To be truthful, we are almost embarrassed to use the term “marketing automation” in the context of schools. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that most international schools didn’t even see the need to market at all. They had a good reputation and their school was full. And then five more schools opened in their city, all vying for the same pool of students.
Similarly, when we think of “automation”, we often think of a factory assembly line. Who in their right mind would use the notion of “an automated process” as the best way to do something in a relationship-oriented organisation like a school?
Our philosophy behind marketing automation for international schools is to automate as many processes as possible so that your staff have the time during the day to do what is much more important – interact with real people. Wouldn’t your admissions department rather spend time getting to know prospective families over a cup of coffee than pouring over spreadsheets? Wouldn’t your Director of Advancement rather build relationships with key potential donors than work on a mailing list?
Our goal is to automate menial processes so that your staff can invest their time in people instead. We work with platforms like HubSpot and others to help schools automate their posting to social media, to track which online ads are working best, and to help them connect with new visitors to their websites. We incorporate sign-up forms and feedback buttons right inside our video player so that viewers can follow a call to action right when they have seen how cool your new campus is. We gather information on what a prospective family finds most important in their school search so that the admissions department can talk with them about what we know is important to them, rather than what we think is important to us.
As long as we make sure to keep our communications as human as possible, marketing automation can be a powerful tool for international schools.
