PRESENTER
Jeremy A. Thompson
Assistant Vice President for Marketing
Lesley University
SESSION ABSTRACT
Omni-channel marketing is all the rage, but what does it really mean? And how can a large, matrixed organization that is slow to change truly embrace an omni-channel approach? Hear the story of one university's successes—and failures—as it gradually makes the transition, and learn how it deliberately reduced lead volume in order to enroll the largest incoming class in its history.
TAKE-AWAY
- Learn about potential barriers to an effective omni-channel strategy and how to address them
- Gain insight into brand, acquisition, conversion, and retention marketing in an emerging omni-channel environment
- Get tips for maximizing your investment in marketing and sales when budgets are scarce
BEST PRACTICE
- Consistency: Make sure tone and personality in messaging is consistent and work together
- Relevancy: The true promise of omni-channel marketing, how can I create more mass marketing with re-targeting?
- Timeliness: Similar to relevancy, where in the process the client is and providing the right message at that time
- Responsiveness: Need to listen and create dialogue in social media channels and step in and respond when appropriate
TAKE-AWAY
Barriers to success:
- Lack of planning: Planning is key with an omni-channel approach as all assets and messages need to be in place at the beginning
- Structural deficits: Don't let "consensus paralysis" stop you from moving forward
- Outdated technology: Speaks for itself
- Insufficient investment: Moving into digital makes people think they can reduce
- Their marketing investment because things like email are less costly, but you can’t do that; you can't simply add more and more channels to the mix and not add the personnel
ACTION ITEM
- Implement a sophisticated automation solution
- Develop a more effective social strategy
- Tackle retention and re-engagement
TAKE-AWAY
Cross-channel marketing as opposed to omni-channel marketing:
- Lesley University is trying to weave together messaging with omni-channel marketing
- Omni-channel marketing: Every portion/channel/message ties in very clearly with every step along the way, those steps may happen at different points for different customers, but they're all aligned with the same messaging
- Geography, demographics--each demographic gets a score of how likely they are to convert
- Channel--removed paid channels because they weren't generating enough leads
- Behavior-- like visiting the campus or filing out a FAFSA
Brand awareness, acquisition, conversion, retention:
The university fid targeting to purchased contact lists/information/emails, then targeted the computer IP address with marketing, aggressive at first and then consistently until enrollment period for that student has passed. Results: Increased enrollment.
Questions and Answers:
Have you increased staff?
Reduced staff by 2 positions, a lot of focusing on efficiency
What's staff retention?
Has had staff turnover but not as much as expected, significant turnover in digital team. They had to do some building there.
Do you differentiate between contacts and leads?
When they purchased names they used to count as leads, but now they take a different approach. Once someone has shown interest and has provided email and phone, then they're considered a lead.
How can you guide people to change?
They have dealt with some entrenched thinking in some areas, how they try to approach it is to balance wins with losses, balance old practices with new practices to make the conversations about change easier. It's really about numbers and being able to demonstrate impact--do a fair amount of research with competitors, look at doing a pilot test as a low risk.
FINAL THOUGHT
Not every channel is right for everyone, look at each channel and how you are
leveraging it in the process.
