Goddard School Used Email Marketing As A Solid Support For Its Franchisees

About The Goddard School

Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI) is the franchisor of The Goddard School. There are more than 400 School Franchisees in cities large and small across the United States. While each Goddard School is individually owned and operated, they all share the same vision for early childhood education, serving children from infant age to before and after school care.

The Goddard School lays emphasis on using the latest, academically endorsed methods to ensure that children have fun while learning the skills they need for success in school and in life. The schools rely on the collaboration between teachers and the parents to nurture children into respectful, confident and joyful learners.

Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI)’s Business Objectives

• To be the acknowledged leader in childcare franchise segment.
• To provide its franchisees with an exceptional foundation to ensure consistency of programs and services for their customers.
• Reaching out to both current enrolled families and prospects.
• To ensure consistent brand communication and promotion.

Approach / Strategy Adopted By Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI)

GSI’s corporate offices were offering comprehensive marketing support to its franchisee schools, including branded collateral, newsletters, interactive materials and more to help each school promote itself and keep in touch with both current enrolled families and prospects.

However, it was established that there was no proper email marketing structure that was being followed by the franchisee schools.
[divider /] “Brand consistency did not exist in regard to email,” – Ashley Betzendahl, GSI’s interactive media manager.”

Some were using VerticalResponse to send their email campaigns, some were using other providers. Each school’s electronic communications would look different and often was not branded. We knew this wasn’t the best presentation of our brand.” [divider /]

a. Integration with VerticalResponse for email marketing

VerticalResponse, are specialists in Email Marketing that help firms grow their business and connect with their customers. An integral element of email marketing is the ability to easily customize email marketing templates, which was the initial draw to VerticalResponse for GSI.

b. One Universal Email marketing Platform for all the franchisees

VerticalResponse, help set up an email marketing platform, which all their franchisees could tap into. The system was both robust enough to support GSI’s large network and easy to use for franchisees with varying levels of technological expertise.

c. Consistent Brand Communication

The Email Marketing platform ensured that the Goddard brand was communicated consistently and professionally across all 400 schools.

d. Training and On board Activities

Learning how to use the email marketing system was made a part of all training and on boarding activities for new franchisees. GSI also held regular training on the system and email marketing with both existing franchisees and on-the-ground operations representatives who worked directly with the schools.[spacer]

Results Achieved by Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI)

a. Powerful Solution for the franchisee system

By having a fully connected Email marketing platform in place, GSI was able to offer more marketing resources and support to its franchisees, and ensuring brand consistency across its entire network, which was a major issue earlier.

b. Increased Efficiency in Reaching out to the existing customers in a structured way for the Franchisee Schools

GSI also has connected its lead management system to VerticalResponse through the VerticalResponse API. Franchisees could go into their database management system, select who they want to email and sync it seamlessly with the VerticalResponse email creation application, with full reporting on opens, click-throughs and more.

c. Easy Lead Generation for the Franchisee Schools

One of the main advantages of Email Marketing was having “relevant” databases and mailing lists to work with. With Mailing Lists, it became simple to classify leads, and deliver the marketing goals by reaching out to consumers with personalized, relevant and dynamic messages.

[divider /]Since the initial implementation, “It’s a huge selling point when we talk to franchisees because they don’t have to upload any lists,”- Ashley Betzendahl[divider /]

Learnings

The major learning points from the case study, highlighting how email marketing provided support to the franchisee schools are as follows:

• Email Marketing was an affordable strategy for the franchisee schools to implement.
• Email Marketing was simple to understand, quick to use and helped the franchisee schools to maintain consistency in their brand communication.
• Email Marketing made Lead Sourcing and Management a much simpler task for the franchisee schools
• Email Marketing helped the Communication to be Personal and Customizable.
• Email Marketing helped The Goddard School in being Relationship Focused.
• Email Marketing made it possible for The Goddard School to measure how the emails were doing, through measurable actions such as click through rates, delivery rates, open rates, etc.

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