anatomy of the perfect private school landing page

Anatomy of the Perfect Private School Landing Page: Case Studies of Effective School Campaigns

Peter Baron Senior Product Marketing Manager

Blackbaud K-12

30-40 minutes (+/-)

http://k12.blackbaud.com

peter.baron@blackbaud.com

Upcoming Webinars

Questions?

Join more than 700 of your school peers in Boston, July 13–15, for our K–12 User Conference. Three days of idea sharing, networking, hands-on training,

industry best practices, and a lot of fun! Make sure you plan to stay for the Unconference, voted “Best of the UC” by our 2015 attendees.

Registration now open on k12.Blackbaud.com

•  What is a landing page?•  The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design•  School examples

Source: boyetboy via Flickr & Creative Commons

Landing pages

Landing pages are often linked to/from social media, email campaigns or search engine marketing campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales or leads.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page

Landing PageWebsite

309:1

Slide Inspiration: Oli Gardner, Unbounce http://bit.ly/unbounce-lp-design

58The average number of

links on 2925 private schools websites.

admissionsstudent lifeacademic programsschool newsathletics...

Goal = Explore, Learn

vs

1:1

Slide Inspiration: Oli Gardner, Unbounce http://bit.ly/unbounce-lp-design

Targeted group

Goal = Conversion

Tracking!

Tracking!

Fill out that form!

Minimal navigation

Clear call to action

Compelling headline Strong

visual

The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design

http://bit.ly/7lpprinciples!

1. Encapsulation

2. Contrast & Color

How To Use Colors to Increase Your Conversion Ratehttp://bit.ly/increased-conversions

3. Directional Cues

3. Directional Cues

4. Whitespace

5. Urgency & Scarcity

5. Urgency & Scarcity

6. Try Before You Buy

7. Social Proof

7. Social Proof

7. Social Proof

Examples: Testimonials (written & video)School affiliationsRecent speaking engagements

8. Test, test & test again!

9. Multi-screen

Anatomy of the Perfect Private School Landing Page http://bit.ly/private-school-landing-page

Designing for Conversion: 8 Visual Design Techniques to Focus Attention on Your Landing Pages http://bit.ly/8-design-conversion-tips

The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Landing Page Design http://bit.ly/7lpprinciples

When do you use a landing page?

Make a gift in honor of a teacher, advisor, program or department!

309:1

12.5%

Support for Boarding School Parents http://bit.ly/darlington-parents

Why Not Boarding? http://bit.ly/darlington-why-not-boarding

8 Tips to Help You Ace Your High School Scholarship Interviewhttp://bit.ly/darlington-scholarships

Landing pages received 12,045 visits during the 2014-15 year and a total of 629 submissions.

629 submissions yielded 272 new contacts for admission and advancement. This is a 7.5% conversion rate.

194 of the new contacts were admissions leads. 27 became new customers/enrolled students for the 2015-16 school year. This is a 9.9% lead-to-customer conversion rate.

100% of the total 167 newly enrolled students/customers for 2015-16 were touched by inbound marketing efforts throughout the admission process (email marketing, automation, social media).

56 of the 167 total new customers for 2015-16 filled out a form/downloaded a piece of content at some point in their admission process.

"In our transition to a more inbound marketing strategy at Darlington School, we have been purposeful in creating content that solves problems and/or answers questions that prospective parents and students may have during the admission process.”

Tannika WesterDirector of CommunicationsDarlington School

"These content offers, made available on landing pages once a visitor fills out a simple form, have become critical not only in garnering new admission prospects for Darlington, but also in nurturing (providing relevant content) to those who have already started the admission process. ”

Tannika WesterDirector of CommunicationsDarlington School

Inquiry form!

"For us, we did not necessarily want to focus on increasing the size of our admissions funnel (SEO, etc.), but rather we saw the biggest opportunity focusing on the nurturing process. "

Scott AllenbyDirector of Communications & MarketingProctor Academy

"In order to get a family into the funnel, we overhauled our inquiry process and stripped it of many details that populated it prior. We got down to business and said, “what information do we need to capture right now to help nurture this family?”"

Scott AllenbyDirector of Communications & MarketingProctor Academy

"The most effective part was that we were able to capture information on what people were interested in early in the admissions process and feed them content specific to THEIR journey, not a generic admissions journey. "

Scott AllenbyDirector of Communications & MarketingProctor Academy

Inquiry

Off-Campus Academics Arts Academic Support Athletics Snow

SportsStudent

LifeCollege

Counseling

Each email “branch” provides information tailored to the specific interest of the inquiring family.

Goal/Call to action = Campus Visit

44% increase in applications over Proctor’s five year average (that is not the most telling in terms of their marketing strategy’s effectiveness).

What is most telling are these three statistics that really tell Proctor how effectively they’re nurturing families:

57% of inquiries visited campus (44% 5 yr avg)

92% of visits to campus resulted in applications (82% 5 yr avg)

5% +/- increase in yield

http://bit.ly/proctor-podcast

Questions?

http://k12.blackbaud.com

peter.baron@blackbaud.com

Upcoming Webinars

Join more than 700 of your school peers in Boston, July 13–15, for our K–12 User Conference. Three days of idea sharing, networking, hands-on training,

industry best practices, and a lot of fun! Make sure you plan to stay for the Unconference, voted “Best of the UC” by our 2015 attendees.

Registration now open on k12.Blackbaud.com