the top of the conversion funnel (i.e. the number of prospective students visiting the site). From there, lead nurturing activities like s and phone calls are used to move prospective students through the conversion journey, ultimately towards completing an application. However, if you can t tie online behavior, like website visits and form completions, with offline activity, like phone calls or campus visits, it s impossible to close the loop on your marketing activities. And without that closed loop to your marketing efforts, difficult questions began to surface, like what exactly does a prospective student s journey to application look like? And what marketing channels are most effective at driving completed applications?

4 Closing the Loop Marketers within the higher education industry should then be concerned with closing the loop on their marketing activities. That is, tying online and offline activities together for a holistic view. You need to understand: Which touchpoint first brought a prospective student to your website How many different touchpoints the prospective student engaged with before applying How long it takes for the prospective student to apply after the first touchpoint interaction And which marketing channels were most effective at each of the different stages of the prospective student s journeys. This will allow colleges to calculate the holy grail of higher education marketing, a return on marketing investment (ROMI). Calculating an ROMI is crucial to securing more marketing funds to continue to improve marketing s reach and effectiveness. From Visit to Application Most colleges and universities today aren t advanced enough to close the loop and measure their online and offline activity together. This causes them to lose visibility from a prospect s online behavior with his or her offline behavior. Closing the loop on marketing requires the integration of visitors online and offline engagement. This is a technical process generally requiring work from an IT team to integrate multiple systems together, like your web analytics tool and your CRM system.

5 Below is an example of how this process might work, using the web analytics tool Google Analytics as an example: Most colleges and universities today aren t advanced enough to close the loop

6 Online + Offline = BETTER INSIGHTS Closing the loop on your marketing efforts is crucial to analyzing the entire prospective student journey, from visit to application. Let me give you an example: For most colleges and universities, once a student submits a lead generation form, the college will lose site of the student s behavior online. They know which digital channel drove the form completion, but this isn t the entire picture. Driving a form completion is different than driving an actual completed application. On submission of the form, the prospective student s information is sent to the CRM system, where an admissions team handles following up and scheduling any activities like a campus visit. This is generally where the college loses visibility into the prospect s journey. When the student does choose to complete the application process, they will generally use Google and a branded keyword (like State College ) or go directly to the site to fill out the form because they already know the college name or website URL. Without Closed-Loop Marketing:

7 With Closed-Loop Marketing If your online web analytics tool is not connected to your CRM, offline activity can t be tied with online activity to calculate an accurate digital marketing ROI. The colleges that can close the loop on a prospect s full journey can gain an advantage over the competition by truly leveraging the channels that are driving conversions. This can lead to several benefits, like: Increased enrollment Decreased cost of enrollment per applicant Increased return on marketing investment

8 LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW INFOTRUST CAN CLOSE THE LOOP ON YOUR MARKETING ACTIVITES Call us at or click on the button below to contact us today. CONTACT US TODAY