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I picked this month's case study for two reasons. First, because the client provided something marketers rarely provide—results, not just response rate; and second, because the case study comes from an industry often overlooked for true relevance-based personalization—education. I chose this campaign from the "government and education" archives of the Print On Demand Initiative. This particular study contained little more than a sketch of the program, so I contacted the marketing firm, Longmire & Co., Lenexa, Kan., for details.
CHALLENGE: Soliciting students for higher education is big business. Traditionally, schools mail tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of solicitations to prospective students. It is not unusual for a college to collect 50,000–100,000 inquiries. From there, it begins mailing to inquirers to begin solidifying their interest and commitment to the college. To do this, it will generally follow up with five or six pieces of mail, anything from letters, to four-color, multi-page view books that cost $3–4 to produce.
Many students will inquire of 20 to 30 colleges, so rather than spending millions to send out 28-page, 4/4 prospecting books, educators strive to find out which subset are the ripest prospects. To do this, they often buy lists from The College Board (which administers the SAT—Scholastic Aptitude Test; the PSAT/NMSQT—Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test; and AP—Advanced Placement tests). The College Board collects information such as test-score ranges, sports, religion, intended majors, and geo-demographics.
Some colleges and universities want to maintain their existing student demographics. Others want to "shape" their classes. For example, they might want to change their demographics to include more minorities, more women, more athletes, more mathematics majors, or whatever else they might be looking for. For its part, Northern Arizona University wanted a generalized increase in undergraduate students. It had an in-house list of students who had inquired about the college, and from The College Board, it could access data on their interests and desired majors.
But even NAU's competitors could do that. It wanted to do more. So the university contacted Longmire & Co., which specializes in gathering "prospecting intelligence" for the education and other industries.
SOLUTION: While The College Board collects valuable information, Longmire & Co. does not see it as overly helpful in creating the kind of truly compelling messages that differentiate its clients in the eyes of prospective students. Instead, it surveys students to find out what really is going to "trip their triggers." Longmire's clients append this data onto their original TCB lists, and use the data to drive variable messages that make up their more highly personalized follow-up mailings.
For NAU, Longmire & Co. created a survey that included dozens of highly specific questions, collecting a total of 90 data points, touching on everything from students' preferences for modern facilities, to whether others in their family have gone on to higher education. This allowed the college to tailor its communications, not only to students' preferences, but also to more subtle issues affecting the communications' flavor and tone.
Typically, for a college of NAU's size, Longmire & Co. will survey anywhere from 5,000–6,000 prospects. Based on the results, it tailors communications at a level not achievable with a less comprehensive data set.
In NAU's case, Longmire & Co. partnered with Scope 1 Marketing Technologies to create a Web-based tool for designing personalized 8½x5½" postcards. The solution, based on PageFlex MPower software, included an interface that allowed NAU's marketing department to access templates, select images, and input the desired text.
The first step was to decide how many iterations of the mailer to create (such as targeting by major or extra-curricular activity). In this case, there would be 20 iterations. The second step was to compose a relevant message for each one. If a student was interested in soccer, for example, he or she would receive a postcard inviting them to campus, with an image related to soccer on the front of the card. On the flip side, the text discussed soccer as a reason to visit campus.
The third and final step was for NAU to upload data to be married to the templates on the fly. The postcards were printed by Superior Business Solutions on an HP Indigo 3000 press.
RESULTS: As a result of this program, Northern Arizona University increased freshman enrollment by 4 percent. This might not sound like much, but the university enrolls approximately 3,000 full-time freshmen per year. This increase translated into an additional 120 students. Previously, the enrollment trend had been static.
Moreover, for the 2004/05 academic year, NAU charged $4,393 in-state tuition and $13,023 out-of-state tuition. With a 9:1 in-state to out-of-state ratio, that's an average of $5,000 (plus $6,400 room and board) per new student. At 120 students, that's $1.4 million! When multiplied out over three-and-one-half years (the average time a student will stay at NAU), now the university was looking at $4.8 million revenue from the project.
Suddenly, 4 percent starts sounding pretty good!
Heidi Tolliver-Nigro is an industry writer, an analyst specializing in digital workflow and technologies. Her e-mail address is htollvr@aol.com.
author: By Heidi Tolliver Nigro