Email Marketing for Higher Education
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1) The document discusses email marketing services provided by Informz for higher education institutions to support admissions, advancement, alumni relations, and other departments. 2) It provides examples of schools that use Informz and highlights a success story from Wartburg College who saw benefits like improved communications and staff efficiency. 3) The document concludes with "Meg & Lori's 10 Tips in 10 Minutes" which provides best practices for email marketing.
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Email Marketing for Higher Education
- 1. Meghan Curtin & Lori Ely Informz June 2 - 5, 2010 Email Marketing for Higher Education
- 3. Where You Can Find Us On Campus Admissions Advancement Alumni Relations Financial Aid Bursar Student Affairs
- 6. There’s Email and There’s Email Marketing…
- 7. The Only Integrated Email Tool for CX & EX
Notes de l'éditeur
- Welcome Intro Speakers Partners with JZB since 2007 Informz is an ESP, that provides web based software, fully hosted… As an ESP all we do is focus on the email industry, its trends and best practices We are the only authorized 3 rd party email tool in the JZB partner community.
- We offer a suite of integrated eMarketing solutions that includes online surveys, text messaging, and event registration . All the tools work together- one stop shopping for the whole campus- so you can now work smarter not harder. And smarter not harder are…You will see from Lori how our clients are using the intgr btw their CX or EX db to send highly targeted and personalized emails. And view the detailed tracking information on opens, clicks, bounces, forwards, best day of week to send emails or time of day.. You name it- you know it. And yes, using Informz costs money…. And, you also have access to other Jenzabar products that are excellent at handling the bulk of the communication needs from the point at which a prospect becomes a qualified inquiry through to acceptance and matriculation. Here is the difference, these JZB tools are great for reactive marketing but for proactive marketing and robust, integrated eMarketing tool should be added to the mktg toolbox. Think of the 2 sets of products complimenting each other rather than competing. Informz is the tool that a school uses to reach out and grab constituent/prospect attention when they are not thinking about you, and the portal can be the place you draw them into to deliver comprehensive information. For example, an email can be sent from an adm counselor to a diverse group of HS juniors interested in fine arts, engineering and biology. She can craft a very specific email to this audience and publish it to them using the different data elements that are provided as part of the informz for JZB offering. Then, the counselor can build an email or a campaign, test the emails and now capture and track their engagement on the mailing all while leveraging the adv spam avoidance features that are built into the informz offering.
- So – where is Informz helping out on campus? Well – the answer is anywhere! Informz is a scalable campus wide solution and utilized by every dept on campus to send targeted personalized email campaigns. Whether it's a small audience of fifty or a large audience over one hundred thousand, you can coordinate an email campaign that lets you communicate like it’s one to one. What our customers like is that we provide one stop shopping, one vendor relationship to manage yet you gain complete campaign execution. This solution is easy to use in fact some of our clients have work study students creating the mailings for them. What are the costs of using multiple email systems on campus? You are spending more money than you need to. Not to mention the data integrity issues and headache of managing your subscribers preferences. In addition, we make this scalable bc each school has a Centralized account and then sub-accounts that can be shared or exclusive that are segegrated work areas for the different depts. We are helping many different departs from Athletics to student affairs but the main depts that we work with are admissions and advancement
- First let me say that we know that email is one facet of your overall mktg campaign. It happens to be the cheapest and most measurable. Lori will talk more about this a bit later. But with email, an: Admissions department can enhance their communication strategy for recruiting campaigns. For example, they can increase their reach of prospects, by getting more emails delivered to the inbox. Then they can create various mailing campaigns to be sent at specific times to try to engage those prospects and encourage them to engage thru the enrollment funnel. Alumni Relations will appreciate the overall campaign management that Informz can provide. Take homecoming weekend for example. This group can invite alumni based on a variety of criteria to attend this big event. For those readers that have yet to register, the Alumni department can send a second chance mailing to only those people that have not registered yet, while confirming those that already have. They can use the event module to manage registrations and capture specific preferences (shirt size, meal preference, golf outing details, etc). During the weekend, they can send text messages to attendees to communicate any last minute changes or updates.
- Here’s a sample of your peers that we are currently working with. All are doing some unique things and Lori is going to give you flavor for the email techniques in a bit. Some schools have only 1 dept utilizing informz some have multiple. Some started off with one dept using informz and now other depts have seen what they are doing and want in on the action as well. If you would like to learn more about their experience, you can reach out to us for their contact info or you can talk to your JZB Regional Sales Rep for more information as well.
- Now as I set the stage for Lori’s part of the presentation….I want to clarify something about the term email. When we use the term “email” we are referring to “eMarketing” the service that allows users to bring in data, create html messages, maintain their unique branding, target those messages to a segmented list, schedule the mailing to be published at an appropriate time, leverage our deliverability expertise so the message reaches the inbox, and then gain valuable metrics from the extensive reporting capabilities. So when we refer to “email” we are not referring to creating and sending text based messages via Outlook, Notes, or Yahoo. Using one of these for your campus communications can actually undermine your email marketing efforts. There are 3 things that really distinguish email from email marketing: targeting, tracking and deliverability. I am going to talk about targeting and deliverability briefly…. Targeting: So, speaking on leveraging the data in your CX or EX database…what does that mean exactly?
- So maybe some of you are currently using email in your mktg mix and you are using another type of ESP. I will bet that you aren't doing email like this. Relevancy speech- you’re at an advantage The latest and greatest data that is in your db is available for targeting mailings in informz. The integration between Informz and Jenzabar is built upon the use of web services. The simple version of this image is that: The integration between Informz and Jenzabar is meant to simplify the process of sending mass emails to specific groups of people. This is done by leveraging the data already stored in Jenzabar as the source for these segments. These "segments" are referred to as a target group in Informz. Users can create unlimited of target groups without importing and exporting lists and reports. Once the email has been delivered, the subscriber activities, like opens and clicks, are communicated back to the Jenzabar, creating a complete view of your eMarketing efforts. The integration also facilitates data in the Jenzabar database to be used to personalize the mailing. This is like a mail merge field in Microsoft Word. It has been acknowledged by leaders in email marketing that personalization is a key expectation by digitally connected students, prospects, and alumni. The technical version of this image is that: Informz uses a combination of the Jenzabar ID and the email address to create a unique key to identify a subscriber. You query data in informz and bc we have a web serv integr an xml query is sent to grab that data. Thru an e ncrypted web srv data now passes back and forth btw the 2 systems.
- Deliverability- what does that mean exactly. As I mentioned Informz is a hosted solution. We manage al the email that goes in and out thru our servers- not yours. Your reputation is a critical factor in your emarketing success. If you don’t have a good one, you could be blocked and if you don’t have an ESP you may not even know this is going on. These are the top 10 reasons you need an email service provider . Coincidentally, these are also the top ten critical email marketing benefits that you will never get by using your standard email account. When it comes time to re-evaluate your current email practice - the result will likely be that you don’t want to take on the burden of managing these things. You want to focus your time on donor cultivation and keeping your school top of mind for alumni and you don’t want to become an expert in email deliverability. And you don’t have to be. By using a reputable email marketing you can easily avoid common mistakes and truly get the most out of your email marketing efforts.
- Client poll – How many people using email as a component of their marketing strategy? How many using Informz? When thinking about your strategy your success the two things that I always stress to clients– A. you want to integrate your communication strategy so your messaging is content across all of your marketing communications channels and B. you want to strive to target the right person with the right message at the right time. And today we’re going to look at how email marketing can be a key component to achieve these goals.
- First lets start by talking about what I mean when I say integrating your communications strategy --- I want to make it clear that we aren’t saying anything like direct mail is dead -- Now, more than ever – the key is to utilize multiple channels and integrating your messaging across all of them. -when your formulating your strategy, remember that email is just one of the tools in your arsenal. You should start by thinking about your message, whatever it may be, and how you can tell it in a compelling way to best connect with your audience. Then from there, decide on how you can integrate that messaging across all of the channels available to you and use them to compliment each other and extend the reach of your message. So its very important to ensure that each of your marketing channels don’t operate in a vacuum – use them to enhance each other and connect with your audience on more levels. When used as one component of your overall marketing program – email can be very powerful tool to help enhance the other channels, to drive people to take action, and drive them to other channels. So next lets take a look at some current clients are using emails as a way to drive people to other channels or enhance their messaging or re-enforce it with other channels.
- Admissions – an area it could be used more – email is the perfect tool to drive people to other areas that are going to help you engage the prospects, AND it can identify the best prospective student, and it is great to compliment your other pieces. Now email is going to allow you to run several different campaign types from things like information about the school and driving them to a viewbook or scheduling a time to meet with a counselor or attend an open house. And much of this should be triggered based upon actions – so the more action they take the different emails they get. Then you can identify a prospect most likely to enroll. Talk about Carroll – for a copy email us
- Advancement – Just like admissions email can help with prospecting also. It can help you identify what people are interested so you can target news and appeals to areas of interest to them. Email is a great way to drive people to your online giving site or can be a great compliment to your matching gift campaigns. For example if you collect employer information you can target an email informing them of how they can initiate the match and drive them back to the page where they can do that because so many have online process for this now. A Also you can use it as enhancment pieces for your direct mail pieces and phonathon. One way is by emailing people and telling them when they can expect to see the piece in their mailbox or to receive a phone call from your callers. Also I think email is an easy and effective way to do immediate thank yous after the call with a gist receipt or pledge confirmation – or to manage your pledge reminder process.
- Next on to Alumni Relations – where you can see in examples on screen it can be a great tool for reaching young alumni --- Also with engagement of alumni here is a great case for why you want to use all of the channels available to you. The more someone is a part of your different marketing channels the more they are going to be a part of more touchpoints from your school and therefore you are fostering their engagement. So use email to drive people to your online alummi community and other social media sites. Also use email to deliver surveys and forms to up date their information and to promote your EVENTS.
- Moving on to current students – here is a good area where you can use email to drive people to other channels You’re going to have access to your current students email addresses so utilize email to send notices about events and deadlines and news. and cut some costs and staff resources. One school did course evaluations --- having it all electronically is going to save you – but also is all trackable so you can see who responded and who didn’t and follow up with the appropriate individual. You can also see if there were delivery problems – things you don’t have the ability to do with printed pieces.
- And lastly I have parents and friends some of the same examples we just discussed with being able to target news and events information that is of interest to them and drive them to your other channels. The options are endless finacial aid, institutional research, athletics ANYWHERE – the bottom line is the integrating you messaging across channels allows people to accept the message in the way that THEY prefer - making it more effective – AND as I mentioned before, the more touchpoints a person is a part of the more engaged they will be and increases the reach of your message.
- Now the other part that I want you to think about when formulating your strategy --- the art of right person with the right message at the right time… First you want to start by identifying the right person or target group for your message. Now when you’re targeting this can be anything like profile or demographic information you collect in your database – or you can identify people based behavioral things like actions taken and this can be very effective tactic – just look at the success of companies like Amazon that are great at behavioral targeting. For example, for Informz users I strongly recommend utilizing the action based targeting tool where you can automatically create target groups for people that have clicked a certain link in an email or answered a specific question on a survey. This is a great tool to help with engagement – for example lets say you have an admissions prospect you can set up an action based target group for anyone that clicks a link your mailing for information about Open houses. That person will automatically be put in a target group and can be used for a future email.
- Then that goes hand in hand with sending the right message – if someone click on a link about open houses – you’re going to want to target them with a different message then someone who has never. THE MORE TARGETED AND RELEVANT YOUR MESSAGE THE MORE SUCCESSFUL – BOTTOM LINE. So set up that action based target group and One message can go to the action based you have on the person that you know clicked a link and already has some information and is interested in the open houses. Then you could have different messaging for the people that haven’t clicked – you may want to have a stronger message or maybe an incentive to come. With dynaminc segmentation we have you can target each of the messages to the apporpriate target group – all within one email – and the appropriate recipient is only going to receive the message that is appropriate for them.. You can see from the example on screen one client did this with their reunion years – so each person received a message with target language and details for them.
- Now you have identified the right person and their appropriate message – but that doesn’t do you any good if there person doesn’t read your message. SO the last part of this equation is sending this at the right time. This one can be tricky, BUT there are a few ways Informz can help you do this….and this is why email is really great because no other channel can really allow you to do this. The first is through AUTOMATION – so sticking with same example of that admissions prospect that clicked on the open house link in your latest email. Well using automation – maybe you send a follow up email automatically to the person a few minutes after they click. This could be an email from an admissions counselor or maybe from a students perspective asking them about a visit. Now you’ve hit them with the offer right when they’re already thinking about your school – and this is a time when they may be more likely to take action. And the real beauty of this is you just set up the mailing and that action based target group and then forget it – it will roll out automatically for you. Now the other way to help you determine on the right time to send your message is utilizing the ANALYTICS CENTER to determine best times and day to send. This will look at your mailings how you determine – so by folder or by campaign –and over the date period you would like – and it will show you easy to read graphs that are going to identify the days of the week and the times of days that are best for you to send – you’ll see when you have the highest delivery, highest opens and clicks. This is important information to be aware of. Then probably the coolest new feature we have is our new SEND TIME OPTIMIZATION feature – this learns the behavior of the people that you send to and will automatically send your email out over a 24 hour period of time at the time they are most likely to open. If it’s the first time you send to that person it will send it at the time most people on that domain are open emails the most. So in the end – as you can see - email by nature is one of the best tool to enable you to target the right message to the right person at the right time.
- To give you some inspriration Here’s a client success story of a real life Informz client where they followed the strategies we just discusses and have had great success – and like they always tell me they are just at the tip of the ice burg in terms of what they are able to do now. In terms of sending that RIGHT MESSAGE to the right person …. For example, Alumni emails targeted by academic major typically see open rates between 40-50% and click-thru rates between 60-70%. Email marketing also enabled the Wartburg team to increase their reach and foster engagement with their Alumni by providing a system for highly targeted messages based on subscriber demographics. For example, Wartburg used Informz to promote regional events as a way to target Alumni not located in close proximity to the college. Email has allowed them to easily communicate timely information and to target Alumni with messaging for news and events happening near them. For example, both the Athletics and Music Departments were now able to target emails to regional Alumni when a sports team or music concert was traveling to play in a nearby town. And as a result, Wartburg continually receives great feedback from Alumni who are thankful for the information as they would not have known about the events otherwise. TIMING - In addition to easily segmenting and targeting their messages, the timing and immediacy of email has also allowed Wartburg to take their engagement tactics a step further by incorporating touch points like emails that hit on special occasions like Birthdays, Anniversaries, Marriages, and Births. With the ability to send these highly targeted and relevant mailings, Wartburg continually experiences excellent delivery, open, and click-thru rates on their mailings. For example, Alumni emails targeted by academic major typically see open rates between 40-50% and click-thru rates between 60-70%.
- Video thank donors complimented their direct mail piece and their phonathon program.
- Improving Efficiency - Graduating Senior Survey The move to email has also enabled Wartburg to improve efficiency and save staff time by automating several processes and eliminating much of the manual data entry associated with managing subscriber information. One such example is the Wartburg Institutional Research Department’s survey of graduating seniors. Previously, the survey was conducted on paper with results needing to be interpreted and then manually entered into a worksheet by a staff member. By moving the survey online, they were able to use onsite laptops during a graduation event to collect responses. This eliminated the usual inaccuracies caused by handwriting and automated the survey reporting for instant results. Additionally, this allowed staff to easily automate a follow up email asking graduates to confirm their information which enabled secondary marketing opportunities to promote Wartburg’s online Alumni Community and Homecoming Weekend events.
- Saving money ---- Another idea, is if you send our a magazine, donors report or any other big publication, Another big cost saver is to use email to send an online version of your magazines or donors report instead of spending money to print a send these expensive pieces. For example, one Informz client, Wartburg College had great success with this. What they did was send an email out with a link to their alumni magazine and shortly after sending that online version out they emailed those same people with a survey to ask them how they preferred to receive the magazine if they were given the option to choose. They had 33% of respondents chose the online only version, 29% chose to receive both online and print, and 38% chose only the printed version. Seeing they received such a great number of responses they decided actually to let people choose. {CLICK} They sent a great piece out explaining how the college was looking for ways to be more enviornementaly friendly and for a way to experience a cost savings. They also explained how people receiving the online version would be receiving the same content and quality of those receiving the print version. Then in that email they link to a form where people could officially choose the method they preferred. {CLICK} This was a great success for them and now they email the magazine out to over 13,000 of their alumni. In the email they link to the online version of the magazine – and then they always allow people to change their delivery method at any time if they would like.
- Echo’s what we talked about so far…. So now that we’ve covered the 2 areas to think about when formulating your strategy and looked at some examples from real clients --- you’re all ready to go back to campus and implement email into your marketing mix – but what exactly do you do to get it right? – well of course we have the answer for that!! We have fun thing called meg and loris ten tips in 10 minutes. Now the reason behind the tip a minute concept is because we love email marketing – we live it and breathe it – and my husband caught me talking about subscribers in my sleep literally so we could go on and on! To keep us on track we need a volunteer to man our timer --- Megs gonna yell out the tip and I’m going to tell ya why its crucial!
- This is important because if you are integrating your messaging across channels you want to make sure that you are doing a good job of balancing the recency and frequency of messages across all of the channels. You want to avoid sending too many messgaes and risk annoying your subscribers – but you want to send enough to stay in the forefront of peoples minds. This also can give you a good picture of how you messaging is targeted across all the different channels and can help you create balance to make sure you are targeting the proper channels. So in the calendar – this can be even a simple excel list - that lists out all of the communication pieces over every channel, that your audience will be receiving. Then Put an internal process in place that before sending an email, staff members need to consult the communications calendar.
- This is important for a few reasons – when you are first getting subscribers you want to be able to collect information and preferences in the beginning do you can target your email programs to them appropriately. Also you want to set expectations about things like content and frequency right from the start – that way there are no surprises. Just make sure that you actually deliver on any promises you make in the sign up process. In the example on screen they list out the different options and have details. Then include a link to the form everywhere – on your website, all of your emails, social pages everywhere. I just had a client that increase there subsciberbase by 5,000 people in under a year by cross promoting their newsletter on their webpage and social sites/
- As with all forms of marketing Branding is so important in email marketing. With email once your email is opened you generally have about 3 seconds for some to get who you are and what is in your message – what you want them to do or what value is in it for them So make sure to maintain your schools branding in your email as well. Also, you want to bring that branding into your from address and subject line as well. People often times are receiving 100’s of emails a day and when they are scanning their inboxes they are looking for either email that is clearly spam or opt in email the they trust and want. So you obviously want yours to fall into that trusted and wanted category – so therefore use you schools name in the from address and again in the subject line.
- First – don’t always just email people when you want something! You need to have a two sided relationship with people just like in real life relationships. So in addition to things like appeals – also make sure you are delivering content that is of value to them as well. Also make sure that you are delivering relevant, personalized content to your readers. Now when I say personalization I don’t just mean first name – true personalization is delivering content that is tailored to their interests and most relevant to them. So segment and target your messages wherever possible – things like major, reunion year, professors etc. This is when you are going to see the greatest results – remember earlier when we talked about Wartburg’s targeted email seeing open rates of 50 -60% which is truly extrodinary.
- Remember the more touchpoints a person is a part of from your school the more engaged they are likely to be. Use your email to promote other ways to connect online – you can use email to communicate the value they will get out of being a member of the social sites – and also you can influence what they go to the social sites for and how they use the social sites. Use your enewsletters as way to highlight things like the online alumni community – you can highlight important discussions that are taking place, or new alums, or athletics as a way to reinforce the value of the communities. Also 90% activity within first 72 hours – keep the conversation going
- This is a big one – because if someone shares your message with their network, they are sharing that with their entire network – this can make you visible to people you might not have reached otherwise. Also, come right out and ask people to share your email. Now having a successful sharing program isn’t just about having sharing links on your email and that’s it – you need to have valuable content that people want to share in order for them to take action. Informz has a social sharing feature – Track who is sharing what and on what sites – valuable info on what sites you should be on.
- Surveys are great because it allows you to gain feedback from your audience directly. Also if it is clear you are making changes based upon feedback that they have provided that can demonstrate your commitment to them. Also links to things like surveys in your email – make your email interactive and also can increase engagement.
- This is a big one – you want to be aware of who on your list isn’t engaged in your emails. This is important for 2 reasons. One obviously the more engaged people are with your emails the better results you are going to see. But also, now engagement in your emails is going to have an impact on your delivery. ISP’s – so that’s going to be personal email addresses – which is going to be a lot of people on your lists. So Isp’s are going to start to look at things like open and click thru rates in determining whether your email get delivered or not. So what you will want to do is identify who those inactive recipients are and then segment them out and target them with special messaging. Try using messaging like don’t miss out on our news up dates – click here to stay in the know. Then you can have it link to a form where you could give them the option to update their communication preferences. Then if someone doesn’t actively opt to stay involved you should remove them from the list – so you don’t impact your delivery rates and be more successful.
- Test, test test! When I say testing is important I mean test 2 ways. First in terms of your effectiveness you want to routinely try testing different things to see what works best for your audience. Try testing out different types of subject lines and the different length of subject lines. Also try testing things like messaging and link placement – this is going to make you aware of the strategies that work best for your audience. Also, you want to make sure that you are testing the rendering of your email to make sure that it renders the way in which you intend. All email programs render HTML code differently, as well as now so many people are viewing things over mobile devices so you need to make sure that your email comes across correctly. We have a great tool in informz called the Virtual Inbox where you can test the rendering of your email against the most popular email programs AND mobile devices. Another big one is images – be aware that many email programs have images disabled by default – so if you’re using lots of images or one big image – and someone can’t see your images they could just immediately delete your email (Another thing that can impact your delivery!)
- Now Analyzing – this goes hand in hand with your testing. In email marketing – and with your marketing programs – you want to try things out – analyze your results – implement what works – and then repeat! It is a cycle. You should also be watching things like your open and click thru rates on an ongoing basis. Not only does this help to determine your success – but also it will help you identify things like which items are most of interest to people – and also how your viral marketing is – so who is forwarding your emails and sharing with their networks – and where most people are sharing. This can help clue you into what sites are most popular with your audience.
- Name any 2 of the top 10 tips!