Question:

During our program review it was recommended that we maintain a quarterly schedule, offering 50 – 55 courses per schedule.

Due to staffing reductions and the extensive man-hour requirement to program and backside administer the quarterly schedule, we would like to solicit your opinion on offering two 6 month schedules (maintaining the 50 – 55 course) equivalent.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Answer:

LERN does not recommend only two brochures per year. Programs that have chosen to offer fewer than three sessions per year have reported consistently lower enrollments than those offering more sessions. The standard LERN recommends is four. I am sure you learned from your program review that there is a strong rationale for this recommendation. Those programs that start more than eight weeks from the beginning of your term are more likely to see lower enrollments.

While there is some additional work involved in administering four terms rather than two, one recommendation from LERN is that you consider programming for at least two terms simultaneously. If you have instructors who teach more than one term per year, schedule their courses for multiple sessions with one contact.. This can greatly reduce the amount of time spent in scheduling courses. When I ran a program, this is how I handled increasing our brochures from three to five per year while reducing the amount of time required to program overall.

There are additional administration costs, of course, but the risk of revenue reduction when moving to producing only two brochures per year is high and could potentially impact your ability to maintain an even smaller staff. If you do reduce your print brochure to fewer than four, I would recommend no fewer than three and I would also recommend a robust integrated marketing effort which would include:

1. Frequent emails to prospective customers. We would recommend a minimum of four general emails announcing that catalog's availability and more targeted emails as course start dates approach--at least monthly.
2. A robust social media campaign including Facebook, Twitter, and blogging.
3. Generating inbound marketing opportunities such as demos, sample classes, open houses, etc. to generate peer to peer word of mouth.
4. I have attached a marketing checklist to help guide you in these efforts.

Even if you do maintain a quarterly schedule, you should consider implementing these other marketing approaches.