3 Challenges for Higher Education Marketers
In recent years, higher education preferences have shifted considerably toward online learning. In 2020, the pandemic has only accelerated this trend. Higher education chief marketing officers are under a lot of pressure to get noticed in this highly competitive market. Vying for the attention and, ultimately, the enrollment of students at home through online content and marketing is a challenge. Despite the increase in the amount of time people are spending online, marketers of all stripes are struggling to capture the attention in such a crowded messaging environment. Every higher education CMO is asking themselves: “How do I make my school stand out?”
Today, higher education marketers face 3 challenges:
- They don’t know the audience segments across prospects and leads, or how to measure the relevance of content to these audience segments.
- They need to know when highly interested prospects visit their website or app, and how to convert more casual visitors
- They need to make sure that the right content is seen by prospects across the student enrollment journey
The average student now spends less time to evaluate and pick courses. This means fewer touchpoints and shorter engagement duration. Further, the piece of the pie is shrinking. The growth of online programs has brought more competitors. The question becomes: “How do I differentiate my program from the competition?”
How Nabler Drives Outcomes for Higher Education Marketing
Obviously, the same content does not work for all users. At Nabler, we provide a more dynamic, segmented, and real-time content approach to each of its clients. Our analysis and products replace a top of the funnel marketing scheme for a more tailored approach. The CMO and his team are in complete control of a prospective student’s journey — from a visit to inquiry to enrollment. To achieve this, we maintain content and marketing effectiveness throughout the journey.
Nabler has been at the forefront of solving key challenges for higher education marketers for the last several quarters. Here are some of the significant outcomes that we have driven for our clients:
1. Decrease the cost per lead by 21% through audience segmentation and data enrichment
Using data enrichment techniques, Nabler focuses on user-level demographics and interest resolution through easy-to-identify information including persona, content, and marketing strategy. Our proprietary measurement method directly monitors cost per visit and cost per lead. We rank different content and campaigns and identify them by high, medium, and low performance. This allows higher education marketers to focus on strategies that improve the efficiency of content and campaigns to reduce the cost per lead.
2. Double website conversion rate in half the time
At the core of this optimization are intent scores and look-alike analyses. These allow higher education marketers to maximize the experience of visitors with a medium or high likelihood to convert. We take care of the entire problem finding and analysis, all the way to the test evaluation. With the entire process driven by entirely by Nabler, we can further decrease timelines and double the conversion rate in half the time.
3. Increase Content Efficiency Score across the journey by 20-25%
Our solution evaluates customer behavior and touchpoints used to access the site, which helps with the following:
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- Find distinct user intent groups
- New content/content edit suggestions for the different user intent groups
- Marketing recommendations for the different phases of the customer
- Focus on prospects in the lead nurture towards conversion through content and marketing strategies
This process can also help increase marketing efficiency and add to the marketing and content returns.
Key Higher Education Solutions from Nabler
The key solutions that Nabler brings to the marketing organization of the higher education industry include:
1. Audience Segmentation
This solution allows users to build segmented user criteria through third-party enriched information, behavior demonstrations, platform-provided contextual information, and intent. These segments can be trained through machine learning on a regular basis and act as classification mechanisms for any new audience acquired or identified. The segments of identified interest can be used to target additional audiences as well as refine any marketing strategy. The solution can be embedded or integrated in real-time with most leading CDPs and CRMs.
2. Intent Score
This solution segments of users based on their channel and behavior, which creates a propensity score towards conversion:
Low score users (Casual browsers, early researchers)
Medium score users (Users looking for specific information, active researchers)
High score users (Users who have chosen a specific program)
With these users identified, a marketer’s target group becomes better defined and focus shift to moving users from low and medium scores to high scores. But, not only can the solution find users that to convert, we can identify the content needed to move them. With this information marketers can find their best content and deploy it in different, more effective, ways.
3. Nabler’s Student Enrollment Journey Planner
Based on the stage of the users, and their propensity towards conversion, we create an effective, impactful marketing strategy, including remarketing and collaterals. The content is rated on its individual effectiveness scores. These marketing material might include gated content, infographics, career growth snapshots, and salary expectations.
Nabler’s Overall Experience in Higher Education
Nabler has worked in higher education marketing since the start of the last decade. Over this time, we have partnered with more than 80 institutions across North America. We have seen the drastic transformations taking place and have developed ahead of these new developments. Nabler has served the industry digital analytics, cloud and data analytics, business intelligence, and data sciences.