We will work closely with you to ensure we’re promoting your degree effectively and efficiently.
To do this, our marketing team uses three key digital marketing channels: organic search, email and social media. In this post, we will share how we market degrees on these channels and how you can be involved.
Marketing channel activity
This section outlines FutureLearn activity and what you can do to help market your degrees:
Email marketing
We’ve been using the test-and-learn approach to feature pathway courses within our general and targeted newsletters. We conduct regular email testing to gain optimal results.
We promote pathway courses within our general and targeted newsletters.
It would be great for us to get some insight into your email communication strategies.
Specifically:
- your audience size
- how frequently you communicate via email to your learners
- your timelines (lead times) for communication
- what your key targets are for this year.
Social media
FutureLearn has an established and engaged base on multiple social platforms.
We test different types of content on our chosen social platforms. The results help to decide which channels have the right audience for the content.
Our social media channels
FutureLearn has a presence on each of the following channels:
Please ensure that your institution is following FutureLearn and let us know about your own social channels so we can follow back and keep up to date. Please tag us where appropriate.
You might want to consider using some of these channels for your own courses. Each channel has its own demographic and purpose, so you should try aligning your channels to your target audience and objectives. There may also be specialist channels that are not listed but that strongly align with your audience.
Degree programs
We promote degrees by focussing on degree pathway courses.
These courses have an additional visual template applied to help them stand out from a normal social media post.
Please provide us with:
- Key collateral to promote the degree: video, imagery, copy, relevant hashtags, key handles for educators etc.
- Key dates for application entries / completions that we need to be aware of.
- Key demographic information for the specific degree for target audience and location to get with promotion.
We announce new degree partners on LinkedIn and Twitter. Degree learner testimonials are useful for this.
Lightbulb moments
If a pathway course has any engaging highlight steps, these can be promoted through social media. We call these ‘lightbulb moments’.
Discuss with your partnership manager if you are interested in this promotion. Early in the content creation process we can share our thoughts on which content in the course will engage with our audience.
Organic search
We use search engine optimisation (SEO) to ensure we drive traffic and engagement.
We optimise our copy to target select keywords to drive customers to our degree landing pages from search engines.
We track and analyse these pages with a respected industry toolset and also receive additional support from our specialist SEO agency.
Degrees are also featured on other pages on the platform, which receive SEO analysis and optimisation. For example, category and topic pages, career advice pages and related courses can all list a degree.
Every new degree will receive the following from our in-house SEO team:
1) Keyword research
We will analyse search behaviour to discover keyword variations. Keyword targets are based on search volumes by geographic region, ranking difficulty and user intent.
Please provide us with information about the degree, and your existing keyword strategy. This will inform our own research and ensure we do not cannibalise your campaign.
2) Content Optimisation
We optimise your degree page content for relevant, highly searched for terms.
This includes SEO elements like the title and description meta tags and the URL.
We will monitor performance and suggest any changes we feel may increase the number of visitors from search.
Please inform us of any legal or brand requirements, as it is possible to specify a review and sign off process if this is needed.
3) Internal Link Analysis
We will analyse and optimise internal links from the FutureLearn platform to ensure discoverability by search engines and learners. This includes internal anchor text optimisation towards the target keywords.
4) Link building
We will track links from your website to FutureLearn and suggest ways this could be improved.
Help us by linking to the degree from your website. We can help identify specific pages if necessary. Please also do share your suggestions and the location of any links to the degree.
5) Optimised blog content
If you have supplied blog content to our content team, we will ensure it is optimised to target keywords and internally link to your degree with optimised anchor text.
You can share ideas for blog content with your partnership manager. Please see the blog article for more information on what form the content could take.
FAQ
Do you market degrees differently to short courses?
Yes, our marketing of degrees differs from short courses as a degree requires more commitment from learners. We continuously test different approaches on our channels based on qualitative and quantitative data.
Can I sign off marketing material before it goes live?
We use standardised contracts and follow the guidelines on brand marks across all of our marketing materials for all product types. We do not share assets as part of an official sign off process with partners.
What is a pathway course and how are these chosen?
A ‘pathway’ course is a short course on FutureLearn which is provided by the degree partner to give learners an enjoyable and worthwhile introduction to the degree topic and ultimately recruit these students onto the degree.
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