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  • Blog
    • 2018
      • 01
        • The hidden cost of selling direct – the returns game
        • 2018 Lead Generation & Recruitment Predictions & Tips
        • How's your marketing?
        • Questions That You Need To Answer
        • Do You Know What Your Competition Is Doing?
        • The Offer - How To Make One They Can't Refuse
        • Successful Product Development
        • How Direct Makes Digital Better
      • 02
        • Managing The Sales Pipeline
        • The Marketing Planning Process...Doing It Right!
      • 03
        • Being Prepared for Change (Why You Need Market Intelligence to Drive Revenue Growth)
        • Competitor Update: Coursera Coming to Eat Your Lunch
        • Discussion: Why Should Your Institution Exist in the 21st Century?
        • Discussion: Should Your College Exist in the 21st Century?
        • Welcome Back: Former Students, Graduates
        • Adult Students: Thoughts on the Chronicle's Report
      • 04
        • Avalanche of Dreck...Are you part of the problem?
        • Profile of the Average Online Student
    • 2017
      • 01
        • Influencer Marketing: More Confusion Over Simple Concept
        • 10+ Reasons Why Most College Marketing/Enrollment Plans Fail & How to Avoid Them
        • Marketing Planning 101 - Are You?
        • Are CMOs' Jobs in Jeopardy?
        • Lead Flow Planning - Getting It Right
        • Omni Channel or Not? Retail Survival or Not?
      • 02
        • Announcing Our New Enhanced On-Demand Services for Adult, Graduate and Continuing Education Programs
        • Tips for Great Direct Response Radio
        • Email Design Tips
        • Data-Driven Marketing...It's As Old As Index Cards, And Then Some...
        • Why They ain’t buying what you’re sellin’
      • 03
        • New Degree Programs: What You Must Learn from Google, Amazon and Apple
        • Student Recruitment & Retention Goes to the Movies
        • Just Outsource It!
      • 04
        • Why You’re Not Answering Their Questions
        • Adult Students: Are You Serious or Just Screwing Around?
        • Is Your Brand Safe?
        • Ask Questions
        • Event Marketing for Adult Enrollments
        • Retail is Not Dead!
        • Pros & Cons of In House Agency
        • Is Affiliate Marketing for Your Business?
        • Webinar: 7 Proven Techniques for Increasing Adult Student Enrollments
        • False Victories
      • 05
        • Bring Programmatic Adv In House? Yes? No?
        • Call Attribution Tech - Do you need it?
        • Are you losing sales people?
        • Webinar: Adult Student Retention
        • Is ‘eMail Blindness’ Killing Your Business?
      • 06
        • Direct Mail Tips for More Effective Student Recruitment
        • Marketers Wake Up...Get Those Phone #s
        • The Secret to Successfully Providing Life-long Learning
        • Higher Ed Marketing Podcast 3: Web Forms
        • Higher Ed Marketing Podcast 4: Thank you page
      • 07
        • 2 Secrets to Achieving Adult Enrollment Goals
        • Social Worship
        • The Amazon Effect...Are You Ready?
        • Old Ways Don't Open New Doors
      • 08
        • Early Results: Adult Student Recruitment Effectiveness Part I of II
        • Early Results: Adult Student Recruitment Effectiveness Part II of II
        • Webinar: Competitive Intelligence 101
        • How to Say the Right Thing so More Adults Enroll
        • Clear Communications, not Content Marketing, is Key to Achieving Adult Enrollment Goals
      • 09
        • Are You Listening Carefully? Asking the Right Questions?
        • Missing Unrealistic Goals
      • 10
        • What Are You Putting Into Your Sales Pipeline
        • Competitive Intelligence - What is it? Why do you need it?
      • 11
        • Yes, You Do Have the Budget
      • 12
        • Enrollment Opportunity: Under-served Segments
        • Why Colleges Are Failing to Achieve Adult Enrollment Goals
    • 2016
      • 01
        • Direct Marketing Planning
        • How Many Leads Do Our Sales Executives Need?
        • The Drones Are Coming!
        • New Study Identifies Opportunities to Improve Student Recruitment
        • Outbound Telemarketing Missing Opportunities As Part of College Student Recruitment
        • Student Retention Tips for 2016
        • Advantages of Direct Marketing
        • 6 Tips to Improve Your College's Content Marketing Performance
      • 02
        • Lead Flow Planning - Getting It Right
        • Are You Sitting Around Waiting for Business?
        • Get More Our of Your CRM Investment
        • Tips for Building Affordable, Effective Marketing Research Program
        • Smart College Recruitment Targets Wisely Using Segmentation
      • 03
        • Marketer's Toolkit Goes Mobile
        • A/B Testing: Some Important Rules to Follow
        • Targeting is Not Rocket Science
        • Snap Chat for Student Recruitment
        • Colleges Must Lead the Way in Marketing to Millennials
        • How Many Leads Do You Need?
        • Do You Know What a "Lead" Is?
        • Do You Know How Many Sales Leads You Need? Find Out With...
        • Content Marketing: It's a Mess
      • 04
        • What Is The Best Marketing Channel?
        • Do You Need a Marketing Plan?
        • Data Analytics Improve Enrollment Performance
        • Why Facilitated Strategic Planning Workshops are Most Effective for Your College...
        • Common Social Media Challenges and Solutions
        • 8 1/2 Common Errors in the Student Recruitment Process
      • 05
        • Differentiation - Colleges Need to Be Uniquely Valuable
        • Non-Traditional Students: Tips to Attract & Retain
        • Market Planning Process
        • Market Analysis - Identify Your Target Markets
        • Catalog Business Plan
        • 10 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes & Solutions
        • Tips for Recruiting Millennials to Your College
        • How to Lower New Student Acquisition Costs
      • 06
        • Your Website Needs Help
        • Better Adwords Performance ASAP
        • Higher Education Marketing Assessment Tool: A Demo
        • Join Marketing Connection Today
        • Marketers Are Focused On the Wrong Things
        • Marketing...It's About the Numbers
        • Top Benefits You Enjoy From a Mystery Shopper Audit
        • Colleges Without Market Research: Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish
      • 07
        • The Future of Content Marketing
        • Pokemon Go: Student Recruitment & Retention?
        • Whatever the Channel: Marketing Success Depends on 5 Factors
        • When Your Customers Aren't Your Customers - Social Media Pitfalls
        • Content Marketing Success
        • Why You Can't Afford to Pass on a Retention Audit
      • 08
        • Your Trouble With Adwords
        • You Can't Recruit & Retain if You Don't Know Your Audience
        • Facebook Live for Student Recruitment
        • How to Make Significant Improvements to Student Recruitment Results
      • 09
        • Why Facilitated Strategic Planning Workshops are Most Effective for Your College...
        • Video Marketing: Tips for Greater Success
        • The Details Are in the Plans
        • Digital Metrics: How Much is Real & How Much is Bullshit?
        • Video Content Marketing: Tips for Greater Success
      • 10
        • How You Can Enroll More Non-Traditional Students
        • Your Email Metrics Are Wrong
        • Too Much Content Too Much Waste
        • How Asking the Right Questions Can Increase Enrollments
        • Content Marketing for Higher Education Recruitment and Retention
      • 11
        • 5 Ways to Increase Graduate School Enrollments by Leveraging Data
        • Big Data, Predictive Analytics & Marketing Research Strike Out in Election 2016
      • 12
    • 2015
      • 11
        • Black Friday - Cyber Monday - Trends

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Top Benefits You Enjoy From a Mystery Shopper Audit

Jun 27, 2016

The Mystery Shopper Audit is one of our most popular services for a number of reasons – low cost, practical recommendations that generate more sales/enrollments, and the peace of mind that comes from having experienced professionals take a look at how you attract and nurture leads.

What exactly is a Mystery Shopper Audit?

The intent of the Mystery Shopper Audit is to experience your organization just like your customer experiences your organization.  The Audit allows us to see “how things work” and react/evaluate that experience based on specific criteria.

For example, when we work with colleges, we can play the role of a “prospective student” that is coming to the college’s web site in order to request information about a specific program. In this instance, we want to [a] see how easy it is to request information and [b] see how the college responds over the course of [ex] 2-weeks in terms of providing the information requested and qualifying/prioritizing/nurturing the lead.

Based on that, our first ‘audit point’ is the home page of the web site.  We examine the page, searching for a way to ‘request information’ about a specific program.  Is the toll free number prominently displayed?  Is there an form or link to a form?

Then we can score what we see based on pre-determined criteria – full points for a web form for information requests at the top of the home page to no points for no visible web form or link to a web form.

The purpose is never to point the finger, assign blame – it’s to identify opportunities for improvement.  Things to test in order to see if performance can be improved.

And it’s amazing what a fresh set of eyes with experience can identify as opportunities – let alone the experience itself.

Some examples of Mystery Shopper Audit Findings

We tend to find two types of opportunities during the Audit.  The first is what we call “tech failure” – and the most common example is the web form that doesn’t work.  Either you complete the form, click ‘Submit’ and get an error message OR everything seems to work but the data never makes it to the CRM so you never receive any follow up.

The only way to uncover these issues is by testing the process from the outside, just like a customer would.  And these issues happen more often than you would think!

The other type of opportunity identified is what we call “it’s always been done that way” and a common example of this is failure to leverage the technology. Here’s what I mean by that – Customer A comes to your site and expresses interest in Product Z.  Your response is the same for Customer A as it is for Customer B through Z.  But Customer A has unique needs and wants and expectations – so they really need their own response.

In this realm, we hear a lot of “…IT told us the web form had to include all those fields…” and “…we don’t know how to modify the emails in the system…” and “…we didn’t realize we could take that approach…”

Basically, it’s a mix of not understanding the technology (training) and experience.  Which is why having outside expertise with experience and familiarity with the technology is so valuable.

Benefit You Enjoy From The Mystery Shopper Audit

Here are the top benefits you enjoy with the Mystery Shopper Audit:

Low cost, high return.

When we sit down with a potential client that is interested in the Mystery Shopper Audit, we identify what “success” means to them – and then we discuss how we can set up a process for capturing the data necessary to answer “Was this a success?”

Typically, our clients will see a 15 to 1 return on their investment – if not more.  You noticed I said “Typically…” and the reason for that is that some have elected to accept our recommendations and then not act on them.  That’s outside our control…we can lead you to water but …

Adds Nothing to Your Workload

Beyond telling us “Get started!” and spending about 45 minutes discussing our findings and recommendations, the Audit requires no work on your part.  And as you will see in the next benefit, the recommendations focus on refocusing resources and leveraging your capabilities in order to replace X with Y rather than adding Y to everything else on your plate.

Specific, practical, actionable recommendations.

Our team has been in your seat and we know how frustrating it can be to have someone make recommendations that just aren’t feasible.  We know you have limited budgets.  A limited number of staff.  And that staff has specific expertise with only so much time in the day to perform their duties.

That’s why we come back with “…instead of doing X, shift the resources to Z and test it in the following way…”  Another way of putting it is we help you work smarter rather than harder- which is a good thing!

Focus on improving results.

What we recommend is tied to improving performance – none of this ‘change for change sake’.  We will explain why we believe doing X rather than Y will [ex]improve conversion rates, retention/loyalty, lifetime value, lower the cost per sale, increase the average order size….

Peace of Mind

Marketers are constantly worrying and wondering about what their audience is experiencing with the competition – and in some cultures, the rest of the organization can be really tough on marketing as well.  Well, part of our feedback is a comparison to what other businesses/colleges are doing so you can benchmark your efforts.

Let’s Discuss Your Mystery Shopper Audit Today!

The typical Audit is finished in less than 4 weeks so you can start putting the recommendations to work – and seeing the improvements ASAP.  To learn more about the Mystery Shopper Audit for colleges, visit here or contact us at 651-315-7588.  If you are a business and are interested in learning more, call us at 651-315-7588.



Tags: Market Research, Marketing Audit, Mystery Shopper Audit
Category: Higher Education Marketing

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Patrick McGraw is VP of Higher Educaton Marketing Services and has more than 25 years experience in market research, competitive intelligence, business intelligence including database marketing and CRM, strategic planning, brand development and management as well as operations/campaign management. His work has consistently helped his clients and employers develop and implement more efficient ways to attract and retain profitable customers, enter new markets and launch new products. His areas of focus include the education, hospitality, travel and tourism, hi-tech, telecommunications, financial services, and retail industries on both the agency and customer sides.


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