An introduction prepared for

Eckerd College

Are You Reaching Prospective Students With the Right Story?

The benefits of a small college education are easy to explain… small classes where you get personal attention and your professor gets to know you — not just your name, but who you are, what drives you, what you need to succeed.

But when it comes to your marketing communication flow with prospective students, does it really exemplify these same qualities and promises?

More than likely most of the messaging thatyou send prospective students is just like what a big public institution would send… a one-size-fits-all message. Wouldn’t it be better if you could relate those individual, personal stories your tour guides insightfully share with visitors to exemplify the essence of your campus?

At New Reach Media we know that the key to a small college’s successful freshman search is ENGAGEMENT. Engagement creates a connection, builds an affinity, a preference, hopefully a lifelong attachment between a student and her or his college.

There’s a way to do it better...find it!

Engagement Marketing

"During our partnership with New Reach Media, we became the fastest-growing private school in the state over 5 years with consistent increases in enrollment and retention. Their PRO approach has given us the competitive advantage to achieve record enrollments year after year.”

— Kim Sherman Bailey, Assistant Vice President Dean of Enrollment Management Chowan University

— Thomas Edison

The DNA of NRM

Our efforts in higher education exemplify that the inherent constraints and limitations of size can be overcome by strong aspirations, big ideas, and performance results. This belief is our inspiration for helping small colleges become more efficient and effective in recruiting the “right-fit” prospective students that will enroll, graduate and remain engaged as alums.

As a small, agile team of marketing, database, creative, higher education and technology professionals, New Reach Media has been at the forefront of evaluating, distilling, combining and employing new technologies and techniques to effectively reach small college audiences with engaging communications since 2003.

And for us, the marketing and communications aren’t the end game – it’s building meaningful relationships that matters most. Our true goal is to help build relationships (for and with our small college clients) that create engagement and value for all involved.

We won’t try to impress you with a long list of clients. We believe in quality of work over quantity of clients. We believe in partnerships over projects. We believe that our clients’ ongoing success is the actualization of our success.

Our hope is to find good-fit small college clients that share our values and aspirations, and help them to reach new heights.

We help small colleges build relationships that create value

New Reach Media is a small marketing communications team passionate about helping small colleges succeed.

“The only true constant is change.” — Heraclitus

Your audience’s opinions and preferences are constantly changing. Having knowledge of those changes, and your college's ability to respond to them, is important to creating and deepening your relationships with stakeholders, whether they're high school juniors or retired alumni.

New Reach Media's Personal Relationship OptimizationSM℠ (PRO for short) is an approach that enables and facilitates small colleges staying in tune with and responding to the personal interests, attitudes and concerns of their individual stakeholders. It is the overarching precept of our work.

Personal Relationship OptimizationSM (PRO)

Our PRO cross-channel communication platform provides a framework for sending personalized messages through various channels, and recording actions and responses to those messages. This intelligence is then used to refine strategies and help you achieve ambitious goals with efficiency. PRO engages individuals around topics that are of interest to them specifically, and creates an interactive dialogue that benefits both parties. While someone learns more about your college, you are also learning more about them.

This strategy enables small colleges to engage prospective students, parents and alumni to:

• Create distinction for your college• Grow and shape your incoming class• Cultivate existing relationships to meet institutional goals• Apply your limited resources more efficiently

PROersonal Relationship OptimizationSM

PRO-Microsites support the direct communica-tions of your marketing initiative (whether stu-dent search or institutional advancement), and promote and cultivate learning relationships with your audience. They utilize personalized URLs, enabling all visitors to experience individ-ualized content that is specific to them to foster engagement.

The PRO-Microsites are designed to have only the information that is necessary to support the desired response to the calls-to-action of your initiatives. Unlike a .edu website that has to be

many things to many people, a microsite’s content is specific to its audience and directed solely at influencing those targeted individuals’ perceptions to meet your objectives.

And, since the microsites utilize personalized URLs (PURLs), it makes visits to the microsite discrete. This enables us to collect data on individual users’ interactions, and build profiles of their levels of engagement, preferences and actions. This data can then be used to better direct the actions of your staff and make better use of your resources.

PROersonal Relationship OptimizationSM

PRO-Microsites

New Reach Media’s approach is distinctively different compared to the one-size-fits-all approach of most marketing vendors. They listen, and then give us what we need to make a difference.”

— R. Chad Holt, V.P. of Admissions, Brevard College

The nexus of our PRO strategy is a personalized, campaign-specific PRO-Microsite.

Higher Intelligence for Higher Education – that’s how we describe the latest addition to our PRO suite of products and services. PRO-Analytics is an extremely sophisticated cloud-based business intelligence solution for small colleges at a price point they can afford.

Imagine being able to bring disparate data sources together to create insightful, holistic visualizations of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important to your success. Now further imagine that you can build in alerts to notify you when those KPIs need your attention. And, better still, imagine

being able to access all that information easily from your smart phone.

PRO-Analytics gives you and your small college access to the intelligence needed to make better, data-driven decisions to achieve your goals. In the competitive market that faces most small colleges these days, this is a new tool that can truly enable you to reach new heights.

PRO-Analytics

PROersonal Relationship OptimizationSM

Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) applications enable organizations to manage their engagements with stakeholders and improve those relationships.

Our customized PRO-CRM sits behind each PRO-Microsite installation. It maintains the individual records and data behind the site. These records control the content (copy and images) that microsite visitors view on their individual sites as well as support other services such as automated marketing messages to visitors. It also provides discrete reporting for your staff on those visitors’ activities.

PRO-CRM is a configurable and customizable relationship database built on an extensive open-source CRM. It offers function and flexibility to query the database to find the information needed to support your goals. PRO-CRM is a great resource to manage records and relationships without breaking the bank.

PRO-CRM

Cross-Channel Communication Examples

Cross-Channel Communications

Email

• Comprehensive email solutions supported by a major, international ESP• Turnkey service includes design, database updating, testing and deployment of personalized emails• All emails developed to be display and mobile responsive• Client-specific templates developed to complement each branded mailing campaign• Variable content capability includes text, images, subject lines, and sender • Emails tested in 70+ environments (inboxes, webmail, browsers, and mobile) prior to deployment• A/B testing available prior to full deployment to assure better open rates• 99% Email Deliverability Rate

Cross-Channel Communications

Direct Mail

Michael, at C of I, the choice is now YOURS!

The College of Idaho presentsa new option to an age-old conflict...

“To test, or not to test--that is the question.”

• Full 4-color variable printing with capability to personalize images, copy, and format to the prospect• Mailing database always CASS Certified and verified through NCOA• Mail drop shipped and entered into regional post offices to improve delivery and postage rate• Intelligent Mail Barcode tracking and reporting provided on every mail piece• Long-standing relationship with a national printing company with extensive printing and mailing capabilities and options

Cross-Channel Communications

Microsites

• Display and mobile responsive• PURL driven (Personal URL) to create a personalized experience for each user• Variable content including text, images, and video to create engagement• Variables based on enrollment stage or personal information/preferences• CRM built into every microsite to drive content and provide daily reporting• Pre-populated forms (Applications, Visit Registration) and pulse surveys

Statistical Comparisons

Eckerd College/SPCIEnrollment Statistics

2010 - 2015

New Reach Media’s Small Private College Index (SPCI) is a discrete group of 586 small, private institutions across the U.S. This graph displays Eckerd College’s

enrollment data (IPEDS) against the averages of the SPCI for comparison.

The above graph compares Eckerd College’s Draw Rate (Yield Rate/Admit Rate) to the average of the SPCI. Draw Rate indicates intrinsic

market demand for an institution.

Draw Rate2010 - 2015

New Reach Media ClientEnrollment Statistics

2008 - 2016

The above graph displays enrollment data from a New Reach Media client employing our Personal Relationship OptimizationSM platform.

The above graph compares a New Reach Media client’s Draw Rate to the average of the SPCI.

Draw Rate2010 - 2015

Case Study

Chowan University is a private, liberal-arts institution located in Murfreesboro, NC, an area of the state that locals refer to as the Inner Banks. Surrounded by small agrarian communities, and 45 minutes from I-95, Chowan is definitely off the beaten path, but as they put it, “only an hour from anywhere.”

Founded in 1848 as Chowan Baptist Female Institute, a 4-year women’s college, the school became Chowan College in 1910, and began enrolling male students in 1931. On the heels of the Great Depression, the school became a 2-year institute in 1937 but returned to 4-year status in 1992. In 2004, Chowan College was on wobbly footing. A new president was appointed, and a new course set for Chowan. Renamed Chowan University in 2006, the institution took an aggressive approach to recruit-ing students, recognizing them as the lifeblood of a tuition-sup-ported institution.

Chowan began working with a well-respected higher education recruitment partner based in Richmond, VA. The aggressive direct mail approach of sending search letters to a pool of nearly 100,000 prospects successfully brought results, but it also resulted in other issues.

First, while the approach produced many applications, it was an expensive pursuit. Second, with the new onslaught of applications, Chowan experienced too many “soft” applications and a lagging yield. Third, the quantity of soft applications stretched the resources of the admissions office, resulting in less than optimal use of the assets available.

In late 2008, Chowan University engaged New Reach Media as its strategic partner for enrollment communications and to employ a new strategy. The new approach targeted the shortcomings of the existing program; specifically, too many

unqualified applications and its high expense.

The first step of the new strategy was to take a more targeted approach and reduce the size of the search pool. This was accomplished through a quantitative analysis of the three previous years’ search pools and their results by New Reach Media. Based on this analysis, the Dean of Admissions at Chowan University worked with New Reach Media and developed a plan that targeted only the higher potential candidates with a more effective and economical approach. The result was a reduction in the size of the search pool from nearly

Consistent Success

How New Reach Media helped Chowan University create consistent growth, become the fastest-growing private college in North Carolina, and one of the one of the fastest-growing colleges in America.

Chowan University Case Study

2006 - 2008

Chowan struggled with the high cost and soft applica-tions incurred by working with a higher-ed agency

out of Richmond, VA.

2008:

Chowan engaged New Reach Media for the 2009

campaign, using the Personal Relationship

Optimization approach.

100,000 to less than 40,000.

The smaller pool obviously demanded a higher conversion rate, and therefore the communication and recruitment process needed to be more effective, yet meet the new budget objectives at the same time. The new communication plan that was devised consisted of replacing the previous conventional search letter in a fancy four-color envelope with personalized four-color postcards and complementary emails to drive students to personal microsites where the recruitment message could be delivered on a one-to-one basis.

When students arrived at their microsites, they were addressed with personalized, targeted information based on what was already known about them, as well as given the opportunity to share more information about themselves and their preferences through a brief survey. Additionally, they had the option of completing a “VIP” application and other pre-populated sign-up forms that promoted campus visits and scholarship programs.

Unlike the typical search approach that usually relies on a single communication to develop interest from a prospect, and then takes no further action unless a response is received, the new strategy involved leveraging the economy of the postcard and the email communications to reach out numerous times to the pool of higher potential candidates.

At the heart of this campaign was New Reach Media’s Personal Relationship OptimizationSM (PRO) platform. Unique student microsite visits and activities were tracked in real time and reported to the admissions staff on a daily basis. The data collected from microsite activity was also pushed back to the school and integrated into its Jenzabar enrollment manage-ment system. This process reduced much of the manual data input that was involved with past programs.

Daily reports and data provided by the PRO platform allowed the Chowan admissions staff to evaluate the level of interest of individual students based on their website activities. It was obvious which students were showing interest by whether they visited their personal mi-crosites and how much interaction they engaged in there. These insights provided counsel-

ors the benefit of streamlining their efforts toward more qualified students, and eliminated time wasted on less-invested pros-pects.

This data was used to further refine ongoing personalized emails and intermittent postcards to interested students to drive applications, campus visits, and provide scholarship and financial aid information at the appropriate times. The call to action of the postcards or links in the emails always involved sending the students to their microsites where personalized, pre-populated forms made it easy for the students to apply or

respond.

This process was continued in the yield phase as well. Content on the personal microsites

2009:

29.5% Increase in new, full-time

enrollment

2009:

32% Increase in Net Deposits.

25% decrease in Applications

changed for accepted applicants to drive a new set of objec-tives. Promotion of campus visits to those that had not yet visit-ed was critical to this effort, as well as financial aid and housing forms being provided. And of course, getting the commitment of the enrollment deposit was the paramount goal. The microsites continued to support the enrollment process up to matriculation.

For the fall semester of 2009, Chowan University increased its new full-time enrollment by 29.5% over 2008. This was accomplished in light of a 2% decrease in inquiries, and a 25% reduction in applications, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of New Reach Media’s and Chowan’s targeted and personalized approach, with the support of a diligent staff. Key to the success of this program was the high conversion rate of the applicants. While there was nearly a 9% reduction in the total offers of admission, the total net deposits for 2009 exceeded 2008 by 32%.

The partnership between Chowan University and New Reach Media continues to produce enrollment success. Enrollment statistics released in 2013 by North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU) substantiated that Chowan University grew 41.4% in undergraduate enrollment for the five years between fall 2008 and fall 2012. That was more than any other institution in the organization. In fact, the next closest growth figure among the 35 institutions represented was 33.2%. The momentum has continued with Chowan realizing undergrad-uate growth of 3.9% over the previous year for fall 2013, and also achieving its highest total enrollment since 1971. Since 2013,

Chowan has continued to succeed in its partnership with New Reach Media. In addition to recently celebrating another record freshman class in 2016, they were named the 13th fastest-growing private nonprofit baccalaureate institution in the nation by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

2013:

Chowan University named fastest-growing small, private college in North Carolina, over a 5-year

period.

2016:

Chowan University named 13th

fastest-growing private nonprofit

baccalaureate in US.

www.newreachmedia.com