While the idea of being able to master any skill after 10,000 hours of practice has been debunked, the concept of continually trying new approaches to improve holds true. It’s important to enrollment marketing, as standing still means falling behind. Your marketing and enrollment data analytics represent an opportunity to optimize your school’s advertising investment and strategies. What’s more, ever-evolving technology has placed seemingly endless amounts of data at your fingertips. However, as busy higher education marketers, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the copious amounts of performance data available and to practice the rule of “set it and forget it” to move on to the next item on your ever-growing to-do list. So, what are some easy ways to continually improve your enrollment marketing strategies without taxing your ability to get it all done?
Consider “best practices” as suggestions and look for small ways to break the rules
Who hasn’t dreamed of living dangerously like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause from time to time? Have you heard it's best to send emails on Tuesdays? Try Fridays instead. Always use your brand to post on social media? Try posting from the Dean or a student instead.
Test one element at a time and keep variations under control
If you’re testing an email subject line, don’t also change the call to action. Otherwise, you won't know which change made the difference. Also, be sure not to test too many variations at once of the element you’re testing. If you’re testing an email subject line, only test 2-3 subject line variations at a time. A/B testing helps you make unbiased data-driven decisions when identifying the best marketing strategies.
Test the same thing multiple times before drawing (temporary) conclusions
Act like a scientist by running experiments several times. This will ensure your initial results hold true over time and different scenarios, while also giving you and your team time to set up the next test. That way, it won’t feel overwhelming, and you’re able to gain new information each time. What a way to really put the strategy into strategic enrollment management!
Ask an independent party to weigh in and help craft a campaign
Sometimes, people who are not in the forest with us are able to pull back and see the bigger picture, or better yet, a completely fresh, untested one. Asking not only for feedback but also for contributing support gives your team bandwidth to move on to the next element of your campaign.
Be sure to make use of what you learn
Now that you’ve identified key performance metrics and are monitoring them, don’t be shy about using the information to gain knowledge about your market, make course corrections when needed, and inform future strategy.
Once you’ve integrated testing into your marketing strategy, don’t stop! Incremental changes can soon add up in big ways! Testing can help you further segment and target your market. Who knows, it may even help you identify your best channels for lead generation if you isolate and test one by one!
Truly, continually testing shouldn’t feel daunting. If you’re on autopilot with your campaigns, the likelihood is that over time, they will stop performing and grow stale, especially in the fast-moving digital marketing space. This means you can’t afford not to test.
If you don’t have time to pause and review the performance of your enrollment marketing efforts, you should scale back and do a few things well. Or, you can call us at FUEL to help partner with you to consult or execute on your enrollment marketing campaigns.
Happy testing!
