Your school: continuum of positive relations or isolated sporadic attempts? For higher education this concept is difficult. Why? Because of the very basic ways institutions are organized as vertical hierarchies, each segment "a barrel on its own bottom," as has been commonly heard for decades on many campuses (an as Bob Topor found at Stanford). This form of autonomous unrelated budgeting, planning and behavior does not lend itself well to building and nurturing relationships as users move along the higher education continuum: as youngsters in preparatory schools, as pre-college students, as students, as alumni, as parents and as supporters and contributors. This lifecycle continuum is difficult to maintain with any degree of consistency and continuity as users move from one stage to another and are handed-off from one to another segment of higher education.

What is relationship marketing?
As the name implies, relationship marketing means developing long-term bonds with users by making them feel good about how an institution of higher education relates to them. The idea is to develop and maintain strong personal relationships, feelings based on positive interactions and perceptions. In many ways relationship building and maintenance is the essence of marketing. The marketing exchange process is used to build and maintain positive relationships with continuity and consistency.

One way for higher educational institutions to do this is to treat users with special services, offerings and communications that are designed to build loyalty. Newsletters, meetings, special invitations to events, tours, and good-felling ideas are used to cement relationships. Rather than thinking of a certain group of people as "matriculating students" people are thought of as being intrinsic to the life-long continuum, and related to the institution, and only by coincidence are they on the student segment of the lifecycle. This, for many institutions of higher education is a very new way of thinking about audiences, especially since most are organized and have experience, often decades of experience, thinking about only "students," (not the overall lifecycle relationship) and where "students" happen to be on it!

The ripple effect
A good way to begin relationship marketing is to build concentrated core groups of key target audiences and focus attention on that group, with the idea of creating a "ripple effect" as members of that group help carry the school's messages to their friends, associates and colleagues. The core groups should be representative of market segments, people who have been identified as homogeneous representatives of target audiences. Once established, membership can be expanded into ever-widening circles.

Loyalty building
Higher education is beginning to understand that people don't change doctors, lawyers, dentists, where they shop for groceries, what airline they use for frequent flying, or tax accountants at the drop of a hat or by whim. Lives are organized around relationships; often very long-term relationships. Once a relationship is broken, for whatever reason, they are very difficult to rebuild. Trust is a central idea to relationship building. Therefor, when an institution of higher education is "convicted" of cheating the government, for example, that negative idea ripples out throughout its constituencies and has far and long-reaching negative effects.

Higher education is beginning to discover what many commercial firms have known for a long time. That is that it is very difficult and traumatic for a person to dismiss a relationship when they believe that relationship is responsive to their personal needs and wants. It's worth the extra effort to build and maintain these relationships.

From mass marketing to personal satisfaction building
Unfortunately many academies have focussed efforts on population segments only when they felt a segment could do something for them. For example, many schools have bombarded pre-college students when they feel they are needed to fill classroom seats. Few have taken the approach of trying to determine what it is the potential student really wants or needs and nurture that person through a continuum of relationship marketing. Often, once graduated, a former student is only thought of as an alum, with little regard for her/him on the lifecycle continuum. Segmentation is a practical marketing principle but it needs to be done as part of a grander plan; not only as individual spurts of activity, often unrelated and with little continuity and cohesiveness.

Touchy-feely?
Long before your time, when I was a youngster, our family had a breadman, and milkman (few were female, unfortunately). My mom knew these people by name. They were part of the family and shared in communications that went far beyond the price of a loaf of bread or a bottle of homogenized milk. They often spoke to each other in very friendly and personal terms. This allowed for feedback and for services improvement. If the milk was to go in the milkbox because of cold weather, that's where mom would find it! Things the customer liked or disliked were carried through the communications conduit of service provider and customer, often an a first-name basis. The breadman often had a cookie for mom's children! Strong relationships were built on personal interactions. Trust was built. Many businesses were built and nurtured on personal trust.

Losing a member of the family
Mom trusted "her" service people to do the best for her, to provide safe products for her family and children and had little reason to switch. In fact if one of her service people retired she would feel as if she had lost a member of the family. Of course you may argue that was in the days when one could afford to build personal relationships (in the 40s and 50s). You no longer can, you may argue. My response is that mass marketing ideas in higher education, broadcasting messages in great proliferation, has moved higher education far away from the kind of personal relationships needed to succeed. Trust, for many, is not being nurtured. Most are being bombarded with generalized, impersonal, institution-serving messages and pleas for help.

Focus on volume and numbers?
As mass marketing ideas have come to be utilized by higher education for services of all kinds, schools have cared more for volume and quantity and enrollment figures, fund totals, quantities of alumni, and numbers of students, rather than for individuals who comprise the numbers. Higher education has, for the most part, allowed itself to become de-humanized, impersonal, remote, and unaccessible.

Mass marketing worked when people had fewer alternatives and when higher education was much simpler (when there were clear and distinct lines between, private, public and types of academies). When there were much clearer definition between costs, type of education, curricula, wrapped in positive public perceptions of higher education. Quality was more easily understood not too many years ago. Higher education, like supermarkets, has broadened its offerings and as a result schools have blurred their distinctions while coming closer to resembling each other in many ways.

Blurred distinctions
The numbers of items in a supermarket have doubled in the last decade (to 30,000) and each day people are exposed to more than 3,500 advertising messages that blur distinctions between providers. This blur has extended to higher education as well. As a result it is more difficult for you to describe clearly defined attributes that can position your school despite the fact that you are very close to it. Where does that uncertainty leave your users who are lost in a sea of generalized messages and conflicting reports?

How do you do it?
Thinking differently is the best way to begin. Don't get caught up in the mechanics of higher education. Break loose from old forms of thinking about what it is you are expected to do. Look outward for answers; not inward. Be open minded. Ironically, higher education comprises many people who are very set in their ways and will not consider new ways of approaching problems and opportunities. Many think of higher education only in their terms and only from their points of reference. Often these ideas are far from reality.

New references
Don't get misled by statements such as "that's the way we do it here" or "that's the way we have always done it." Those statements are warnings. They are often used to mask reality or to perpetuate dated thinking. The real question is how do your users perceive your school, its people and offerings? And what can be done to improve relationships?

Listening before talking
The most important step academies of higher education can take, before attempting to snuggle up to users is to build representative lists of loyal users that can be tapped regularly for marketing research. Listening before talking is one of the greatest challenges for higher education. Higher education is all too quick to do "what needs to be done" (as perceived internally) without really finding out what audiences think and believe. Today's technology allows you to get much closer to your users than you have ever been able to do. Sophisticated technology allows cross-referencing files by life style, age, usage patterns, and by perceptions and feelings. If, for example, you want to determine how alumni in a certain lifestyle category feel about ski trips to Colorado, there are ways to determine that through focus group marketing research. Schools are beginning to compile lists organized by factors that far exceed the traditional age, sex, graduating class year, and address!

Track changes
Periodic polling of key audiences can be used to track changes in perceptions and attitudes, ideas that are key to building relationships. Of course, these ideas have to be built on solid, quality program offerings. Marketing fluff and putting spins on reality can only serve to build expectations that will ultimately crumble. Breaking promises will not build relationships.

Creating an image: standing out in crowds
Some schools are building relationships with baby boomers through their children. Parents want to "buy" more than a service or products from higher education. They want to understand philosophies, values, missions and benefits. The importance of identity, logos (limited to a concise logo rather than the fragmented identities proliferated by many schools). Identity, symbolism, logos, colors, style, form, and content of communications are going to be more and more critical.

Self-destruction
Some academies have allowed their communications functions to become depleted, or in the worst examples, cut to the point where they have non-functioning communications activities. This is like trying to make a phone call after you have cut the cable and thrown away the handset. Astute administrators will discover that their communications operations (publications, news, and departments who are conduits for direct contact with users) are absolutely critical to their success. Having excellent faculty, well developed curricula will do very little if few know about it and are convinced about their value.

Outreach and Inreach
One of the reasons for launching Publications, the adjunct newsletter to this one, is to reinstate the importance of creative and aggressive internal and external communications for higher education. Many schools have discovered that communications are the decisive factor for effective marketing. You cannot have one without the other.

Turning users into evangelists
Institutions will have to build cadre of friends and "family" who will convert their friends and acquaintances to becoming loyal and frequent supporters. There are many examples of for-profit organizations that have been doing this very successfully. Observe technique and ways of corporate allegiance building. It is occurring all around you. It's happening to you personally. When you get home tonight check your mail and ask yourself why you are getting some of the mail you find. When you attend your next off-campus meeting ask yourself why you are there and how did you get there. The next time you consider a major purchase ask yourself how you cane to that decision? What motivated you? Ask yourself why you chose the next movie you attend. The next time you get a phone call asking you to subscribe to a service ask the caller why you were selected for the call. Why did you select the location for your last vacation? Each day, in many ways, you are being nurtured in some form of relationship marketing. You may not even realize it!

Use similar ideas for your work after testing them with key audiences.

Increased competition
It's going to get more and more competitive. One of the functions of this newsletter is to break free new thinking and actions in order to take advantage of the power of marketing. There is going to be more and more competition for the valued user. This is a people business. It is not a business of budgets, forms, accounting, balance sheets, organizational charts, and fiscally directed activities. Those are all adjunct to the real purposes of higher education. Real purposes are people related. For schools that forget that basic idea the future will look very dim. For those that don't, even in very difficult environments, success is attainable through relationship loyalty-building.

Think relationship marketing! It's a powerful idea.