A previous Marketing Advisers (MA) blog story highlighted how video can be introduced in a creative and personalised fashion to help make the pupil from the past feel (Alumni) connected to its present and its future. This was also highlighted in a published piece on ISMP to further reinforce how schools can and should do more to engage with their Alumni. The long-term benefits for the school, particularly Independent schools with new and repeat admissions (from within the family and network), are clear to see.
Let’s delve deeper into the use of video, particularly video that is personalised in a scenario to help support school admissions, but this activity could be highly effective to increase response rates across a range of external communication requirements.
The key is to be clear on the audience profile, the relevant channels to share the highly engaging content through and, of course, the tactical video content will be central to the activity.
We can showcase this through a live case study with a MAT school (click here to view the complete project) to highlight how the technique could, and we think should, be a tool in every school marketers box. Significantly, we can share the remarkable results that it helped to achieve!
What is the concept of personalised video?
Personalised video is where we actively address the individual and bring them along to have their very own journey – to help make it ‘their’ memorable story. Schools can now use such techniques and achieve great results through personalised video and it has already shown how effective this can be. Creating feelings of excitement and emotion which can lead to increased levels of connection and loyalty, mean that we are really connecting with our audience and understanding them.
How about personalised video in practice?
A recent MA brief was for the Knowledge Schools Trust (KST), more specifically for one of their schools, the West London Free School 6th Form. Our specialist communication skills were required to develop creative copy and digital content, to help this particular school reach both a wider audience and, in the short term, increase pupil conversions in their Admissions cycle. This has major impact for the school and is an important part of their continued presence and visibility.
As a Marketing team we considered the question: what tactical marketing activity can make an impact in a relatively short space of time and deliver results that can be tracked and are meaningful to an outcome?
Our approach
To help facilitate the sending of such a developed personalised video, the communication platform Mail Chimp was implemented as a key piece of work. This helped staff to be able to quickly communicate with large numbers of pupils in the Admissions cycle but also importantly, to help deliver an embedded video personalised to each individual, with content hosted on a dedicated cloud server.
Video content was primarily developed to call-out and encourage the Year 11 (end of GCSE 15 year olds) External Offer-holders to join the 6th Form school in September, for the new academic year.
A series of themes for the videos were developed which would achieve the right balance between pupils having fun, making friends and being inspired, but also highlighting that working hard will bring rewards of successful results. It was a brilliantly engaging piece of work that also showcased the school’s brand.
We also wanted to introduce a ‘Welcome walk-through tour’ video to make these prospective pupils feel like they already belonged to the school and to start the friendship process.
Personalised video was the answer…
It was introduced as a specific piece of tactical activity to help bring these prospective Year 11 pupils over the line to join the 6th Form school (which previously had had a challenge with their in-take numbers).
So, a boost of personalised joy ‘by name’ was the idea…to welcome them in person (by video) to the school and to sit back and enjoy a brief tour by the pupil and staff hosts.
The outcome
This ‘video-by-name‘ activity was an exceptionally creative piece of work, where 400 prospective pupils, within the admissions database, were addressed throughout the video personally ‘by name’ and given a 90 second walkthrough their future to-be school.
This creative work aimed to make the pupils feel a part of the school fabric even before they start.
See how the personalised name slots (“placeholders”) were creatively used to bring in the pupil’s name, to help keep their interest and importantly seeking to increase the levels of engagement (and commitment) with the school. From the Welcome entrance board, the Andy Warhol frame, the Banksy wall art, the classroom board to the sign-off by ‘full name’.
Results by comparison
The standard video results were certainly encouraging…
“Inspiration theme” (non-personalised video) – Open rate 67.5%
“Results theme” (non-personalised video) – Open rate 66.6%
However, the Walk through Tour (personalised video) – Open rate increased to an impressive 75.3%.
When looking at the personalise video stats, the Open Rates increased by some 50%* against industry standard data.
* 2021 Global Email Benchmark data – Education Industry Average Open Rate: 24.90% Click Through 4.30%
A month or so after the Admissions Y12 (2021) new cohort of pupils started, the collective work delivered a healthy 18% increase uplift compared to the 2020 figures.
Open Rates with the personalised element far exceeded expectations! For the specific project, this was a real winning creative part of the campaign and a first for a UK school we believe!
The tactical video activity and project received excellent feedback from the Trust client…
"I'm very happy to have the themed videos all ready to use this time around - in fact we will probably show one at the Open Evenings next week. I definitely think videos are the way to go in terms of high impact in a short time…"
"Our 2021 Admissions target by the end May has been increased by 17% from 120 admission documents submitted to 140 and counting".
"Thank you for all of your creativity on driving forward our approach to marketing!"
The final video
The live send of the personalised video to the 400 prospective pupils utilised a bespoke school branded landing page, which also contained Admissions related information links. Note, below highlights a generic landing page.
Talk to us about incorporating personalised video into one of you school campaigns, across Admissions, Alumni events or another use. We could tune up your existing video content to work harder!
We also have a range of individual services aimed to bring tangible change through tactical activity. This can suit all types of schools to achieve a specific digital communication improvement or goal, like…
Call or email us, we would be more than pleased to have a conversation.