What medium works best for different Adult Prospects?

I find this an interesting topic. When I started Market Mapping plus back in 1990, one of my mantras over all these years has been "Track response". Why? If you don't track where your prospects and students are coming from, how do you know where to allocate resources?

Yes, 26 years later I keep asking clients "what gives you the best response?" and they have no idea. The opportunities for spending your marketing dollars are expanding significantly. In the past, you had direct mail (postal) as one of the only and primary methods of advertising. Since then the market has expanded to include Billboards, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, the CAS Devices (like the Amazon Echo) which are new technologies that dilute your marketing budget. But how do you decide which method to fund?

I had a client many years ago who hired me to evaluate their Adult Student marketing program. I evaluated all of the methods of advertising, told them to start keycoding ads/direct mail pieces to identify where a lead came from. After the first quarter of testing this new coding system I had a meeting with the VP of Enrollment Management and asked him which methods were the most effective? He gave me his top 3. Of his top 3, there were zero leads from the top two. The #1 method of advertising was direct mail postal postcards. Marriage mail and newspaper insert programs generated nothing in terms of response. So they reallocated their budget to become more effective in their marketing efforts.

The ultimate question is "How do we track all of these marketing programs?". The key is integrating some method of knowing where a lead came from. For printed marketing materials a user code to identify the source of the lead, and in some cases, the source of the name. Where did it come from? What list? For Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter use a unique code to identify where a lead got motivated to contact you and enroll.

There is an easier way to track campaign success. For every Adult Student who enrolls, give them a short survey. Ask them what got them to enroll to get their degree. This is the best and easiest method of finding out what's working.

If you need help setting up a quality tracking program give me a call. David Fant, Market Mapping plus Inc. at 616-956-7129, or write me at david@marketmappingplus.com.

What makes a strong offer?

The first questions is, what is an offer? We all know the answer to that so I won't go to the Dictionary to give you the formal definition of an offer. Yes, is the word "offer" the right word? The offer states what you would like someone to do. Whether you are selling toothpaste, a car, a college education the offer creates the groundwork for a prospective student to decide to move forward and actually buy.

Remember the offer is the first step in the sales process. Your goal is to get people to buy, not browse and "kick the tires" so to speak. So the offer has to have some serious incentive to get someone to move forward. Let's look at a couple of examples.

You are selling a tube of toothpaste for $2.95/tube but the offer is $.50 off the retail price. The savings is 17%. Not an insignificant savings.

You are going to buy a car, It's retail value is $15,000, you offer a $1,500 discount plus a trade-in guarantee of $1,000 for a total savings of $2,500. The savings for this offer is 16.6%.

Now, you send out a mailer, offering a student a degree completion offer with a total projected cost of $20,000 and you offer to waive the application fee (estimated at $75). The total savings for this offer is .37%. Pretty pathetic when you compare your offer to offers people see every day in the overall marketplace.

People have come to expect something for their investment. Whether it's toothpaste, a car, or an education. I find, that most Higher Education institutions don't recognize the fact that to attract more students (note, I did not say prospects) they have to give them something that they consider valuable! And keep in mind, that doesn't have to be money. Meeting the needs of a busy family, a tiring job, a busy work schedule and around hobbies and other areas that conflict with them completing their degree can be more valuable than a cash outlay. However, it's YOUR job to translate the intangible benefits of your institution into a strong offer.

One negative example comes to mind. I have a good friend, single mother, child under the age of 10, who was working on completing her degree. She registered for a class, started taking it, and due to a work/child scheduling problem missed two classes. When she returned to class after her mini crisis she was told by the professor, she had been dropped. She knew, going in, that she was only allowed one absence/semester. Now, this may have been a totally unreasonable professor (by the way, it was a required class) yet, had the institution had a resource to help her work through that issue this could have been a huge offer to make. We have an office to help you with a flexible schedule. Had this institution done that she would have remained in school or that class she would have felt wonderful. As it was, she finished her other class, dropped out and completed her degree at another local institution.

On the other hand, a positive example. A Midwest University wanted to increase enrollment to their degree completion program. After three email deployments, 75,000 each they ended with 112 new REGISTERED students. How? They offered each of them a $1,000 scholarship, no strings attached. It's the offer and how you communicate the offer to your client that makes the difference.

My recommendation is, don't think institutionally, think like a prospective student. What do they want and from there, create the best offer possible. The offer is what get's them to buy.

When did you last talk to one of your adult students?

When did you last talk to one of your adult students?

This is an interesting question that often goes unanswered. Why? Most of us are sitting in our offices, toiling away at each daily project given to us by our boss, a department head or some other project that is critical for our institution's success. We know there are adult education classes on campus (or on a nearby campus) and we know that there are students in those classes (after all, we in Marketing were instrumental in getting them there) yet, we rarely if EVER go talk to them! The excuses are many. "These are night classes, I have to be somewhere." or "What can they tell me? What would I ask them?" or maybe "I don't get paid any extra to stay late and track down these classes, talk to the professor, get permission to talk to a few of the students either before or after class, what a hassle!"

Well, let me tell you, you are missing a fabulous opportunity for some primary market research. Research that will answer any of the following questions:

·         Why did you decide to get your degree from XYZ University?

·         Was cost an issue to you?

·         Who influenced you in your decision to attend our school?

·         Have you had a good experience while attending classes here?

·         What were your expectations when you first started and what are they today?

·         Is there anything specific that you can tell me that made our institution stand out in your mind when looking for a (degree completion, advanced degree) program?

Imagine what you could do with all of that information! Say a majority of the students reference location as a key motivator. If there are a few students who have that point of view, I guarantee there are others who have the same issue. What if they say "fear" was a roadblock to going back to school. Fear of failing. Fear that they will be the oldest person in the class. Fear of not having enough time for work, class, family and hobbies. Ask them how they conquered their fear. Learn from them.

As with direct marketing, each mailing is a new test. What are you testing? If you don't know the answers to the above questions (and those are the tip of the iceberg) you have NO idea how to market your institution. Ask, learn, grow, test new ideas. That's what direct marketing is all about. The ability to test new ideas, new thoughts, new markets. But without a sound basis for the testing you're just wasting dollars and time.

Focus on learning as much as you can about your audience, not only demographically but also psychographically. Get out of your office. Walk around campus, set up a routine EACH semester to visit at least three different adult education classes and talk to the students. If you feel up to it and have the budget (ok, stop laughing now) invite a class to dinner on marketing. A small investment in a few meals will reap huge rewards with marketing success.

Contact David@marketmappingplus.com for more information on how to identify and reach your target markets.

Targeted E-mail campaigns are the key to success

I have been running a number of E-mail campaigns for Universities across the country. An interesting phenominon has occured in that the smaller the campaign, the higher the response. The key has become how to focus on the EXACT market segment you want and then focusing your message on those prospects. I have recently gotten over 50% open rates and as high as a 32% click through rate for two schools on highly targeted campaigns which delivered over 1,200 new prospective students to these schools.

What are the keys to their success?

1) Their market segments they are reaching were very specific. RN's and MBA degree prospects.

2) They identified the benefits of attending their school over their competitors. BENEFITS, not FEATURES.

3) They know who their key competitors are, and focus on pointing out why they can exceed their competitors programs.

4) The message is simple, 5 or 6 bulleted points at the most.

You don't need to have a complex message filled with graphics and images. Keep it simple, to the point and those who have an interest will follow.

If you need to learn more about E-mail marketing and prospect development contact us today and we will be happy to help you acheive your admissions goals.

David Fant
Owner
Market Mapping plus LLC
David@marketmappingplus.com

E-mail campaigns designed for success

We have been doing a number of e-mail campaigns for clients of late and always hear the same question. "We have over 800 or 1000 click throughs but don't see anyone responding. Why?" The answer is mulitfaceted but has two fundamental answers.

First, prospects are used to seeing a message more than once, particularly for something that is time intensive or potentially expensive. They need an incentive to take the next step and give you their information for follow-up. Basically, what this means is that you don't just want to send a message out using e-mail and hope for the best, but you need to give some incentive to complete the form with their name and contact information for follow-up. Remember, you want THEM to select you to be their school of choice to complete their education.

What this means is, multiple deployments should be considered for the maximum response. Give them a STRONG reason to contact you and register, which means a discount on the first semester's tuition, discount on books (don't give them a sweatshirt, or travel coffee mug), it's insulting considering what you are asking them to spend on their further education. Give them something of substance to convince them to learn from you.

Second, and most importantly, use a unique code or process to identify who is applying. If you offer a discount on tuition, use a discount code (for example, AE1020 may reference Adult Education 10/20/10 campaign. That way you know the source of the new student. Make this unique for EVERY campaign.So, if you do three deployments over 2.5 weeks, the first may be AE102010, the second AE102610 and the third AE103110. That way you will be able to track performance by deployment.

As an example, here are some actual numbers from a client who did a campaign like the one described above.

Each of these deployed 75,000 e-mails, spread over six days.

Deployment 1
   Opens 13,471 or 17.9%
   Click Throughs 1015 or 7.53% of the opens
   Confirmed registrations 4

Deployment 2 - 2 days later
   Opens 16,004 or 21.3%
   Click Throughs 1855 or 11.59% of opens
   Confirmed registrations 33 new students

Deployment 3 - 4 days later
   Opens 17855 or 23.8%
   Click Throughs 2280 or 12.76% of opens
   Confirmed registrations 75

They used a unique registration/discount code for each deployment and offered a discount on tuition for this campaign. The acheived 112 new students from this campaign and are now rolling out this program for every recruitment semester.

Learn how a program like that can assist YOUR institution. Contact us today for a count and quote.