It’s fair to say that the OU’s communication with their MBA alumni had been a little sporadic and they were well aware that their data was out of date. They had also come to recognise that if they were to re-engage with their alumni, communication would need to be more tailored and personalised. They asked us to devise a campaign to clean the data and better understand what their alumni wanted from the OU today. We also saw an opportunity to start to build an MBA community that could be a resource as well as a revenue stream.
Be different, but relevant
Now, we’ve done a lot of work with MBAs and do have an insight into how they think. We knew the campaign should make them feel valued and respected, but also be distinctive from conventional business style communications. Due to the age of the data it was necessary to plan a campaign that used multiple channels. We used direct mail and email to drive MBAs to a bespoke website to update their details and gave them the opportunity to tell us more about themselves and their interests.
Honestly
We decided that honesty was the best policy and spelt out exactly what we were doing. That’s why we called the campaign ‘The Big Clean-Up’. Our direct mail piece was a branded screen cleaning cloth. In emails we used micro animations and just a little wit. All of this worked and it’s fair to say that we cleaned up.
