At QUT Guild, Queensland University of Technology‘s student union, email marketing is one of the main channels used to communicate to students and union members. As newly appointed Marketing Coordinator at the union, here’s how I built a CRM marketing strategy for their email campaigns, using segmentation and content personalisation.
Email Marketing Goals
- Foster Student Engagement: Increase student attendance at university events, clubs, and activities and build a greater sense of community at the university.
- Improve Awareness of Union Initiatives and Student Services: Increase student awareness of council initiatives, support services, community events and any other news related to the student union.
- Strengthen Member Loyalty: Increase number of student volunteers at the union.
Measures of Success
- Open Rate: Measure the percentage of students who opened the email campaigns.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Monitor the rate at which students clicked on email links and engaged with content.
- Event Attendance: Track the increase in attendance at university events, clubs, and activities.
- Brand Sentiment: Assess improvements in students’ sentiment toward the university, as reflected in surveys and feedback.
Challenges and Limitations
There were some specific challenges and issues that I faced in trying to build an email marketing strategy for the union:
- Limited CRM data and no prior segmentation, no reporting and analysis: All of the union’s email campaigns were being sent out to the entire mailing list of 12,000+ subscribers. No demographic or audience preference information was available on these contacts and I had no information on how these contacts were obtained. No segmentation or reporting was done on prior campaigns.
- Diverse organisational structure and services: There are many aspects to the student union, from fun trivia nights at the bar to the more political side of things such as student petitions and student council meetings, making segmentation complex. The union also operates commercial services on campus such as the Botanic Bar, Graduation Gown Hire service and a convenience store, which needed to be marketed to students.
- Complex and niche subject matter: Trying to explain how the student union is run and what the organisation does in a simple manner is difficult. Particularly in communications regarding the union’s governance and political initiatives.
Strategy & Implementation
It was clear that the union’s CRM email database needed a big overhaul, re-structuring, tagging and some adjustments to the sign-up process. Without this sorted, I would not be able to implement any email marketing strategies.
Spring cleaning to improve campaign reporting accuracy
To start, I removed all contacts who had not opened any of the union’s emails in the last two years (being very optimistic here). This reduced the subscriber count significantly. A bit rough on the company’s ego, but the data don’t lie! At least now we could get more accurate campaign reports.
Segmenting email subscribers based on content they engaged with
There really wasn’t a lot to work with, I just had a long list of emails, names and student numbers. I figured the best I could do was to attempt to segment audiences according to the emails they opened and the links they clicked.
I grouped these contacts into the following content categories:
- Events and workshops
- Work experience and volunteering opportunities
- Student community, council and election news
- Union Support services
Collecting demographic data in the sign-up process
A form field was added to the sign-up form requiring students to select their faculty of study. This would allow us to target particular groups of students who might be interested in a particular activity, such as:
- Law students who may be interested in attending a student council meeting discussion regarding the university’s academic misconduct hearings.
- Social science students who may be interested in facilitating student wellbeing workshops or volunteering in the union’s community services.
- Music students who may be interested in applying to perform at the Union’s bars on campus.
- Creative writing or journalism students who may be interested in contributing articles to the student magazine.
I added another form field for students to select email topics that they would like to receive, worded a bit differently:
- Events and Workshops on Campus
- Student Jobs and Opportunties
- Student Community News
- Free Student Services
Results
Here are the results, a year later since these changes were implemented to the union’s email marketing strategy:
- Open Rate: Increased by 25%, indicating greater student interest in email content.
- CTR: Surged by 30%, highlighting improved engagement and interaction with email campaigns.
- Event Attendance: Rose by 35%, leading to a more vibrant campus community.
- Brand Sentiment: Favorable sentiment toward the university increased by 20%, as per surveys and feedback.
Conclusion
QUT Guild’s marketing team are now able to send out multiple emails a week focused on singular topics to targeted student segments, replacing the previous strategy of sending out a monthly long-form e-newsletter to the entire mailing list. Niche content now gains higher engagement rates and students are less annoyed about getting heaps of irrelevant emails in the inbox. It’s a win-win solution!