[col2 width=”50″]This exciting project was Cheshire Academy’s first foray into workflow nurturing; an entire digital strategy to support the Academy’s business goals went into this project, which ended up encompassing 24 emails sent over the course of nine months in a time-based MailChimp email workflow.
Operating in the set-it and forget-it mentality, I put together 24 emails over the summer, got them proofed and approved by the Director of Strategic Marketing and Communication and the Director of Admission, plugged them into MailChimp, tested them, and set them to run for the entire year whenever new users were added to the list.
There were three workflows. The first was a general admission workflow, with a mix of information about Cheshire Academy, personal “letters” from the director urging students to apply, and a collection of newsletter-style emails. These emails sent every other week. The second workflow was set to send on opposite weeks to users entering 8th grade, a segment we struggled to recruit for the previous year. The third workflow also sent on opposite weeks, but to students entering a PG year, another segment that gave the school difficulty in the past.
The below excerpt is from the CASE award submission for Communication Program Improvement, which earned a silver award:
Finally, the Academy developed a nurturing lead workflow. Prospective students were sent a series of 12-24 emails, depending on their grade level. Each prospective student received each of these emails, and in the same order. The Academy shortened its lead generation form to increase conversions, and limited the number of links in each email to push prospective students to take specific actions. The workflow has seen 42,605 opens (33% open rate) and 2,654 clicks (6% click rate). As of December 2015, at least 22% of inquiries and applicants for the 2016-2017 year had come from digital marketing efforts.
Beyond yielding a sizable number of inquiries, the admission workflow is important because in previous years, all admission emails were created manually and send individually throughout the year. By taking this piece of the job and getting it all done over the summer, I freed up time to work on other digital projects, such as the school store website launch, or increasing our weekly school newsletter production from one a week to two a week, or updating the 1794 magazine micro site three time a year. This aspect of working smarter, and using digital tools to do so, is one aspect of digital marketing strategy that has allowed our school to do and produce more with the same number of people.
Related Content:
Podcast: Using email marketing to guide prospects to enrollment with Caitlin Garzi, by Randy Vaughn
Podcast: Learn How to Supercharge Your School’s Email Marketing with Caitlin Garzi by Peter Baron
“Increasing your Email Marketing Impact,” Blackbaud K-12 User Conference Presentation, 2015
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