July 2009 Lawlor Focus

The Five W’s and One H of College Direct Marketing (Search)

Even before the class of new students arrives on campus this fall, it’s time for admission officers to turn their attention once again to planning their search and direct marketing campaigns for future new classes. In the past, search campaigns relied upon “push” marketing tactics to encourage prospective students to move down the admission funnel. But now that the marketplace has shifted toward two-way communication and expects the ability to “pull” the information they require from sources other than those the college is pushing, institutions must re-evaluate the efficacy of their funneling strategy.

McKinsey & Company examined consumer behavior during the initial consideration phase (at the top of the funnel) and during the active evaluation phase (at the middle of the funnel) and found that consumers are reducing the number of brands they consider at the outset: “Faced with a plethora of choices and communications, consumers tend to fall back on the limited set of brands that have made it through the wilderness of messages.”  Yet as they enter the active evaluation phase, where two-thirds of their touchpoints with a brand come from consumer-driven marketing activities like word-of-mouth recommendations and Internet reviews, the number of brands they consider actually expands—contrary to the narrowing a funnel model would suggest.

Therefore, in planning this year’s direct marketing efforts, institutions must go back to the basics and engage in fresh thinking about each aspect of the search campaign:

Who: New predictive modeling tools can aid in your decisions about which names to purchase for your prospect pool. In order to generate better qualified leads, an algorithm developed uniquely for your institution can be applied to the name selection criteria in order to prequalify the prospects according to their likeliness to enroll. Because the multivariate analysis results in a weighted formula, you can cost-effectively generate enrollment from market segments you may have been overlooking previously.

What: The content of the best search campaigns is simultaneously distinctive and authentic. The presentation of your institutional messages must be creative in order to gain your prospects’ attention—yet not creative for novelty’s own sake. Instead, your creative approach should have the primary purpose of capturing, communicating and demonstrating at least one of your institution’s authentic traits.

When: As the “stealth marketplace” has demonstrated, the prospects themselves will determine the timing of their engagement with your institution, in accordance with their expectation of being able to respond anytime they wish (versus exactly when you ask them to). Thus, you cannot view your search campaign as a one-time event, but rather must see it as an ongoing process that offers your prospects multiple times and ways to respond.

Where: Your search campaign should reside both on paper and on the web. E-mail messages with links to an online landing page are a must, but the reply card (attached to a printed piece) is still an effective response mechanism, in particular among male prospects. Additionally, your search campaign could include a social media component that allows prospects to share your messaging with others—capitalizing on the activities they engage in during their active evaluation phase.

Why: The incentive you offer in order to entice prospects to respond cannot be generic. Fulfillment pieces should not simply offer more information about the college search process or the institution, as prospects can gather that information themselves through multiple channels. Ideally, the fulfillment piece should communicate an attention-grabbing and authentic message about the institution and should be an item that prospects would want to show off to friends.

How: The effectiveness of your search campaign is also dependent upon your ability to track its various dimensions. The success of new search methods can’t be judged by the old standards (such as reliance on response rates), especially in the realm of social media. Re-evaluate what you want to accomplish with your direct marketing efforts, and then track your performance accordingly. Utilizing web site analytics and other metrics can help you determine exactly how a prospect arrived in your pool, what messages you should target toward that prospect, and what level of engagement is optimal for that prospect.

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The biggest barrier to running an effective search campaign is lack of early planning. Too often, institutions find themselves in the position of picking any two from the choices of affordable, fast and good, having already locked themselves into the need to do it fast. Instead, devote time now to working through these questions:

• What demographic and psychographic data must be gathered about past searches in order to inform our list buying, so that we can prequalify the names in our next purchase?
• What fulfillment offer would have the most impact?
• How might the content, timing and delivery mechanisms of the initial contact be uniquely tailored to capitalize on the nature of the fulfillment offer?
• How might we build in “pull” tactics that allow prospects to gather additional information from a variety of sources when they want to obtain it?

In the news

More students are taking on more of the riskiest debt via unregulated private student loans. An analysis of federal National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data by Education Sector found that with the growing gap between average unmet need and the maximum federal loan limit, the proportion of undergraduates who have taken out private loans has tripled in only four years. Furthermore, almost as many students in the lowest income quartile take out private loans as do students in the highest income quartile. The report warns, “If this continues, the consequences will be severe: reduced access to higher education, diminished life choices, and increasing rates of catastrophic loan default.”

Did you know?

A meta-analysis found that “[s]tudents who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.” Blending the two methodologies is even better: “Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.”

Source: U.S. Department of Education (.pdf)