August 30, 2010 - Oakland University's 2010 Summer Program enrollment was up 6.5% by leveraging SugarBush's marketing management solutions.
SugarBush Media Solutions, a technology marketing company specializing in education, announced today that’s its Summer 2010 Marketing Program for Oakland University was up on average 6.5%
SugarBush was contracted by Oakland University to improve the value of the marketing function for Oakland’s 2010 summer attendance.
According to Mark Parent, President "We were awarded the contact because we guaranteed Oakland we could measure all media channels. Not only did we do that, but we also came out on top with a 4% undergraduate enrollment improvement in the Summer One Session and a 9% undergraduate improvement in the Summer Two Program, with an overall increase in enrollment of 6.5%. The previous year’s efforts resulted in a marginal 1% increase in enrollment.
It was refreshing to work with Oakland University. They allowed us the freedom to make the recommendations throughout the program when opportunities to improve the marketing process became available. Our primary goal was to get the measurements in place, and then determine the best marketing mix.”
SugarBush used a number of media channels including, movie theater marketing with standees, MS Tags, arena marketing with SMS text messaging, Integrated marketing with individualized direct mail, and e-mail marketing all connected to multiple Smart Microsites. Social Media and Twitter was also leveraged in the communications strategy and helped increase results.
Old media methods that were used the previous year, such as billboards, magazine ads, radio and TV were eliminated. Only digital and track-able media channels were considered for the 2010 program. SugarBush identified a great amount of waste in the previous year’s summer marketing program, and also identified the best marketing mix for 2011.
SugarBush also performed SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Oakland’s Summer website and achieved a 166% increase in traffic compared to the previous year. In addition to the increase in traffic, visitors were routed to the appropriate program related pages more efficiently. This eliminated page bounces and aligned Oakland’s offerings to student needs with minimal effort.
As part of the marketing and communications plan, SugarBush optimized their SNAP (Student Needs Analysis Process) for Oakland University to identify what students cared about if they were to consider attending a course during the Summer Program semesters. Understanding students’ needs helped SugarBush position Oakland University’s value proposition appropriately throughout all of their program communications. This process ultimately helped Oakland University drive explicit one-to-one relevant messaging for the entire duration of the Summer Program campaign.
Recommendations and reporting were a critical element for Oakland University. SugarBush delivered a comprehensive end-of-program report that provided detailed campaign metrics, segment ROI results, and detailed recommendations for the 2011 program. This report will further drive best practices for Oakland University in 2011 that will promise to optimize marketing spend, leverage best practices and increase ROI.
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About SugarBush Media Solutions:
SugarBush Media Solutions Delivers Marketing Management Systems for Education and Business to Business that are designed to increase marketing efficiency and convert prospects into revenue. SugarBush’s technology based marketing solutions were developed to meet the continuously growing need for customers to leverage marketing metrics and analytics to find the best marketing mix. Gaining insights and visibility on marketing and processes allows organizations to build best practices to deliver repeatable and predictable Return On Investment (ROI) on marketing initiatives.
For more information about SugarBush Media Solutions:
Website: www.sugarbushms.com
Contact: Media Relations
Phone: 1-800-834-4910
Email:
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