We recently sat down with our customer Wiley Education Services, a global leader in delivering technology-enabled higher education solutions, to discuss how the company was able to build a more mature, robust marketing operation after onboarding Acoustic into its tech stack.
Prior to using Acoustic, Wiley’s marketing functionality was limited to distinguishing leads based on only one unique defining variable: email. This limitation was not compatible with Wiley’s marketing needs and plans.
For example, let’s say a student was interested in a school and became a unique user in the system associated with said school. This student, though, was undoubtedly looking at multiple schools and likely using the same email address to do so. Two opportunities may have been in existence with the same user, but because the unique identifier was limited to a singular variable, Wiley was only able to market on behalf of one of those partner schools.
Wiley’s marketing team solved this by moving to a new marketing automation platform. During this process, leaders created a list of requirements that they knew they needed in a new system. After careful consideration of a wide variety of vendors’ current features and product roadmaps, the Wiley team decided on Acoustic.
Maturing Wiley’s marketing program with Acoustic
Wiley’s needs were clear. The team needed to be able to identify customers as they navigated through the customer journey. Customers had to be identifiable as students or alumnus, through the products they were interested in and the universities they researched. The platform also needed to be able to follow these prospects through unique CRM identifications beyond email. If students were changing emails when they got to college and after graduation, an email-only program meant the Wiley team was starting from scratch with a new lead instead of building upon data from the customer profile they’ve built throughout the journey.
It’s common that once you select a new marketing platform you’ll want to utilize all the shiny new features, but it’s crucial to start small and build. As Wiley proves, launching with where your performance metrics stand today is the best way to start making data-driven decisions and to concentrate on what issues teams need to face. While performing this internal audit, ensure that your campaigns scheduled on the old platform are still being managed and your program continues to convert.
Upon integration, Wiley created an automated campaign guided by business initiatives, such as getting people back into school or getting them there for the first time and improving all their students’ educational experiences. This automation freed up a significant portion of the team’s time and enabled them to utilize it to nurture hotter and higher-quality leads.
New personalization capabilities with a mature operation
The personalization campaigns Acoustic supported the Wiley team on included better understanding the student application process. Wiley sent out surveys to understand what motivated students’ decisions. This knowledge enabled the team to identify about 80 datapoints, such as university pricing, accreditation, course materials, professors, and other information that was pertinent to each prospective student. The team segmented based on the sales stages each unique student was in. This ensured that messaging would match where they were in the process. There wouldn’t be any premature messages such as “Hey, are you ready to apply?” (the minute a student found out about a school). Using Acoustic Campaign, Wiley began an advanced personalization strategy based on the relevant interests of each student, offering timely, pertinent information.
Wiley has been able to measure the success of its marketing program using Campaign. The metrics the team utilizes are mostly engagement focused, such as open rates and click-through rates. Campaign has enabled Wiley to adjust accordingly and with agility as the team sees KPIs improve or decline. The ability to move across systems and channels has been a crucial aspect of Wiley’s marketing operation.
What’s next for Wiley?
Wiley isn’t done with its personalization journey. The team is exploring further automation programs and wants to personalize their campaigns for each of their partner schools. They’re looking to harness all the data at their disposal — about 50,000 fields of data points informing the preferences of each of Wiley’s customers.
Wiley is focused on moving the ownership of its data governance to those more ingrained with the process — entrusting the data and related analytics to expert partners.
Learn more about Acoustic’s partnership with Wiley in this case study.