Optimum value? 

Our job at Catholic Schools Marketing is to make sure that every school we work with receives the optimum value on investment. We want the ratio of what you spend proportionate to what you receive. When you spend $1.00 with Catholic Schools Marketing we want to make sure that your investment grows, proportionate to the outcome  you’re looking for. Your aim should be continual growth, and ours is to give you the resources to make that happen. In that effort, we endeavor to give our customers marketing tools to leverage their marketing dollars into productive enrollment growth strategies. Strategies that give you the ability to reinvest into ongoing and future

enrollment growth and expansion projects.

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An established scientific process? 

When ministry growth is the goal, especially in terms of school enrollment, we advocate the use of time-tested marketing tools to discover the potential of the products and services you offer. Your website is a tool; classrooms, teachers, curriculum, marketing committee and administrative staff are as well. These core tools are foundational in affecting  the targeted outcomes necessary to reach your goals–whether that’s operating costs, parent growth, building your brand in the community, or increasing student enrollment.

Additional to these foundational tools–did you also know that direct mail marketing is one of the most important collateral tools you can posses in affecting profit and growth? Surprising to some, direct mail marketing often seems more like a craft than a process; more like speculation and whim than a science. At Catholic Schools Marketing we believe that direct mail marketing is  a process, a process founded on time-tested and proven marketing science; empirically based on observation and measurement, not simply theory. As such it must be based on tools that govern the marketing outcomes.

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Here’s the process… 

For over thirty years, Catholic Schools Marketing has based its direct mail marketing process on the concept of“what” marketing does for you. Good marketing creates value.  It’s all about input and output. Your foundational and collateral resources (input), converted into something more valuable (output). The result is …

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1. Enhanced research and development. As research and product development are a key aspect of how you create your school enrollment program , marketing should motivate you to become better at research and more adept at knowing what your school offers from a value perspective to the community.  It’s a unique learning opportunity that’s imperative to your growth as a school.

2. Increased and sustainable growth. Growth is about more people knowing about your product or service today than they did yesterday. Good marketing strives to give you an efficient cost/value relationship when it comes to your investment dollars. Additionally, the best marketing is just as concerned with sustaining growth as growing it.

3. More influence and impact. When a successful marketing campaign is concluded and sustaining programs are put in place, the end result is that your marketing message should be more dominant today than yesterday, and your customer base more committed than ever to your brand.

 

The tools… 

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√ Better lists, better pricing

At Catholic Schools Marketing our primary marketing tool is list acquisition and analysis. Our residential lists are unsurpassed. The reason? We  employ what’s called “Water-falling” on every consumer list we purchase. Waterfalling is a subscription analytical tool which enables us to look at multiple list vendors, each with their own unique set of pertinent data. Unlike past best practices of buying the most accurate list we could find based on psychographic and demographic data alone, as of 2017 we began purchasing several lists and overlaying them, removing duplicates and adds new names with each consecutive list. Ultimately, due to the efficiency of this process, our consumer lists have traditionally given you a better list (traditionally accurate to 90%) for a better price (see below) .

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New for 2019/2020!

Catholic Schools Marketing is pleased to announce an improved list sourcing process- Enhanced Data Analytics

Enhanced Date Analytics allows us greater and deeper penetration into consumer markets, increasing data quality through additional data filtering capabilities.

What does that mean for you? Because data accuracy is advanced to a level of up to 95% your Catholic Schools Marketing consumer mailing list will be more accurate now than ever before.

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√ Marketing analytics make a difference in how your marketing pieces are designed

All Catholic Schools Marketing Associates  have a background in marketing. Cumulatively our staff has over 200 years of marketing and advertising  experience. When we look at marketing pieces, whether envelope, card, letter or brochure, we do it with a critical eye focused on: readability, call-to-action, copy flow, word usage, and compatibility within  the target market. We’re adept at telling a poor piece of marketing from a good one. Yet, despite all our experience , we can and do overlook minute details amidst  a myriad of layout options. Perhaps a picture should be in the upper left-hand part of the card and not in the lower right? Did that block of reverse type really get read? Is that headline in the right place? These and many other similar questions are legitimate, but only a marketing genius would have the ability to remember all the possible questions, let alone the possible solutions. That’s why we’ve made a considerable investment in a brand-new, cutting edge marketing
analysis tool.

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New for 2019/2020!

Catholic Schools Marketing is pleased to announce a new marketing analytic tool – Cognitive Marketing Analytics

Cognitive Marketing Analytics  gives us the scientific ability to determine how to design the very best marketing layouts. We are now able to  know how copy position and size make a diff erence, which colors are more eff ective, how large a picture should be, or in what sequence aspects of a marketing piece should appear.

What does that mean for you?

 This exciting, cutting edge marketing tool enables us to examine direct mail visuals and layouts subjecting them to these four tests:

1. PET (Predictive Eye Travel).  PET tells us where the human eye focus is on any given piece of mail: card, letter, brochure–any printed or digital piece of advertising.

2. GPA (Gaze Plotting Analysis).  GPA analytics give us a better understanding how long the human eyeremains on each area of focus. A longer focus gives us a better idea of what visuals keep customer attention the longest.

3. APA (Aesthetic Plotting Analysis).  APA is the tool we use to help us understand the overall aesthetics of a layout or design on a scale of 1 to 100. We rate colorfulness, clarity and how well the visual elements are balanced.

4. DPA (Duration Plotting Analysis) . This final Cognitive Marketing Analysis tool tells us which segment of an advertising layout  or design held a viewer’s attention the longest. Did they look more at the visuals than the headlines or copy? Which parts of the advertising did they skip over altogether?

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Why Cognitive Marketing Analysis?

It doesn’t replace our marketing know how–it refines it. It’s a considerable software investment that we’ve recently made to enhance our capabilities as designers, writers, and printers. Not only does it help us know what looks better, it actually gives us a very good idea of what works better. Cognitive Marketing Analytics answers the question of what gets read? Where does the human eye look in the first critical seven seconds of browsing? Which colors hold a glance longer than others? How effective is one photo over another? Research shows that the average human attention span is less than four seconds. That means your marketing materials need to be not only attractive, but strategic in how they are laid out and designed. If you can’t keep the reader’s attention long enough, you may mitigate your recruiting efforts considerably.

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Why you need Cognitive Marketing Analytics

Common sense dictates that your designs will work most effectively when you test them first. However, when you put all the effort into designing, printing and mailing a marketing piece, you’ve invested a lot of resources. It may take two or three mailings to begin to find the response rate you were looking for. Our  Cognitive Marketing Analytics reports graphically show what will work on your design and what won’t; all before you’ve invested a dime in printing and mailing. This empowers you to make crucial design decisions based on facts and not subjectivity or intuition. That’s how important visual elements are in your direct mail marketing designs. When each design element is seen in the right order, it ensures your marketing message will be heard. Cognitive Marketing Analysis does this for you– scientifically. When you use our Cognitive Marketing Analytics services, your design will be validated with clear evidence of what works and what doesn’t. We make it possible for you to base design decisions on facts about user behavior, not assumptions. That’s because we’re putting the user, your customer, at the center of the design concept segment of your direct mail marketing campaign.

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If you want to find out more about Catholic Schools Marketing Plus, call us today at 262-338-8538. Or, visit: catholicschoolsmarketing.com/csmplus.