Leverage the Course Catalog.

'What will I learn?' At some point during the search and admissions process every prosepct needs this question answered. The idea is to leverage the course catalog to answer this question. The objective is to help prospects choose your institution and programs over your competition. Content works in all three major areas of marketing.

Prospecting

Direct mail is a me-too strategy. Increase the odds of being noticed by giving your marketing team the ability to send personalized and interactive content.

Remarketing

Send interactive content or applications. Everyone else is using flat public email. Set yourself apart and compete in ways your competition can't match.

Building Rapport

The first to create a relationship wins 90% of the time. Instead of blind follow up, know instantly what content prospects engage with and tailor a response to match.

It's all about cost per enroll.

Cost per lead is rising; conversion rate is falling. This combination is lethal to the ultimate metric: Cost per Enroll. Buying leads on the open market and seeing conversion drop into the single digits puts pressure on all budgets at all schools. Content, your unique content, can be used in three ways to offset these trends.

Enlarge the prospect pool
Improve the chances of being chosen
Nurture interest over time until prospect is ready

Show them what they've never seen before.

Make the curriculum the hero. Whether used in outbound marketing or paying off inbound marketing the stories told by your courses can make for compelling content. Too bad most institutions lock it up in administrative documents hiding it from all but the most intrepid prospects.

Program-specific microsites can improve conversion and remarketing efforts by addressing the 3 Ps of education marketing.

Program: What am I going to learn?
Placement: What will I be able to do?
People: Who goes there or went there?

Somewhere a marketer is sending an email; somewhere a prospect is searching.

Why not integrate the two? For degrees with specific outcomes - from Associate's to Master's - prospects consider their options on whether the skill gained will be worth it. While convenience, flexibility and cost are important - they rarely differentiate one school from another in the consideration set. After rapport - over the phone or face-to-face - it is the understanding of what skills they'll gain and what careers they can pursue that makes a difference. To address these needs the curriculum should be part of both outbound and inbound marketing.