How TAG Innovation School increases enrollment in courses using Email Automation

What does automation even really mean? The term automation is limiting, as it only highlights the technical and functional aspects. More than anything, automation means setting a continuous, punctual, personalized communication cycle in motion.

One of our customers uses workflows in an especially interesting way, also considering the sector they are in: Talent Garden‘s TAG Innovation School, a physical platform that offers students and digital, technology, and creativity professionals training courses tailored to the needs of the working and business world.

TAG Innovation School has implemented a particularly successful email automation strategy using MailUp. This is why we asked the school’s Marketing Specialist Veronica Bellino to tell us their story. The result was a case study which covers strategy objectives and results. We would like to share it with you today.

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 therefore needed an integrated email marketing platform in which to gather data and information on all users – coming from the various forms on the website, each related to a different training proposal and a different degree of interest expressed by the user – to take advantage of in order to develop more or less complex automations.

The MailUp platform took charge of these operations, providing TAG Innovation School with an integrated tool to create emails and define automations that trigger sendings in line with each phase of the school’s relationship with the user: from the request for a course brochure to the submission of an application, up to the activation of the candidate evaluation and selection process.

The case study continues by taking a deeper look at TAG Innovation School’s strategy, analyzing its email sending plan and the pre-defined triggers. Let’s take a look:

Welcome email | Brochure request
Everything starts from a user’s clear manifestation of interest: a course brochure request. 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); the user is then directed to the download page, and at the same time the first automatic email is triggered: a welcome email.

Created with three levels of content, the welcome email is composed as follows:

1. A contextualization of the course the user requested information for
2. A call-to-action to download the course brochure, also providing the user with a way to download the brochure multiple times or in another moment
3. The invitation has a second call-to-action to apply for the course by accessing the application page.

Workflow
Here is where we touch the real workflow which was triggered by a previous action, led by a certain behavior, and punctuated by precise chronological steps. At this point if the user does not proceed with the application, 4 days after the welcome email is delivered, a workflow of 3 emails spaced 4 days apart is triggered.

The three emails have a common structure for their content, with two main sections:

1. Content related to the course topic
2. A call-to-action to submit an application.

The emails are entirely textual and are sent using the first and last name of one of the Talent Garden Admission Specialists the user will interface 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
• Increasing email open rates.

Welcome email | Application
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 flow of triggered emails lets Talent Garden strengthen its one-to-one relationship with users it has already acquired through advertising campaigns. Proof of this greater degree of involvement and relevance can be seen in the results (which for the case study refer to the Master Business Data Analysis) of the sending workflows.

Welcome Email | Download Brochure *
Total OR
202.3%

Welcome Email | Download Brochure*
Total CTR
74.4%

Welcome Email | Application*
Total OR
179.3%

Welcome Email | Application*
Total CR
75.4%

1. Exploit the potential of welcome emails

This type of message records average opening rates 50-86% higher than those of regular newsletters.

2. Customize emails

In addition to inserting the full name of the person who will eventually interact with the user, add a dynamic field to address the recipient by name: two small tricks for creating even closer relationships with interested users.

3. Develop automatic flows

Define an email workflow that touches all phases of the funnel: they allow you to optimize conversions of already-acquired contacts and avoid new investments in lead generation.

4. Create and share original, quality content

Engage, persuade, and inspire the user to a deeper level than a strictly push sales logic ever could.