CASE STUDY Schoolcraft College - Pitney Bowes · schoolcraft college case study “pbbi’s ability...
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Schoolcraft College CASE STUDY “PBBI’S ABILITY TO CATEGORIZE NEIGHBORHOODS BASED ON CONCENTRATION OF IN-PROFILE RESIDENTS PROVIDES VALUABLE GUIDANCE FOR OUR DIRECT MARKETING EFFORTS.” Marty Heator, Director of Marketing, Schoolcraft College PITNEY BOWES BUSINESS INSIGHT HELPS SCHOOLCRAFT COLLEGE MORE EFFECTIVELY TARGET DIRECT MAIL EFFORTS TO SUPPORT LONG-TERM STUDENT ENROLLMENT STRATEGY. Challenge Traditional mass mailing of course brochures was proving to be an inefficient and costly method of marketing to new students. Schoolcraft College needed to more narrowly define the neighborhoods where residents are most likely to become students of the college and focus marketing efforts on those specific areas. Solution PBBI’s in-depth customer segmentation analysis enables Schoolcraft to better understand its most in-profile and out-of-profile students. By identifying areas where these in-profile residents are concentrated, Schoolcraft can pinpoint the neighborhoods most likely to generate student enrollment, helping to more accurately target direct mail initiatives and more efficiently distribute marketing dollars. SUMMARY Schoolcraft College is a comprehensive, open door, community-based College in Livonia, Michigan, offering a variety of educational, cultural and recreational programs to meet individual needs and interests, including the increasing need for lifelong learning. The mission of the College is to provide a transformational learning experience designed to increase the capacity of individuals and groups to achieve intellectual, social and economic goals. Schoolcraft has the largest continuing education program of any other community college in Michigan. However, when unemployment increases, enrollment in classes, especially those for personal enrichment and enjoyment, tends to drop dramatically. In 2007, to combat declining enrollment, the college began to closely reevaluate its traditional approach of mass mailing course brochures to determine where marketing dollars could be redirected toward other marketing efforts, such as web-mail and advertising. The Schoolcraft College Marketing department developed a spreadsheet for the existing carrier routes and mailing schedules for course brochures, which showed that many carrier routes were not productive. For example, there could be a carrier route with 400 households receiving three schedules per year, totaling 1200 schedules per year, but the college was getting only 1 to 3 students from those neighborhoods. To analyze existing carrier routes to help redirect marketing dollars toward more effective campaigns, Schoolcraft turned to Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI), the leading global provider of location and communication intelligence solutions, to help the college implement programs that would have a higher return on investment. To begin the project, PBBI analyzed several data components, including: • Schoolcraft student records from 2004 to 2008 (2006 was a partial year) • Number of Schoolcraft students and number of courses by year • PBBI demographics and geographic boundaries • PBBI geocoding engines (latitude and longitude coordinates) • PSYTE ® U.S. Advantage Segmentation system Using PSYTE ® U.S. Advantage, the company’s geodemographic segmentation system, PBBI analyzed each carrier route, looking at the different neighborhoods and classifying them into market segments, or “clusters” that correlate well with individual preferences, consumer behaviors and attitudes. PBBI combined the PSYTE cluster analysis with Schoolcraft’s enrollment history to develop a model that predicts which carrier routes are most likely to generate students. Each carrier route receives a score based on the propensity
Transcript of CASE STUDY Schoolcraft College - Pitney Bowes · schoolcraft college case study “pbbi’s ability...
Schoolcraft College C A S E S T U D Y
“PBBI’S ABILITY TO CATEGORIZE NEIGHBORHOODS BASED
ON CONCENTRATION OF IN-PROFILE RESIDENTS PROVIDES
VALUABLE GUIDANCE FOR OUR DIRECT MARKETING EFFORTS.”
Marty Heator, Director of Marketing, Schoolcraft College
PITNEY BOWES BUSINESS INSIGHT
HELPS SCHOOLCRAFT COLLEGE MORE
EFFECTIVELY TARGET DIRECT MAIL
EFFORTS TO SUPPORT LONG-TERM
STUDENT ENROLLMENT STRATEGY.
Challenge
Traditional mass mailing of
course brochures was proving
to be an inefficient and costly
method of marketing to new
students. Schoolcraft College
needed to more narrowly define
the neighborhoods where
residents are most likely to
become students of the college
and focus marketing efforts on
those specific areas.
Solution
PBBI’s in-depth customer
segmentation analysis
enables Schoolcraft to better
understand its most in-profile
and out-of-profile students.
By identifying areas where
these in-profile residents are
concentrated, Schoolcraft can
pinpoint the neighborhoods
most likely to generate student
enrollment, helping to more
accurately target direct mail
initiatives and more efficiently
distribute marketing dollars.
SUMMARY
Schoolcraft College is a comprehensive,
open door, community-based College in
Livonia, Michigan, offering a variety of
educational, cultural and recreational
programs to meet individual needs and
interests, including the increasing need for
lifelong learning. The mission of the College
is to provide a transformational learning
experience designed to increase the capacity
of individuals and groups to achieve
intellectual, social and economic goals.
Schoolcraft has the largest continuing
education program of any other community
college in Michigan. However, when
unemployment increases, enrollment in
classes, especially those for personal
enrichment and enjoyment, tends to drop
dramatically. In 2007, to combat declining
enrollment, the college began to closely
reevaluate its traditional approach of mass
mailing course brochures to determine where
marketing dollars could be redirected toward
other marketing efforts, such as web-mail
and advertising.
The Schoolcraft College Marketing department
developed a spreadsheet for the existing
carrier routes and mailing schedules for
course brochures, which showed that many
carrier routes were not productive. For
example, there could be a carrier route with
400 households receiving three schedules
per year, totaling 1200 schedules per year,
but the college was getting only 1 to 3
students from those neighborhoods.
To analyze existing carrier routes to help
redirect marketing dollars toward more
effective campaigns, Schoolcraft turned
to Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI),
the leading global provider of location and
communication intelligence solutions,
to help the college implement programs that
would have a higher return on investment.
To begin the project, PBBI analyzed several
data components, including:
• Schoolcraft student records from 2004 to
2008 (2006 was a partial year)
• Number of Schoolcraft students and
number of courses by year
• PBBI demographics and geographic
boundaries
• PBBI geocoding engines (latitude and
longitude coordinates)
• PSYTE® U.S. Advantage Segmentation
system
Using PSYTE® U.S. Advantage, the company’s
geodemographic segmentation system,
PBBI analyzed each carrier route, looking at
the different neighborhoods and classifying
them into market segments, or “clusters”
that correlate well with individual preferences,
consumer behaviors and attitudes. PBBI
combined the PSYTE cluster analysis with
Schoolcraft’s enrollment history to develop a
model that predicts which carrier routes are
most likely to generate students. Each carrier
route receives a score based on the propensity
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“WE CONTINUE MAILING TO PRODUCTIVE CARRIER ROUTES, HAVE STOPPED
MAILING TO LESS PRODUCTIVE ROUTES AND HAVE IDENTIFIED NEW,
UNTAPPED NEIGHBORHOODS.”
Marty Heator, Director of Marketing, Schoolcraft College
of residents to enroll at Schoolcraft, taking
into account several factors, including
historical enrollment, distance from campus,
etc. The number of students generated per
1000 adult population had a clearly defined
distance decay and therefore, distance from
the campus played a key role in the scoring
and selection of carrier routes that received
Schoolcraft course schedules.
RESULT
Using the model, PBBI uncovered two major
trends: the student count was dropping and
the course load was decreasing per student
faster than the number of students enrolled.
PBBI’s analysis also helped determine
Schoolcraft’s most in-profile and out-of-
profile students.
With this insight, PBBI has provided Schoolcraft
with valuable guidance, helping to streamline
the college’s direct mail campaigns. Schoolcraft
has stopped mailing to carrier routes that were
not producing. The model has also helped the
college identify many carrier routes that have a
high propensity for student enrollment that
should be receiving course brochures and the
college has started mailing to them. Each carrier
route consists of approximately 300-500
households. The best carrier routes bring in
an average of 15-20 students while the least
productive bring in 1-2 students.
Out of the 72 PSYTE® clusters, PBBI found
that the vast majority of students fall into five
clusters. Schoolcraft identified the carrier routes
dominated by those clusters and have redirected
some mailings to some of those other routes.
Categorizing neighborhoods into PSYTE
clusters has been a powerful tool in helping
Schoolcraft gain a deeper understanding of its
target student and communicate with them
more effectively. The college was surprised to
find that three out of five of the top clusters
were the same for both credit and continuing
education students. Schoolcraft can now
combine efforts and market to both types
of students in a similar way, which offers
increased efficiency and cost savings.
Working with PBBI, Schoolcraft is better able
to quantify the return that they are getting
down to carrier route level on each course
brochure mailing. PBBI’s analysis has helped
to open the door to discussion on how to
better target marketing dollars on initiatives
that will have the highest ROI. In addition to
customer profiling, PBBI created a distance
decay curve to show how distance from the
college affects the likelihood of a resident to
take a class. This extra step is what differentiates
PBBI from its competitors. PBBI’s analysis
shows that enrollment drops off at the 10
mile mark. The distance decay curve for the
culinary school shows that students will drive
further for the program while distance decay
curves for other programs show that driving
distance can impact a student’s decision to
enroll. This insight is important because it
enables Schoolcraft to know the distance from
the college it should be marketing to so that it
is not missing neighborhoods or sending
course brochures to those where students are
unlikely to travel from.
©2010 Pitney Bowes Software Inc. All rights reserved. 92395-AM-1003Pitney Bowes Business Insight is a division of Pitney Bowes Software Inc., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes Inc. Pitney Bowes, the Corporate logo and PSYTE are registered trademarks of Pitney Bowes Inc. or a subsidiary. All other trademarks are the property of the respective owners.
THE PITNEY BOWES BUSINESS INSIGHT ADVANTAGE
With the largest continuing education program of any other community college in Michigan, Schoolcraft
College offers a variety of educational, cultural and recreational programs to foster lifelong learning.
Schoolcraft turned to PBBI to help the college identify how marketing dollars could be used more
effectively. Through sophisticated customer segmentation and distance decay analysis, PBBI helped
Schoolcraft better understand the characteristics that best classify its target student and focus direct
mail efforts on the neighborhoods most likely to generate new students.
