Dive Deeper with Net Natives: Seamless Success: Leveraging an Omnichannel Marketing Approach in Slate to Maximize Your ROI

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Welcome everybody. As you are connecting, we will get started in a few moments.

See that number of participants ticking up? So all of you are just getting connected.

OK. As we wait for a few others to join us, we'll just go over some of the housekeeping for today's event. But first let me welcome you to our Dive Deeper series. Today our our leaders are our colleagues and friends from Net Natives and they're going to be speaking about a seamless success leveraging an Omni channel marketing approach in slate to maximize your.

ROI.

So we will hand it over to our first presenter Julian in just a moment, but we just have a couple of housekeeping.

Wants to go over with all of you. The webinar is being recorded and it will be made available for viewing. To view the webinar you would simply click over to Home Slate and on the same portal that you registered for the event there is a a tab that says recording. So the recording for this webinar and all of the webinars through this series and any of our other webinars through our through our standard slate presents will be there. If you would like to view it or if colleagues couldn't attend today and they would like to view it, you may enable Closed captioning.

By clicking the CC button at the top of the corner of the share window. You may also enable full screen viewing by clicking the expand button at the top right hand corner of the share window as well. And should you need to resync audio or video at any time, please refresh your share window and it will connect you right, right away. Again, questions may be posted in the chat and I will be moderating the chat as well. As you know Juliano's colleagues as well. When they join us, we'll oftentimes jump in on the chat as well, so.

Delighted to have you join us. My name is Melissa Pucci. I'm a client success Manager here at Technician. So excited to just be along to help facilitate this. So without further ado, I will hand things over to Julie.

Amazing. Thank you, Melissa. So hello everybody and thank you for joining us today. So for today's webinar, I'd just love to speak to you about leveraging an Omni channel marketing approach in slate to maximize your ROI. What is Omni channel? Just to go through that very quickly, an Omni channel, Omni channel communications basically happens when an institution delivers a consistent experience across all student touch points.

And so it is lead nurturing and user engagement with our institution communicates and provides not just communications, but also support services to students across many channels with the same brand, voice and experience.

A little bit of information first in terms of student marketing transformed so and what We are so net natives. We are a full service agency that basically empowers ambitious marketers to transform how they inspire, reach and connect with their future students.

As our mission states, we work with a variety of universities globally and our aim is to provide a full suite of wrap around services ranging from market research to creative direction to media planning and activation. And so as a Slate Platinum partner, we offer a number of consulting and integration services not just in terms of advertising or our Akiro platform, but also with slate consultation as well.

So you'll be hearing about that later on today. We also at the end of the session have created a suitcase to provide for you with a plethora of different features that you can implement within your slate instance.

The learning outcomes, so today we're here to talk about Omni channel marketing. So the benefits of this strategy and how you can leverage A variety of softwares including slate to implement the solution.

And so we're going to be talking about the importance of creating consistent experiences that resonate with prospective students. So learn why your slate nurture campaign matters and how to create a consistent experience that click with perspective students in that sense as well. We'll also learn a little bit more about the importance of personalization, so how through personalized communications and landing pages and your slate CRM and any other technology that you use in.

You can use a synergy, you can use it all together to create to be able to provide that Omni channel and consistent message. We'll also give you some tips on how to use SMS and chat platforms for this communication strategy. So that will allow you to gain insight into their dynamic potential of using these mass emails and SMS outreach and chat bots to be able to build those personal connections. And then finally we'll talk about student advocacy and building an authentic brand all these.

Within slate as well As for our clients that use Acura currently within both platforms.

And so moving on to Omni channel communications. So I'll kick us off today with an overview of those Omni channel marketing strategies.

And first of all is Omni channel marketing, so exactly what is it? So many of you have probably heard this term or maybe have even already implemented an Omni channel plan within your university. But for those of you that have not heard this term or what what it is his basically the main aspects of it. Omni channel marketing refers to the institutions objective to provide that consistent on brand communications but across multiple customer touch points.

Regardless of where they are in the marketing funnel. So this essentially means taking a step back, auditing all of the coms that are prospect are likely or would receive during the enrollment journey and basically thinking of ways in which you can improve upon those touch points to create a truly consistent, seamless and personalized experience for your students. And so when we say coms are channels, what are we referring to? Well, it could range from your Student Viewbook and financial aid brochures.

To your website, your nurturing comes within your CRM, so it's really any communication channel that you consider as a key point in the Students Enrollment Journey in a critical part of an Omni channel approach.

In terms of the benefits?

And so.

There's a lot of benefits of having a multi channel approach. These are but not limited to an enhanced customer experience. So Omni channel marketing essentially provides that cohesive and consistent experience regardless of where that prospect is in nurturing journey, whether they're at the top of the funnel and they're just learning about your institution for the first time or you program one of your programs for the first time all the way through to those that are more likely to convert or are further down the funnel for example.

Those that are coming from Google are more likely to be aware of your institution because they're actively searching for you in a search engine as opposed to those that are maybe come through one of the more general awareness tactics that you have in place. Regardless of both sets of segmentation and those leads, we want them to experience the same tone of voice and the same consistent messaging. This allows for improved engagement. So we're also utilizing multiple channels and universities can really reach prospects.

Through all those different touch points, increasing the likelihood of those engagements.

In terms of the the benefits of Omni channel versus personalization, this strategically actually enables you to collect and integrate that customer data from various channels. And This is why it's also very important that you have a text stack that has synergy and it's integrated well because that means that you can have all of that data coming from all those different channels within one place that you can access. That data is then used to create that personalized and targeted marketing campaign, the seamless customer journey.

As well. So we want to create that seamless journey all the way from initial touch point through to enrollment and this continuity helps reduce that friction and enhances the overall user experience. That means that the student won't perceive that there's any silo between your marketing and admissions teams and regardless of where going back to where they are in that journey, they just won't see a difference, even if that lead has gone across different departments.

Adaptability. So Omni channel marketing allows institutions to do exactly that, adapt to the prospects, preferences, meeting students where they are, students one institutions to adapt towards more modern methods of communication. So whether you're doing that through chat bots, whether you're doing it through WhatsApp for international students, whether you're doing it through student ambassadors, that consistent message is key, but it's also being able to adapt to those channels that these prospects are more likely to.

To contact you from.

And also brand consistency. So maintaining A consistent brand image across all channels is critical for building trust and recognition.

Um, that consistency can be from that initial imagery that they see with that tacked, that marketing tactic clicking through on that ad and seeing that same consistent branding and imagery on the landing page, that same consistent tone of voice within the RFI form that they're complete in going through to those e-mail communications that they're receiving all the way through to those conversations that they're having with your institution. All through the same tone of voice and consistency and messaging that you are delivering throughout.

And so how does an Omni channel approach different is different to others and that's a really good question. And the answer is there's a difference between Omni channel and multi channel. And so a multi channel marketing approach just means contacting your leads, your visitors, your prospective students through multiple, through multiple different channels exactly as the word says, whether as Omni channel.

Just keeping that consistent message, Well, there's the multi channel approach just means different channels.

A variety of different channels, but a variety of different messages.

And so the problem with the multi channel approach is that there can be isolation in terms of the differences in the communications that you have And with those prospects, customer information and engagements are also siloed and your recruitment and marketing teams have hierarchical hierarchical access to data. And so this is what I mean in terms of creating potentially that friction for that prospect because all of a sudden they see a change in the approach to which you are speaking to them, nurturing them, getting them through the process.

But if your institution is using multiple communication channels, um, by offering the same experience, then that means that that prospect will be more familiarized with the entire process.

And so an aspect here to remember a customer is an Omni channel experience should feel that no matter how or where they reach out to your business, they'll get the same experience with your brand every time. And so we want that centralized customer data and a true view of all engagements. We want tracking of those touch points and the ability to attribute through MRI and also a personalized and automated student recruitment journey.

So I can see that there's already some great questions coming through and we'll be able to answer them at the end of the webinar. We'll also have Michael who's joining us today. They'll be able to answer on chat at a later stage, but some great questions so far in terms of Omni channel versus multi channel approach.

And So what challenges could you face when adopting an Omni channel approach? And this is also a very good question because it's all well and good to talk about it, but what potential challenges are there? And so some examples can be it's not a priority at the institution. So you already have a multi channel approach. You just don't think that it's a priority to be able to do that consistent message across all the channels that you're using. There's too many processes in place to change.

So you know, if it's already working, why change it? Um.

Budget constraints as well to be able to have to change.

Um.

If you have to change the imagery for all your tactics or through your website, that can also potentially one of the challenges would be budget, lack of expertise and dedicated internal resources. You know there can be a limits in terms of the amount of resources that you have in personnel to be able to do that change to be able to keep that consistent message.

Difficult to integrate our existing systems to work together in a seamless way. I think one of the biggest challenges for a lot of institutions is that synergy I mentioned between your tech stack. So making sure that your marketing tactics and all the data that you have in your slate CRM whether you're using a different.

A different functionality for your SMS messaging. Being able to have all of those platforms speaking to each other to be able to have that synergy can also be difficult.

And then lastly, a lack of alignment between units within the university, you know, they can potentially be a silo between faculties, between departments, between program leaders, between marketing and admissions. So it can be difficult to be able to collaborate, to be able to keep that consistent messaging.

However.

It's really important to be able to to think about our the benefits of an Omni channel approach to do what I just mentioned in terms of reducing that silo between departments. So we want enrollment and admissions and marketing to be able to collaborate together to be lead focused to marketing budget versus applications and deposits to be able to have that zero based budgeting to be able to know exactly what it takes to be able to.

To increase enrollments. But also there's also there's always questions in terms of marketing spend versus the marketing metrics focused approach that is put. And so there's a lot of benefits of the Omni channel approach versus multi channel and we'll be able to tackle those today in terms of how you can do that implementation within slate.

Breaking down the silos though, this is really, really important and this is something that we work with a lot of institutions throughout and and in terms of the steps, first of all plan and set objectives, milestones and key outcomes, This is really important for you to know exactly what the overall plan is and the goals and the objectives. We always say you know what's the macro conversion. So the ultimate goal of the institution versus the micro.

Conversions, so the steps to get you there in this instance these would be the micro conversions. So planning, setting objectives and milestones and the key outcomes to then understand who needs to be involved, is it the, is it marketing, is enrollment services, is it Deans and faculty, Is it also students under Blondie? This is really important because if you plan on implementing an Omni plan channel approach that's consistent within marketing and enrollment, but then prospects, potential prospects are speaking to students.

Prom night and all of a sudden there's a different approach then that breaks down that openly channel strategy that you have in place.

Consulting early and often so making sure that you speak into each other constantly about the plans to be able to have that consistent imagery, consistent tone of voice, consistent conversations.

Get buying from senior teams and finance. This is really important for you to know exactly what your budget is, exactly what you can implement to be realistic in terms of whether you're able to apply that Omni channel approach across all the different channels that you have available.

Maintaining closed communications is just a must, you know, making sure that there's that consistent speaking to all teams to make sure that there's any potential changes, any suggestions, any ways to be able to implement that consistency, that consistency and brand throughout that you have in those communications to be able to do so?

And finally, setting clear responsibilities and celebrate your shared successes. You know, we see Omni channel approach work really well when implemented.

When implemented in the right way, I need just like I mentioned, it just means that you're really reducing that silo between departments and that potential barriers of entry for that student and any friction points that they feel they might have.

The dos and the don'ts, what we would recommend when you're thinking about an Omni channel approach. So now in terms of create an inconsistent brand message of image. If you have a specific type of tone of voice and imagery within your marketing tactics and then a prospect clicks through and all of a sudden they go through to your landing pages and website or your slate portals that have a completely different type of imagery, different tone of voice.

Not the right call to actions then. That's going to create that sort of unfamiliarity between marketing and the next step of the journey. And so you don't want to create that inconsistent branding from marketing through to website landing page through to admissions, through the e-mail communications that they receive.

Also, don't forget how your channels can work together. So for example, events being a large aspect of the nurturing approach, something that we find works really well is SMS on the day of an event as a reminder for that prospect to to attend that virtual event or that.

In house event on campus, if your SMS all of a sudden has a different tone of voice, different imagery, different Ctas, different message to the actual event that they're going to, that's already two different channels that you use in events and SMS that are not working as they should together in an Omni channel way.

Disregarding device optimization as well, so one of the main things about Omni channel as well is thinking mobile first a lot of the time. So within our propriety technology Akira, we're able to see exactly how many prospects are accessing our landing pages through a mobile device and through the benchmark and report that we've done over the 12 months, we found that over 60% of prospects are accessing these landing pages on a mobile. And so if you if you disregard and device optimization that means that you're.

Potentially discarding or ignoring a large aspect of your audience that's coming through to your landing pages, but not having mobile first landing pages that are device optimized that are also have call to actions that can be used on a mobile device and so on.

Don't ignore the guidelines set for the use of a platform. So the same way that with your marketing tactics through whether that's Facebook, whether that's Tick Tock, whether that's YouTube, there's different parameters to the imagery, the sizes of images, the limit to the amount of words that you can have.

You know, it's the same with any other platform that you're using, whether that's the e-mail comments that you're doing through Slate or whether that's your SMS provider or whether that's your chat fault functionality. Just make sure that you're not ignoring the guidelines set for the use of that platform, which means that that platform isn't delivering the best that it can to that prospective student, which means in kind that is also affecting the Omni channel approach process.

Don't ignore the the advantage of new platforms and technologies. Um, you know, there's a plethora of different channels and different technologies that come out on an annual basis. And like I mentioned, students look for modern channels of communication from institutions. And so just keeping up with trends, for example, recently we conducted an interview with 12 current students for an institution who mentioned that the thing that they wanted to see the most.

Um, during that particular question that I asked about, new content was actually student to student TikTok stories as an example. So that's already an example of, if you're not doing it already, something that would work really well with prospective students, which is having an interview process video in which a student asks other students how they feel about that institution, about the campus, about finance, about anything like that. Because students.

To see that student to student consent content and also so many of them are using TikTok right now. So that's an example of not ignoring the advantages of those new platforms and how you can deliver that message through an Omni channel approach.

In terms of yes, so understanding your audience, so making sure that you are segmenting your leads and segmenting your audiences, whether that's within your slate CRM or within any other platform that you're using, just make sure that you understand your audience so you can deliver that personalized message.

Use consistent personalized messaging across all channels, you know, and this is the importance, especially as we go towards 2023 to our calculus world due to Google. The importance of first party data is huge in terms of your Omni channel approach, in terms of your segmentation and in terms of your personalization. The questions that you're asking from your prospects will really allow you to be able to personalize those communications. You know, we'll touch about these in a second, but for example.

Multipart forms in which you are asking for the vital information to begin with and then Part 2 of the form is asking those qualifying questions such as motivations to study a program or their preferred method of contact, or the highest level of education, or the language or the level of English proficiency. Asking those questions will allow you to to have that personalize but also Omni channel approach at a later date where there is the conversations that you're having with these prospects where you already have that information.

To speak to them about, or whether it's those automated coms in which you can send them targeted e-mail communications specific to those motivations.

Create an easily recognizable brand identity across platforms is hugely important. Just making sure that you're consistent with your USPS, that you're tackling those anxieties that these potential prospects might have, and that you communicate in that all the way from the top of the final through to enrollment.

Integrate offline and online channels. This is also really important and going back to making sure that you have all of the data that you gather in from your different platforms, whether they're offline, whether they're online through to your CRM. For you to be able to have that extra information, that augmented profile about that prospect for you to be able to have those personalized messages.

And then also, you know, seek feedback from your students. So it's always really good to hear it from the source to be able to have those surveys, to be able to have those interviews, to be able to have those communications with your prospective and current students, for you to be able to touch upon potential.

Pain points that they might have and then finally embracing their technology. So similar to what I mentioned on the don'ts of.

Ignoring new platforms, you need to embrace any potential new technology that comes across, UH, whether that's new features that have come through from Slate with the Ping data or whether that's any other potential channels that you're using.

Perfect. So just a couple of slides before we focus on slate and that is how a KIRO can help. Just so we can communicate to you how Akira can sit and integrate with your slate instance to be able to provide that extra information. Then you can then have within your slate CRM and be able to even have more granular data for your Omni channel approach.

And so just quickly what is Akira? So Akira is our propriety technology that can house all data within one place, so specifically built for higher Ed based on client feedback is propriety for net natives and is the most comprehensive and robust reporting tool within the industry. So with this you have a student marketplace, you had advertising reports, you have student heart pulse that provides closes survey responses from a plethora of different students.

Industry benchmarks are the examples that I've just mentioned, not just in terms of marketing. UM.

And marketing tactics and performance, but also in terms of information on landing pages on most common bottlenecks within your RFI forms on percentage of prospects using a mobile device on what Ctas work best within an e-mail communications channel. So that's the sort of information and benchmarks that we can provide within their carrier platform because we are using a care on a daily basis to be able to to communicate with students.

And that's that's the aim of it. It's just understanding students. So it's a wall of data on its own isn't very helpful but present an insights next to your results. You always have the context that you need and you can create that understanding with advertising performance in combination with your form performance in combination with your page performance, not just for best practices but you so you can also avoid or you can actively see from your analytics is causing those pain points within your students, so for example as another.

Sample of the benchmarking that we do through Akira and the analytics is we identify that the two most common bottlenecks within RFI forms were date of birth.

And the phone number and so.

The easy answer here would be ohh, just get rid of those answers, get rid of those questions from the form. But that's not the case for a lot of institutions. The the main approach once they have those leads is to to phone those prospects. So you need to have phone number as required. If that is the biggest bottleneck, what would be the solution? So as an example instead of asking for the phone number, if you ask for their preferred method of contact and the list is e-mail, SMS and phone call, those that select phone call you can prioritize.

Them to call them first. Those that select SMS, you can send them an SMS coms approach. Those that select e-mail, you can send them through an e-mail. It doesn't matter that if they select just one of them, that's the only channel that you can target them from. But that means that you can prioritize the way that you communicate them with them. And if we're talking about an Omni channel approach, you can also keep that message consistent. So they've come through in our mobile device, they've selected SMS. It's probably a good approach for you to target them through an SMS communications approach.

Where the calls to action that you wanted to go through are device friendly as an example.

The advertising performance that we've mentioned as well. So as a reminder that Akira can integrate with your Slate instance. So any data that you can acquire or you can see within a KIRO that lead data when they're completing RFI forms, anything like that can be integrated with Slate. But it's also really useful to have these tools available in combination with your slate CRM. So you can have a look at the best performing search, social, programmatic, student advertising campaigns for a low cost.

And so having that advertising performance is also really helpful for you to be able to to communicate and be able to keep that consistent message from your Omni channel approach.

The page performance that I mentioned, so seeing how your landing pages are performing and identify areas for improvement with the help of us as well for the natives. So it comes with conversion recommendations. So their landing page analytics, if you're using Akira, will show you when the leads are coming through to your landing pages or what time of the day or what day of the week. And that means that with that information you could also interlink the times that you're doing your organic social posts or the times that you send in your emails.

In combination, when you get in the most traffic to your landing pages.

So service landing pages as well. So this is actually really important from Omni channel approach and the reason for that is because being able to look up and answer on their own without having to contact a representative makes it really convenient for leads or website visitors. Now this particular slide is not limited to Akira, you can create amazing slate portals as well that can serve as a self-service landing pages, but nearly 3/4 of students prefer to use an institution's website.

To find a solution versus some other service channels. And so there are a lot of ways to help students find a solution, with a comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions page being the most widely implemented self-service channel, for example. Or even if students can't find the answer themselves and need to contact a representative, the availability of reliable and consistent information helps facilitate the user experience and reduce those friction points that I've mentioned.

This also reduces the amount of time it takes for your student ambassadors or your customer service agents or answer a question and be able to have those more meaningful conversations versus those that can actually be answered on a landing page. And the reason as to why I mentioned this in combination with the KIRO is because of the landing pages that you can create in a KIRO that are device optimized, so you can have quantum blocks that are only for mobile versus desktop and so on.

The other thing that I want to mention, and this going back to the personalization is it's incredibly important to be able to personalize your landing pages. So rather than building.

You know, dozens of pages. To be able to accommodate for every tactic, there's ways that you can personalize each landing page through data tags and through containers. So then a prospect coming from LinkedIn is seeing a LinkedIn themed landing page with the same imagery, whether as somebody coming through from Facebook that has a completely different approach could see a Facebook themed landing page. Now we're talking about Omni Channel. It would all be the same imagery and tone of voice, but it's just nice to know.

Even at this stage as well, you can send those that are coming from particular tactics to design landing pages for those tactics.

Multi part forms as well as I mentioned. So being able to capture those extra nice to have questions for you to be able to personalize that journey. So being able to ask questions such as those motivations to study a degree or the preferred method of contact or any way that you can qualify leads based on behavior and responses will really allow you to be able to not just segment your audience but also sign them through targeted Omni channel coms.

Also what I wanted to mention is these analytics all well and good and you're probably thinking I don't want to move away from my slate forms. This isn't limited to just a KIRO forms. We actually what we can do as well is we can provide slate form performance and so we can get really granular insight into the exact point of the form where you prospect abandon their journey and you don't have to move away from your slate forms. We can actually provide your information in terms of bottlenecks and form abandonment in the way.

Of very simple, very well visualized reports for you to be able to see where your slate forms. Might need just some slight readjustment to make sure that.

The form fields that are causing the biggest form abandonment can be made optional instead of required, or worded differently, or moved entirely from the form.

And then lastly before we move through to our slate, recommendations for an Omni channel approach is excellent mobile and SMS services. So again going through to Akiro, so we Akira has an SMS and mobile functionality, but I think mainly more than that is it allows you to build those different blocks depending on the devices that I'm entering from your landing pages and forms. And so that means that with the blogs that you can build from mobile, they offer a number to call or text.

Rather than an RFI form for example, whilst landing pages can offer landing pages for desktop can offer a form as an example. It's just a way to think device first, and a way that you can personalize that journey based on the device that is used by the prospect.

But more than that, as I mentioned, people just expect good mobile devices, um, services. So it's no secret that mobile is huge. And unfortunately, occasionally institutions aren't keeping up with the student expectations of their mobile engagement. And so a consistent Omni channel approach means visitors should be able to get the best possible experience regardless of the device that is used. And so, as an example, the top complaint of visitors searching for self-service on a mobile site is incorrect display or difficulty to navigate.

So slow loading times also frustrate customers looking for information.

And then on top of that, lastly also SMS as a service just works. So texting is popular with students from booking appointments to send them the appointment reminders. SMS is just very versatile.

And so it's ideal for urgent messages. And so if you want to reach more people then use an SMS. It's an extremely effective way.

What I'll do now is I'll pass it over to my colleague Michael, who will talk you through the Slate features. Thank you for listening.

Hello wonderful slate people. Hopefully you can hear me. I am coming to you live from the San Jose Airport, going to visit another slate community site, Santa Clara University, who just recently joined us here with natives and we have talked a lot about and Julian has done an amazing job talking a lot and as you can hear there's some background noise from the airport, right? But as Julian has mentioned, a lot of the Omni channel approach.

And how we do that within the KIRO as well. I'm gonna talk a lot about some of the slate features that already have this built in for them. And so as we move through feel free to jump in the chat, ask your questions as we as we move along. I wanted to start first by answering Kaylee's questions that are here in the chat. First, how effective is the Omni channel method versus the multi channel method when it comes to traditional print, print communications and that is a really good.

Question, Kaylee. I think when we're looking at traditional print communication nowadays can include things that are digitally focused like QR codes, those sorts of pieces. And with that we can start to begin to to integrate an Omni channel approach into traditional print communications. There are lots of really good examples that are out there. I know that my previous institution that with Ursuline College has has used that in the past.

Used QR codes on those print pieces to track delivery, but then also personalized URLs to kind of get those same sort of clicks and impressions that can help kind of work with an Omni channel approach as well. Kaylee, you asked if you're using Omni channel, does it make it more difficult to refresh your communication plan when you want to give it an update? I'm going to hopefully share some tools within slates that are going to be really helpful for that completely and if.

You have more questions about that. We're gonna leave some some e-mail addresses sort of at the end of this presentation in this chat. But yes, let me also jump into how feasible zombie channel if the current interactions are very isolated and insular with no, with little to no willingness to interact. Really good question. I think we all kind of build our marketing plans and our and identify our channels on the information that we have and hopefully what I I'm going to help you with a little bit is line up that CRM data.

That you could you have that may that you may not be capturing or if you are capturing and it's a small end value, maybe we can get you to a place where you do have enough data for you to be able to kind of interpret that for yourself. But I know that that is something that is shared across the board. So hopefully I can answer some of that as we move forward and we'll answer a lot of those questions Julian and I kind of towards the end, but I want to address those while we were here together.

So let's dive into a little of the slate features. And what I wanted to do is sort of set a stage for you right here at the beginning and and kind of talk a little bit about how as Julian had kind of mentioned previously, right, is that marketing and enrollment tend to have the same we, we have the the same vision and that same end goal is to make sure that we get those enrollments right and bring those in. But those means are are different, right? And So what I'm going to introduce you to.

Briefly before we jump into it.

Is um go ahead and pull that, pull those slides up here is talking about leading out of your CRM. So I'd like to kind of take a step back from the the marketing side of things and really talk about your CRM technology and the data that you collect. So when it comes to enrollment, most admission teams kind of leave out of that CRM and what does that mean? That means that your funnel is segmented by person conversion through application through enrollment, right. So fundamentally those.

Conversions are identified by actions taken by the prospective student kind of within your funnel. It's already sort of predefined, predetermined and then you're also looking at it in a very relationship forward. We're looking to help facilitate and ease up. And I answered Rhonda's question a little earlier about a some seamless processes that are going to be really helpful for you know creating creating a good atmosphere for relationships to be built and you know.

I I think also sort of out of CRM is sometimes and I and I know that I've seen this with a lot of our clients is that and that's sort of what Akiro is trying to do is not necessarily have a complete visual comprehensive profile of a student or sort of the pipeline of how students are moving through enrollment attribution with your digital ads and your your Instagram follows and all of those things. And hopefully today I'm going to talk a little bit more about how all those things are connected together and how you can connect to some of your marketing and enrollment.

Data within your CRM with some of the tools that Slate provides and you also might see an Omni channel approach differently than marketing, right. And we've already kind of chatted about that. But one of the biggest pieces that to to walk away with is that we can always find tune within Slate through delivery, through portals, through all the different tools that I'm about to mention.

So starting off briefly jumping into sort of the best practices within Slate, now this looks like a confusing web of nonsense and you're like, what is that? What is this garbage, this hot garbage that you're providing me? No, it's not. I promise. And here's why we're taking those, those benefits, which I'm going to continue to talk about of Omni channel approach and I'm going to apply those to some of the tools within Slate and then also some of your overall CRM goals, so.

Talking about this briefly and we'll chat as we move through the presentation, but we're looking at really enhancing the customer experience and that follows into discussing automation through through workflows, through rules, but then also deliver, which we'll chat about in a second. We're talking about personalization, which you've heard many and many a chat on the slight stages about what personalization looks like and how it means. We're going to talk about it even more in depth within some of that.

Enrollment attribution.

Improving engagement, which is I think something that we all want to do. And I know that it seems that Kaylee had kind of mentioned that as well, right. It's like how do we improve the engagement so they have the data to understand what's going on and there are lots of tools within Slate to do that. Ping is a really good example for that. It helps you collect data on, on sites and places where you may not, may not be, you know, taking a look at what those UTM parameters are. And that's something that we're going to talk about as well. But you'll also notice that all of these are.

Kind of interwoven and interconnected with multiple kinds of tools with the same sort of benefits. And that is one of the biggest pieces that I want you to walk away with today. As we talk a little bit more about this a seamless customer journey which kind of comes into both of the though the rule side, the back end side things are are as seamless and as flow as well and you have the greatest segmented communication plan through the enrollment funnel, but it's also talking a little bit about some of those, how we can create some of those.

Of service portals, how can we optimize those for students and and for front facing we talked about adaptability. I'm going to talk a little bit about project management within slate. I think that's something that we need to emphasize a little bit more and then we'll jump into a little bit of brain consistency as well with some of the new tools that have come out especially with portals and with branding editor.

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of the layout of the spider web, of those benefits of Omni channel approach, but also with the tools that are already kind of built into Slate and that are always being refined for this purpose.

A little caveat before we jump in and I'm going to go through these a little quickly. But don't worry, we've got a little party favor for you at the end here that will help you kind of get started on some of these journey or wherever you are kind of within this seeking out an Omni channel marketing approach. A little caveat is that I'm really going to talk heavily on some front facing pieces that you can edit today and start to incorporate an Omni channel approach in today with deliver and with.

Portals, I'm going to talk a little bit about automation, but I'm also going to talk about some other conversion tools that I think are really important to mention when we're talking about an Omni channel marketing approach. Because not only are we looking to fine tune a consistent branded message to students that is a seamless process, but also there's lots of tools that we don't necessarily look at as conversion tools that might actually be a really big game changer for you.

So jumping into a little bit of deliver, I think that there are a lot of really good strong valuable best practices and presentations on those best practices. But a couple of the key pieces that I I just want to chat about first before we we really dive in. I want to make a differentiation between two types of campaigns. These all go I'm focusing a little bit on e-mail, but this can also incorporate your slate print your SMS, your slate voice and we'll we'll talk about all of those things and.

We build out a full scheme of a nurture campaign and the 2nd. But I make a differentiation between nurture campaigns and blast campaigns. So BLAST campaigns are are the ones you're you're sort of 1 offs. You maybe you want to increase the number of students coming to your open house coming up here. So emphasizing the use of personalized URL's within those communications to help kind of attribute clicks but then also prefill information. We're looking to create a.

Seamless experience. Julian had touched a lot on SMS, which I think is really important and blast campaigns for SMS. I I think that one of the biggest things to kind of chat about is your full approach within an Omni channel. It should emphasize sort of what students are are looking for and you know I I've been a part of teams that have tested out using emoji responses for event registrations. You know, skys the limit when you're trying things out.

Sleep video is also a really good opportunity for blast campaigns. When you are looking for to one AB test a particular video that can be kind of 1 off into a a campaign that clearly ends like an e-mail that clearly ends or an SMS that clearly ends. But also you have an opportunity as we kind of have mentioned and I'm going to mention throughout this is this idea of progressive profiling and progressive profiling is taking the record data that you have and.

Using it within A2 prefill forms to direct your CTA's, all those kinds of good things. When an action is completed by a student in particular, like on a landing page or something like that. Could you imagine if right afterwards they got a presentation notes or a rather a CTA button that says like, hey, we saw that you're interested in the soccer team, why don't you click on this and it's a highlight reel of of video of the soccer team, right? So we'll talk about some more progressive profiling as we move.

But I want to jump into some of those best practices and and the Omni channel approach through throughout the funnel. We talk a lot about Omni channel marketing when it comes to top of the funnel inquiry prospect, a list purchase or a name purchase. And I think that an Omni channel approach works even better when it's fine-tuned down towards the end of your funnel. So as applications roll through, you're receiving more data.

From that student, right. And that's even more data in which you can use to fine tune your messaging and segment, even better to kind of create a consistent message for that particular segment.

Taking cues from the data you collect, I think that is well, deeply rooted within all of us. I'm gonna tell you a little bit more when it comes to portals and UTM in the in the second here, but those are some pieces that I think you really can find some some good data with enrollment attribution tying in your social.

And we'll talk about this with portals as well, is using a a diverse number and spicing up a your your CTA buttons in a way that can push the Omni channel marketing approach without having to necessarily forgo or do anything totally extra with your campaigns to provide a really good example for you.

We we we talk a lot about student to student marketing and how do we get students to talk to other students, right. If you segmented your campaign all the way through your nurture campaign all the way through building an opportunities for those connections through your Instagram live profiles. So this is all kind of planning out well in advance which I'll show you some tools to do that in a second. But those are some strong suggestions that we have sort of moving into deliver to help kind of bolster an Omni channel marketing approach.

And you're probably thinking like OK Mike, this is really great. Let's talk a little bit about some, some portals here. And I just want to briefly mention some really cool new features because I know we're we're running up against time here. But two new features that I want to mention in portals that are going to actually make your Omni channel approach pieces and AB testing opportunities even easier for you starting with a the custom portal branding which is a a new feature.

Didn't sleep.

And that it just recently came out and for the that particular piece, you know a custom portal branding enables the creation of like a distinct portal that doesn't inherit the branding elements from like the main site, right. And what I think is really important is, could you imagine having portals that are fine-tuned for every single segment that you have? I know it's crazy, it's wild. We don't want to bite off too much, much more than we can chew as of right now. But custom portal?

And it kind of gives us that opportunity additionally to, I wanted to chat briefly about components here and components are sort of a portal component is a great way to kind of do some maybe testing with different portal attributes. But and it's very similar to components within Deliver, you can take the opportunity to create that seamless journey for your user experience. Components enable users to choose styling options from a list you provide, for example like a header.

Could be designed to offer a selection of one of two colors, so Sky's the limit on the continuity. You can create the portal components and how. You can also have those different segmentation pieces kind of within your slate portals.

Julian had talked a lot about like great landing page etiquette and portal best practices, like personalization and relevance, diverse CTA's and simplicity. So I'm not going to dive too deep into those and I think there are a lot of really awesome portal resources that are out there.

So I want to take us and I want to shift us from portals and like the front facing pieces to a little bit more of that seamless customer journey and the best sort of customer experience. And as a former operations person and as somebody who is kind of working with our clients, I think having a really robust set of rules and workflows that are are contingent on and and corner you know the the best parts of segmentation, but then also moving people through your funnel, a couple of.

Adjustments that I will make in in the one I want to emphasize here at the top with workflows and rules is talking a little bit about internalized lead scoring, which is a little bit of a teaser to the little goodies, the goodies that we're going to share here at the end of our presentation, but.

Lead scoring is a you probably have some you know, whatever partners you may be working with, vendors with marketing who are potentially lead scoring and sending that data over once that inquiry hits a certain number or is constantly being sent over and and upgraded as they do more stuff within that particular funnel. That's something that can be automated within your slate instance on particular actions, particular event registrations, all those sorts of things and.

Lead scoring can give you an opportunity to prioritize kind of within your funnel. But how it fits into an Omni channel marketing approach is when we we start to look at sort of a seamless experience. Could you imagine if a student had you know filled out some things rather quickly, they have a high lead score and then they're prioritized within a task list for a counselor to reach out? Because sometimes I think that we also forget that within an Omni channel marketing approach that also includes that relationship building and that person to person.

Connection which is really important. So gearing up your your counselors for for that sort of opportunity.

But something that I I think that I've always struggled with in in in sort of building out nurture campaigns and especially with an Omni channel approach. Bringing in, you know, my paid media, my advertisements, my print, my my sleep voice, voicemails for particular events or or any of those sorts of communications is like what where where can I, where can I house that? How can I scheme that out for myself in one little location or one one place? Project management and slate is really easy with.

Projects. It's a great way to set, create, design and and upload and assign a particular components or pieces for particular people to edit and create. And it helps us kind of automate within that those tasks, milestones as well and creating tasks. But what it can do really is is help you sort of visualize within your slate platform exactly what is happening and if you haven't tried out projects or haven't worked with it, something.

You definitely suggest, which also might be a part of that little, those little goodies at the end that we wanted to provide.

And the last little bit that I really want to discuss and there's lots of really good documentation on task creation, but actually a lot of really good and really robust presentation pieces. I believe Emily Haggerty from Ursuline College did a really wonderful slight stage at one point. It's reported somewhere sort of within the knowledge base on like tasks and assigning those tasks. Tasks can be a really, really good best friend when it comes to an Omni channel marketing approach.

So I would suggest that could be a really good opportunity for you.

The last little bit that I want to talk about before we really kind of transition out and get to answer some questions are some other slave features that you might not think as are robust conversion tools, but they really are. And the first one I want to talk about is the the chat bot. Your chat bot is a really helpful kind of conversion solution. Now we can incorporation of natural language learning models within that that potential as we we all are familiar with chat TBT.

Um, with that in kind of engagement, what it can help you do is help you measure within your your stealth sort of applicant and stealth prospecting on your website. So if you haven't kind of implemented a chat bot or don't have one through a vendor, I think it's a great opportunity for you to start including some of that chat button functionality into your marketing schema.

We chatted a lot about progressive profiling, but I can't, I can't emphasize it enough when it comes to a really strong opportunity for a lot of our institutions to create personalized and relevant communications that are targeted and segmented based on the data that you receive in CRM from forms that's coming from maybe your Ellucian banner, you know integration coming from Caspa, all of that data that's coming into your system, your.

You know, you might be focusing on just the transcripts and the material uploads for those things, but you're also getting a lot of engagement data that you maybe aren't tracking and you can progressively profile on those and create a really robust student identity based on some of those engagements.

You're talking about lead scoring. I won't, I won't focus on that. But I also mentioned that if you're at a place where you're like, I'd really like to do this Omni channel approach. But I have zero idea where to get started. And I would say the biggest place to to start engaging with, and this is a really good conversation with your marketing departments as well, is looking at your your Google Analytics web pages are performing but installing your ping URL on the places that you know the landing pages your vendors are hosting.

Um, or your your home pages, those sorts of that sort of data and that you TM, that urgent tracking that's going to come in is gonna be paramount for you to understand exactly where students are coming from so that you understand what channels you should be working through the best for particular targets and segmentations. So I flew through that section. I want to give us some opportunity for some questions, but I want to chat to some key takeaways.

You know an Omni channel approach kind of allows for prospects to get the most out of their journey in the sense of an enhanced customer experience with improved engagement. And Omni channel strategy will increase engagement across a number of channels which is which is wonderful. It's less of a single stream, it's it's looking at engagement across different different platforms and especially when it comes to personalization where personalization and relevance within your segmentation is crucial and.

Helps. You can leverage that with tools within Slate or with your partners.

But.

You've seen with customer Journey kind of make sure that you have like the workflows in place to ease your students through the enrollment process and easing is all about automation, adaptability and omnichannel approach is better to understand the platforms in which your prospects wish to engage with you, right. But Julian mentioned SMS, looking at Instagram, looking at Twitter, where are the places where, I'm sorry, X, forgive me, where are your students engaging and how can you have a fine-tuned message for that particular channel in this Omni channel?

Approach and then bring consistency so I you know. Build a clear narrative within your campaigns, consistency with your assets to help you build trust and connect with your prospects.

So next steps we we, we tried a lot with you today with the the little goodie bag that I wanted to leave you with is I've created a slate suitcase. So you never installed a suitcase before. There's all you have to do is type it in the Slate knowledge Base and I'll teach you how to do that. Go ahead and take a screenshot of that suitcase ID plug it in and what you're going to take a look at and see within that suitcase is a sample homepage widget and Melissa is going to follow up with an e-mail with the suitcase ID.

You're gonna see a home page twitching of leave details. You can start to fine tune for yourself with incoming data from your your partners. You could sample query, a ping data and UTM parameters, a sample AB e-mail test, and like I teased earlier as some examples of lead scoring within forms in and rules within slate. So a lead scoring example form and the rule so that you can start to build and begin kind of capturing that data as well.

So Julian and I are here to answer some questions. We have some our contact information there as well. I know there's a handful of questions that we had within the chat too. And I'll turn it over to Julian to to answer maybe some of those questions.

Yeah. Thank you. So we've had some some really good questions starting with the first one, which is how effective is the Omni channel approach method versus multi channel when it comes to traditional print communications? And So what we tend to see through the marketing campaigns that we do through net natives is whether you're applying it to your marketing tactics, whether you're doing it to your landing pages, whether it's in person events or it's print or it's out of Hong Communications.

We find that the feedback that we've had is keeping that message consistent builds that brand trust and familiarity. And the reason for that is because students are more familiar. They see the that consistent messaging across all channels and it reduces the potential anxieties that they might have regulars that regular anxieties that we tend to get are in terms of finances or in terms of relocating or things like that. And although that particular tactic whether it's print or whether it's a landing page.

If it's that consistent messaging that they've seen from that original advertising and it's that consistent message across.

It builds that familiarity within that institution and with your brand. So even if you're not addressing those specific questions in that particular print, we find that those Omni channel approach just builds that brand trust.

Umm, another question was if Omni channel is all about consistency, how does it allow for AB testing of messaging? And that's also a great question. You know, we are big advocates of AB testing and the way that we approach AB testing in combination with an Omni channel approach is as long as you are AB testing the new messaging simultaneously across all your channels instead of AB testing the message on one channel only, then AB testing is recommended and works well with that Omni channel approach. It just means that you're not doing that.

Messaging AB testing on e-mail comms. But then actually through your marketing tactics and through your landing pages, you have a completely different message. So there's not an issue with AB testing a brand new message in that you want to use. Just do it simultaneously across channels.

The next question was can the student perceive the difference in how they are being processed when it comes to multi channel versus Omni channel? And the answer is yes. Students can often notice a difference, especially from marketing tactic to landing page or marketing communications to admission communications. And the reason for that is sometimes because of that siloed approach between marketing and admissions teams, they have different ways that they feel they can tackle the way that they nurture.

Prospects or you know from the message in your e-mail comes to the human touch points that those prospects are having. You know there can be a noticeable difference in the way of the USPS that you're using to get them to attend your institution or the actions that you're trying to get them to make, you know. And keeping that message and that consistency across is really important and it does get noticed by students. So we just, we recommend keeping the same tone of voice, the same USP's.

The same messaging whether there is somebody at the top of the funnel that I've just heard about your institution or whether it's somebody that you just trying to get them through to matriculation, just keep that message consistent.

Umm, more questions. So if you are using Omni channel, does it make it more difficult to refresh your communication plan when you want to give an update? Not necessarily make it more difficult, it just requires more planning so the update is updated across all channels simultaneously. So this is what we mentioned about there's nothing there's not. If you're using an Omni channel approach, it doesn't mean that you can't AB test new messaging or that you need to make updates and all of a sudden.

Until you can't because you need to keep the consistent the message consistent, it just means that you need to do it. If you're making a change, run AB test to do it across all channels so students, regardless of where they're coming from, don't notice a difference or they're not interacted with differently.

How feasible is Omni channel if the current interactions are very isolated with little to no willingness to interact so?

Even if there is little interaction from visitors or leads or students, a planned or a well planned Omni channel approach means that the message is kept consistent regardless. So even if a prospect has only interacted by visiting your website so you've only seen through your Google Analytics, they will still receive the same consistent tone of voice and information through that landing page they visited as those who are receiving regular e-mail comms or are speaking to a member of the faculty, or are speaking to the student ambassadors who are engaging.

The point of the Emmy Channel approach is that is is the same tone of voice, the same communications, and the same style. Whether it's somebody that's visited one of your landing pages or somebody that's interacted with your SMS, e-mail, com, spoken to student ambassadors and attended an open day, they both sets of audiences would have still received the same message.

And then we currently have a high volume of web pages and information already built out. Would it be possible to somehow connect all of those tools mentioned with our current content? Or does everything need to be rebuilt? Not everything needs to be rebuilt. We just recommend reviewing your best performing content, your best performing imagery, Ctas, and channels between your department to identify those correlations of what is working and why. You can then work together to develop a strategy.

To implement it institution wise, whether you want to get in contact with us so we can provide recommendations, whether you want to use that really useful suitcase that Mike has provided to get started. I think the point is you don't have to completely rebuild anything. You don't have to not do any more AB testing or update. It just means planning out your Omni channel approach to then implement it institution wise just to make sure that regardless of department and regardless of whether on prospects is at the top of the final or about.

To enroll, they just received that same consistent message because you've planned it and you've implemented it institution wise at the same time.

Hopefully that answered your questions, but if you feel like they didn't, we will share the slides. And on one of the final slides we do have our contact information for you to ask. Whether it's a follow up to one of the questions today or any new questions. Please do get in touch because we'd love to hear more about whether you have an Omni channel approach where you're planning to implement one or whether you just like to have a conversation about to get that started.

I'd like to thank Michael and Julian for joining us today. From that natives and to all of you who were able to log in and listen to their presentation once again, we will send out a follow up e-mail with the recording as well as the suitcase link that Michael spoke to towards the end of the presentation. So thank you again for joining. Please to be sure to check out the other dive deepers that will be rolling out this fall via your homesley. Thanks everybody. Thank you Michael. Thank you Julian.