MASTER OF THE MESSAGE: 6 Tactics (and Hacks) for Using in Student Recruitment

Transcription

1 MASTER OF THE MESSAGE: 6 Tactics (and Hacks) for Using in Student Recruitment

2 Even as Facebook and LinkedIn and their various brethren have made a home on campus in the recruiting office for the purposes of prospecting for undergraduates, continues to be one of the most effective mechanisms in the marketer s toolbox for drawing in candidates for graduate degrees, short courses, online classes, executive education and other nontraditional programs. This white paper provides six tactics to help you use more effectively to support your outbound marketing to prospective students. Whether you re responsible for crafting your institution s marketing strategy or implementing the programs, you ll find best practices and practical advice here based on the results of actual campaigns undertaken by colleges and universities. 1

3 1 Align Content with Audience It isn t enough just to describe your program. There s too much competition for a reader s attention, and generic messaging won t grab anybody s notice. You need to set your messaging apart through content that entices the recipient to click on your links by emphasizing something that will resonate. For example, to woo prospective degree completers, an online program might emphasize the ability to transfer credits from other institutions. Or your text may appeal specifically to those aspiring to move forward in their professions. Consider the profiles of students who already attend the program you re marketing, and use the interests of those varied personas to craft your messaging. Try out different messages in that will appeal to each type, such as somebody who has plateaued in his or her career and wants to move to the next level, or the person who is struggling to understand how the field is changing and needs a fresh perspective or the individual who has been promoted into a new area and wants to gain a foundational understanding to build confidence. 2

4 For example, an East Coast law school found a rich intersection between the profiles of students who make up the cohorts in its two online master s programs in energy regulation and environmental law and subscribers who receive the Wind Energy SmartBrief. Carefully crafted messaging about education programs in that publication gets attention because it speaks their language and touches on topics that matter to them. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: For nearly every major degree category, SmartBrief can provide access to between five and 200 applicable audiences, all of whom are completely optin. Testing messaging with new recipients is an important part of aligning your promotion with the audience. Plus, although standard practice may be to target job function or job level when choosing recipients, consider geographic targeting, too. This can be especially helpful for schools whose brand and student draw are more regional than national. 3

5 2 Build Relationships Institutional recruiters have long understood what other segments are just realizing: Relationship marketing breeds success. An education program requires a major financial investment that few people jump right into. The optimal way to get potential candidates to respond to your is to put yourself in a position of addressing their aspirational challenges and needs over time and from multiple directions so they come to trust you as an adviser. One way to build relationships is to draw on your institution s own research, to give recipients a taste of the learning they would experience by attending the program. Likewise, education marketers have seen amazing results by pairing up multiple items such as a link to a free and timely research report developed by the school and additional explanatory information (with link) to the program through which the work was developed. For example, a North Carolina university offered marketing professionals access to an infographic containing a summary of research about the differences 4

6 between marketing to millennials and their managers. At the same time, the promotion gave a quick snapshot of the institution s master of arts in communication degree. Results from the SmartBrief program were phenomenal: a 40% open rate and an 18% click-through rate. Another institution promoted its educational-leadership program in a dedicated that included an infographic about the effect those school leaders have, outperforming a more typical response for the same program by six times. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: If you re struggling to come up with content ideas for a white paper download or some other special resource to offer through your , talk to the deans and faculty members in the specific program and ask them what resources they ve developed that really energize their students. Those materials will also appeal to people who would be drawn to the program. 5

7 3 Employ Mobile Messaging Want to be loved? Go mobile. That s the advice (and title) of research that measured the emotional response of people when visiting sites and using branded apps on a mobile platform versus other kinds of hardware, such as desktop computers, laptops or Web-enabled TV. The researchers offered three conclusions: People react faster on mobile messages than any other platform; they apply a narrow focus and quick decision-making; and, therefore, brands need to make their messages instantly compelling and convertible. People will choose yes or no, with no middle ground. That means brands need to create simple, easy-to-use interfaces that are highly targeted and reward-oriented. People respond positively to brand messages YES NO on mobile devices more than on other kinds of hardware. Immediate rewards work best. 6

8 The big lesson here is that colleges and universities need to enable marketing outreach with their campaigns for mobile viewing and response. If you don t do that, you ll be ignoring a major opportunity. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: Optimize conversion of your messaging by working with a digital media partner that optimizes its content for mobile devices. SmartBrief s is automatically formatted to be mobile-enabled, allowing readers in 15 industries and 150 newsletters to access content in their preferred format. The SmartBrief approach maintains consistency in font, look and feel, an important consideration for universities intent on preserving their unique institutional branding. 7

9 4 Hunt for the Immediate Response The moment a recipient moves from your message to the next one, you ve lost. Your call to action must highlight the benefits quickly and urge the reader to take the next step without thinking twice. Instead of the openended Learn More or Apply Today, try using Download Now or Click to View. Give the audience something substantive to engage with, or grab its attention with a time-sensitive offer or an incentive specific to that . For example, a nursing program at a private nonprofit institution in New Orleans celebrated National Nurses Week (and dramatically accelerated call to action) by promoting the elimination of its application fees for its online master of science in nursing during that short period. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: Reduce the effort required for a prospect to participate in your offer. Simplify your registration process by eliminating all unnecessary fields from your request-for-information form. Make the form as easy to fill out as it was to click on your offer in the first place. You ll know you have it right when your form-abandonment rate drops to the single digits. 8

10 5 Get Answers with Testing Sometimes the smallest changes can have the biggest effect on performance. The only way you ll know the optimal combination of variables in your s is to test them headlines, graphics, copy, the offer, the format and delivery time and day. For example, the s from a Washington, D.C.-based university were being passed over when it used generic higher-ed copy proclaiming program features, similar to what its competitors ran. When it shifted gears and began testing various combinations of offers such as various faculty podcasts on compelling topics related to the programs being marketed response jumped three to seven times higher in subsequent mailings. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: Be methodical in your testing. Early in your campaign, use A/B splits to work through each variable in your s to establish which ones get the better response. Then slip that higher-performing material into the campaign as it progresses. 9

11 6 Stretch your Reach with Social The best marketing gets even more effective when it can be shared. If prospects are captivated by your offer, they re more likely to amplify your messaging by putting it out on their social channels and letting colleagues and friends in on the magic, too. Give them something memorable a headline, a download, an image that will inspire them to share. The advantage universities and colleges have over segments is that they tend to be on top of hot-button issues. They can tap their in-house faculty experts to help develop the kind of content that works supremely well in social media. MARKETING Marketing Hack: HACK: Remember to use your institution s own social channels to extend your campaign. However, nobody has time to fuss over loading creative content into multiple social sites. content delivered through SmartBrief is archived with a unique URL that can be used over and over on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to drive additional prospects to the original offer. 10

12 Kick-starting Lead Generation at Ashbrook With When federal funding that paid for continuing education for K-12 history and civics teachers dried up in 2012, the graduate program at Ashbrook Center realized it needed to become more aggressive in promotional and recruiting activities. It has found wild success in lead generation by using SmartBrief s to offer a free download tied directly to its academic mission. The nonprofit, which is based at Ashland University in Ohio, was offering weeklong intensive courses that drew between 250 and 300 students to the university during summers. To address the financial shortfall, the center restructured and launched a series of graduate courses that would be available online during three terms and on campus over the summer. There really isn t another degree program like ours, said Jason Ross, Ashbrook s director of programs. All of our classes are seminar-based. They re all conversations based around primary source documents. We don t want to convey the message that the faculty member is the expert and that the teachers are students. We want to indicate by bringing 11

13 teachers into conversations about primary documents, You are all scholars, Programs Tried by Ashbrook and we re going to engage you as equals. That s something that the teachers who participate in our programs find very refreshing. Ashbrook turned to SmartBrief to try out various marketing programs. The overall goal, according to Ross: to put itself in front of an audience that is concerned about their place in the profession and concerned about their content knowledge and having resources to help Sponsorship of NCSS and NBPTS (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) briefs, in which banner and text ads accompany editor-chosen content; them to convey content to students. It s been a useful approach for us. SmartBrief s marketing team recommended that the center test out promotions specifically to the opt-in SmartBrief created for members of the NCSS National Council for the Social Studies. Because they ve opted into the SmartBriefs, they want to know what the latest trends are in the profession, Ross noted. They re interested in and they think of themselves Spotlight Briefs, where the sponsor defines the topic and provides content to share with readers; as part of the social studies profession. In a certain way, they re already thinking about the kinds of opportunities that organizations like Ashbrook have to offer. Ashbrook has tried out multiple programs: Sponsorship of NCSS and NBPTS (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) briefs, in which banner and text ads accompany editor-chosen content; Dedicated Sends, an sent on behalf of the center that highlights multiple aspects of the program, interspersed with editor-chosen articles relevant to the audience.* * largest driver of traffic to Ashbrook website Spotlight briefs, where the sponsor defines the topic and provides content to share with readers; and Dedicated Sends, an sent on behalf of the center that highlights multiple aspects of the program, interspersed with editor-chosen articles relevant to the audience. 12

14 The last one, said Ross, has been by far the largest driver of traffic to our website. Knowing that the best way to do online prospecting is to give your audience something they can use in the call to action, Ashbrook developed a free download, 50 Core Documents That Tell America s Story. So far, the center estimates it has distributed 36,000 copies of the e-book. The download landing page includes an invitation to participate in free webinars where the documents are discussed. Now Ashbrook is following up with recipient needs by developing a series of in-person programs that will be taken to historic locations around the country for day- and weekend-long teacher training. That s really what we ve gotten from the SmartBrief relationship, Ross said. We re in front of teachers they ve identified for us [who] are interested in teaching with the documents by downloading the book. Then we say, We have all these other opportunities for you to learn more and to go deeper into the content. Ashbrook is pleased with the campaign s conversion rates. Ross offered this anecdotal evidence of success with marketing through SmartBrief. I have run into a number of teachers who would tell us, The first thing I found out about you guys was through this 50 Core Documents book, then I did the webinars, then I applied to come to this program. Ross said the kind of outreach SmartBrief is enabling his organization to do allows Ashbrook to connect with and introduce new teachers to our broader programs. When we send out SmartBrief s, particularly that sponsored feature, the needle starts to move. 13