When you do things well, sooner or later reporters and bloggers start to notice. That explains why in the last week alone, StraighterLine has been attracting a lot of attention and making news. If you want to take online college classes check out these stories:

“Money Talks: College for $1,000 a Year,” a post on the MoneyTalks News on November 5, further praises StraighterLine’s unique approach for offering credit-worthy college courses at low prices: “Straighterline represents a new type of learning: one that offers college courses online, often with the same materials and books that you’ll find on campus, and for a whole lot less.”

“Startup Offers Inexpensive Online College Courses,” a post on the BrainTrack blog, noted on November 3 that: “The company offers online courses a la carte, including in mathematics, English, biology and business. Besides the low prices, it offers students flexibility . . . StraighterLine has already signed up 2000 students.”

“Is A College Class For $138 Too Good To Be True?,” a post on the Huffington Post on November 2, profiles StraighterLine and calls attention to the unique value that we offer to America’s students: “Students who choose to take a class through StraighterLine commit to self-directed, self-paced study, with the help of online tutors and course advisors. Those who enroll in StraighterLine courses can transfer credits to the 22 partnered institutions, or can petition a different university to accept StraighterLine class credits.”

“StraighterLine’s challenge to the rising cost of college,” an article in The Baltimore Sun on October 31, tells the story of Elizabeth Smith, a woman who completed the course requirements for her bachelor’s degree by taking just one course at StraighterLine for $138: “After putting off finishing her college degree for more than two decades, Elizabeth Smith this year needed just one more class — an algebra course — to earn her bachelor’s degree in theater arts.”

All the media attention is happening because of StraighterLine’s value, and because of the unique role they play in American higher education. Stay tuned to see what the reporters and bloggers say next.

20 Plus Direct Marketing Dos and Don’ts

In a previous post I gave you five direct mail tips to improve your direct marketing efforts.  Here is a list of direct marketing dos and don’ts that should help you improve your marketing results:

Do:

• Focus on your target audience as well as who you don’t want to mail to
• Personalize your messages
• Use direct mail to acquire, retain and win back customers
• Make it easy for me to respond (include 800#s, URLs, mail response and
  today, mobile text messaging and social media)
• Think through your strategy and make sure everything is in order before
  the mailing (sales, fulfillment etc)
• Create a sense of urgency
• Provide an offer or incentive for me to respond
• Get creative and think about what is going to make me take notice of your mailing
• Test everything (lists, offers, formats, messages, etc)
• Make your mailings interactive to get the reader involved
• Use active and directional words in the copy
• Set goals and read results
• Use direct mail to sell your products or generate leads
• Hire a specialist if you never worked with direct mail – you won’t be
  disappointed.

Don’t:

• Focus exclusively on the creative or offer – the list is the most important part of the mailing
• Mail dated material to close to the due date
• Copy your competition – how do you know their mailing works?
• Try to wow me with fancy creative and forget about the benefits (what’s in it for me)
• Forget a call to action – you would be surprised how many mailings miss this one
• Try direct mail once and give up – it takes time to build a great program
• Rely on one media channel
• Get complacent with your mailings or results – you can always test and do better
• Assume since you like something your audience will too
• Use direct mail as a branding tool and expect sales results
• Refer to direct mail as junk mail

OK that is more then 20 and I am sure there are more.  If you have additional points you want to make please share them in the comments section.

5 Direct Mail Tips To Improve Your Marketing Results

Here are a few direct mail tips to improve your marketing results.

Direct Mail has been beaten up over the years by the press for being junk (a term I really hate) for  creating large amounts of waste and in general is considered less glamorous then say TV advertising.    Direct Mail is one of the most cost effective and efficient ways to reach your customers and has been proven to work more often then most other media.  Almost every business and organization I know of uses it whether they admit to it or not.   You would probably be surprised at what a creative person can do with the mail.

Here are a few direct mail tips to make sure your effort is on target and environmentally friendly:

1. Use recycled paper for your printing.  There is really no excuse not to anymore. The difference in paper quality is almost indistinguishable.
2. Make sure you clean your mailing list with tools such as NCOA and other postal processing procedures.  These process will save you money and improve your response.
3. If you get a request to remove someone from your mailing, do it.
4. Remove any return mail from your database so that you don’t mail the names again.  There are a number of data entry services available for this task and many will even pick up the mail and send you a file of bad names.
5. Utilize the DMA’s Mail Preference Service to remove names from your database or outside lists that don’t want to receive mail.  If they don’t want it they probably are not going to respond.

Every name you remove or update means you have saved postage, paper and resources mailing a prospect.

Did you know that for every penny increase in the price of gas it costs the USPS $1 Million a day (or something like that).  Just think about how many cars, planes, trucks etc the USPS uses to get your mail across the country or the world.  A piece of bad mail does the trip twice!  Keeping your database clean  will improve your results and help the environment.

Not sure if Direct Marketing is right for your business, drop me a note and I will be happy to discuss it with you.

I am a big fan of word of mouth marketing. I always gather (or give when requested) referrals from friends and family when I need a service or a product. So it occurred to me why not let our client’s customers do the talking for them. Last week we put together this video with one of their students. She loved the program and wanted to tell the world about her experiences so we recorded her and put this up on YouTube / Facebook etc. We did edit the recording to add some fades between her comments along with some music but her words are all original and unedited.

You can feel her passion and excitement about the online college courses. Who would ever get so excited about college algebra…? You just can’t make this stuff up.

When was the last time you let your customers tell your story?

As mentioned in our last post on Lead Generation In Higher Education we are now the co-host of a blog talk radio show focused on education marketing .  This week we had a great conversation on Why Education Marketing Sucks and What to Do About It.

Many schools rely heavily on paying lead generation companies to send “qualified” leads to their sales team so that they can convert them into paying students.  If you ever paid for a lead you know why traditional Education Marketing has some issues.

Listen to our conversation and let us know what you think about Education Marketing and how you can market to students in a cost effective way.

We touched on the following topics as they relate to lead generation and student marketing:

• How to use social media to keep qualified leads flowing to your sales team
• Traditional Direct Marketing – does it still have a place in lead generation
• TV advertising and lead gen
• Search Engine optimization and paid search efforts

If you have a topic suggestion for a future show let me know in the comments section.  We are always looking for new ideas and guests.

One of our main areas of focus is Education Marketing.  So we naturally accepted the invitation to join the founder of the LinkedIN group .eduMarketer with this new radio show.  The show will cover many topics related to marketing educational products, services and programs.

Please join us live on Blog Talk Radio for the first episode of this new show titled:

Lead Generation in Higher Education: The Buyer’s Dilemma

The show will take place:

March 18, 2010 4:00 PM EST/ 1:00PM PST

The first show will focus on the experience of buying sales leads for higher education, specifically:

• Buyer’s Best Practices
  • What to do once you own the student lead
  • How to evaluate lead quality (we will look at the lead provider and the sales team process)

• Lead Generation Practices: Good, Bad, and Ugly
  • Organic Search Engine Optimization
  • Call Verified Operations
  • Co-Reg Offers
  • Incentivized Leads
  • Paid Search
  • Offline and other media channels

This show is live and you are encouraged to call in and join the conversation—we’d love to hear from both buyers and sellers of leads during the discussion.

Join the show and sign up for future episodes of this series.

Related Posts
Grow Your Business With Social Media Marketing
Educational Lead Generation

Related Marketing Services
Education Marketing
Integrated Direct Marketing
Social Media Marketing For Business

We ran a number of social media marketing labs to explore in a hands-on approach and show entrepreneurs how to use social media marketing to grow their business.  This web lab series was a follow up to our popular Grow Your Business With Social Media Marketing Webinar.

This week we covered  Twitter and Blogging.  Here is the archive:

We discussed a number of topics including:

• Tips for using Twitter
• Blogging Tips
• Best practices
• Basic SEO for blogging
• and a few tools to make your blogging efforts more rewarding

The attendance was great and we answered a number of questions from the crowd.

Please let us know what you think about the session(s) and if you have any questions on social media marketing just leave us a comment and someone will get back to you.  We are here to help.

In the last few weeks we have been asked to explain social media marketing to entrepreneurs and business owners.  They asked:

• How can I use social media to grow my business?
• How can I get my business started in social media marketing?
• What do I need to do to market my business online?

To answer these and other social media marketing questions we conducted a free webinar.  Here is the archive:

During the presentation we referred to some resources and follow up but since you are viewing the archive we won’t be able to email you the links so here you go:

• A post on link building and SEO
• List of resources for building your social media presence and links to some other lesser known social media services

Stay tuned for our ‘Social Media Labs’ as we explore the major social media sites in detail.  We will show you how to use them to market your business and yourself online.

In case you missed our webinar  5 Tactics To Create Student Leads That Convert you can now access the archive here:

Listen and learn how you can run effective lead generation efforts. Lead generation should be part of your education marketing campaigns.  It is a  cost effective way to identify people interested in specific educational offerings (the tactics covered work in most industries) and convert them into paying customers.

Please let us know if you have any questions about education marketing, lead generation or other topics covered during this session.  Just leave us a comment and someone will respond.

Marketing Tactics To Create Student Leads That Convert

The postcard has many uses in marketing.  Over the last few days I have been thinking a lot about their pros and cons.  Here are some of my thoughts about the simple postcard as a direct mail powerhouse.

A postcard by USPS standards is no larger then 4×6.  So when should you use this potentially very effective mailing device?

Pros:

• Postage is lower then any other class of mail
• Fast and easy to print and mail out
• Inexpensive to produce in small or large quantities
• Great for timely promotions or specials
• Can be used as a reminder to an earlier direct mail effort
• You can use graphics and text to communicate
• They can be used as an Activation/Coupon/Response Device. “Bring this postcard to our booth for a free gift.” “Present this postcard upon purchase to receive your “Best Customer” Discount.” Etc.

Cons:

• May get lost in your consumers mail pile
• Limited space to tell your story
• Size limits room for creativity (although you can be creative)
• Too small to send to a potential prospect
• May not perform as well as a larger mail piece
• Some marketers rely too often on postcards when other formats would be better suited.

I think the pros win but remember to make sure your marketing goals match the medium.

So, if you have a limited budget, pressed for time or want to get a simple or promotional message across the postcard can be a great asset.  If your product is complex and you have a few marketing dollars to play with go with a different format.  There are always exceptions to every rule so make sure to test and read results.

Do postcards work for your business?

Let us know by posting a comment.