Higher Education Marketing: 5 Ways Your University Can Stand Out

The higher education landscape is crowded and filled with both large well-known university programs as well as mid-tier executive education programs. The landscape is becoming much more competitive as COVID has driven many universities to change their primary in-person classes to fully online and live online courses. This blog will cover higher education marketing and show you 5 ways your university can stand out in a crowd.

Digital marketing for higher education can be complex, especially because of the crowded market and the fact that programs are creating data (even more so during these turbulent times). Universities and six sigma programs should begin to leverage as many touchpoints as possible to clearly communicate their value proposition and how they adapt their programs to COVID to ensure they stand out in a sea of different educational programs.  Our university email marketing company will cover everything from email marketing strategies to email marketing campaigns for universities. Stay tuned and don’t forget to have a pen and paper ready to jot down notes!

 

Higher Education Marketing: 5 Ways Your University Can Stand Out 

 

1. Understand Your Audience

Your students have likes, dislikes, and needs. Do you fully understand the students who attend your programs? Are you tailoring your content and personalizing your emails and website copy to speak to their particular goals and aspirations? When you write content that is tailored and personalized to a specific demographic, you are better able to psychologically condition them through touchpoints and ad copy to change from just an email subscriber or casual browser of your program’s offerings into a student that is a lifelong learner and program advocate. Higher education marketing involves building avatars and then understanding how to use this information to fully engage your audiences. One of the university marketing strategies that are most useful is beginning with your student in mind, not your marketing tactics. 

Marketing begins with understanding your target student body. This could include any or all of the following: 

• Age
• Gender
• Goals
• Challenges
• Fears
• Frustrations 

You may want to build customer avatars which are fictional representations of customers that help you to really solidify your customer’s demographics and how you will begin to market to them to turn them into students in your program. Many universities also employ other organizations to do surveys and market research which could be a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions that help them understand both the granular (and not so obvious) parts of their target student body. You can use survey tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics to build out surveys. Are you doing the best you can to implement your higher education marketing strategies? Do your university marketing strategies incorporate surveys? If so, how can you improve them? If not, below are a few suggestions you can use.  

 

You may think about developing the following:

• End-of-course surveys 
• Email drip campaigns that include 5 question surveys
• Website questionnaires 
• Outsource your market research 

Don’t forget to lift information from your student avatars with the university marketing strategies that we list below. 

 

Contact FrescoData to learn more about our higher education marketing strategies that will help you grow your program to full capacity and beyond. 

 

2.  Relatable Social Media Marketing 

Social media marketing starts with knowing your target audiences’ content preferences, browsing times, and how best to engage them so they then engage and share your content across their own personal networks. 

Building effective messaging that drives prospective Executive MBAs to make decisions is one way you can engage your email address list and bring it back from the dead. Successful email marketing for universities needs to include a major focus on practical experience and testimonials from alumni in the C-suite to be effective. Social media marketing is one of the most powerful and popular university marketing strategies. Are you using it to its fullest potential? 

Here are also a few of the common social media marketing activities that many universities do to stand out in a crowd: 

• Post content that increases brand awareness
• Create a hashtag for your university (eg. #RhoseIslandU)
• Do social media takeovers
• Feature student stories
• Introduce key members of your university community
• Go live on social media
• Conduct online tours on social media
• Omnichannel university marketing strategies

Email marketing for universities combined with social media marketing and word of mouth are all examples of omnichannel marketing strategies you can easily leverage to market your university programs. How effective are your university marketing strategies? Do you track your KPIs?

Here are three more ideas that may be useful: 

1. Graduate addresses in rich media or interactive formats (C-suite or VP level execs.)
2. Relevant statistics  on salary or career flexibility 
3. Content-focused on professional associations your graduates may join

No matter what omnichannel or email marketing strategy you choose, digital marketing for higher education is here to stay. Remember to follow up your social media posts with powerful email marketing for universities. 

 

Are your university marketing strategies working? Contact FrescoData to learn more about how you can gain an edge in a crowded higher education market. 

 

3. Standardize Your Content

Content should be standardized in order to set your university apart in a crowded market. Several universities are sending out a thousand different marketing messages a week. Are these messages standardized to an overall brand tone, message, and format?

When you standardize your content, you have the ability to build powerful, scalable, and relatable omnichannel marketing campaigns. Omnichannel marketing can be defined as “the integration and cooperation of the various channels organizations use to interact with consumers, with the goal of creating a consistent brand experience” (Marketing Evolution) Omnichannel marketing should be combined with various other forms of digital marketing services such as omnichannel marketing because it will help you to reach your guests where, and when, they browse. Have you implemented omnichannel marketing in your university marketing strategies?

Omnichannel marketing could be a combination of: 

• Display advertising 
• Geofenced advertising content 
• Referral traffic 
• Targeted social media marketing
• Mobile advertising  

FrescoData provides best-in-class service and campaign excellence from concept to execution. Fortune 100 clients depend on our years of experience, analytical insights, and unparalleled access to global data sources ensuring sustained business growth throughout its lifecycle  

 

Contact one of our Higher Ed Digital Industry Executives to learn how FrescoData can help you attract and convert more prospects into your professional 

 

4. Build Your Brand Story

Your university needs to distinguish itself not only locally but internationally as well. You are competing with programs that have a steady stream of leads and creatives that are powerful and well-designed. 

Brand elements include: 

• Brand Position (where do you market your university programs)
• Brand Promise (What is your value proposition? What do you promise or excel in?)
• Brand Personality (What is your personality? Are you quirky, formal, or a mix of the two?)
• Brand Story (Is your brand a household name rooted deep in tradition or a flexible executive education program focused on meeting the changing needs of a consumer population?)
• Brand Associations (What feelings do your brand’s logo, name, and colors evoke in prospective students and alumni?)

 

Email marketing for universities is a good combination of brand building and personalization.   

 

Build Powerful and Delightful Creatives

FrescoData built an award-winning in-house creative team that effectively translates client goals into concepts and campaigns that yield the highest potential return on ad spend and that will yield the best ROI of all of your university marketing strategies. We deliver world-class creatives through all formats, beyond what is listed here. Our process is comparable to what you’d experience with big agencies that produce work for blue chip brands, but not blue-chip budgets.

 

Don’t Forget: Email Marketing For Universities Helps Build Trust 

Email marketing for universities helps you to get the right information in front of your target students (at the right time). Remember to build out powerful campaigns and messages that are focused on (and address) their wants, needs, goals, and challenges. Are email drip campaigns a part of your university email marketing strategies?

Examples of email marketing for universities (drip campaigns) may be: 

• Back to school events and program information 
• Book store discounts 
• Schedule changes or COVID updates
• Testimonials or faculty webinars

 

Is your university program leveraging email marketing for universities?

 

5.  Segment Your Digital Marketing Higher Education Email List For Better Performance

Segmenting your list is one of the most critical parts of building a responsive, and worthwhile, higher education marketing campaign. 

Executive MBAs are not the same. They have very different goals and aspirations from the college experience. It is important to understand this and use it to your advantage in your personalized email marketing strategies. With a high-quality email mailing list, you can easily segment your junior and senior high school mid-career professional emails into segmented lists focused on specific interests. Some ways to segment your email list by interests include:

• Academics
• Location (zip code or community)
• Professional organizations (six sigma, etc.)
• Demographics
• Gender
• Leisure activities (golf, sports clubs, and prestigious social clubs)

You could then segment based on various other factors if you build out different campaigns such as program type or intended major. Higher education marketing firms should spend quite a bit of time building out the proper segments and testing them out with different messaging both in email and omnichannel ad campaigns. 

 

Is one of your university marketing strategies to use data-driven decision-making? Contact Us to learn more about our proven data append strategies. 

 

Data-Driven Higher Education Marketing Strategies That Work: Using Data to Create Segmented Email Lists

 

You may find that you do not have enough information available on your own to adequately create responsive, or detailed enough, email list segments. This is where FrescoData comes in. For senior professionals, FrescoData can provide a list of rentals that hyper-target and include the exact interests your potential executive MBA students and senior professionals would be interested in. We know where they consume information and our lists help you append data that will get results. 

Whether you are focusing on segmenting by professional interest, athletic involvement, or outside interests, professional organizations are always a good way to segment. Demographics, age, and gender are also important ways you can retarget and segment your list to bring inactive subscribers back to life. Creating custom interest, and segment, tailored messaging may just peak your subscribers’ interests yet again.  

Segmenting and personalizing messages based on geographic area and zip code can also prove to be a useful way to move your list to take action.  We will then help you take this information, segment it in the most effective way possible, and send out highly targeted emails to valid email addresses that will boost your marketing metrics and return on investment (ROI). 

Ultimately, this information will help your university secure more senior professional enrollments. We will focus on what the data says and match that with an innovative, personalized approach to target the best prospects that will actually end up converting into students. Data is important both in order to make the best decisions and also to understand past errors. Having a data-driven approach will put your marketing department ahead of the game. 

 

FrescoData: We Partner with Higher Ed Institutions To Drive Results

 

FresoData previously partnered with many major higher education institutions such as NYU and Cornell University and perfected our unique digital marketing in higher education strategies.

We specialize in helping universities and higher education marketing firms institutions by: 

• Providing the right database for the right audience (Executive MBAs, Six Sigma Professionals, & more)
• Generating more leads while spending less time and money
• Improving the Sales Conversion rate
• Generating Repeat Admissions

 

FrescoData’s Education Industry Professionals Can Help Your Message Reach Executives Worldwide

FrescoData’s Education Industry Experts will help you get your email message to the right audience. Our omnichannel marketing approach and design team will ensure your campaign gets a much-needed upgrade. Our data dashboard and creative team offer you detailed, real-time insights, helping marketers create a precise and enriched email drip campaign. 

With the internationalization of education, not only academic institutions but also nations are collaborating with one another in an effort to provide quality learning to Six Sigma professionals and Executive MBAs across the world. Industry-oriented educational programs are launched, wherein multi-nationals partner with universities for the purpose of making Executive MBAs industry-ready.

FrescoData’s unique sourcing model delivers the most complete and accurate database to help you reach executives for your program. 

Our clients are influential decision-makers and higher-ed professionals, who contribute to the exchange of different ideas and shape the cause of education across the globe. We use this information to better hone our marketing campaigns to target the right executives, at the right time. 

 

Contact one of our Higher Ed Digital Industry Executives to learn how FrescoData can help you attract and convert more prospects into your professional Six Sigma or Executive MBA programs.