EdNET Insight - Market Insights

Infographic: The Details on Teachers and Tech

Friday, June 07, 2013

What digital media are teachers using, and on what devices? How do they use technology to make purchasing decisions? Do educators use social media? Get the answers to these questions and more from MDR's infographic, Tech Trends: The Big Picture.

5 Tips to Spring Clean Your Data

Friday, May 24, 2013

Spring is that time of year when thoughts turn to cleaning up, clearing out, and starting fresh. It also happens to be the sweet spot in the education marketing calendar between finalizing one year’s sales results and preparing for the new school season. With four to six weeks needed for a data cleanse project, there is no better time to evaluate and update the condition of your customer data.

Here are some tips on what to prioritize in a springtime data review:

Strategize and Set Your Scope
Out With the Old
Align to the Truth
Get to Know Your Best Customers
Add-on for Growth

Education Marketing Gets Personal

Friday, April 26, 2013

One of the oldest adages among fisherman is to fish where the fish are. But fishermen need to be ready to react when fish take to different waters. Education marketers are experiencing a major shift in how they target and reach educators. The wall that divided work life from home life has eroded, and with that opening comes five new opportunities for marketers to most effectively connect with educators.

Understand teachers as individuals
Recognize how teachers use the web to research and influence
Develop digital strategies customized to teachers’ online behaviors
Tailor marketing efforts to teachers’ specific consumer traits
Fish where the fish are

What's Next with Funding and Common Core: Webinar Recap

Friday, April 12, 2013

Recently, MDR hosted “What’s Next With Funding and the Common Core,” a webinar presented by Anne Wujcik, Education Research Analyst at MDR, and Geoff Fletcher, Deputy Executive Director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). Designed to update listeners on the latest federal budget news and on the Common Core, the webinar focused particularly on state and district readiness for the Common Core assessments. Among the major points made:

The federal budget for FY2013 is now final, with the new Continuing Resolution keeping FY2013 spending level with that of FY2102.
Sequestration went into effect on March 1, with almost all non-defense federally funded programs subject to a 5.1% across-the-board reduction of their FY2013 budget.
State spending is rebounding, with slow but relatively steady growth.
The Common Core State Standards are alive and well.
The path to readiness for the 2015 administration of the Common Core assessments is bumpy, but states and districts continue to make progress.

Read on for more details on some of these issues or better yet, listen to a recording of the webinar to get the full flavor of what our experts had to say and the questions on the minds of the audience.

Integrated Content Marketing

Friday, March 29, 2013

A good content plan can help streamline your marketing efforts and save time while helping you to make great strides in customer engagement, brand awareness, and more.

Here are three quick tips to guide you as you incorporate content marketing into your plan:

Use your brand’s area of leadership to create an integrated content marketing campaign.
Strike a balance between the various types of marketing content on your social channels.
Engage your audience in new and creative ways.

While Channels Change, the Need to Integrate Stays Constant

Friday, March 01, 2013

Integrated marketing: we’re all talking about it, and most of us get it, at least conceptually. As we continue to evolve our marketing strategies in a changing digital environment, the constant has always been working to integrate branding, messaging, timing, and offers across channels. It’s deliberate, it’s coordinated, and I’ll admit, it’s hard because it takes a lot of planning.

The Impact of Repeating Patterns: Enhance Your Campaign ROI with Digital Marketing

Friday, February 01, 2013

Part of what made humans successful as a species is our ability to identify patterns, such as what are good things to eat versus what things are likely to eat you. Our brains are trained for it, and we find it uniquely satisfying when we can quickly identify something new as something known. It is this pattern recognizing instinct that makes integrated marketing such a successful strategy for brands. Each instance or venue where a brand or product reappears triggers a recognition response: “I know what that is. I’ve seen it before.” For every marketer that is fighting the good fight against waning email response rates, rising direct mail costs, or decreasing lead generation numbers, finding a way to trigger more positive response from each campaign is critical. Adding a digital component to your existing marketing efforts can broaden and maximize the impression each message makes…increasing impact without breaking the budget.

Customer Data: The Engine of ROI

Friday, January 04, 2013

In good times, it may make sense to generate and pursue tons of leads. In leaner times, a more targeted approach is necessary. In the last article, we talked about expanding your horizons to new digital channels that can help reverse the slide in email marketing response rates. In this article, our focus will stay closer to home: maximizing the value of your customer file. While this may seem like a back-to-basics approach, every other marketing effort depends on the quality and utility of this data.

The Changing Face of ROI

Friday, November 16, 2012

Email marketing has been a great learning opportunity for the education market. It is the channel that has taught us the power of targeting, testing, quantifying results, and attributing leads back to the source. But as email has matured as a channel and become almost ubiquitous—according to our 2012 Digital Trends Report, 94% of education marketers use email—it has started to suffer from its own success. Crowded inboxes are eroding the effectiveness of this once fertile channel. Marketers who have experienced the response rates email once delivered are loath to see those numbers decline. Some have doubled or quadrupled email frequency to recapture those earlier results, only to realize they have simply accelerated the decline of email as an effective channel. So where do you turn to bring leads and sales back to the levels of the early email days?

Content Marketing: Telling Your Brand's Story

Friday, October 19, 2012

The 10-second elevator pitch. The 140-character Tweet. The mobile-optimized web page. In many ways, the real estate available to education marketers is shrinking. At the same time, content remains an indispensable platform for brands to tell their story and convey their value—a message that doesn’t fit inside a Tweet. While these two dynamics might seem to be in conflict, they are driving the emergence of one of the most potent tools in the marketers’ toolkit: content marketing.

Why Building Brand Matters

Friday, August 17, 2012

You’ve established your brand in the marketplace. Everyone knows who you are, what you offer and what you stand for, so you can focus on product sales and short-term revenue gains, right? Sorry, but like so many other aspects of marketing, brand is shifting under your feet.

Email Targeting Case Study: PBS Finds Success with Email Response Index

Friday, July 20, 2012

In a marketing landscape where doing more with less has become a fact of life, email continues to be the go-to channel that consistently delivers cost-effective ROI…but these days, even email is under pressure to produce better and better results. The good news is that the education industry’s focus on email marketing over the past few years has created an unprecedented depth and breadth of data quantifying which educators respond to email campaigns, and in what ways. This knowledge dovetails nicely with email best practices that emphasize targeting and relevance as essential to campaign success. PBS, like other organizations, felt the urgency to generate leads or engage audiences.

The Mobile Transition: Best Practices in a Changing Email Landscape

Friday, June 15, 2012

Email is a constantly changing marketing channel, and marketers must adapt their email strategies in response to technology, legislation, and new best practices. The current shift to mobile devices presents unique challenges for marketers: no longer can we assume that email messages will be seen on a full-size screen, likely in an HTML-capable application.

The Changing World of Email Marketing

Friday, May 18, 2012

When it first came to prominence, email marketing was a game changer. The ability to cost-effectively test and target messaging combined with the direct feedback of Opens and Click-Throughs helped this new channel become an indispensable part of the marketing mix for nine out of ten marketers, according to our research.

Making the Digital Transition: Trends in the Education Market

Friday, April 20, 2012

Of all the forces impacting the education market, none is as fast moving or far-reaching as the transition to digital, both in marketing technology and education product development. For five years, MDR has conducted annual research reports focused on Email Trends in the Education Market. For 2012, the digital revolution demands a broader view of the impact on educators and education marketers, and MDR quantifies this impact in its first report on Digital Marketing Trends in the Education Market.

Web Advertising: Targeting Gets Personal

Friday, March 23, 2012

As web advertising graduates from the “next big thing” in educator marketing to a valuable and indispensable asset in the marketing mix, there are important lessons to be learned from its predecessor in digital marketing: email.

Fresh Perspectives on Funding…A Look Inside State and Federal Funds in 2012 and Beyond

Friday, February 24, 2012

In a recent MDR Webinar, Fresh Perspectives on Funding…A Look Inside State and Federal Funds in 2012 and Beyond, Anne Wujcik, MDR’s Senior Education Research Analyst, and Michael Griffith, a state funding expert with the Education Commission of the States (ECS), provided an update of the 2012 federal budget and the changes in store for 2013 as well as an overview of the state funding situation. Read on for highlights from the webinar and for tips on how to focus on areas that are your best opportunities.

Top 10 Marketing & Sales Tips to Help You Succeed in 2012

Friday, January 27, 2012

A new year, a new set of goals and aspirations! Whether your business works on a calendar or school year planning cycle, starting off 2012 with a pause to reflect on marketing and sales strategy always makes sense. With a marketplace that continues to be tight on spending—both at schools and in our own businesses—you need to make every part of your plan count. We asked industry colleagues and MDR experts for their tips on how to make the most of the New Year. Read on for more…

Six Market Drivers to Watch in 2012

Friday, December 16, 2011

As 2011 winds down, it’s time to look ahead to 2012. Read on for some advice about the education environment from industry expert Anne Wujcik.

How Marketing Automation Can Help You Improve Efficiency, Lower Costs, and Maximize Revenue

Friday, November 11, 2011

Marketing automation tools are helping companies — large and small — improve response rates, identify well-qualified leads, and make informed decisions about when and how to act on opportunities. They are also reducing the time and cost of creating campaigns and improving overall returns on marketing investments. Read on to find out how your organization can start leveraging marketing automation and how other companies that sell to schools are using these tools to reach the right educator with the right message at the right time…