THE ALICE SMITH SCHOOL
How inbound marketing increased online summer admissions inquiries by 19%
OVERVIEW
Increasing admissions inquiries is the goal of every school. However, not many schools would set out to achieve that goal in the summer months when most admissions and marketing departments are on break or functioning with minimal staff. Additionally, it’s commonly thought that parents are not looking for schools for their children in the summer months. Can the seasonality of admissions be conquered?
This case study will demonstrate the misconceptions of this typical mindset. It will prove when a goal is defined, a persona identified, and there is a well-crafted marketing strategy in place, it is possible to increase prospective family lead generation in lower admissions seasons using automation tools.
THE CHALLENGE
With more than 75 international schools in Kuala Lumpur, it’s a competitive school landscape.
The Alice Smith School needed to increase inquiries and applications in both the Primary and Secondary levels of their school. Both the Reception Year (PreSchool) and several Secondary years were below their budget for enrolment heading into a new school year.
Unlike many international schools, Alice Smith’s marketing and admissions departments are fully operational during the summer holiday and they wanted to maximize the opportunity to offer tours and connect with parents during these months.
The goal was to not only increase the volume of inquiries and tour requests, but also the quality in a season where the volume of parents looking at schools for their children is lower.
THE STRATEGY
In an attempt to increase both the number of leads in the summer, as well as the quality, we made the strategic switch in early June to focus ad language, landing page content and audience targeting specifically to the personas named “Elizabeth” and “Laura.”
Once a lead submitted an inquiry, they were put into a targetted, three email, lead nurturing strategy. This is a practice to lead prospects further around the admissions flywheel, or through their journey, with the content focussed on their pain points.
CAMPAIGN SUCCESS FACTORS
➜ The ad language and audience targeting to a specific persona.
➜ The emails were personalized with the prospects’ names in the subject line.
➜ Automated email content addressed the persona’s top three pain points.
➜ The Call-to-Action was appropriate for the geolocation of the audience.
➜ Admissions offered tours in the summer, unlike many other schools.
THE RESULTS
By leveraging automation tools to implement the targeted strategy, online admissions inquiries increased 19% year over year in the slowest admissions period of the year. Additionally, tour requests were up 4%, with a total of 71 admissions inquiry and tour booking leads.
19%
Increase in admissions inquiries
71
Admissions inquiry and tour bookings
68%
Open rate of automated lead nurturing sequence
24%
Email CTR
Typically the summer is a slower tour time for our school; however, with the changes in our inbound marketing strategy and the addition of automated technology, the volume of tour requests [greatly] increased.
Andrea Grassby
Director for Marketing and Admissions
The Alice Smith School
