Lessons in engagement: Innopharma Education’s email personalisation strategy qualifies 142% more leads

Students of all ages and backgrounds have taken a leap forward in their careers by taking a qualification with Innopharma Education. This independent education provider offers courses in food science, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and digital transformation, with many of them being subsidised by the government of Ireland because they fill a skills shortage. Courses are taught both online and in person at institutions across Ireland.

Learn how Wolfgang Digital helped the higher education provider keep potential students engaged for longer

Challenge

Innopharma Education found that the boom in demand for courses created by the pandemic didn’t last when lockdown ended. The higher education provider found that its prospect pool was shrinking and what’s more, the economic squeeze and rise in global uncertainty meant that people were taking longer to make a decision about taking a course. There could easily be a year between someone seeking information about a qualification and starting their studies. More needed to be done to nurture the leads in the pipeline to avoid losing potential students.

Solution

Innopharma Education’s digital marketing agency, Wolfgang Digital, decided to overhaul its email programme and, after reviewing several options, chose Klaviyo to partner with. Klaviyo’s intelligent automation platform integrated with the business’s Zoho CRM system, which meant the agency could switch from Zoho Campaigns to Klaviyo. This allowed the agency to take Innopharma Education’s email marketing to the next level. 

Email deliverability, segmentation and automation immediately improved with Klaviyo. And, the platform’s advanced tech capabilities along with direct integrations with other platforms removed the barrier of needing developers’ assistance.

We had a vision of what we wanted to achieve and were just being limited by the existing technology. Being on Klaviyo meant that we had ownership. We could switch things on and off, create forms easily, and build segments for hyper-targeted email nurture.

Strategy

Innopharma Education uses lead magnets, such as ebooks and course guides to build a list of prospective students for its courses. The leads are captured in Klaviyo when people complete a sign-up form, and from that point on, they enter an email nurture programme.

Wolfgang Digital uses the data in Klaviyo to build segments for potential students based on their course of interest, level, eligibility and region, and the acquisition channel. Using segmentation makes the welcome email series very targeted. The automated flow has multiple conditional splits and dynamic content blocks to deliver highly specific content about the curriculum, opportunities in different industries, and career prospects in a particular field. As a result, engagement is extremely high and the flow averages a 67% open rate and 27% click rate, which is about 4x the average click rate in the sector.

The personalisation strategy is also carried through into campaigns, which makes the emails promoting open days, webinars and course news very targeted indeed.

As an agency, efficiency is our king. We used to have to build four different emails to send to four audience segments. Now we can build one email and use conditional logic to make the content dynamic, and Klaviyo’s analytics still allows us to report on the segments separately.

While owning prospect data has improved the effectiveness of lead nurture, it has also brought benefits to the business’s paid acquisition channels. Wolfgang Digital uses Klaviyo’s integrations with Google and Meta to build and target lookalike audiences and run retargeting campaigns. And it achieves strong results.

Being able to feed audience data into Google Adwords and Meta has made a phenomenal difference. We’re spending less and getting better leads because we know which audiences convert and have important engagement signals to make informed decisions.

Zoho’s integration with Klaviyo means that Innopharma Education can also use Klaviyo to email current, as well as prospective, students. Once people have completed a course, they become a prospect for the next qualification level. The business stays in touch, assesses their interest in progressing, and begins the lead nurture process once again.

Our collaboration with Klaviyo has been transformative. With Klaviyo’s advanced segmentation and automation capabilities, we’ve elevated our engagement strategies, achieving unparalleled results in our sector. The platform seamlessly complements our existing systems and broadens our reach, allowing us to connect more effectively with both potential and current students. Choosing Klaviyo has been instrumental in refining our approach to CRM automation and marketing.