How MindCampus triples conversion through smarter email marketing

Dedicated follow-up email

The basis of the new approach is email marketing. A known visitor receives the content newsletter and clicks on a particular article. It was determined in advance which topics are related to which course or event and clusters were created from them. Then mailflows are set up that are triggered by click behavior.

In practice, this means, for example, that someone who has clicked more than x times in the newsletter or on the site in the past month on an article linked to a specific training course will receive a dedicated follow-up email. "We can't make that link with every article because we want to serve our target audiences well with news and background information. If we only created content that matched our courses and events we would lose relevance. But a large part of our newsletters are linked to our services in this way."

MindCampus can communicate in a much more targeted way with the new format. Instead of batches of a thousand recipients, mailings are sent out with a hundred or fewer recipients. As a result, a quarter of conversion comes from remarketing emails. In addition, unknown visitors are re-approached through display advertising and SEA, Pieter said. "We capture the click behavior if someone agrees to it via cookies and compile lookalike audiences. The great thing is that if such an anonymous visitor eventually makes themselves known, we can retroactively link behavioral data to that."

automate onboarding

In addition to remarketing visitors and customers, MindCampus has also tackled the onboarding process. To this end, the Ternair Marketing Cloud is connected to the ERP and CRM applications. Everything starts with the participant's enrollment. They provide their personal data, and that is the signal to start the email flow.

"It is trigger-based - when someone registers, the registration date and the date of the event are used to create a logical flow, from the confirmation of registration to the login details for the e-learning environment and the evaluation afterwards," Pieter explains.

Previously, these were all manual actions, requiring a selection from the back-office system and the creation of the content. Now there is a "near real-time" response, meaning that the system reads the systems three to four times a day for new enrollments.

The biggest practical job was linking the data sources and matching the content. Flows for more than thirty courses were created and corresponding articles had to be published in the content newsletters. For Pieter, the challenge was mainly in keeping an overview.

"It's easy to define what you want but complicated to define and set up every step needed to do so. How do you categorize a click? Do participants get the right mail? You have to tie up threads and connect the back office systems and for that you need systems thinkers who stay on top of the whole process. Another important lesson was that email marketing is more than 'baking emails'. To deploy it strategically you need people with other competences. Everyone is now in place and we have made a lot of progress. Customers are satisfied with the automated onboarding communication, according to a recent sample. In the end, it was well worth all the effort."

"It's trigger-based - when someone signs up, the sign-up date and event date are used to establish a logical flow, from confirmation of enrollment to login credentials for the e-learning environment and post-evaluation."

About MindCampus

MindCampus provides training in the field of human resource management and facility services, the so-called HR-Academy and F-Academy. It also organizes events and provides news platforms for the two target audiences.

Ternair and Mindcampus - then under the name Weka Business Media - have been working together since 2012.