Enrollment, Engagement, and Donations: How Higher Education Can Improve Its Grades with Marketing Automation Software

Transcription

1 $ Enrollment, Engagement, and Donations: How Higher Education Can Improve Its Grades with Marketing Automation Software

2 Introduction If you re responsible for marketing in higher education, you face fierce marketplace competition and, more likely than not, growing budget pressures. According to research by Noel-Levitz, the majority of fouryear private institutions said their recruiting/admissions budgets were either declining or staying the same. To make matters worse, Moody s Investors Service predicts a less-than-rosy outlook for US higher education in 2014: Heightened competition for government funds, donors, and students, combined with pressure to increase compensation and invest in programs and facilities will result in continued deterioration of financial performance. While higher education marketing budgets are being slashed, traditional programs are being threatened by a growing interest in MOOC, or massive open online courses. At the same time, consumers are increasingly turning toward digital channels for information gathering, as well as for personalized communications and interactions. And everyone, from your future students to your seasoned alumni, is overwhelmed by the marketing messages and advertisements bombarding them at every turn. In light of these trends, traditional marketing strategies including direct mail and mass s are failing to prove effective at engaging the right students, alumni, and donors. Far too many schools are struggling to meet their enrollment, retention, and alumni and donor goals. A survey of college and university admissions directors by CUnet shows that more than half of higher education institutions did not meet their enrollment goals in

3 Introduction In this ebook, we ll cover how marketing, admissions, recruiting, and alumni offices in higher education can: Improve the results of your marketing outreach by engaging prospective, current, and former students Build enduring relationships with personalized messaging Create a strategy as sophisticated as the best-in-class marketers from every other industry Prove the impact of every marketing dollar spend, so that you can defend and protect your budget 3

4 Adopting a Modern Marketing Strategy Today s higher education organizations recognize the need to evolve their marketing techniques, and they re naturally looking for tools and best practices that will put them on par with the most advanced marketers from other industries. This modern marketing strategy needs to accomplish four primary goals for higher education organizations: We are experiencing a confluence of forces of change. All of this coming together is persuasive that business as usual is not in the future cards. We must innovate. American Council on Education President Molly Broad, Inside Higher Ed, Change from Within, March 4, 2013 $ Engage more prospective Speak meaningfully to Improve productivity for Optimize marketing students to drive more alumni to drive higher recruiters and alumni relations investments across recruiting, higher enrollments engagement and donations admissions and alumni These goals are largely self-explanatory with more prospective students and enrollments, schools can meet their basic goals for attendance and call upon a larger pool of alumni and donors. Engaged alumni build your school s community and networks, and are more likely to donate. Optimized investments in marketing and recruiting, along with increased productivity, means that no time or money is wasted with a limited enrollment window, higher ed organizations can t afford to waste either. 4

5 Adopting a Modern Marketing Strategy To achieve all these goals, you need to find new, cost-effective ways to develop relationships with prospective students, existing students, and alumni and donors. Nurturing and solidifying these relationships is critical to survival in today s highly competitive environment. As Christopher Hofmann, Director of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Extension, told The EvoLLLution, Successful higher education marketers of the future will need to increase their marketing competencies, both in traditional direct (or outbound) marketing as well as the newer inbound marketing, in which marketers focus on getting found by prospects. Higher ed organizations need to evolve their own competencies, to go beyond student/donor acquisition, and to build long-term relationships with students, alumni, and donors. Increasingly, higher education organizations are graduating to marketing automation platforms. 5

6 Engaging Students, Alumni, and Donors in a Hyper-Connected Age Your school is probably under pressure to increase retention, graduation, and post-graduation employment rates the measures that determine public funding and consumer interest and support. But marketing that attracts and recruits new students and maintains the loyalty of past students is no small task, especially when you re competing against thousands of other schools and fighting for attention in the age of information overload. It s particularly challenging to meet these goals when your marketing budget is being squeezed at every turn. 6

7 Engaging Students, Alumni, and Donors in a Hyper-Connected Age Building Enduring and Rewarding Relationships A growing number of higher education organizations are recognizing the need to build long-term, personal relationships with prospective students. These relationships start at least two years before students decide on a school, are used during enrollment to discourage dropouts and boost satisfaction, and then encourage graduating students to become active alumni. Many institutions are turning to marketing automation to support the relationshipbuilding process. The best marketing automation platforms make it possible to plan and orchestrate personalized marketing activities at scale meaning that you can engage ten thousand students as easily (and effectively) as you can engage one. This starts with advanced segmentation capabilities. The best segments involve some demographic and some behavioral information for example, you may create a segment such as juniors in high school who are interested in Marine Biology and have visited our website in the past 30 days. You can even trigger s to certain individuals based on specific activities, such as someone who requests information about a specific program. After you ve segmented out your database, the next step is personalization. People are much more likely to respond when shown a message that s relevant for them, whether it s in an or on your website. For example, when a high school student visits your site, they could see a message about applying to the school, versus when an alumni visits your site and sees a message about making a donation. 7

8 Engaging Students, Alumni, and Donors in a Hyper-Connected Age Embrace the New Marketing Era: Be Found Online 75% of year olds To truly engage students during the pre-enrollment, post-enrollment, and postgraduation phases, you need to meet them where they spend time online. More and more students are researching and locating colleges and universities online, and in general, consumers increasingly use the internet to gather information. According to Pew Research, 41% of all students use social networking sites 75% of year olds; 50% of year olds; and 30% of year olds). 50% of year olds 41% of all students use social networking sites According to Northeast University, 50% of its students apply to a degree program without having contacted the school or having attended an event. That means you need to publish, optimize and distribute content so it appears and is easily found in the channels where prospective students spend time online. This is commonly referred to as inbound marketing, and it s become a staple for modern marketers in every industry. 30% of year olds 8

9 Engaging Students, Alumni, and Donors in a Hyper-Connected Age Embrace the New Marketing Era: Be Found Online To successfully leverage inbound marketing in higher education, schools need to do more than send messages to an inbox. Ensure consistent, personalized messages on your website and landing pages. Deliver all your information in a compelling, digestible manner to mobile devices. And make sure your brand s being heard on social these networks will only gain in both credibility and reach. When it comes to inbound marketing, higher education institutes can power their efforts with marketing automation in the following ways: Higher education commoditization is forcing institutions to provide more information to prospective students, who are behaving more like customers than ever before. Julie Corwin, Executive Director of College Marketing and Communications, Northeastern University Optimize your Easily create landing Tap into social Track the activity of Track keyword website and landing pages that help you marketing applications, your website visitors, and rankings for you and pages to be viewed attract students, alumni, further spreading your customize the web and competitor schools to on any device and others to your content message s reach mobile experience for pinpoint areas each visitor for improvement 9

10 Engaging Students, Alumni, and Donors in a Hyper-Connected Age Mix it Up with the Power of Outbound Marketing Outbound marketing can get a bad rap in higher education, and it s true that some outbound efforts (like generic batch-and-blast s, or direct mail pieces sent to everyone who has taken the SAT) tend to be ignored. But outbound marketing can still be a powerful way to market your offerings. A growing number of schools are embracing the outbound marketing tactics that have proved so successful in other sectors. Trade shows and events, display ads and commercial spots, marketing all of these amplify your brand and help your inbound marketing grow. More importantly, marketing automation can coordinate these activities with your other inbound and outbound activities, increasing effectiveness. For example, organizations can implement campaigns that coincide with in-person events. In this case, the messaging of those campaigns might change when sent to someone who registered, attended, or didn t attend. And as we touched upon earlier, marketing automation allows organizations to segment much more effectively, ensuring that direct mail pieces and s are relevant, and increasing response rates. Lastly, one of the most important outbound channels in higher education is, and will continue to be, outbound phone calls. Recruiters, donation/engagement managers, and even existing students often make outbound calls to solicit donations or to engage prospective students. Calling the right person at the right time is as important as sending the right at the right time, and that s where marketing automation comes in. Most marketing automation platforms allow marketers to track and score behaviors and look for key indicators that someone is engaged. That information can be used to prioritize who should receive a phone call, and also ensures that the recipient is much more likely to engage. 10

11 Personalize for Maximum Engagement Higher education organizations speak to a diverse audience, with a diverse range of interests and problems. Every marketing activity should reflect its intended audience whether you re interacting with a prospective student still in high school, an enrolled student, an alumni, a donor or a parent. How close is the high school student to graduation? What degree did the alumni earn? Appealing to the interests of all those constituents requires tailored messaging in real time, which traditional programs simply aren t able to do. But if you re using a marketing automation platform, you can customize the entire experience for students those already in your database, and those who are still looking. Personalization tools allow you to adjust your website for each visitor, depending on their demographics and how they interact with your site. For example, a student who repeatedly visits your music program s webpage might be shown a video about that program during their next visit. Or you might chose to present a certain message to anyone logging in from your university s IP address say, a reminder about a school-wide offering or event. You can also send triggered communications via meant to encourage further engagement. For example, if the student views a web page about a certain graduate-level business class, you could information about similar classes, along with details about your entire graduate program. 11

12 Bringing it All Together We ve mapped out how higher education marketers might use marketing automation to engage prospective students. Jane is a prospective student still in high school. On the next page we ll explain how higher education organization can use marketing automation to engage Jane. Student acquisition is not a one-time event but a process. It is important to develop a multi-touch strategy that both captures the attention of nontraditional prospective students and creates a relevant conversation based on the data that you have collected about a prospect s specific goals and interests. Dan Sommer, President of Global Education, Zeta Interactive 12

13 Bringing it All Together Jane does a Google search for best premed programs. She clicks on a link to the university s landing page (created within their marketing automation platform) which highlights the university s pre-med programs. After reading a particularly well-written piece, she shares it on Facebook, and visits several other pages on the university s website. This triggers an Act Now for a recruiter, who calls Jane. Enticed by a cheat sheet called How to Choose a Pre-Med Program, on the landing page, Jane fills out a form to download the cheat sheet. Using his knowledge from the behaviors Jane has previously exhibited, the recruiter invites Jane to register for a campus tour. This triggers a welcome . Jane is added to the Pre-Med Marketing Program nurture stream. After Jane s tour, she s added to a followup campaign inviting her to apply, which she does! Over the next month, Jane receives two more s with links to other content relevant to prospective pre-med students, both of which she opens. 13

14 Bringing it All Together Of course, it s possible that Jane doesn t click any of the links in your , even if she s a prime candidate for your school. In that case, you d want to try to engage her the next time she s online on social networks (in the below example, the school has placed an ad on Facebook), or on any page that sells ad space. Using a marketing automation platform, this is easy to do. Segmentation allows universities to market to recent grads in one way, established professionals in a second way, and retirees in a third. You could even segment by the year (or decade) that an alum graduated from your school, referencing a relevant moment in the university s history or a graduate from the same class. Advanced marketing automation allows you incorporate the data you collect about alums to personalize your messaging. Let s say an alum attends a particular sporting event why not send an thanking them for attendance, and reminding them to buy tickets for the next game? Marketing automation also allows you to trigger communications based off of behaviors (like visiting your website) and demographics (like graduating during a particular year). For example, you might invite alums who have recently retired and have visited your website in the last month to consider mentoring a current student, or to volunteer. Using Marketing Automation to Increase Donations Marketing automation doesn t just help engage with prospective and current students there s also a strong use case for marketing automation and engaging with donors. Here are three ways marketing automation helps higher ed institutions increase their donations. 14

15 Evolving the Marketing Toolkit with Marketing Automation A growing number of higher ed institutions are adopting marketing automation software, and for good reason. With marketing automation software, you can: Create and launch campaigns without IT involvement. User-friendly marketing automation platforms put the power in the hands of marketers, enabling them to develop and go live with campaigns on their own. Listen for behaviors and respond with personalized information in real time. Track behavior on your website and social pages, helping you understand how a prospective student, alumni, or donor is interacting with your site. In other words, you can determine who is truly interested in your school even if they aren t responding to direct mail, haven t attended events and don t visit your table at college fairs. All marketing activities should produce quantifiable recruitment and donor opportunities in an efficient manner that stays within budgetary restraints. This is where marketing automation helps. Frost & Sullivan, Empowering Higher Education Relationship Management: It all Starts with Marketing Develop a 360-degree view of each student, alum or donor. As you monitor the activities of thousands of people online, you can score and rank them, taking into account their demographic info and behaviors on social sites and your site. Does this person match your ideal student profile? Is he from a country where you re trying to expand recruitment? You can assign different scores to these variables, and also assign thresholds once a person reaches a certain score, your recruiters and admission counselors will know to focus their limited resources on that promising student. 15

16 Evolving the Marketing Toolkit with Marketing Automation A growing number of higher ed institutions are adopting marketing automation software, and for good reason. With marketing automation software, you can: Engage across all stages of the student lifecycle. With marketing automation software, you can initiate and develop relationships over time, sending relevant information to students before they are enrolled, throughout their student career, and beyond. Doing so helps improve recruitment efforts, boosts the likelihood of students getting the most from their time at your school, and encourages alumni to hire recent grads and participate in alumni activities. Optimize marketing spend. In many schools, marketing activities occur in silos, with different efforts undertaken by different groups across different channels. With marketing automation software, you can report on your activities and their effectiveness, analyzing the campaigns and content that fuel engagement and conversion. This empowers you to identify which channels and campaigns are driving the best ROI. As a result, you can make smart decisions about your budget, focusing your marketing investments on activities that drive enrollments, and stronger alumni relationships and career center partners. Most importantly, you can clearly demonstrate the positive effects of increased budgets, or the negative effects of decreased budgets, protecting your budget from cuts when times get lean. Figures 2 and 3. Built-in reports allow you to analyze campaigns and channels to pinpoint the ones driving the best ROI 16

17 CASE STUDY: Algonquin College With campuses in Ottawa, Pembroke, and Perth, Algonquin College has over 19,000 full-time students and more than 36,000 continuing education students. Algonquin relied on batch-and-blast s to generate student awareness, but they wanted to create targeted campaigns that would truly speak to their large, diverse audience. Also, the college s administration had no way to tell what was working they had no system to track their marketing s effectiveness. The college knew it needed to modernize its interactions and communications, and that it needed to leverage new technology to do so. It selected Marketo s marketing automation solution for its ease-of-use, Salesforce integration, and ability to provide first-hand insight into how prospective students could progress through the website. Using Marketo, Algonquin was able to learn how their audience interacts with landing pages, uses their mobile application, and responds to marketing campaigns in real time. Algonquin was also able to move from basic nurturing to launching relevant, targeted content at the instant a prospect expresses interest. The college now understands what it takes to move prospective students from consideration to enrollment, expediting their conversions. 17

18 CASE STUDY: Algonquin College Last but not least, Algonquin noted that 70% of prospective students visit a college website from a mobile device. In response, Algonquin used Marketo to capture and nurture these potential students across mobile channels. As a result, Algonquin has increased click-through rates to over 10%, engaged with 71% more prospective students, and increased enrollment by 18%. At the same time, it has reduced its distribution and marketing costs. For example, print fulfillment costs alone have dropped by 50%. Engaged With 71% More Students 18% With a declining trend in student enrollment, the opportunity cost of not deploying a marketing automation solution is just too high to ignore. The reporting and analytics provided through Marketing Automation empowers higher education institutions with the intelligence to effectively nurture prospective students. The ability to use the intelligence gathered through the recruitment lifecycle is critical to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns that focus on relationship building. Enrollment Increase Frost & Sullivan, Empowering Higher Education Relationship Management: It All Starts With Marketing 18

19 Conclusion: Higher Education Must Move Beyond Mass Messages Education organizations like yours need to do more than send mass messages to students, alumni, and donors. Instead you need to deliver relevant, personalized communications across channels including web, , mobile and social for a consistent and engaging experience that increases the likelihood of conversion. With marketing automation, you can manage the entire educational funnel and student lifecycle from pre-enrollment and beyond. The software provides the range of capabilities you need to engage today s students, alumni and donors. It enables the required level of sophistication in today s hyperconnected world, automating all marketing workflows, tracking key performance indicators for web and interactions, and tapping into all available data to help you best engage, recruit, and motivate students, alumni and donors. 19

20 Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading marketing software for companies of all sizes to build and sustain engaging customer relationships. Spanning today s digital, social, mobile and offline channels, Marketo s customer engagement platform powers a set of breakthrough applications to help marketers tackle all aspects of digital marketing from the planning and orchestration of marketing activities to the delivery of personalized interactions that can be optimized in real-time. Marketo s applications are known for their ease-of-use, and are complemented by the Marketing Nation, a thriving network of more than 250 third-party solutions through our LaunchPoint ecosystem and over 40,000 marketers who share and learn from each other to grow their collective marketing expertise. The result for modern marketers is unprecedented agility and superior results. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA with offices in Europe, Australia and a joint-venture in Japan, Marketo serves as a strategic marketing partner to more than 3,000 large enterprises and fast-growing small companies across a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit marketo.com. marketo.com 2014 Marketo, Inc. All Rights Reserved Designed by SCORCH 20