Recently, I was told by a teacher (and long-time friend) that universities should not follow standard marketing principles because students are not clients and knowledge is not a commodity!
It would be almost sacrilegious to apply marketing principles to students. Moreover, marketing automation tools should be avoided, leaving space for a human approach to guaranteeing quality, thereby keeping reputation safe.

Although I respected that opinion, I also started wondering whether, nowadays, it is really unholy to automate communications to students. Is audience targeting that bad for education? Are we sure that students don’t pretend modernity in 2022? Lastly, are students the only ones involved in the university ecosystem?

Far too many questions in mind! To find a bit of clarity, I started jotting down a mental chart that I have pictured here:

My aim is to “show respect” to education while also examining all the actors of the ecosystem of a university, arguing that marketing principles and automation tools could represent an enormous advantage in improving the speed and quality of service provided, without forgetting reputation.

Targeting / Profiling
We all agree that universities are home to pupils striving for the future, eager to learn and change the world in such a way that they expect modernity, challenging the status quo. They appreciate an institution that speaks their language and nurtures their curiosity. It takes a lot of knowledge to adapt your language to each student. How could you better serve your students? With profiling and segmentation.

The main focus is on understanding the inner needs of your students, either current students, alumni, or prospective students, and providing a clear answer to their needs. We can already see here that each profile has peculiar needs and that the related communication would vary according to the profile and to those needs.

For example, if a student is interested in an MSc, would you send him a prospectus with all BSc subjects? Segmentation could help you address this issue by gathering students according to course interest, for instance. You can be creative, segmenting by age, language, Interest, country of origin, achieved education, professional skills...the list goes on.
Moreover, you can use profiling to qualify and differentiate the students that need nurturing from those who are ready to enroll, dealing with each profile in a different manner and addressing the marketing content accordingly.
You could use profiling criteria to assess the quality of information you already hold into your CRM/database. You could assign points to each contact to highlight the reaction to and engagement with your marketing efforts.

For instance, you could somehow “assign” more scoring points to those contacts that always open the emails you send, compared to those contacts that have never opened a single email.
Now, to dig deeper into the subject, are universities made only of students? The answer is obviously no! There are also lecturers, teachers, assistants, professional partners, suppliers, staff members of any sort and background—and the list can go on! Would you use the same language and communication content with each of these actors? Once again, we need to adapt our communication according to the circumstances and the audience. Profiling is not that bad after all!


Journey - Strategy
Each actor in the Uni-Ecosystem has his/her own journey in life. It might sound cheesy but I strongly believe that the right word received at the right moment can make a difference in someone’s life!

How can you send the right message at the right moment? Well, it takes a lot of experience as well as a bit of strategy and planning.
First, you need to segment the audience according to the criteria that we mentioned above but mainly according to the needs of the marketing effort you intend to pursue. Strategically plan all the actions and interactions with your audience to ensure that your message reaches the right target, at the right time.
As you can see, this simple step requires some legwork.

I’ll break it down. Let’s say that your university would like to organize a recruitment forum, during which you will help your pupils find their dream job. You will need to reach the pupils, obviously, but also those actors of the ecosystem gravitating around the university itself, e.g., professional partners, catering staff, and janitors. I already see that we started from a marketing-related need and are shifting toward an operational need that serves the cause of service and reputation.
I am often told that marketing pervades every aspect of our lives. That is to say, a marketing strategy should consider some operational/logistic aspects as well.

STEP 1
Segment the students into current students, alumni, and prospective students.

STEP 2
Segment the professional partners into teachers, lecturers, coaches, staff members, suppliers, caterers, janitors, etc.

STEP 3
Create the invitation emails for the students (one for current students, one for alumni, and one for prospective students).
Would you send the same information to everyone? You would definitely need to send different types of messages according to the profile and segmentation.

STEP 4
Create invitation emails (and operational emails) for the professional partners.
Distinguish between invitation emails sent to lecturers and operational ones sent to janitors, catering staff, security staff, etc.

STEP 5
Decide on the time frame of the marketing effort and determine the timing for the reminders.

Would you send the message just once? You would definitely send a series of messages and reminders to make sure your message reaches most of the audience, once again, at the right time.

STEPS 6-7-8-...
Decide on the actions you will need to take according to the audience’s engagement with your content and to the temperature of your marketing strategy—“fairly aggressive” or “not too intrusive.”

Example:
Send a reminder email to students 15 days before the event if the first email has not been opened.
Send a reminder operational email if the catering staff has not opened the first email and has not downloaded the floor plan of the venue or the shift planning.
Send a reminder email to the lecturers if they didn’t confirm the presentation subject or the hotel room or dietary requirements for the gala dinner.

STEP X
Create a landing page and a web form to register students for professional interviews with the partners. These are the key features of the entire recruiting forum.

STEP X + 1
Send a confirmation email containing the details of the interview. This is a courtesy to your students as well as to your professional partners. It shows professionalism and care for the details.

STEP Y
Send a satisfaction survey to the students and partners. Don’t we need to make sure everything went well? Let’s face it: Sometimes things don’t go as planned. You need feedback to react fast and improve service. Your reputation is on the line!

We can really go far with imagination and creativity!
My personal tip is to draw a decisional flow chart so that you know exactly what is going to happen at every single moment of your event, using the example above, or in every important node of your marketing campaign/effort.

Once the segmentation and planning are done and dusted, focus on the content. It technically holds the message you want to deliver, but it represents the essence of your university.


Content
Content plays a fundamental role in the whole marketing strategy.
Would you send a bland message or would you do your best to captivate the audience with calls to action (Wikipedia) aimed at engaging the audience?

The message you will deliver is the showcase of your university.
You should be brief and captivating yet provide the right information to keep the audience engaged and informed but mainly reactive.
Easy? Well, in my humble opinion, no! It takes experience, flair, creativity, and professionalism.

To make your job less arduous, you need the right tools that make your life easier when you are creating your “masterpiece”-tools that indulge your creativity but that don’t require a long learning curve to master.
I mean, would you prefer to code an HTML email template or prefer to build an email in a few minutes with a drag-n-drop that looks stunning and modern?
Whatever your choice, you should have a tool that is closer to your needs or skills and that will not add complexity to an already difficult task of creating a “Paganini.”

In the last years, I have encountered more or less the same issues repeated, shifted, and amplified. Certain institutions have great content but lack strategy. Some other institutions have a solid strategy but either the segmentation or the profiling doesn’t follow the best practice.
Moreover, after all the efforts of building a sound marketing campaign, the gathered data is either not exploited or not completely understood.


Metrics
After all this time spent on planning, building, and executing a campaign, event, or “simple” email send, it would almost be a shame to not gather data and information on what went well and what needs to be improved. In a word, you need metrics.
When I say “metrics,” you might be confused or intimidated by the meaning of it. Essentially, “metrics” means that it would be useful to know who has opened the email, who has read the email to the end, and who has deleted the email without reading it at all.

It would be useful to understand which area of an email has been clicked the most.
Who has registered for an event? For how long has your website been visited?
All of this data for a sense of self-reconciliation? No! It is always wise to understand your own mistakes (if any; some of us are just perfect!) to improve the provided service/content.

Time to Say Goodbye
I hope you managed to read the article through to these last sentences. Pardot can be really flexible and can greatly improve the quality of the service you provide. It can reinforce the branding/image/reputation (call it as you will) of your institution.
With all this information, I can now go back to my friend with a fully documented answer and argue (politely) about his opinion!