ExplorerHop
Sep 2021-Apr 2022
Background
ExplorerHop is an e-learning school that provides youth financial literacy & special skills programming which are normatively not offered in schools
It was primarily a B2B company since it licensed its programs to schools across Canada, but also had general B2C offerings
As their collection of courses and programs began expanding, they were in need of a Go-to-Market Strategist who can effectively bring each product to the market, while simultaneously targeting new customers as well as previous customers.
Their existing process of marketing products was generic and lacked personalization; it entailed mass-emailing their existing customers with one general newsletter.
A similar approach was adopted with new customers, where contacts were scraped from school websites and sent a generic email.
My Solution
Single Channel Strategy: Tasked with turning around the Go-to-Market strategy with little to no budget. That meant I was limited to email marketing as my only outbound channel.
Customer Win-back Strategy: Utilized 3 years of customer data to segment and then retarget based on previous / past purchases
Customer Acquisition Strategy: Created personas who would be targeted with specific products and personalized messaging
I created specific personas who would be targeted with relevant products (i.e. Economics or Accounting Department Heads would be targeted with financial literacy programs)
This allowed for a drastically higher level of personalization when compared to the previous strategy of generic mass-emailing to all audiences
Business & Entrepreneurship
Accounting
Marketing
Sales
Design
Problem Validation
Financial Literacy & Economics
Stocks
ETFs & Funds
Bitcoin
Futures & Options
Taxes
Career & Critical Skill-Building
Debating
Public Speaking
Leadership
Customer profiles curated
3
Lead Generation
Lead Qualification
Email Marketing
I analyzed datasets for the past 3 years of customer purchases. Then, I performed behavioral segmentation which would categorize customers based on their based purchase behaviors
This allowed me to retarget them with specifically those products which would be complementary to their previous purchases, as well as their relevant education level (i.e. Level 1-3 for elementary schools & Level 4-6 for high schools)
Product lines marketed
3
Products marketed
18
Once the product offerings were categorized for each segment & persona, I created a process for A/B testing various factors within the email campaigns, including:
Subject Lines
Determine open rates, this is the first impression a customer gets when an email lands in their inbox
Body
This is the messaging, we experimented with tone, products, offers, layout, visuals & more.
Call to Action
What action are you calling the customer to? What does the main button ask them to do?
Scheduling
What time and day are you sending emails? What is best for getting prospects to open emails?
However, all this was only relevant at the first stage of the funnel. I also had to curate content sales enablement material for the next stage of the funnel; I designed slide decks & program brochures for each product offering, showcasing the curriculum, pedagogy and relevant details which would be needed when conducting a demo to qualified prospects.
A/B tests conducted
32
Outcomes
The refinements made to the Go-to-Market approach for ExplorerHop's programs resulted in us achieving 103% of our enrollment targets.
This was possible due to the 23% uplift in conversions due to the campaign improvements, as well as the subsequent conversion of 4 major private schools as a customer.
Enrollment target achieved
103%
Uplift in conversions
23%
Major clients closed
4
Learnings
Generic targeting is a weak strategy when attempting achieve high conversion rates, especially when your target audience is diverse and your product offering is both, horizontal and wide.
It is certainly more labor intensive and strenuous to build an extremely personalized Go-to-Market strategy since it requires meticulous segmentation and a deeper understanding of just how complex your customer base can get. However, its long term outcomes bring greater benefits.
