The Challenge
The OU have a commitment to engage with their current student base online, especially at the start of the relationship. That could be either when a new student initially joins a course or when they migrate onto the next module. With over 520 courses on offer, each with their own syllabus and student briefing notes, this was a challenge that Branch had to deliver on.
The Outcome
Branch developed a series of welcome newsletter emails that contained dynamic content tags. The tags were then populated with the information that was relevant to the student receiving the newsletter. The result was a communication that was highly targeted to the individual student.
Forward planning, effective testing and high levels of accuracy were required to ensure that students were briefed well before their course started with their relevant content. Over 18 months, Branch managed the Open University’s student support email communication programme. This involved initial creative development, programming, data handling and management, transmission and of course post- transmission analysis to ensure that all of the email communications were delivering the desired and expected results.
The Results
Repeatedly Branch saw open rates between 60-70% and unique click through rates between 20-30%. Remarkable when you consider that the industry averages are only 16.64% for unique opens and 3.41% for unique clicks. It’s clear that the highly targeted content of the emails were the reason behind these astonishingly high rates.
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