By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

In these difficult economic times, while continuing education units are trying to cut costs and optimize revenues, we cannot ignore one of the largest marketing expenses: your catalog. Deciding to cut catalog-mailing altogether could save you a lot of money, but it could cost you in registrations.

In this article, we discuss a simple yet rigorous model to optimize your catalog-mailing lists and explain how to:

By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

The article “Computing True Return on Investment Using Customer Lifetime Value in the Continuing Education Industry: A First Glance”, discusses the relationship between return on investment (ROI) in marketing and the customer lifetime value (CLV). The article provides a best method for computing CLV. In particular, this method lets your business model drives the methodology for computing CLV. However, attempting to compute CLV in a rigorous way leads us to another concept: customer defection.

By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

Return on Investment (ROI) is a powerful concept in any business or non-profit organization. Knowing the ROI of marketing efforts, process improvement, or project initiation facilitates your ability to improve your organization. However, truly understanding ROI depends on another, more elusive concept: customer lifetime value.

By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

A critical component in building the enrollments for a certificate or degree program is the information session that potential enrollees attend. The purpose of these information sessions is twofold:

By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

Three days before your class launches, there are still empty seats, and you need the materials prepared.  If you prepare extra sets in anticipation of new enrollments, you may waste time and resources. If you prepare just enough for the current enrollees, you may find yourself scrambling to get additional materials prepared for the late enrollments.

By Jacob Ensign, Business Analyst, JMH Consulting, Inc.

Most continuing education departments have a firm grasp of our industry’s fundamental metrics: revenue, net revenue, enrollments, evaluation scores, and a few others. However, measurement beyond this is generally beyond the capability of continuing education staff. Few departments translate good for-profit business practices into a working continuing education model, and even fewer find such translations effective.

By Jon Horn

Continuing education, for all of its strengths, often struggles with the effective marketing of programs. When done poorly, marketing represents an expense that undermines profitability. However, effective marketing results in a return-on-investment that easily justifies the original expenditure. This article explores several common mistakes in continuing education marketing.