Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | October 30th, 2019

Data-driven marketing: It’s not as complex as you think

Data can be your most powerful marketing resource. But using it can also become one of your biggest challenges if you’re not used to working with statistics, crunching numbers or harnessing large amounts of information to make informed marketing decisions. Here are some simple ways to start using data to strengthen your marketing campaigns, regardless of your comfort with data visualization tools.

Segment your communications

Even with a wealth of available market research and your own analytics, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming to use data if you look at it in simple groupings. If you know 2-3 things about your audience – for example age, gender and zip code— you’re on your way to a segmented email campaign that can match programs to certain age ranges, discuss career benefits for men or women and promote on-campus or remote classes based on geography.

Diversify your channels

You can use data to expand your marketing campaign beyond emails. If you know from an industry whitepaper that video ads are trending or that millennials are using Snapchat more than Facebook, you can use this to develop a multi-channel strategy. For example, you may be surprised to find out that 60% of your prospects are on LinkedIn daily but that they don’t check their personal email more than 2 times a week.

Enhance the experience for your prospects

Using small, digestible pieces of data (from your own analytics) can make a huge difference in optimizing your school’s website and marketing campaigns. For example, if you notice that the area of your site with the largest viewership is student testimonials, you may think about curating ad content using personal student stories. Or, if your ROI page has high viewership, but not a lot of time spent on the page, consider beefing up that content since ROI is a huge decision factor for many prospective students. Starting small and expanding as you gain confidence with your data can have far-reaching effects.

If you’re looking for ways to use industry data or need advice on how to use your own analytics to improve your marketing, contact GPRS today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | October 23rd, 2019

Investing in landing pages that are user-friendly, informative and optimized

Say you’re aimlessly scrolling through social media or you’re on your favorite news site and all of a sudden, you see it – the thing you’ve been waiting for. It’s going to change your life. It’s the price you want. So really, it’s perfect. You must buy it right away. You click on the link while anxiously reaching for your credit card. The link takes you to the company’s homepage and you scroll and scroll. You may even click over to another page looking for the very product you wanted. It’s not there. At this point, you’re frustrated and less likely to buy.

Don’t let this happen to your prospective students. While this may be an over-exaggerated scenario, and it’s not likely that your prospects would be applying and ready to pay for tuition in one simple click, you certainly don’t want to lose them at this stage, or extinguish their enthusiasm for your brand. If it’s the first time they are engaging with you, you’ve done the hardest job which is to grab their attention. But the next step is to make sure the experience is consistent. When they click on your link, you want to secure their interest and action.

Ways to optimize your prospects’ experience with customized landing pages

Address directly what they have seen in your ad so the messaging is cohesive.
Keep your branding front and center, use imagery and make the landing page visually intriguing
Give them enough (less is more) details about your school to be intrigued and request more information. Think 3-5 bullets.
Provide a simple call to action, i.e. request more info, download a brochure, see a list of admissions events.
Keep the form simple with 4 fields – first name, last name, email and phone number.
Ensure the transfer of data (to your organization) is clean. Route it directly into your CRM to avoid manual labor and minimize mistakes.
Employ “thank you” pages (after an inquiry is completed) to redirect to your website.

Why invest in a landing page?

While you have spent a lot of time building and optimizing your school’s website and it may be seen as the primary source of information for your prospects, it’s not always the right place for them to land after they’ve seen one of your ads. Custom landing pages can offer your future students a simple solution for the specific information they seek. If they’ve clicked on an ad, they’re willing to go a step further than just browsing your website. And if they’ve never seen your website or they’re not aware of your program, you don’t want to overwhelm them with too much information. Using a gateway landing page can make all the difference for that first connection, and give your prospects confidence to keep exploring further through the information request phase.

Not to mention, a landing page that routes to your CRM that is properly coded can help you determine how well your advertising is working, response rates and ROI. And with a sophisticated Prospective Student Data Platform, you may even be able to track your ads and landing page activity back to seated students.
If you’re looking for ways to build your next campaign and structure your landing pages to collect information that can also integrate into your CRM, contact GPRS today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | October 9th, 2019

Embracing the digital video advertising trend for your school

You don’t have to be a marketing pro to notice that video ads are taking the digital advertising world by storm. It is likely that 50% of your social media feed is populated with videos or that a friend or colleague has recently shared a video with you on their phone or computer screen. Although video advertising can work for any company in any industry, it’s becoming imperative in the higher ed world because of the personal scale connection required for large buying decisions like a degree.

Here are 4 reasons to embrace the video advertising trend:

Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter
Connecting visually can form stronger relationships
Social media is dominated by video, especially Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook
Customers expect it and your competition is doing it

What are video ads and how do they differ from the videos you have on your YouTube channel?

Video ads are shorter and more succinct than the traditional 3-5 minute video you have on your website or YouTube channel that tell about your program, the benefits of your school or highlight a professor or student testimonial. Don’t misinterpret – those videos still have a place and purpose. But for marketing strategies, advertisers are starting to opt for 30 second video ads (like a traditional commercial) or 10-15 second micro-videos that can be produced in a series. Although you may have many points to make, you can do this over time with varied versions of video ads pieced together to form a journey for your prospective students.

Secrets to successful digital video advertising

Although you may be ready to jump on the video ad bandwagon, you can’t just do it haphazardly. Consumers are smarter than you think and they can recognize quality in an instant. Additionally, they can make snap decisions on your brand so you want each interaction to be a quality experience. Here are some keys to creating good video advertising:

Mix and match lengths; vary with 10-30 second videos
Keep the message simple – you don’t have to say everything, just say something that spurs their interest
Make sure it can make an emotional connection without using sound since many people browse on silent mode

How to integrate video into your marketing strategy

When you’re developing your marketing strategy, it’s critical to examine your target market, pick the right channels and develop messaging that supports your programs key features and benefits. Make sure that your messaging is conducive to video, distill your information into key points and even use existing video footage pieced together to showcase your school in a way that maintains your brand.

If you’re looking for ways to integrate video advertising into your school’s marketing strategy, contact GPRS today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | September 26th, 2019

Industry Benchmark Data: How do you compare to the competition?

In higher ed marketing, a competitive analysis can help you gain insight into program trends, offerings and innovations. You can even determine how your competitors are creating their messaging to prospects and channels they are using. But if you’re not in their market it may be harder to gather intel. If you’re like many schools, you may have missing pieces of the puzzle like how peer schools are marketing and on what channels. You may even be wondering what they’re spending, how many leads they’re getting and where their students are coming from (hopefully it’s not your backyard). Wouldn’t it be great to have a marketing partner that has all of these answers, and more?

Filling in the gaps with industry benchmark data

When you’re developing your marketing strategy, it’s critical to examine your target market, pick the right channels and develop messaging that supports your programs key features and benefits. But if you’re going to compete in a national (or global) market, being armed with additional information on how your competition thinks can only serve to enhance your strategy.

In addition to the standard competitive analysis areas, when comparing your marketing with your peers, here are the main categories that are important to benchmark:

Leads – how many leads were obtained and how may turned into prospects and seated students
Cost per click – what is the typical cost per click and cost per seated student by channel, area of the country, program
Seasonality – what seasons are key recruiting periods? You may know your school’s seasonality based on recruiting events or past data, but there could be times of the year you are missing.
Geographic Interaction – where are prospects coming from that are attracted to your type of program, where is your competition pulling from, and what radius should you target for the highest possible interactions?
ROI – how much is your competition spending and where, what channels are working the best and how many seated students are they obtaining directly from their marketing spend?
Messaging – what types of messages resonate the best in your geographic location and for your specific type of program?

How do you obtain this industry benchmark data?

Although we’d like to tell you that “there’s an app for that,” that’s unfortunately not the case. But partnering with GPRS will give you access to our proprietary platform, GP Insights^TM, that we’ve developed after years of collecting aggregate industry data. We are tracking real-time market data and can give you the type of insights you’re seeking to deepen your marketing strategy. With a subscription to the GP Insights platform, predictive analytics in the higher ed space is no longer the future, it’s available today.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can fill in the gaps of your competitive analysis, contact GPRS today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | August 15th, 2019

Connecting with prospective students

Are you overloaded trying to keep up with all of your prospects? The right tactics, and the right partner, can help you optimize the middle of your recruitment funnel for greater enrollment results.

Your admissions staff is the first point of contact for most prospective students and follow-up time is crucial for making that first impression a positive one. In our 24/7 world, leads are expecting their schools of choice to be “always on.” So how do you balance your leads’ demand for instant communication with your recruiting team’s bandwidth?

If you’re concerned (and you should be) about asking your team to respond to texts, calls and emails at 3 a.m., here are a few tips to lighten the load as you prepare for your next big recruiting wave.

Automated (personal) emails

You’ve probably done it – you’ve signed up for a newsletter, entered a sweepstakes or requested more info about a product. You check your inbox and hit refresh. You refresh again. Where is your confirmation email? Did you accidentally type the wrong info? Did your email go into a black hole? Should you try again? These are things that you never want your prospective students to wonder, especially when they are considering a high-dollar purchase (your degree program).

When you have an automated email campaign that spurs an immediate response from your school, the prospect is immediately gratified and will be less likely to regret taking that first step to inquire. Your first email doesn’t have the be fancy or even include a ton of information. Just a quick note to acknowledge them and let them know you’ll be following up with them soon will go a long way. Here are some tips on creating a custom email campaign using your CRM.

Text or phone call follow-up

Here’s where your admissions team can experience a backlog if your volume is too high. Voicemails and requests for information can pile up quickly and it may take some extra resources to help get back on track. Using a contact center can help by screening applicants, categorizing requests and handing off qualified leads when appropriate. And when they take the time to get to know the ins and outs of your school’s recruiting process, they can align communications with your brand and handoff prospects to your recruiting team seamlessly, giving you more time to focus on pulling them through the funnel.

Real-time tracking

When you are using resources like automated email and a contact center to engage with your prospects on an ongoing basis, tracking is critical. Not only do you want to monitor communications, but you also want to keep a close eye on what’s performing well so that you can continue to optimize. When you are searching for a contact center to use, just make sure they can help you track communications and integrate with your CRM for real-time data collection.

If you’re looking for resources to improve your customer experience, GPRS can help. Our contact center provides both inbound and outbound coverage for your program inquiries, as well as timely email follow-up. We use state-of-the-art technology with real-time call monitoring and recording capabilities to ensure our team is consistently an extension of yours. And we can enter every communication directly into your existing CRM for seamless handoffs to internal staff at the perfect time. Contact GPRS today to learn more.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | July 31st, 2019

Marketing approaches: Key differences in marketing executive education vs. degree programs

Can you use the same marketing campaign, channels and budget to market your degree programs and executive education? You can, but you may not be thrilled with the results.

The truth is, although both leverage your brand and aim to educate students, these audiences differ quite a bit and so should your approach to communicating with them. Besides the demographics, here are a few key points of differentiation that are important to consider when crafting your marketing strategy for these unique groups.

Cost

Although this seems obvious, when you are asking someone to invest $2,000 in a program vs. $100,000, you can benefit from different messaging strategies. Here’s how you can address the cost difference:

Executive Education: focus on the immediate benefits like sharpened skills, applicable case studies, and resume boosters
Degree Programs: tout the long term benefits like network, strategic vision and upward mobility

Investment of Time

A 2-3 day program or online course takes less planning for than a 1-2 year commitment. Here’s how you can address the time investment difference:

Executive Education: make it easy for them to come to your program, give them enough notice so they can ask their manager for a couple of days to attend a training and emphasize immediate rewards
Degree Programs: address the barriers to their time commitment like family and career and assure them it will pay off in the long-run

Decision Cycle

Because of the cost and time investment, the decision-making process can either be quick or something they consider for up to 5 years. Here’s how you can stay integrated into their decision cycle:

Executive Education: stay top-of-mind, promote your calendar, and offer thought leadership and value-added content throughout the year so that when it’s time for them to act, you’re the first choice
Degree Programs: depending on the program, lead cycle time can vary greatly; be sure to stay in their consideration set with these tips

Motivation

What motivates a working professional to attend a short program may be completely different from the goals of someone considering a degree program. Here’s how you can address different motivation sets.

Executive Education: focus on the immediate need to fill a skill gap and sell the return on investment for the employee and the organization (it is often the talent manager or supervisor helping make the decision)
Degree Programs: emphasize the long-term benefits, career trajectory, network and the return on investment

If you’re looking for more ways to hone in on your strategy for promoting a variety of programs at your school, GPRS can help. Leverage our long-term partnerships with universities in both the degree and executive education spaces to create a solid marketing plan that can address these unique audiences.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | July 12th, 2019

Ways to track your marketing spend, optimize your campaigns and find an ROI for your graduate student recruitment campaigns

One of the biggest questions that universities have about their marketing is related to its effectiveness. How do you know if your marketing spend is making a difference?

If you’re not sure if your recent spike or dip in interest, leads or applicants is related to your advertising, the competition, the economy or something else, you’re not alone. Gauging peaks and valleys and determining the root causes of what’s going on in your funnel can be difficult and often cryptic. Assuming that your marketing campaign is based on a sound strategy and tied to your enrollment goals, the next most important thing you can do related to your spend is to track it carefully so you can use data to optimize your campaigns for greater success.

But what data should you be looking at to gauge ROI? Here are the key metrics that can determine if your efforts are moving the needle.

Digital advertising is measured in 3 key ways (that matter to you): Cost per Click (CPC), Cost per Lead (CPL) and Cost per Acquisition (CPA) – or seated student. This translates to: how much did you spend to get someone to click on your ad, convert into a lead, and then turn into a seated student?

In higher ed digital advertising, you often can’t get a true CPA until you have your final seated class. At that point, you can do a match-back process utilizing your reporting dashboard to see how many seated students came from your marketing. But since that may happen at the end of the year, the CPC and CPL are what you should be measuring and optimizing throughout your recruiting season.

Your digital agency will know what is typical by channel (i.e. LinkedIn vs. Facebook vs. retargeting) and can advise you on whether your campaigns are working or need to be adjusted – monthly, weekly or even daily. It is typical to start with a higher CPC which will lower as your campaign becomes more efficient. This often translates to a lower CPL because the people who are clicking on your ads are more qualified leads.

If you take it a step further and use a sophisticated campaign optimization platform that ties in with your CRM and aggregates all of the data in real time, you can get even smarter with your spend. When you can track every program inquiry back to not only a specific marketing campaign, but also to a particular image, message and ad size, you can powerfully optimize your campaigns and match your enrollment data back to your marketing efforts to prove ROI at the end of the year.

If you’re looking for an agency that is well-versed in digital campaign optimizations, GPRS is your partner. Our proprietary lead optimization system, GP Insights^TM, shows your real-time campaign data and can even display industry benchmark data showing how your peers and competition are trending. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to give you a demo.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | June 26th, 2019

Enrollment Marketing: The value of digital strategy from a specialized firm

In most retail or consumer goods businesses, a good digital agency will be successful in helping meet revenue goals. But finding a firm that has experience in education and enrollment marketing is taking it a step further. Higher ed is a definite “niche market” and working with a firm that is both qualified in digital advertising AND has education expertise is key to success.

Here are a few insights on how to select an agency to help you with your enrollment goals.

They’ve been around the block (with a solid and varied education client roster)

You recognize their past clients. You may have even seen some of their recent work. Although digital marketing is all about innovation and new tactics, it’s important to select a firm that’s been doing this for a while. They can spot a good opportunity and weed out the bad ones. They’ve “been there done that” and can share new perspectives in your strategy sessions based on their breadth and depth of knowledge on how to meet enrollment goals.

They can prove their results (think case studies)

When you ask them about past results, they readily respond with client testimonials and proven ROI. The firms that you want to work with to fulfill your enrollment goals have done this for other schools and they’re proud of their results. You might be the next client they use for a case study!

Your peers know about them (and recommend them)

The last time you were at a conference, connecting with your peers from other schools, this firm may have come up in conversation. Nothing speaks more strongly than a recommendation from a peer. It’s likely that if the admissions director or CMO at a peer school is singing their praises, there’s something worth looking into.

They have their roots in education (although they may serve other industries)

Starting with retail or consumer goods and then backing into education is very different than originating in the higher ed space. You don’t want to be the guinea pig. Chances are, if they haven’t had an education client before, or have only worked with one or two, you’ll be paying heavily for their learning curve. Instead, look for a firm that has a strong background in your space and understands the sales funnel for prospective students. This is especially true with the specialized niche of graduate programs.

If you’re looking for an agency that has all 4 of the criteria listed above, GPRS is your ideal partner. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to share those case studies with you.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | June 12th, 2019

Navigating the Generational Divide: Communicating to Prospects

Baby boomers. Gen X. Millennials. Each generation has different value sets, core motivations and media consumption habits. Make the most of your communications to each group, and bridge the gap with some universal messaging that applies to all.

Millennials are in the work force and Boomers are slowly starting to transition out of the professional landscape. You’ve been inundated with information about how these groups consume information. But how do you handle communications when you’re marketing a program that may include more than one generation?

Universal Messaging

Marketers can go crazy trying to integrate the buzz words that are important to different market segments. Make sure you don’t offend anyone. Use the right mix of humor. Try to include data that is relevant to a certain career stage, or you’ll lose them. If your head is spinning, wondering how you can stay relevant, consider this – there are some universal messages in education that cut through any generational divide. Those are:

Value – Who wants to pay more than something is worth?
Return on investment – Most people are looking for a payoff on the time and money they’ve spent.
Personal connections – We are all human. Relationships matter. Make sure your prospects know you care and are available to help them.
Flexibility – Regardless of career or life stage, we can all use a little more time and control over our schedule to focus on things that are important to us.

Communication Tracks

In a recent blog, we discussed using segmentation to bucket your communication strategies. One way to do this is to segment by age group. For emails, if you have birthdate or years of work experience, you might be able to use that knowledge to craft different messages aimed at core motivations. For advertising and social media, you can depend on certain channels. Check out this infographic showing media consumption habits across generations.

Event Strategy

Wondering why your Preview Day attendance has dropped? Thinking about trying a webinar for the first time? Are you open to testing new types of events? What worked 10 years ago to market an Executive MBA program at a 3 hour event on a Saturday may not yield the same response today. Why? Because when you were marketing your program 10 years ago it was to Boomers who may have been amenable to that type of event. But now, you’re marketing to GenX and even some ambitious Millennials. They don’t have the time to attend this event, although they would attend class if they were accepted to the program. These generations are less likely to invest time in something that is not a sure thing.

Bottom line: Innovation can work in your favor. Try a webinar or a coffee chat. Hold an info session at a restaurant near a business park. You can still keep your favorite events, but it can’t hurt to add new ones to the mix.

Marketing Materials

Have you checked out your competition online recently? You may be surprised at what materials they are offering to prospective students. In an age where the website is king, even supplemental information is shifting. Standard brochures are morphing into videos and blogs. Photo albums are now social feeds.

If you’re looking for ways to innovate to connect with your target, we can help. Get tips to engage prospects on their terms so you can get the most from your communications strategies. Contact GPRS.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | June 11th, 2019

Pattern matching: The 10 most important marketing and recruiting insights derived from working across 120 graduate business programs

Eighteen years and more than 120 different graduate business programs.

Do we have your attention?

Our first-hand experiences have unearthed a treasure of insights. And, here’s a unique opportunity for you to take a peek inside. Join Graduate Program Recruitment Solutions (GPRS) President of University Partnerships, Anthony Campisi, at the 2019 GMAC Annual Conference as he gives you a rare look at how to enable your graduate programs to thrive, even during challenging times.

From June 19-21 in Denver, CO, hundreds of industry professionals will converge to share ideas, trends and best practices at the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s 2019 Annual Conference. Complete your stay in the mile-high city with Anthony on Friday, June 21st, from 8:30am – 9:45am, as he presents insights developed working with top graduate programs.

Session Title:

Pattern Matching: The 10 Most Important Marketing and Recruiting Insights Derived from Working across 120 Graduate Business Programs

Session Description:

In this session you will have the unique opportunity to explore the top 10 marketing and recruiting trends that have led to enrollment success across more than 120 different graduate business programs, including MBA, EMBA, Working Professionals, Specialty Masters and Online programs.

Patterns that have emerged time and time again, leading to increased program inquiries, diversification in applicant pool and higher matriculation yield rates.

You will learn:

• What type of content encourages more women to apply to graduate programs
• How many form fields is the sweet spot for an information request form
• You may be closer to an enrollment with your older leads than you are with your newer ones
• To tone down your “calls to action”
• The truth about which geographies online programs are most successful in
• Who your biggest competitor is – spoiler alert – it’s none of the schools you think!

Expect to leave this session with insights that will exponentially increase your market penetration.