How TAG Innovation School uses Email Automation to increase enrollment in courses

TAG Innovation School is Talent Garden’s school of innovation: the physical platform where digital, technology, and creativity professionals work, learn, and connect. The school develops training courses for students, industry experts, and companies based on the needs of the working and business world.

Objectives

Since its inception in 2015, TAG Innovation School has chosen the email channel to manage its entire communications cycle with its customer base. Talent Garden needed to rely on an integrated email marketing platform in which to gather data and information on all users – potential students – from the various forms on the website, each related to a different training proposal and a different degree of interest expressed by the user.

By integrating MailUp, TAG Innovation School was able to use a single tool to accompany the user along the entire acquisition funnel: from a course brochure request, to the submission of an application, up to the activation of the evaluation process, which allows Talent Garden to select the best candidates.

Strategy

With the goal of reaching users the very first time they express interest, Talent Garden has defined and developed a communication sending plan as follows:

In order to download the course brochure, the user must fill in a short form online (requiring the user’s name, last name, and email address) which gives them access to the download page. This step triggers the sending of the first automatic email, a welcome email that:

• Thanks the user for their interest
• Renews the invitation, via a call-to-action, to download the course brochure
• Suggests, thanks to a second call-to-action, they apply for the course with an application.

If the user does not proceed with the application, within 3 days following the delivery of the welcome email, an email workflow is triggered which spaces sendings 3-4 days from each other (based on the different products), which:

• Offer content related to the course topic
• Invite, via calls-to-action, users to submit their application to the course.

Once the user submits his or her application to the course, a new triggered message is sent: a welcome email containing a link to the online form with which the selection test can be taken.

The emails are entirely textual and lack any graphic elements and are sent using the first and last name of one of the Talent Garden Admission Specialists the user interfaces with throughout the selection phase. The emails are sent according to a schedule which includes only working hours on working days, thus excluding weekends and holidays: together, these choices contribute to establishing a direct, authentic, close relationship with the user and, consequently, to increasing email open rates.