Using "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" for marketing

My boss got this email today...I wish more companies had the balls to be this creative: 

The revised Commandments of Email Marketing

I did a presentation today at work where I used my Five Commandments of Email Marketing.  When I originally did them, I geared them specifically towards admissions email marketing.  I decided it was time to revise them slightly to be more broadly applicable.  Without further ado...

A bit of commentary: 

1. Thou shall send using an external service provider: Outsource, baby, outsource.  There is little to no reason to send your own email.  At one cent per email or less, let someone else handle it.  You'll still get massive ROI.
2. Thou shall make your template simple and unobtrusive: Simple templates are just more effective in getting the user to take the call-to-action as they don't provide any distractions along the way.  You can get super fancy with your design...but if your goal is to get them to DO something, there really isn't any reason for it.  
3. Thou shall make messages as segmented and timely as possible: See Barack Obama's email campaigns if you want an example for how segmentation and timeliness should be done.  The closer you can get to your recipients and their wants and needs, the higher percentage of users you're going to make the sale to.  
4. Thou shall keep copy short and calls to action obvious: You can't take a print letter and literally translate it to email.  Be short, succinct and redundant.  Ask for the sale in every paragraph and in the PS.  Your users are just going to scan the email and look for what you want them to do.  Make it easy to identify.  
5. Thou shall only send messages that offer value to the recipients: Providing value is the hardest Commandment to follow.  I just wrote a post for .eduguru about a book I read over the weekend called Neuromarketing, which talked about our self-centered nature.  You can email people every day of the week without turning them off if you provide them with value.  You can turn them off by only emailing them once a month but giving them nothing.  

The Internets isn't just something the kids use...you can raise big bucks on it too!

The Chronicle of Philanthropy released its annual online fundraising statistics this week and I'm sure many old-school fundraisers (who think the Internets is just something the kids use) were surprised at the results.  

One article discussed the findings of the Defenders of Wildlife that email communications to donors can lead to larger online (and offline) gifts: 

• Donors who contributed through traditional means (mail, phone) and who did not receive email communications gave an average of $40.
  
• Donors who contributed through traditional means but did receive email communications gave an average of $59. 
  
• Donors who gave exclusively online made average gifts of $65-$70
  
• Donors who gave both online and offline made average gifts of $105-$110.  These donors were also the most likely to make repeat donations. 
  

The organization also found (not surprisingly) that people are much more likely to give more if they receive an e-mail appeal right before or right after a print appeal, though the follow-up was more likely to have a bigger effect. 

In the same issue was another article discussing donors who make larger gifts online.  Increasingly (and I think in no small part because of the Wired Wealthy report, released back in March), non-profits are becoming open to the idea that it's OK to ask donors to make large gifts online.  Though some experts say this is most effective for donors who will make gifts of up to $10,000, there are organizations out there who have reported receiving gifts of over $200,000 online.  This means you have to make sure that you are capable of accepting large gifts - we had an incident a few months back where a donor tried to make a gift over $50,000 online, but our system wouldn't let him!  We don't traditionally court donors with asks of over $25,000 online, I don't think it occurred to anyone to make sure we could accept large gifts.  This has since been fixed (pushed up to $150,000, which is the limit of the bank) and I believe since then we've received another large gift ($83,000 if my memory serves).  Not too shabby, but I have to wonder what would happen if we started actually ASKING people to make larger gifts online!  

Key Takeaways: 

1. Email leads to larger gifts, online and off
2. People will give you large chunks of change online if you ask them
3. Make sure your systems are set up to take large gifts, whether you are asking for them or not.  You don't want to lose out on $100,000 because your website can't process the credit card. 

Fast Tip Friday: Be Consistent

It never ceases to amaze me how many emails I get with "monthly" or "weekly" in the title which don't actually come out on a monthly or weekly basis.  Someone is too busy, they don't have the content for it...pick your excuse.  Users will notice if you say you are sending regularly but really don't: "What do you mean weekly?  I didn't get anything from you last week!" 

If you know you're going to have trouble being consistent, play off of that in the email - "the every once in a while newsletter" or the "sometimes monthly update".  There's nothing wrong with that - it manages the expectations of your users by letting them know that if you have something to say, you will. 

Pop Quiz: What went wrong with this An Event Apart email?

So why did mailscanner tag it?  How could it have been avoided?  Leave your answer in the comments!

Email personalization is bad? Hmmm....not quite the whole story.

So there was a post on ReadWriteWeb yesterday about a new study that says too much personalization in email can backfire.  Now, I'm convinced that technology pundits are never happier than when they are decrying something so I went to the original article on the study they cited and found the following: The level of personalization had LITTLE to do with people's reaction - instead, it depended on the VALUE the message offered them.  

Gratuitous personalization + value = good!

Gratuitous personalization + no value = bad!

No personalization + value = good!

No personalization + no value = bad!

This isn't rocket science, folks. 

All this study is really saying is what good marketers should have already known - speaking to the interests of the users is the way to go.  I think that sometimes, this may come from personalization.  More often though, I think it comes from segmentation. Instead of overloading an email with content that is irrelevant to the user, why not use that information to segment your campaigns to better target the  message to the user's needs?  For example, for you admissions email marketings out there - send different segmented messages to your inquiries, applicants, accepts and deposited students instead of one blanket e-newsletter.  For development, use class  year to segment messages with different iconography that is familiar to the user depending on what era they attended your institution.  This can make them feel like you know them without being overt about it, while at the same time offering the value this student actually recommends.  

Selecting an Email Service Provider

I just got a call from a young woman at a small university in South Dakota that is thinking about going with FireEngineRed (FER), a higher education email service provider that I have used for years and love. She had just started out the process and was given my name because I recently went through an extensive ESP-search process for Dartmouth and have a ton of research about dozens of ESPs, both higher-ed specific and general providers. Like most of us when we start out, the woman was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the options and didn't really know where to start. I've done previous posts (like this one on email basics) that are applicable to this topic to try to help beginners out (yes, Kyle James...in these posts I'm actually trying to teach ;-) but I don't think I've ever addressed the topic of picking an email service provider.

So here's how it goes at most places: You get a postcard in the mail one day from this company that sends email. You think "wow...email! what a good idea!" You call said company for a demo. You think "wow, this looks awesome" and sign on the dotted line because you really have nothing to compare it too in terms of awesomeness. Now your problem may be solved, or it may not be....but either way, you're committed to this company for a year.

I implore you to avoid this at all costs. I've been there and have regrettably done it and I ended up being with a company who's product isn't as good as it could be....and where I got in regular monthly fights with their tech guy. That made me feel loved as a client, I tell you. So I looked elsewhere and was lucky to stumble on FER. But it wasn't until I started at Dartmouth (where I quickly learned they were sending emails internally.....ICK!) that I actually had to go through a search process. Here are the steps I recommend:

1) Demo as many providers as you can stomach.

Ok, yeah. Demos suck. They take up time you don't have and you have to deal with sales people who with call you again and again and again. But they are necessary to see what the product has to offer. Two things here:

• Don't be afraid to demo non-higher ed providers: Higher ed has specific needs that a lot of B2Cs or B2Bs just don't have, but don't count out providers that service other industries off-hand. There are some great ones out there. 
  
• Get demo accounts: Get them to set up a demo account for you so you can go in and play with it on your own time, without a salesperson being in your ear. Some may fight you on this, but they will do it. You have to be a hardass with vendors some times but always remember that you are the customer and its their job to win you over to get your business. 

2) Use those demos as an opportunity to make a list of the features you are looking for.

Besides seeing specific products, demos also allow you to get a real sense of what is out there. Start to make a list of the features you see that you really like, or the ones that you don't like so much. This will help you out tremendously later in the process.

Here was our list:

List Control

• No restriction on mailing lists
  
• Provider handles unsubscribes
  
• Provider runs imported lists against unsubscribes to prevent mailing to opt-outs

Message Creation

• Message customization
  
• Users can save messages in draft form
  
• Provider gives flexibility of creation/uploading templates
  
• Editing capabilities in WYSIWYG and HTML source
  
• Sent campaigns are archived and can be copied and reused
  
• Ability to suppress branding in Footer of message

Quality Control

• Provider checks outgoing message for spam triggers
  
• Users can schedule messages to be sent in advance
  
• Ability to internally and externally test the message
  
• Provider checks for broken links

Reporting

• Users can monitor messages as they move through the queue from draft to sent
  
• Ability to compare metrics from different campaigns within the tool
  
• Users can track and export the following statistics: 
• Deliverability
  
• Hard and Soft Bounces
  
• Exportable Bounce Logs
  
• Unsubscribe Rates
  
• Unique/Total Open Rates
  
• Unique/Total Click Rates
  
• Forwards

Deliverability

• Provider accepts responsibility for maintaining relationships with ISPs and providing assistance on any deliverability related issues.

Miscellaneous

• Unfettered control to timing, content and number of campaigns
  
• Ability to conduct A/B tests
  
• Dynamic content
  
• Unlimited individual accounts
  
• Ability to set up automated reports of hard bounces to accommodate current internal processes.
  
• Triggered Emails
  
• Preview screenshots of email in major clients
  
• Survey capabilities
  
• RSS/Blogging capabilities
  
• Vendor Offers API

3) Make a grid to compare all the vendors side-by-side.

Ok, so you've got your list. Now plug it into some sort of grid to compare your vendors side-by-side. Every vendor will have different features and policies so some of these that may seem like no-brainers come into play.

Also, another good thing to include on this is the pricing structure of the vendor and your cost for your first and subsequent years if you went with them. Get quotes based on how many emails you think you will be sending monthly/yearly. The way most places do it is that you get charged a monthly/yearly fee for a certain amount of messages. If you go over that number, you pay an additional fee, per message. If you come in under that number, you lose the emails you paid for. Many vendors also have start up costs and additional a la carte features that you can buy. I'm always weary of those, but you need to do what works for you. This is one of the things that really put FER over the top for Dartmouth - you pay per email, no more no less. You never lose emails and you can always get refunds for whatever reason.

4) Weight your list. What are the "deal-breakers" and what are the "nice-to-haves"?

Weighting your list of features is also helpful in determining which provider is right for you. Here is a screenshot from our grid:



3s were the deal-breakers. 2s were things we really wanted, but might be able to live without. 1s were things that were nice-to-have but were not going to play into the final decision if they didn't. Assign your own values based on what your institution is looking for, add them up and you should have your finalists, who will probably all be within a few points of each other.

5) Check references.

Ok, this seems like a no brainer but when I went to do this, it was much harder than I thought! First, one of the providers actually refused to give me references, reasoning that it wasn't necessary to do a reference check until we committed to going to with them. That was a pretty quick way to get their name taken off the list lol. Secondly, when I did reference checks for another top contender, I actually found out that their clients didn't really like them that much and were thinking about switching! Talk about enlightening :-)

6) Get buy-in.

Internal buy-in to a few process is important. I work in an advancement services shop, so I have multiple clients within development that have been affected by the switch to FER. Making sure they were on-board was key to having a smooth transition.

7) Always re-evaluate.

Just because you select a vendor does mean the process stops. Always do a re-evaluation at the end of each year to make sure they are still the best provider for your institution.

Now, even after going through this process with Dartmouth with almost two dozen vendors, we still choose FER. Even though I had a previous relationship with them, it didn't weigh into it - by the numbers, they were just the right ones for what we were looking for. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY WOULD BE RIGHT FOR EVERYONE. Each place has its own needs and what works for me may or may not work for you. That's why its important to really consider the needs of your audience and your institution.

Key Takeaways: 

1. If you're not overwhelmed by this process, you aren't taking it seriously enough. 
   
2. There is no one right answer when it comes to an email provider. Making sure you understand the needs of your institution in relation to what the provider offers is the most important thing. 
   
3. Get it all on paper. Once you do, the choice becomes relatively easy. 
   
4. It's ok to be a hardass with vendors. Really, some are just asking for it.

Integrating print, web and email

I believe that the key to success in any marketing campaign is integration of your look, feel and message across mediums, which constantly reinforces what you want your audience to get out of it. For example, a lot of people ask what day and time is best to send out email. It's the wrong question. Say you ask that at a conference and the speaker says "Tuesdays are the best day to send them out". Then everyone in the room starts sending them out on Tuesdays and it instantly becomes the worst day.  Specific time/day, in my opinion, just isn't that important.  What IS important is how you integrate it with every other part of that marketing campaign.

Here's an example of that. We just launched a fundraising challenge to get alumni to make their annual fund gift before the end of the fiscal year.  Below are some of the key marketing pieces: 

Print mail (Inside):



Home Page Promo:

(www.dartmouthcollegefund.org)

Challenge Landing Page:

(http://www.dartmouth.edu/~alfund/june_challenge/index.html)

The first (of many) segmented emails promoting the challenge:


Other lessons from this challenge:

1) When I was originally designing the landing page, I was REALLY worried that it would look too much like the print piece. The last thing I want is for a page to look like we just took a picture of the print piece and then slapped it up and called it a web page. At the same time though, I think consistency is very important. People may glance at the print piece or the promo or the landing page or the email, but if they all have the same look, feel and message, they'll still be mentally associating all of them and maybe gleaning a bit more each time they see one of the components.

2) A simple javascript ticker will make you look like a genius. I'm not kidding. When I first set it up, I was worried it would come across very cheesy...I still think its cheesy, but I also think its quirky and fun and works within the message (TIME IS RUNNING OUT!). If you're going to do it though, you have to go all out...when the idea was originally brought up, someone joked that it should be to the second but then consensus was that it should just be a countdown by day. I think expanding it and actually doing it to the second is what makes it cool.

3)Doing things like this requires you to be proactive. It's very difficult to pull it all together at the last minute. When you're relying on other people for content, this can be an extremely frustrating point. I'll admit, I about flipped out on a few people in trying to get all this stuff together.

Chicago here I come!

Yesterday I was invited to speak at the American Marketing Association's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. I'm psyched! This is one conference I've always been interested in but there was always something that kept me from attending it.

I'll be speaking on the subject of building an integrated email program from the ground up. It's all about practical advice from a 40,000 foot view. I really want people to be able to go home and IMPLEMENT something rather than contemplate their launch strategy from no one giving them a "how to" guide.

The Symposium is in Chicago from November 16-19. (As an aside, a few days after this I'll be running the Philadelphia Marathon...yes, I'm insane). Here is my abstract that was submitted for the call for papers. I hope to see you there!


Taking Email to the Next Level: Practical Advice for Creating a Integrated Email Marketing Strategy That Will Get Results

Email marketing is not new to higher education. However, many colleges and universities have struggled to grasp its potential impact on the overall goals of the institution and have relegated it to a second-class status in relation to print communications. This session will seek to change that mindset and offer practical advice for the creation of an email marketing strategy or taking an existing program to the next level of effectiveness. It is based on my direct experience with implementing integrated email marketing strategies as the former Interactive Recruitment Manager at Norwich University Admissions and as the current Web Producer at Dartmouth College Development.

Justifying email as a valuable business component: Many senior administrators still view email as a throwaway: they’re fine with doing it as long as they don’t have to invest a lot of time or money in it because they don’t expect it to return results. This is an out-dated point of view, as email as proven to return a significant ROI to the organization that uses it wisely. Consider the following example from a recent fundraising challenge at Dartmouth: We sent out a number of email campaigns costing the College just over $1,100. Those emails directly resulted in over $129,000 worth of gifts (at an average of $158 per gift) to the institution. Using the AMA’s online ROI calculator, we calculated a return on investment of over 11,600 percent.

Selecting an external service provider: Having a quality email service provider is a vital component to a successful program. Sending email is not a task that a college should be taking on in-house, as external providers offer the benefits of advanced email creation features, spam testing and ensured deliverability. There are dozens of well-qualified providers out there at all price ranges and based on the ROI your campaigns will achieve through increased applications or donations, the cost is easily justifiable. In selecting a provider, make sure you have a solid requirements document in place that takes the following into consideration: list control, message creation, quality control, reporting, deliverability, pricing model and level of support from the provider.

Integrating email and print communications strategy: The key to success in email marketing is not to think of it as separate from your traditional marketing plan. Your email templates should be branded with the same imagery as the print pieces they are complimenting, use similar language and be timed to follow-up to your audience’s receipt of the mailing with an online call-to-action.

Segmenting, customizing and targeting for maximum effectiveness: To really take advantage email marketing, you must build your campaigns to appeal to your user on a personal basis, beyond “Dear FirstName”. This could mean segmenting your mailing and modifying each version slightly to appeal to the distinct audiences, timing the mailing to compliment a specific event or creating email templates with multiple customized fields. During this presidential election year, a great place to look for inspiration for a solid email strategy are emails sent from the different political campaigns, which will be covered in greater detail in the session.

Tracking results and managing expectations: Follow-up tracking provides a wealth of information that will allow you to fine tune future campaigns to your audience. You should be careful, however, not to expect the same results from all your audiences. For example:
• In admissions you can’t expect the same open, click through or conversion rates from your applicants as you can from juniors or seniors (that have not applied) in high school. They are at different stages and have different interest levels.
• In development, you will find different reactions by age. Older alums may open and click through at a higher rate, but are not as likely to make their gift online as they are to mail in a check. Younger classes are more likely to click through from a campaign and complete their gift on that visit to your website.

Shamelessly stealing from Obama's emails

So throughout the 2008 election cycle, I've been raving about how great Obama's emails are and how we can steal concepts from them and apply them to our own email marketing campaigns. To show I'm not all talk, here is an example that I just did today.

Obama sends out emails all the time with a simple screenshot of a video embedded in it and I think it's an extremely effective tactic to get people to launch the webpage you want them too. We're so use to seeing images like this now with YouTube and Google Video. Here is one example of this from the campaign:



And my blatant knockoff:



When the user clicks on the gallery image, the landing page will launch with a simple flash gallery created with Simpleviewer. Alumni absolutely eat these things up, spending an average of 8 minutes on gallery pages we've built in the past.

Key Takeaways: 

1) Blatantly stealing other people's ideas is fair game

2) Politics is a great arena to look for inspiration in

3) Alumni love simple flash galleries :-)

Building an admissions email marketing plan: Part 2 - When, Why, What and Calls to Action

This is the second in a series of posts on creating an 

effective email marketing plan for your admissions office. 

If you missed the first, read it here.

In my last post in this series, I offered some guiding principals for setting up an admissions email marketing program. From here on out, I'm going to get into the nitty-gritty. When I first started doing email marketing many years back, I was always looking for that step-by-step "how to" guide. Of course, most colleges weren't doing serious email marketing to prospective students back then so no such guide existed. I'm really hoping this blog will be a resource for at least a few people who want to get into this type of communication with their prospectives but really don't know where to begin.

So why should I bother? Email is soooooo 2003.
I bring this section up only because there are still a startling number of schools out there that are doing little to no email marketing. If you ask people to come to your website and do something, they will. Want your prospects to apply online? Then send them an email and ask them too! Ok, maybe not everyone you send it to but on average you can expect to get a 30-40% open rate and a 3-5% click through rate for your messages. The more personal and timely you make your messages, the better your rates will be. It will never be 100% (though I've had emails as high as 80% open and 60% click through) but its certainly better than the 0% you'll get by not doing email at all!

Where do I start?
A good primer for this is a previous post I did: So you need to create a marketing plan....

I'll bring it one step further with this post. Start off with the easy, no-brainer stuff. Every time there is an event, a deadline or any other important date, there should be an email to the primary audience it impacts with some sort of call to action. This may or may not require you to create a landing page with a response mechanism (be smart about when you are creating these things so you can reuse them time and time again).

So with this basic framework, let's start to build out an email calendar. These are just sample dates/events to get the ball rolling:

Notice a pattern with the online RSVP? EVERY event should have one. Even college fairs. I put a * next to college fairs because they are a little bit different. You'll only get a handful of online RSVPs for every national event you do but say you know an applicant is going to be there - why not have you representative find out the status of their application (any missing items, if they've been accepted, etc) and update them in person at the fair? Or have a pre-made packet of information for every inquiry you know is going to be there, including a pre-printed application with all the fields you know of filled in and their fee waived. These personal little touches mean a lot to kids and cost you nothing in terms of time and resources.

Next, you have to figure out the timing of your messages. This should vary based on a few factors:

1) What type of event is it? The type of event dictates the timing. Families need time to plan to attend open houses on campus, but events in their area are an easier decision. Easier still are live chats, where all you need is the luck of them being on the Internet when they occur.

2) Is there a corresponding print mailing? Emails should ALWAYS follow up a print mailing. Directors like to do what I call a preemptive strike: They want you to send out an email BEFORE the print invitation to let students know that a print invitation is coming. Does that sound a bit bizarre to anyone? Plus they never work. It's your job to take the bullet and say "NO!"  (can you tell this is a pet peeve?) Instead, send an email that follows to the students receipt of the print piece.  Follow-ups are great because they act as a reminder in between the day the student receives your print invite and the day of the event. Inevitably, a good number of your audience will have tossed aside the invite and have forgotten to RSVP but your email will jar their memory.

With these two things in mind, we can start to assign our dates.  These are not arbitrary for examples sake.  Instead, I looked at the type of event and whether or not there was a print invitation to look for a good day for a followup.  

Now, of course these dates need to be flexible to accommodate days of the week and other email communications to the same audience. As a general rule, avoid emailing on Saturday or Sunday but other than that, its fair game. However, if you take anything out of this section, take this: There is no magic day of the week or time of the day that works in all circumstances. More important than day of the week is that the message is coordinated with other types of communication your audience is receiving.

Note: When I made these tables, I forgot to put live chats on here. Chats, in my opinion, are mostly a waste of time because they only appeal to the students you've largely won over (which is find during the summer when you're trying to prevent sugar off, but not so much during the year). However, they are what they are and if you do them you need to market for them. Send out an email half and hour before your chat is scheduled to start and it will bring in 75% of your audience. Also, if you send out an announcement earlier in the week, give the students a way to RSVP online. That way if they don't show up the night of, you can call them under the pretext of checking to see if they could log on OK to remind them to get their butts online.

Additional ideas for subject areas

Events are no-brainers. They are easily scheduled and basically write themselves. But don't rest on your laurels there. What are the subject areas that matter to your prospective students? I'll give you a hint: Quality academic programs (that are going to get them jobs after graduation) and kicking ass outside the classroom (athletics, community service organizations, greek life for those you like that sort of thing, etc).  Also, tying emails into the business goals of the organization are never a bad idea.  Here are some ideas:

-Application fee waivers: A primary call to action of any admissions office is getting your kids to apply. Offer them special codes that they can put in their online application to waive the fee in your email messages throughout the fall, culminating with a "holiday" gift if they apply before the new year.

-Regular emails talking about the cool/fun/useful/impressive things going on in your academic programs. It's near impossible to do these things on a monthly basis (because of silly things like summer vacation) but there's usually interesting things going on that prospective students want to hear about like class projects or job placements or research publications by students.

-Athletic previews (discussed further in the call to action section)

-Triggered emails: There are no better times to email your applicants than right after they've submitted their application or right after they've been accepted. Consider doing emails written by your faculty members or students in individual programs to prospects who applied or been accepted to them.

-Admissions updates: Applicants have a very specific set of needs. Regular emails updating them on key dates or aspects of the admissions process can go along way in alleviating their concerns.

When you're coming up with the content of your messages, be sure to make the mental distinction between emails meant to cultivate an audience over time and emails that are meant to push the user to take the next step in moving through the admissions funnel.  News updates are for ongoing cultivation of your prospects, some of whom inquired as early as their freshman year in high school.  It keeps the name of your school and your brand in their mind.  Pushes to apply or deposit online are next steps.  You don't do these until they are at a stage where they are mentally ready to make that decision.

So what do I write?

You've figured out when you want to send your emails and what subjects they should be about. Now what do you say?

I can't tell you specifically what to say in your emails but can say that studies show content to be 40% more effective if it speaks directly to the reader using a conversational tone rather than using a business-like, formulaic one. I don't know for sure but I would bet all the money in my pocket that this is especially true when you're trying to reach teenagers. I always thought of it as writing a blog. Speak to them simply, easily and directly and they'll respond.

I do, however, have one cardinal rule of email content:

ALWAYS have a Call To Action

I can't emphasize this point enough. If you don't have something for them to do, you should be thinking twice about hitting that send key. Even if you're doing a purely informational email, relate it back to the user and give them a call to action based on that relation. For example, at my last job I did athletic preview emails that went out to all students who had inquired to a particular sport right before the season started. They were basically just an overview of the team and what the coach expected of them during the season. The call to action at the end of the email was to go on the team's website and fill out a "prospective athlete questionnaire" to let the coach know you're interested in playing. Kids LOVED these emails. Not only did a lot of them fill out the form, but they would also reply with their various stats and clips, which we'd then forward on to the coach for them. Having a simple call to action and creating a few forms on the website allowed us to take what would traditionally just be an informational email and make it into something that students could interact with.

Key Takeaways:
1) Anything that requires a print invitation requires an email (and probably some web work)
2) Don't worry so much about what specific day of the week you're emailing. Worry about coordinating it with other mailings and communication.
3) Don't be too formal. You'll only turn people off.
4) Always give your users something to do.

Building an admissions email marketing plan: Part 1 - The Five Commandments

This is the first in a series of posts on creating an effective 
email marketing plan for your admissions office. 


The news of emails death has been greatly exaggerated: Technology pundits have been proclaiming the death of email as a tool to reach your teenage audience for well over a year at this point. I maintain that the pundits aren't happy unless they are proclaiming the death of something. The fact is, for the type of communication a college would be doing with any prospective students, email is still extremely relevant. Remember, you're not their friend. You're more of a business contact. For their friends, in-person communication, text messaging or social networks reign supreme as their communications mediums of choice but their "business" contacts are relegated to a second-class email status. A lot of your prospective students will have created separate email accounts (that their parents have access to) for their college search process so to a real extent, they are expecting you to communicate with them through the medium. Plus its so cheap to do it will almost instantly garner a huge ROI.

Ok so it's still useful...but what do I do with it?

Before you jump into it, you need to come up with an over-arching plan or philosophy.  Here are my commandments for effective admissions email marketing:



Make it timely, relevant and personal: One of the benefits of doing email marketing is that it is very easy to customize it to the individual user. A great place to look for inspiration are political emails because these guys get it. If you can, hit the user when they are most open to it, like right after they've submitted an application or have been accepted. Statistics show that emails that are sent based on a user's action are up to nine times more effective than ones that are sent whenever. Also, make sure your content is relevant to what the user has told you they are interested in. Big news in your school's biology program is not relevant to a student who's applying as an English major! By only sending out relevant content, you create a promise with your students that you will only email them when its directly applicable to their interests, which will result in higher open and click rates in the long run.

Target the type and quantity of emails to the specific audience: The more excited your students get about your institution, the more you can get away with emailing them. This excitement usually goes by high school graduation year and then admissions status:



You should always include all audiences in your plan - a freshman or a sophomore wouldn't have inquired if they weren't interested and open to being cultivated. At the same time, be mindful of what stage they are at in their life to avoid turning them off with too much communication. The communication is meant to build off of each other. You may only be able to get away with emailing a sophomore inquiry once a month but you can add more relevant communication as they move through the admissions tunnel.

E-newsletters suck...but can be salvaged (to a certain extent): E-newsletters are probably the most ineffective type of email marketing you can engage in but for some reason, directors of admissions think they are the greatest thing ever. If you find yourself forced into the position of doing one, there are ways to salvage it to make ultra-relevant to your user. Think about merging in the following fields: name, major, high school graduation year (if they're an inquiry), phone number (and ask them to update it or add a cell number to their file), admissions status (inquired, applied, accepted, etc...), any missing items from their application if they've applied, their counselors name, phone number, email and IM screenname. And, yes, I'm taking about merging it all into the same newsletter. You'll have a huge spreadsheet like you've never seen before but it is very doable.

Also, think about incorporating student profiles into your newsletters and then segment your newsletters based on major or gender or whatever so that the user can see "students like me" in the newsletter. This will re-enforce that your school is a good place for them.

Then after you've done all this personalized stuff, put all the regular mass news that they probably won't read anyway. They may read the first two articles but readers will trail off as it starts getting longer so make sure to put your most exciting stuff at the top.

Keep it simple: Email templates should be ultra simple - a tables based layout with a simple header and a simple footer. Keep it to 600px width max. Always assume your images will be turned off when they first open it. The less distractions you give them to the call-to-action the better. Test the template before you send it if you've never used it before. Campaign Monitor provides a great service that you can use to test it in a ton of email clients for $10.

Use an external provider: Higher education institutions are simply not equipped with the resources necessary to support sending email in-house. The deliverability issues alone should make it a moot point. There are a ton of great email service providers out there, some higher ed specific and some not. If you're looking for a higher ed specific one, I really like FireEngineRed and James Tower. However, don't completely discount providers that aren't specifically higher ed oriented! A lot of colleges have gone with providers like Exact Target, What Counts, Silverpop, Real Magnet or Emma. There is no one best service provider out there - make sure you do a bunch of demos to find the one that is right for your organization.

Key Takeaways:
1) Email is still a very effective way to communicate with prospective students.
2) The more personal you get to your specific user, the more effective your campaigns will be.
3) Design for usability, not for flash.
4) You're only asking for trouble if you send emails in-house.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week!

Treat your "customers" like you know them

My car was 3,000 miles overdue for an oil change so I finally broke down and dropped it off at the mechanic this morning.  While I was there, the manager of the service department reminded me of one of the cardinal rules: treat every customer  you have like you know them. I've only been to this place a few times and I know damn well this guy didn't remember when I came in this morning...but he made me feel like he did.  And it makes all the difference in the world in terms of how inclined I am to bring my car there again and again, even if they are more expensive than the place up the road.  

It's helpful to start thinking of your audience as your customers.  They may not be buying things from you like they do from the mall but its a sale nonetheless.  Whether you are in admissions, development or anywhere in between, you are selling your audience on your institution being a worthwhile component of their life.   

The easiest way to implement personalization into your web marketing plan is through email.  I don't think colleges go far enough with customizing their email marketing to the direct needs of their customers.  Once you have a template built, employing different techniques to segment your list and varying the message slightly to appeal more directly to the needs of your audience.  I use to do a monthly admissions newsletter that was segmented into 21 different parts.  Coming up soon, I'm going to be involved in the creation of a challenge email campaign that could have as many as 70 different parts.  It's really not any more or less tedious or challenging than any other aspect of working on the web to create that many templates.  

Also, colleges should go further with opt-in lists.  Sure, we can consider a person to be "opted in" to our communications based on their relationship with the institution, but why not go one step further for people who have told you that they want to receive specific communications?  For example, I posted an article earlier today about the wealthiest donors being interested in receiving electronic communications about how the organization has used of the money they've given.  The highest end donors are telling you EXACTLY what they want and they are the most important audience out there to appeal to on a one-on-one basis.  Giving them what they want reminds them that you know who they are and that you've listened to what they've told you. 

Show Me The Money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My last job wasn't in the hard-line budget of the university when it was first created and I knew there was a high probability that the day would come when I would have to show that they made the right decision in funding it to be able to keep my job. I literally had a folder in my documents called "Justifying My Existence" and in it contained all of my bragging material that showed the impact of the position as they DIRECTLY RELATED to the business goals of the university. That last part is the hardest - while some things are easily quantifiable, some just aren't even though you know in your gut that they have an impact.

Nonetheless, come budget time you're going to have to justify your projects to your higher ups to get funding for it and you don't necessarily speak the same language they do. I'm as guilty of any of using the "but it would be so cool!" argument, but that doesn't always cut it. Money and resources are always tight in higher ed, especially when it pertains the web because so few senior people in any organization really understand it (not that they aren't very smart people....it's mostly a generational thing). So how do you get them to see things your way? Give them numbers. I'll give you some real world examples of things they gravitate to:

You think your school's/department's website sucks and want to do a redesign.

How is this redesign going to enhance the bottom line? The primary business function of any college is educating its students. The majority of this money (I'll make a broad estimate of 65% at your average school) comes from tuition dollars, which most directly comes from admission. Another 25-30% come from fundraising/development/alumni relations. The rest of miscellaneous sources. How will your redesign enhance those areas? Will it even? If not, I would take the next step argument of saying that it will enhance current student engagement with your area and here's some testimonials from current students saying how much easier/better it would make their life.

You want to convince your boss to let you dedicate more time or money to email marketing.

A good email system can track any statistic you could ever want and even a half-hearted email marketing plan will give you results. In admissions, show how many prospective students go directly from receiving an email to fill out an online application (you can later use these results to show what percentage of these students ended up enrolling). Make a graph that compares online applications to paper applications and their change in popularity over time. In development, show them how many users went from receiving an e-mail to making an online gift (you can really easily do this with Google Analytics). With the total value of gifts derived directly from your email campaign, use the American Marketing Association's ROI Calculator to show the value these emails bring to the organization.

You hate making phone calls and want to move towards relying more heavily on IM with prospective students.

Instant messaging is nothing new in admissions and has certainly gained traction over the past five years. Yet phone call after phone call remain. You need to show IM are just as valuable, if not moreso, than that phone call. First, you have to find a way to track IM conversations, which should be as simple as utilizing an existing CRM (whatever you use to track phone calls/events/etc...if you don't have something, you have larger problems to worry about). Then you can run lists that show students you've had IM conversations with based on outcome (reject, enroll, accepted but did not attend, etc...). My past experiences tell me that the students who are going to contact you over IM are the super-excited students and the vast majority will either end up getting rejected or enrolling. Why wouldn't the university WANT to offer students that are already inclined to enroll an opportunity to communicate over their medium of choice?

You want to expand your web presence into the social network dejour.

Saying "because everyone else is doing it" is not a good enough answer. Find a way to relate this directly to the business process (i.e. $$$$$$$$$$). For example, I blogged a while ago about social ads on Facebook. Since we instrumented our ads with Google Analytics, we were able to show that, although we only got a hand full of leads from it, those leads were far more inclined than your average visitor to make a donation. It was very cheap for us to test the waters (about $80 or so for a full month of ads) but the return opened the door for future involvement on the site. Social networks, and student blogs to a certain extent, are tricky ones because they are really about engagement rather than hard numbers. You can have a group on Facebook that has 500 people in it but no one ever posts or you can have a group of a dozen or so really dedicated members that are on there 10 times a day. Which is a greater success? This is going to require some time to massage your manager into the idea of looking past the hard numbers to see the true value that can be attained, but it is worth the effort.


I hope you're seeing a pattern: Everything comes back to money.

Better website => more applications/donations => more $$$
-or-
Better website => more current student engagement => less transfers/more excited alumni => more tuition/more donations after graduation => more $$$

More email marketing => more applications/donations => more $$$

More use of IM => better recruitment of excited students on their medium of choice => higher enrollments => more $$$

More use of social networks => better leads once they are driven to your website => more applications/donations => more $$$


The last one is a bit of a stretch, but you'll have that. In addition to the numbers, many managers just want to know that you're actually THINKING about this stuff and if you show them you are, they will have more confidence in your abilities to make solid recommendations in the future. More-so, any manager worth their salt will translate that confidence like this:

More confidence in you => higher likelihood that they'll want to keep you happy as an employee so you don't get lured away to another organization (on average it costs an organization about $40,000 to fully train the employee that would replace you) => they give you a raise => more $$$ for you :-)

See, it works out for all involved.

Now THAT'S Service!

Yesterday I wrote a blog inspired by my annoyance with companies that don't cater to the needs of their customer. Today I've got an example of the flip side: Dartmouth had been utilizing an external email provider, FireEngineRed, for a series of emails during our latest challenge as a temporary solution after getting ourselves blocked from two major ISPs for sending email in-house (something, as an aside, that I take no responsibility for!). After the challenge ended, we stopped sending a lot of email and started the search for a permanent solution to this problem. I've been demoing email providers like crazy for the last month and a half and have spoken to a ton of sales people. So when I got a phone call yesterday from the CEO and the COO/CTO of the company just to check in and make sure everything was still well, it was a welcomed change from your average sales person. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask them about a few features that they don't offer that I had seen in other providers I was demoing (specifically dynamic content and A/B split tests). They quickly said they were planning a big update and that those features, along with several others, would be available by the end of the summer. They continued: Did I want to be a part of the Beta test to see how these new features worked? Did I have any other "show-stopper" requirements that they didn't offer because they have 4 developers on staff (and are hiring one more) and can build them into future updates and are always looking for suggestions from their clients. Oh and if you even need to delay a payment due to a budget crunch, it's all good. We know you're good for it.

I was blown away. Talk about customer service! This type of relationship with the provider is difficult (at best!) to quantify when you're doing demos of their offerings but its one of the most important attributes to a successful partnership. Bravo to FireEngineRed for stepping up to the plate and putting the client's experience above all else. I wholeheartedly recommend them if you're in a search for a provider - there are few out there in the higher ed specific market or in the greater email service provider market that can match them.

Making the Business Case for Email: Is 11,000% ROI not good enough for you????

I had a conversation with one of my bosses this morning and she was explaining to me how she has to make a business case for email to her boss in regards to getting it into next year's budget.  We had just run a series of emails through a provider and our conversation got me curious.  I decided to run a quick ROI calculation using the American Marketing Associations super-convenient ROI Calculator.  The results were overwhelming: 

Number of pieces/Cost: 73,553 at a cost of $1,103
Number of respondents: 1,231
Number of buyers (or in our case givers): 815
Total program revenue: $129,316

Cost per response: $0.89
Cost per giver: $0.01
Cost per piece: $0.01

ROI: 11,624.02%

Here's a screenshot of the actual calculator:


Now, I've got an MBA....but you CERTAINLY don't need to know that that's a good deal at twice the price!  

Maybe politicians are good for something...

It's no secret that I'm a Barack Obama fan. But I have to say, even before I pledged my vote to the man, I was always a fan of his e-mail marketing strategy. To me, the timeliness is most effective. There are many times when I'll get a news update from the campaign before I hear it on MSNBC. For example:

(click on any of the pictures to enlarge)

This was actually how I learned he won the South Carolina primary, welcomed news after the loss in New Hampshire. Another example:



This e-mail was sent the night of the State of the Union at 11:40pm. (Note: The video was not embedded in the email - it opened up in a web page).

And lest we forget the 12:30am update on Wednesday morning after Super Tuesday:



The campaign also enlists his wife, Michelle, on e-mails that have a less urgent tone:

And of course, the fund raising. Here's the one that inspired me to make my most recent donation to his campaign. From his campaign manager:

:-)

So what can higher ed take away from this:

1) Timeliness is key: These things have to be planned proactively to be their most effective. It's not like the Obama campaign suddenly thought "wouldn't it be cool if we sent a video out after the State of the Union" after the speech had already started!

2) Use your assets: Your email doesn't always have to be from the same person. Mix it up! Who is the most appropriate person for this message? It may be your VP....it may be your president....it may be a student....it may be an alum. Don't pigeonhole yourself because the sender can be a significant factor in the results that you get.

3) Competition is good for fundraising: We do this all the time - pit the classes against each other or "shame" the alums who haven't given into submission by not including their names in the online honor roll. Also, I think its important to note that regardless of the message of a specific e-mail, the overarching theme is "GIVE ME MONEY!!!" Links to donate are always prominent, sometimes being given multiple times in the same email.

4) First name basis: This may be more attractive to some people than to others. I'm a very informal person so it really annoys me when people get obsessed with title, position and power. It's that informality that really bonds me to the person writing the e-mail on a human level and makes me much more inclined to give them a donation.

Overall, I think the biggest piece of inspiration that higher ed can take from this is that it's OK to look outside our niche. Look at business. Look at politics. Look at other non-profits. Oftentimes, we're about five steps behind these areas in our e-marketing efforts so it's not only OK, but should be encouraged, to go to them when we're looking for some new ideas.

Email basics

Email marketing is probably one of the easiest and most cost effective things you can do but if you have e-mails that look awful when they are delivered, you've missed the point! What a lot of people don't realize when they first start designing email templates is that there IS NO STANDARD. Email clients don't abide by WC3 standards (though, God willing, the Email Standards Project is on it) so you have to take extra care when designing your templates to make sure they work over multiple environments. Here are some rules of thumb:

1) KEEP IT SIMPLE! Use a simple, tables-based layout.

2) If you're going to use CSS, you can ONLY use inline styles: Gmail does not currently support embedded style sheets and I'm guessing you have more than a few users on there. To make it even more fun, they and Outlook 2007 only support the following properties:

• background-color
• border
• color
• font-family
• font-size
• font-style
• font-variant
• font-weight
• letter-spacing
• line-height
• margin
• padding
• text-align
• text-decoration
• text-transform

3) Always assume that your images are going to be turned off. Use a simple header and a simple footer (and if you're really feeling saucy, a picture in the body) but make sure the pertinent information is in text form! Keep your headers/footers to 600 pixels wide.

4) Keep your text simple and to the point. Give your users ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY to do. "Here, click this link!" If you don't have a call to action for your users, you probably want to rethinking sending an email in the first place.

5) TEST, TEST, TEST! You have a few options when it comes to testing:

1. Set up a bunch of accounts in a bunch of different e-mail clients...though this often proves to be more trouble than its ultimately worth given the alternatives.
   
2. Use an ESP that will test for you. For example, right now we are using a service that gives us screen shots in all the major clients, with images on and off.
   
3. Campaign Monitor offers a great service where they will give you screen shots of your template in over a dozen e-mail clients for $10 a pop.
4. If you can get your hands on a handheld, its not the worst idea in the world to test what your e-mail looks like in Versamail and in different web-based clients, particiularly if you are targeting an older audience.

If whatever you are using to send your email doesn't give you basic metrics, do yourself a favor and instrument it with Google Analytics. They have a URL Builder that will easily build you a custom URL to be able to track click throughs and conversions, which is particularly important for those of you running e-commerce sites!

Once you get your basic templates down, it becomes relatively easy from there. Happy emailing!

UPDATE: In an effort to get Gmail to see the light, the Email Standards Project has started "Project Gmail Grimace": 

Here's my picture:

Submit yours as http://www.email-standards.org/blog/entry/getting-some-gmail-attention/

When it doubt....

DON'T SEND YOUR OWN BLODDY EMAIL! That's why they created ESPs :-)

That is all.