“A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie.
Personalised marketing quickly became one of the most powerful trends in the online world, with personalised email marketing campaigns receiving 29% higher email open rates and 41% higher click-through rates than regular emails.
The independent school’s landscape is increasingly competitive, and building brand loyalty is one of the biggest challenges marketers face. And, if they aren’t personalising their content, whether it be via email, prospectus, or their website, they may well be missing a trick.
Below are just a few of the ways that personalised marketing can work for education.
Significantly boost engagement
Personalised marketing comes in many forms, but perhaps the most obvious is the use of a person’s name.
Addressing someone by their name catches their attention, and research reveals that emails addressing the customer by name receive six times higher transaction rates. Personalisation has become something that consumers now expect. When an email is not personalised, 52% of customers say they’ll find somewhere else to go.
Although this marketing tactic may sound cliché, it’s really successful and is used by giants such as Amazon and Netflix constantly!
Personalisation doesn’t just end with emails. We’re all aware of the success of Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which stands as evidence of the power of name personalisation. For the first time in 10 years, Coca-Cola saw an increase in sales following this campaign – proof that a name is enough to boost your engagement.
This also applies to prospectuses. We’ve had some great feedback from schools that are using our Unify system to personalise their prospectuses with students names.
Wisbech Grammar School had this to say:
“Typically families would not email to say ‘thanks for the brochure’. But within 24 hours of emailing our personalised prospectus, we received emails, either from parents to say thanks for the email we look forward to attending the open evening, or our child can’t make it but we look forward to being there. We also had a few questions asking if we offered certain subjects at A-Level, so the brochure has prompted questions which is fantastic and exactly what we want considering the dialogue would not have been there when posting out generic brochures.”
Increase customer loyalty
Any business understands that customer loyalty is essential to success. Customers are five times more likely to stick with a brand, but how do you build customer loyalty? By building a relationship with them.
Schools have a major advantage when it comes to digital marketing, as more often than not enquiries are made after an initial visit to the school or after an open event, where the prospective student and parents have had the opportunity to meet the faculty face-to-face. Personalised marketing can further cement this blossoming relationship, by making a student feel unique and valued.
A 2013 study found that 78% of customers equate brands who created personalised content for them with brands who wanted to build a relationship with them. For schools, a personalised prospectus from Unify Schools is exactly the type of personalised content students and parents are looking for. You have shown that you understand exactly what that child wants from your school in the form of subjects and hobbies, allowing you to remain at the forefront of their minds during the decision making process.
We were asked to pitch for Felsted’s brand refresh a few years ago and won the job based on our personalised offering. Their head of marketing said:
“Unify would give us that personal touch when marketing to prospective students – something that has never been done before in the history of the school.” Read the full case study here.
Personalisation is the future
It would seem that the schools we’ve worked with really loved the idea of implementing personalised marketing into their strategies, by personalising their prospectus on an individual basis. In fact, 90% of schools we spoke to said that they would absolutely see the benefit in being able to update their prospectus live at any time.
Make sure your prospectus is having the maximum impact it can have. We can work with you to personalise aspects of your marketing offering, give you advice on prospectus development or to help you plan your strategy for your next prospectus.
Chat to us today if you’d like to find out more.