INTEGRATED MARKETING communication is a three-legged stool. The first leg is brand marketing to create awareness. The second leg is direct marketing, concerned with response. At colleges and universities, the two big direct marketing functions are admissions and advancement. Direct marketing strategies will always be more effective if they are preceded by an effective brand strategy.
The third leg of the stool-which most people significantly underestimate-is customer experience management. We understand the importance of a strong brand. Though the technology may change, we "get" the value of direct marketing. But we don't always understand, appreciate, or commit to delivering on what we promise in our brand. At its most basic, that's exactly what experience marketing involves.
This two-part column establishes a framework for experience marketing and shows how it can be implemented.
WHAT IS EXPERIENCE MARKETING?
Let's define experience marketing as a holistic approach to identifying and managing, to a specific end, the key touch points that define an experience that a customer has with a product or service.
Margaret Drugovich, vice president for Strategic Communications and University Enrollment at Ohio Wesleyan University, says that experience "connotes understanding, familiarity, and the act of connecting. Our success will, at every turn, increasingly be the result of how well we build these relationships."
Colleges sell the sum of all the experiences that a student (or donor) has while attending.
One blogger, when asked to define experience marketing, said simply, "Walking in her shoes." Experience marketing is often more than this, but it's never less.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Marketing depends on an exchange relationship. Students, donors, parents, and alumni buy what colleges and universities sell. What colleges sell, most often, is the sum of all the experiences that students (or donors) have while attending and the opportunities they have when they leave. In other words, we sell experiences.
Now here's the horrifying part. The global business consulting firm Bain & Company discovered that while 80 percent of organizational leaders believe they deliver a superior customer experience, only 8 percent of customers agree.
Can this be true? In many cases it's probably truer than we would like to admit. Even as more students enroll, an increasing number never earn their degrees. Amidst all the wellness centers and food courts, retention has slowly declined for a number of years and is expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.
So what separates those 8 percent from the rest? According to Bain's James Allen, in his writings on "The Three Ds of Customer Experience," these organizations pursue three imperatives simultaneously. The organizations:
- Design the right experiences for the right customer.
- Commit (organizationally and cross functionally) to deliver them.
- Develop capabilities to please customers again and again.
A NINE-STEP EXPERIENCE MARKETING STRATEGY
1. Address the political dimension. Committing to deliver an exceptional experience can be surprisingly political. Many experiences currently offered-and the people and departments that deliver them-will be evaluated and likely changed.
It also involves the understanding that experience marketing is cross-functional. It can't be done at an institution unduly preoccupied with silos. Everyone might agree in theory that experience marketing is a worthy commitment, but there's almost always an educational version of NIMBY- not in my backyard. The success of any commitment to experience marketing will depend on signals the president sends and the commitment that he or she makes.
2. Live out your core values. Amidst the daily grind, keeping core values fresh and central requires extraordinary commitment. Arthur Kirk Jr., president of Saint Leo University (Fla.), says he believes one of his most important jobs is to keep reminding people to live out Saint Leo's core values daily. New employee orientation emphasizes the university's mission, vision, and core values, and then those employees are assigned a mentor who is fully committed to those values. The president also joins them for a special breakfast and answers questions about the university's core values and how they're lived out on campus.
