Victoria University Uses RightNow® To More Effectively Draw Students From Around The World
Goals
Maximize conversion of prospects to enrollees
Achievements
- Conversion rates from offer to enrollment improved by up to 40 percent
- Cost-effective delivery of highly targeted information to prospects worldwide
- Improved insight into market issues drives smarter messaging and tactics
Like most institutions of higher learning, Victoria University of Wellington has a variety of marketing objectives. First and foremost, the University must continue to convert prospects into enrollees despite ever-increasing competition for international students. The University is also trying to maintain a rate of 16 percent of its students hailing from overseas. And it is trying to bolster its post-graduate programs, which are critical for growing its portfolio of funded research.
With prospects scattered across many countries, traditional advertising mechanisms simply aren’t practical. In addition, the information the University has to provide prospects during the course of their enrolment decisions is too rich and complex for conventional media. Its focus needs to be on relationship marketing, rather than advertising a single-minded proposition. So the challenge for the University is how to deliver highly personalized information to such diverse recipients within its tight cost constraints.
Fortunately, with RightNow, the University has discovered a highly effective solution for drawing students from all over the world. Using RightNow, both the University’s own staff and its overseas contractor-partners can maintain an ongoing, content-rich “conversation” with prospects across multiple communication channels—significantly increasing the likelihood that anyone considering Victoria University will ultimately choose it.
“RightNow enables us to quickly, accurately and cost-effectively get the right information to the right people, despite the diversity that characterizes both,” explains Charles Brooks, the University’s international e-marketing coordinator. “It has also given us a wealth of actionable insights into all of our overseas markets, so that we can make better decisions about how to promote Victoria University to each type of prospect.”
Intelligently Managing The Online Conversation
The University’s conversation with prospective students from overseas typically begins electronically, since the phone may be impractical because of cost or time-zone differences. In many cases, a prospect’s first contact takes place via the web when he or she looks for answers in the University’s RightNow-powered self-service knowledge base. At this point, the prospect typically “opts in” to the University’s email program, which is also powered by RightNow.
Once a prospect is entered into the University’s RightNow database, every interaction with that prospect is tracked. So, over time, the University learns more about the prospect and can monitor where he or she is at in the decision-making process.
This allows the University to deliver highly targeted information to each and every prospect as appropriate, given the prospect’s interests and attributes. Thus, for example, a prospective undergraduate engineering student from India making an initial inquiry receives very different information from a prospective post-graduate business student from Denmark who has to make a final decision within two weeks.
In fact, RightNow gives the University complete flexibility to mix-and-match content to create highly individualized messages that touch on each prospect’s likely concerns. A message may therefore combine information about curriculum, housing and financial aid if the RightNow database indicates that those issues could all impact the prospect’s decision.
RightNow also enables the University to “trigger” messages based on any number of conditions. It can broadcast a message to all prospective law students simultaneously, or send customized reminders to students whose applications are late with specific information about their chosen program of study and/or the particular decision factors they have already expressed concern about.
“Our biggest objective in emarketing isn’t to send out a lot of messages. It’s to send out the best possible message at the best possible time to everyone who is considering coming here,” says Brooks. “With RightNow, our only limitation to achieving this objective is in how wisely we can define rules and content for our messages. The system can do anything we want it to do.”
Actionable Insight That Yields Results
In addition to providing complete insight into its individual prospects, RightNow has helped the University better understand the differences between the various geographic markets it serves. In some countries, for example, students typically apply to many different institutions—while in others, students only apply to one or two schools. This obviously affects conversion rates and selling enrolment strategies. Students from certain countries may also be more concerned about housing and student life, while others may be more focused on post-graduation employment opportunities. By providing visibility into these market characteristics, RightNow is enabling the University to deliver a higher-quality student experience from first touch through enrolment, thereby enhancing conversion rates and strengthening the University’s post-graduate admissions efforts.
Malaysia exemplifies the University’s overall success. Before implementing RightNow, the University’s conversion rate for the country had dropped to around 30 percent. With RightNow, that rate has jumped to 42 percent—an improvement of 40 percent.
The University is further leveraging RightNow by extending it to the telemarketing partner it hires to support international recruiting efforts. This partner is provided with relevant applicant information from the University’s RightNow database, so they can have well-informed phone conversations with their target prospects. In addition, if a prospect brings up an issue that requires action by someone on the University’s staff, the telemarketers can create an incident record in RightNow to ensure the matter is taken care of appropriately.
Thanks to RightNow’s on demand delivery model, the University can enjoy the benefits of a globally distributed CRM environment without having to shoulder the capital costs or ongoing infrastructure management burdens that a conventionally provisioned system would require.
“RightNow provides Victoria University with the advanced emarketing and contact center capabilities we need to create a superior experience for our prospects around the world, while allowing us to avoid the significant overhead associated with ownership of complex business applications,” says Brooks. “Our engagement with RightNow is delivering very high return-on-investment and helping us achieve strategic institutional goals that are critical to our long-term success in an increasingly competitive global market.”
About Victoria International
Victoria University of Wellington was founded through an Act of Parliament in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebration, and named in her honor. It is home to more than 20,000 students distributed across four major campuses located in the center of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. The University offers academic programs in more than 90 subjects at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. For more information, visit www.victoria-international.ac.nz.
Greg Gianforte