Higher Ed Marketing

Content Strategy Consistently Yields 20-25% Open Rate on Biweekly Newsletter

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Australian-based Pilbara Group provides academic resource management tools to higher education institutions worldwide that support costing and budgeting processes vital to financial sustainability and survival. They have been a TME client since 2016.

First, define gaps between internal BI and target need-to-knows

In the beginning of 2017, Dr. William Massy, Pilbara’s longtime advisor and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, interviewed more than 50 individuals to better understand what academics and administrators need to support their involvement in the financial management of their institutions.

Second, build content your audience actually wants/needs

As a result, Dr. Massy and Pilbara’s Michelle Brooke were able to distill eleven shared data governance requirements. This was critical content that Pilbara wished to disseminate to its community of prospects and customers to demonstrate how its solution meets all of the requirements uncovered by Dr. Massy.

Third, determine best distribution strategy and schedule

At this juncture, TME recognized that this content could very easily be translated into an 11-part series that would enable them to feed the bi-weekly newsletter and blog posts as well as LinkedIn. The series would then culminate in the complete report which would be gated content on the website.

Fourth, deliver content in channel-appropriate formats

The report was quite extensive so an abridged version was also created as a quick teaser to be used at industry events. The one-pager pointed back to newsletter subscribership and the Pilbara blog as well as a new interactive online demo. The full report was also produced, but only for highly qualified prospects.

Finally, keep readers hooked with consistently strong content

Since the series launched almost one year ago, Pilbara has consistently seen a 20-25% open rate on its biweekly newsletter. President & CEO of Pilbara, Lea Patterson, reported a spike in direct inquiries and demo requests tied to readership as well.

This success story shows how powerful content can be to an overall marketing program when the RIGHT content is generated and then extended properly and thoughtfully to target audiences through all relevant channels.

In summary:

When a client works with TME to define its prospects/customers need, the content can be created and disseminated in the right format and right frequency allowing the upfront investment of time to be maximized.

This “build once” strategy proves time and again to be one of the most effective ways to feed marketing channels over an extended period of time while successfully maintaining community interest and motivating movement within a sales pipeline.

Learn more about TME’s content creation and digital marketing expertise or speak to us now for more information.

Self-Assessment Survey for Intelligence & Lead Generation

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Pilbara is an Australian-based company that builds custom cost modeling tools used by higher education institutions for financial planning and decision support.

Survey as campaign centerpiece

A recent campaign we developed and deployed for client, Pilbara, was built around a survey concept with two objectives: extract critical business intelligence from current customers as well as prospects and generate demand. The approach is particularly effective because it is mutually beneficial for the client and the survey recipient.

An efficient approach that benefits client and prospect

Through the survey, the client is given direct access to the type of information usually obtained in the field during early face-to-face sales conversations. The benefits to the survey recipient are two-fold: the opportunity to self-assess internal strengths and gaps as well as access to the survey report (once available) which provides insights into their peers and industry at large—compelling lures for a campaign.

This approach is also efficient when you look at the closed-loop of the campaign. There are at least three “touches” already built in: an invitation to the survey, the survey itself, and finally the survey report. The survey is easily promoted across multiple inbound and outbound channels including client website, client social media, client-driven email programs, and relevant third-party publications/associations.

Designing the perfect survey

For Pilbara we collaborated to create the survey, mindful that it must be brief to increase participation, but then craft the questions intelligently to ensure we are reaping as much valuable data as possible for Pilbara and its participants. We determine the survey could be no longer than 10 questions, all of which much be followed by yes/no or multiple-choice answers. The survey itself was designed for ease-of-use.

Survey results and campaign success

Ultimately, the campaign proved successful on all fronts, meeting the objectives determined at the outset. Pilbara yielded vital information about its customers and prospects that fed back to its product roadmap, market message, and sales approach. Participants gained a robust report of survey results. Of those participants, those that were previously mere prospects were added to a sales pipeline for nurturing.

We recommend this approach to clients who want to obtain quick business intelligence while simultaneously generating leads.

Pilbara: Higher Education Cost Models