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HAI, AI ft. Anna ('AI') Iveson · The MADness Podcast

• James: So Anna, Director of Marketing and Admissions at Rugby School Japan. Welcome to the Madness Podcast. How are you? Anna Iveson: Yeah, really good. Thank you. I'm excited to be here and thank you for giving me the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you and your audience. James: Not at all. So you've had an interesting career leading up to working where you are now. You're not an education lifer, if you will. So really interested to get just a quick potted history of your career. And then I'm to hit you with a question, which is when you got into the world of education, what did you think was being done wrong? Anna Iveson: Sure, so I actually started out in banking. That was where I trained. I was a graduate trainee at Citigroup. And then I tended to work in sales and marketing focused roles very much around institutional relationship building. So I've always been in a sort of client facing sales relationship role. I took some time out when I had my children and then I got into digital marketing. So I was very much self-taught. And just because of my natural interest in education, I started working mainly with online education companies. And that was how I sort of got into this sector initially. And then when a role came up at RSJ, I decided to go for it. And it's been an interesting experience moving from entirely online education businesses to a very, very traditional bricks and mortar business. And the biggest thing that I noticed with schools is that first of all, digital is often not their core strength. So I've come from a background that's been very focused on online funnels, meta advertising, YouTube advertising, that sort of background. So quite technical. A lot of the schools lack that kind of technical expertise. So that's been really helpful for me here because I've got a bit of an advantage over some of the school marketers. But also some of the messaging, especially on social media, tends to be quite inward looking. And a lot of the schools when they're On social media, we'll talk about events and activities that they're involved in, but it's almost like they're talking to their existing families rather than looking outwards and explicitly saying, we've done this cool thing in the school and this is what it means, this is how it ties into our ethos and our values to help the parents to understand why it matters. And so that's something we've been really, really focused on at school is every event we talk about, anything that happens in the school. The message is always tied back to, and that's why it matters to you, the parent, rather than that's why the school is great, in our own opinion. James: Japan is relatively new in terms of opening in 2023. So what were your immediate priorities when you got behind your desk to give the school an immediate cut through in a super competitive market? Anna Iveson: So when I joined, was a small social media presence, but it was not really consistent, so there were the occasional posts. So again, because my background is digital, I decided that the focus was going to be content. So social media, blog articles, email newsletter, taking all of the expertise that I'd had working with online education companies and really dialing the message in. and making sure that everything pointed back to our whole person, whole point ethos. So what we've done is we're really disciplined around the messaging. Everything points back to that. So that was really laying the foundations on the messaging side. And then the other thing that I did a lot of work on was our follow-up processes. So this is really not glamorous at all, but when I joined, people were coming into our funnel. So they would submit a registration of interest form or they'd come for a tour on open day. And then I asked the team, what happens to those people then? What kind of follow-up are we doing? And the answer was nothing. We were just allowing those leads to disappear into the ether. So one of the things that we did was build structures around it using our CRM platform. That meant everything was documented. There was a really clear follow-up process that everybody followed. It was very systematic. And that has carried through. And we've been, again, very disciplined about that and making sure that there's a paper trail for everything, which I think drives my team mad. because we have to document everything. But it has meant that now we can see the journey from start to finish. Everybody on the team can go into a pupil's profile and see exactly how the journey looked, where the challenges have been in the conversation. So those were probably the two biggest levers that we pulled. And I think the foundations have made the biggest difference. Nik Higgins: Really interesting, Anna. And I think what you've outlined there is kind of the state that many incoming market and admissions leaders find at a school. I'd so I'd maybe slightly controversially, but I'd like your take. So you've come from outside the education world. Why why is kind of marketing and admissions or kind of sales and marketing, the promotion of schools? Like let's face it, it's kind of like five, ten years behind any other sector of a similar size. Why do you think that is? Anna Iveson: think sometimes it comes down to almost wanting to preserve the purity of education. Sometimes educators feel like marketing and admissions is a bit grubby. And when you're in a startup, you have to be quite scrappy as well. can't sort of stay in the ether with the very sort of abstract messaging. You've got to really roll your sleeves up and get involved with having conversations and tracking everything. And the way I... When I joined, I remember speaking to the principal and saying that I very much see marketing as marketing, but admissions is equivalent to a sales function in a commercial organization. So our admissions team, we hired an absolutely incredible salesperson to do our campus tours. He's fantastic. He really understands handling objections. So he's not just walking the... families around the campus and saying, here's a classroom, here's a gym. He's listening to what they're saying. He has an initial conversation with them to understand what their priorities are, what their fears are, what their objections are likely to be, and then he'll tailor the tour around. what they're interested in and make sure that he's answering all of their objections while on the tour. And he's had a massive impact on our tour conversion rates because he's fantastic. He's just a really great relationship building guy, but because he has a sales background, he really understands how to move people through the funnel to the application stage. Nik Higgins: I think you might be the only marketing admissions leader that's ever used the phrase objection handling. And I think far more of them should because you're absolutely Anna Iveson: Thanks for that. Nik Higgins: right. Like I have done on I'm really lucky. Like when I in my role, when I visit schools and I visit so many of them, I always get a tour, and it's lovely to see the school. It's great to see these like thriving, happy environments with students. But the tours are often an exhaustive list of every feature and thing that that school possibly has. And instead thinking about them as kind of an exchange where you're overcoming objections, like you're doing not normal sales work, I think is actually quite rare, Anna. So yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I think that's I think that's interesting. I'm sure there'll be our listeners who will go away and Google, what the hell is objection handling? maybe Anna Iveson: Hahaha Nik Higgins: that's a thing that we should do in our tours. Anna Iveson: Yeah, well, something James: folks. Anna Iveson: we've trained the team on is how to read the question under the question, because often whatever question the family is asking is not really what they're asking. So then it's framing the answer around. what they're actually getting at. for us, we get questions often where maybe somebody's had a bad experience in another school and so they're expressing their fears based on what they've experienced elsewhere. So then it's our job to position the school as the opposite of that, not dishonestly, obviously, we're not lying to anybody when we do that, but it's just how do we take the best parts of our school and contrast it with the poor experience they've had elsewhere. So yeah, we've done a lot of work training the team on that. James: That's quite deep emotional psychology that you're diving into there, isn't it? Reading the question behind the question, the intent behind the politeness. I guess that's super smart. Anna Iveson: I think that comes, so I have a background in copywriting as well. studied that really in depth. I really nerded out on copy. So a lot of that is about sales psychology and understanding. The way that we were taught copywriting was you're having a sales conversation basically with yourself. So you've got to be able to preempt the objections whilst you're writing and to know what the person is going to be thinking in their head as you're selling them the product. and be able to say, so I say X, they're probably going to be countering that in their own mind with Y. I then need to be able to counter that again with Z and having that conversation in your mind before they've even spoken. So that's again, something that I've really trained the team on is to be able to preempt the questions based on what the family's telling them before the tour even starts. James: Very interesting. You've mentioned the team a couple of times, so keen to hear about the structure of that in a moment. But before that, what would you say is the most effective tool that you're implementing at the minute to drive interest in the school and to get families in front of the chief objection? was it? it? What was your? Anna Iveson: our, so his job title, Anthony R. Admissions Sales Genius, his official job title is Admissions Manager and Relationship Development. So I think that's, it's the world's longest job title, but it pretty much sums up all the things that he does. Nik Higgins: No, let's call him let's call him the admission sales genius, the ASG. I like it. Not so much about Tayo. Anna Iveson: I won't tell him I said that though, he'll get a big head. James: The ISG. So what would you say is the one thing Anna Iveson: Yes. James: at the minute? If you had to turn all campaigns and all activity off, but you could just keep one thing live, whatever that might be, what do you think it would be that you'd keep live and running to keep driving those inquiries? Anna Iveson: For us it would be our email list. I'm slightly going to cheat because we've grown our email list through meta advertising so we could keep our email list the size it is. I think we're around probably 11,000 people now on the email list and they're from around the world. When I joined the email list was about 1200 so we've almost 10x the email list in the last two years, which is great. But we've done that through meta advertising and we've used that as a list building tool. And the reason that the email list has been so great for us is that it's the primary driver for filling our open days. It also drives sales of our holiday camps as well. So it's really powerful for us. And what we do that's probably a little bit different from some other schools where they have an email newsletter and again, it's very inward facing. It's just going out to the parent community. We have an email that goes out to all of our subscribers. We have a version that goes to our families and then we have a version that goes to people that aren't yet enrolled in the school that showcasing all the fantastic things we're doing. But again, framing it around what makes the school different. And then there's always a cyclist section with all the things that we've got going like the camps in the open day so we can promote them that way. And then we'll also send broadcast emails when we've got an open day coming up or when we've got deadlines for applications and things like that. So that's probably our most effective. channel when it comes to marketing. James: So we said we were gonna talk a little bit about your team. Obviously you are one of a number making all this amazing stuff happen, presumably. So can you tell us a little bit about the set up of the marketing and admissions team and if that's evolved since you've been in position, Anna? Anna Iveson: So right now we've got two admissions officers that handle the more process driven side of admissions. So they're accepting the applications, checking all the documentation, moving the parents through the process and really taking great care of them. My admissions officers are fantastic. They're just the sweetest, kindest, most caring people you'll ever meet. the level of customer service that they give is just phenomenal. I couldn't speak highly enough of them. I've already mentioned our campus tour sales genius. can't remember title we gave him but that's Anthony. So he sits, he's technically in admissions but he's almost the bridge between marketing and admissions because he's in more of a sales function than a process function. Then we have Emily who does most of our content work so she runs our social media and does our articles and PR and then we have Marie who largely does events marketing events like Open Days. She does a lot of the logistics around our tours, which are really important for recruitment for us. And then we have Pip, who is also on the sort of events coordination commercial side of the team. I'm really hoping I haven't missed anyone, because I'm going to be in trouble, but I think that makes up the team. James: And if there was one, if there was a money is no object, one position that you could introduce into this team now that you think was going to have maximum impact and give you a super bang for your buck, what would that be? Anna Iveson: What I would really love, we're very fortunate that we have an external media buyer that does all of our meta advertising. He's absolutely fantastic. I worked with him when I was working at an ad agency. I would love to bring someone like that in house and also to have somebody who will be dedicated to funnel building and copyrighting. Because at the moment I'm still doing all of that work myself because there isn't anyone else on the team that's got that level of technical expertise. It would be great to not have to do so much of that anymore free at my time but people, funnel builders and copywriters in Japan are kind of a rare commodity so we struggle a little bit in that area which James: and that's Anna Iveson: is why I'm having to keep doing most of that work myself. James: You've mentioned, Nick, I know you've got some questions around the wider Japanese market and ecosystem, but just before we get to that, you've mentioned digital quite a lot. that's obviously the core of everything that you do. Do you still draw in some of the more traditional sort of marketing channels there? Do you have physical printed brochures? Are you on billboards? operating outside of that digital sphere? Anna Iveson: Yeah, we absolutely still do physical marketing. We have printed prospectuses, boarding brochures, we have a pack that we give to our families. We also still attend in-person events. So we'll do our own open days, we'll attend fairs where they're relevant and a good fit for the school. We'll travel around different parts of Asia, visiting markets are our target. So we still do that, but our main focus, probably relative to a lot of schools, is we do a lot of digital and over 50 % of our lead flow comes from the work that we're doing online. Nik Higgins: All right, so Anna, I want us to take a bit of a step back. I want to talk a little bit about the market that you find yourselves in Tokyo and in Japan. So first I'm just wondering if for our listeners you could kind of situate RSJ in the competitive landscape, in the school landscape. Anna Iveson: Yeah, so Japan and Tokyo is a competitive market. There's a very well established international school sector here. What isn't as well established is the British schools. before RSJ, there was really just the British school in Tokyo. which is an Nik Higgins: Yeah. Anna Iveson: institution here and it tends to be where a lot of the expat families and the embassy families enroll. And that's been here for probably 30 odd years. And then we've got the new entrance to the market. So RSJ, Malvern College, and then Haro Appi, which is in North Japan. But we are... really fortunate in our position that we're about half an hour outside of central Tokyo, which means we have a bigger campus than many of the Tokyo-based schools. But we're close enough that it's very easy for day pupils to access us and we can get to all the cultural centres in Tokyo. So that's really what sets us apart. We're also the only school near Tokyo that offers A-levels now. BST has just switched to IB. So that's been a real differentiator for us because there are still families that are specifically looking for an A level school and in Tokyo we're the only one. Nik Higgins: Nice, all right. Thanks, Anna. That's that's really good to kind of triangulate RSJ's position. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the Japanese market. So again, I have a very a very surface level of understanding of what's going on around the world. So you are the Japan expert, but from the outside, Anna Iveson: Hahaha Nik Higgins: my take is that you know, I think it's fairly well understood that Japan has a a a declining or stagnant birth rate. But that, you know, there is kind of interest in demographic movement, perhaps from Chinese and South Korean families into the country. So specifically for RSJ, like what does that mean for you? What impact does this kind of stagnant birth rate for I think local families have? And then this interest in kind of demographic influx from from other Asian countries in the region. So first have I got that right. And second, what does that kind of mean for RSJ? And what's your take on it? Anna Iveson: Yeah, absolutely correct. So what we have is our core market segments are domestic Japanese families and then we have a group that we call globally mobile Asian families. So those are families that are relocating from other Asian countries to live in Japan with the whole family. So they might join us as day pupils or as weekly boarders. They tend to come from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong. And then we have our overseas families where the family stays in their home nation. but the child comes over as a full boarder. And our boarders probably make up, to overseas boarders make up about 30 % of our student body. So they're a big market for us. What's really interesting when we're marketing and doing admissions with our families is the different level of understanding of British schools, boarding schools, A levels, and the recognition of the rugby brand. So Chinese families are very well aware of Rugby School as a group, whereas Japanese families, before we arrived, knew nothing about British education, so we're having to talk to them at a very different level and at very different level of sophistication, which is interesting but also quite difficult when it comes to messaging. Nik Higgins: Yeah, that's that's really interesting. And so do you feel the pressure of the kind of stagnant birth rate in Japan. Like is that something that you and other schools feel, or is it really like a just a secondary thing in in in the background? I I ask because we we you know we've talked in a few episodes recently about the change in demographics in Singapore and it's a very different issue there. There's not a problem with birth rate, but there has kind of been like an ongoing exodus of expats, for example, from the island. So yeah, I think our listeners really find this nuance very, very interesting. Anna Iveson: think when, so when I joined the school, I had a misconception that most of our pupils would be expats and that's definitely not been the case. We do have a good number of expat families but they don't make up the core of our pupil body and I think that's probably true of a lot of the international schools in Japan and in Asia where they were set up for the expat families like BST but now they're very much serving the local market and wider Asia. So we're definitely noticing that. I think In terms of the falling birth rate, because we're a new school and we've only ever operated in this environment, I can't really say what impact it's had. Nik Higgins: Yeah, sure. Anna Iveson: But we've had a really strong year this year. It's looking really great for us. And what we've noticed, interestingly, is amongst the Japanese local families, whereas two years ago, one year ago, almost all of our Japanese families had already been enrolled in the Japanese in the international school system. We've noticed a shift this year where more of our Japanese applicants are coming out of the public school system. So they're switching school systems completely and looking for an alternative. So that's been a really interesting shift. And I think it's because they're now starting to understand the value of British education, the value of boarding, and that messaging is starting to land with people that... Maybe we're more focused on a conservative, traditional Japanese track, but we've presented them with an alternative that they're now finding attractive. So that's quite exciting for the sector as a whole, I think. Nik Higgins: Yeah, that's that's really cool. So it sounds and tell me, Anna, if I'm wrong, you've got these two groups. So you have your local Japanese families and then you have your globally mobile regional families. I don't know if I got the name quite right there. Anna Iveson: Yeah. Nik Higgins: do you, you know, it d does the school have ambitions to increase the number of, for example, Western expats? Do you see that as a meaningful segment? Is that an effort you make or or are you kind of settled on the demographic composition that the school currently has? Anna Iveson: We're definitely working hard to... speak to the needs of the expat market. So we're really involved with Tokyo American Club, which is a fantastic expat organization. We do a lot of work with the British Chamber of Commerce. So I recently joined the executive committee there, which means I'm getting to meet corporates and we're trying to build more corporate relationships. We're doing a lot with the British Embassy. So we're definitely focused on those markets, but we also understand that they're only ever going to make up a small segment of our overall market because the number of expats in Tokyo has fallen over the years. Although what's great is the British government has recently announced a huge push to try and encourage more British investment into Japan. So that should mean there's going to be an inflow of British families into Tokyo in the next couple of years, which is great for us. But that's going to take time. Nik Higgins: Amazing. Thanks, Anna. Okay, so I actually have just realized, because your name is on the screen, that your initials are absolutely perfect for the questions that I wanna you are literally Anna A. Iverson, which we have to Anna Iveson: I'm Nik Higgins: use in the pun for this episode. So Anna, I I know from some of the work we do together at Doris, but in general in our conversations, that you are interested in AI's application in marketing in general. But particularly what it can do for promotes in a school. So I'm gonna I'm just gonna fire a few questions at you and feel free to choose them. Anna Iveson: show. Nik Higgins: I I'm interested to know one, why you're interested in it, two, what you think its kind of application is in that context, and three, what you're doing at RSJ. Cause I think you guys are without risking a platitude here, I think you guys genuinely are doing something a little bit different. Anna Iveson: Okay, yeah, so my background when I started marketing was very much in performance marketing. I'm really competitive. I like to win. So a lot of my motivation to explore AI has come from that. I like to explore anything where I feel like we can get on the front foot and gain a bit of an edge over our competition. And I feel like this is an area where if we gain a foothold early, then we will be the force that other schools need to dislodge Nik Higgins: Mm. Anna Iveson: when it comes to AI platforms. So that's the way I'm looking at it. I think a lot of... Nik Higgins: No, I like it. That's by by the way, that's that's cool. Like we we we need schools that I express this kind of competitive desire more more honestly and more thoroughly. Anna Iveson: I'm probably going to get ruined for this by my team. Nik Higgins: No, no, no, no, no. This is fantastic. Anna Iveson: I think where a lot of schools and lot of organizations are looking at AI now is as a productivity tool, which is great. It's fantastic. It's allowed us to create a much higher volume of content Nik Higgins: Mm-hmm. Anna Iveson: in a way that we couldn't previously because it was very labor intensive. But I think that's just one application of it and it's a very basic application of it. The way I'm looking at it is that we've noticed this year a much, well, we've basically gone from a base of zero applications coming from AI platforms like Chagy, BT and Claude to almost 3 % now of our applications are coming from referrals that have been generated by AI. And I've done some research around it and the thinking is that... within the next five years, most search traffic is going to be going through AI platforms and not through Google anymore. So where schools were maybe or maybe not focusing on SEO, we're now shifting our attention to how do we increase our retrievability on AI instead of on Google. Nik Higgins: Yeah. Anna Iveson: And so there's work that we can do in the background on the way that our website's structured, the way that our content is structured so that it makes it easier for AI to crawl. We're also doing more PR work. I've never been a huge believer in PR purely because, not because I don't think it works, but just because it's not measurable. And I like things to be measurable. But where we are seeing value in PR is that obviously the AI platforms will think the information is more credible if it's not coming off our own website. So we need to make sure that we are being spoken about in a way that sounds objective on other platforms. So we're doing a lot of work around digital PR with platforms that are bigger than ours and that have more credibility than us just speaking about ourselves in order to have those sourced and cited on AI platforms so that we're the first response when someone searches for international schools in Japan on AI. Nik Higgins: I think that's amazing. I believe the geeky phrase is you need to increase your distributed authority to improve your entity confidence. That's the yeah, that's the new Ye No, no, but you're totally Anna Iveson: for a while. Can you write that down and email it to me so I can sound clever? Nik Higgins: right. That's exactly the thing. Like, look, like the traditional SEO is dying. SEMrush put out a great graph last year that, you know, kind of charts as they see it, the the decline in referral traffic coming from, you know, traditional search engines and the increase coming from AI search. And they predict that inflection point is early 2028. And all signs point to them being correct. So yeah, it's really interesting. I think schools kind of woke up to the importance of SEO, what, like five years ago? And now it's kind of a a dying beast and there's this new thing that they need to invest in. And I think the investments that you're making are absolutely on the money. So you don't have to give away any of your secrets, but people listen to this podcast because they want to hear smart market admissions leaders share interesting stuff. So if a school okay, I if I'm honest, okay, I talk to a lot of schools. I reckon most schools have heard of GEO, AIO, whatever we decide it's called, but the importance of being visible in AI search and are thinking, my God, here's this new thing. We need to do something about it. And we're not. So if they're at step one, What would you advise is the first thing that they can do, Anna, to s to start making some progress towards improved AI visibility? Anna Iveson: So the first thing we did was put ourselves in the shoes of a prospective family and think about what they would be searching on AI. So what kind of questions would they be plugging into chat GPT in order to find the school that they want? So like, what is the best international school in Tokyo or which boarding schools would you recommend in Asia? And then... using that as the basis for any information that we're putting out online. So any articles that we're writing, we're trying to answer those questions that we know our families are going to be entering into chat GPT. But then also writing them in a way that is friendly for the AI to pull the information out that it needs. And often it's a bit sort of, it's a bit meta. We're using AI to optimize our work for AI because it's the best judge of what it's going to find useful. to do things that way. We have to balance because sometimes the AI-friendly, AI-generated content is very clunky to read and we still want, Nik Higgins: Mm-hmm. Anna Iveson: although we want it to be read primarily by AI, we also want it to be friendly for our human readers to digest as well. So we're putting out content that's valuable, yes, for AI, but also valuable and readable for our human readers so that we're striking a good balance. And we then track every quarter where we're ranking for the questions. So if we've got our key questions, say 15 or 20 of them, that we know we want to rank as the first answer, we're checking every quarter. Are we still number one? Or if we're not number one, who is number one? And how can we nudge them off the top spot? Nik Higgins: This is th I mean, that is genius. It's actually very similar to what this podcast is not about Doris, but it's the same thing that we did. We basically took, we reverse engineered the questions, so we just pretended we were a parent. We talked to Claude Perplexity Chat GPT. We saw what came up, we created some content, saw how it ranked, and tweaked it until it came to the top, basically. So I think that is a smart, smart approach. And is this something that you've developed? Is this from experimentation or have you borrowed a framework from somewhere? Anna Iveson: It's a lot of experimentation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Just researching online or also asking AI how I can do a better job on AI. So it might not necessarily be entirely effective all the time, but we are seeing an impact and platforms like Doris are helping us because we... We are citing Doris often as a source of information, which is great. And it's one of the reasons why we've always been so keen to work with you, because we know that you're a credible source that AI is pulling from. And it means that we're then able to rank highly on the platforms where we know our families are searching for information about us. Nik Higgins: Thank you, Anna. That's very kind. I might even edit that out because I should say this is not a this pro this is not about Doris. It's about Anna Iveson: Okay. Nik Higgins: you guys, but that's very, very kind. Thank you. AI search is changing the way we find everything online. It's a different door into the internet's information. So of course it's changing the way that families find schools. I I'm not going to ask you to predict the future entirely here, Anna. That would be very unfair to put you on the spot and do that. But in five years' time, what are some of the changed shapes or what are some of the emerged themes that you you think will inform kind of school marketing admissions? Like how will it look different than it looks today, particularly considering the impact of AI on the on the industry? Anna Iveson: I think more schools are going to have to pay attention to marketing on AI, so it's going to become a more competitive space. One thing that does trouble me about marketers like me basically going in and ruining AI, which is what we do with every platform, wherever people are gathering, know a marketer is going to come along and ruin it. It's just whether the information that AI is distributing to users. stops being objective because people like me are Nik Higgins: Yeah, okay. Anna Iveson: going and kind of gaming the algorithm and then if people lose trust in it because it's become biased towards the schools that are better at AI rather than Nik Higgins: Yeah. Anna Iveson: the answers being truly objective. So that bothers me a little bit because then users will naturally migrate away from those platforms unless the coders of the platforms can do something to make sure that the information remains as objective as possible. And then I suppose there's a question of whether these platforms as well start becoming advertising channels just like social media Nik Higgins: Mm. Anna Iveson: did and how that impacts the way that AI information is distributed. don't know. I have asked ChatGPT whether it's going to become an advertising platform. It keeps reassuring me that it's not. I'm not so sure. Nik Higgins: No, can you can you believe that? Can you believe that it would tell you the truth? yeah, I think that I think that's interesting. I think people my my take is of someone who works in technology, I think people think that like AI is some kind of miraculous paradigm shift, which in some ways it is at a much deeper level. If you're thinking about its application on robotics, for example, but I think at the level of search, it's likely to become commoditized like the front door of Google did, because of course someone is going to need to make some ad revenue from it at some point. Anna Iveson: Yeah, yeah. And I think, I feel like with marketing, it's always that way. As soon as a new channel opens up, marketers come in, advertisers come in, they kind of ruin it. And then all of the users go somewhere else where the marketers and advertisers haven't ruined it and it feels pure and clean again. And then the cycle repeats itself and then people like me come in, ruin it again. Nik Higgins: All right, okay, Anna, thanks for your thoughts on AI. I'm definitely gonna have to do some kind of Anna AI verson pun to create the title of this episode. It would Anna Iveson: Hahaha Nik Higgins: be a time we'll not see. We're gonna move on to your madness satchel. and in the madness satchel, we're gonna ask you, as we do with every guest, three quick fire questions. So we actually like our guests to answer these without giving them too much thought, as they give us a nice little insight into your thinking. So Anna Iveson: I'm bit scared. Nik Higgins: No, I know. It sounds terrible. I've made that sound really scary. James introduces it much better. That's Anna Iveson: you Nik Higgins: probably why I'm only the co-host. but we're going to go straight into it. So, Anna, I'm going to ask you your first question, which I'm going to pluck from the Madness satchel. So, The first question is, what is the one piece of Marxin and Admissions technology that you couldn't live without? Anna Iveson: And so we use a platform called ClickFunnels, which is how we drive our advertising leads into our email list. It's my favorite thing when it comes to funnel marketing, so definitely couldn't be without that. Nik Higgins: Amazing. Can you actually tell us a little bit more about ClickFunnels? Because I d I really doubt many schools are using it. Anna Iveson: So it's effectively a sort of fancy web page builder, but what it does is it allows you to create workflows using page builders. And rather than it being like a website where you've got multiple different menus and bits all over the place where you can get distracted and lose your lead somewhere in the ether of the website, the funnel that we're building, we're trying to make landing pages and we'll make a sequence of landing pages that take our leads through a... a journey, very sort of intentional journey from start to finish. ClickFunnels allows you to build that within the platform and track the leads through that workflow, but all the pages are designed that the only thing the person can do when they land on the page is either take the action that we want them to take or leave the page. Obviously we don't want them to leave Nik Higgins: Mm. Anna Iveson: the page but we can't hold them hostage there forever. So that's what ClickFunnels is designed for. Nik Higgins: So, okay, schools, if you're listening, if you want to drive email list growth from your digital advertising, ClickFunnels is a tool that you might consider. And that's recommended by Anna, who is our digital expert. Okay, question two. What's the one thing that you wish you could tell your younger marketing and admissions self? And I'll caveat this question, Anna, by saying that I know you haven't worked in market and admissions for a long time, but I think even that is interesting. What would you tell the Anna on day one of working in school marketing and admissions? Anna Iveson: is a really good question. gosh. Nik Higgins: Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, it's our job it's our job to ask them. Anna Iveson: I think probably what I would say is that when I joined I mentioned that I'd always been relatively sceptical of PR, but in a school... PR is really important and probably more important than it has been in any other organisation that I've worked in because trust is so important and being featured in print media and the more kind of traditional legacy media is really important to build trust with the families and trust is our main currency really with the families. So that has become much more of a core part of the marketing strategy than it ever has with other organisations that I've worked with because I don't like that it's not measurable. It freaks me out a bit spending millions of yen on campaigns where I can't measure the impact other than just vibes which as a digital marketer is not it's really scary. Nik Higgins: That is that is such a great answer. And Anna, I've got to say, trust is our main currency. You're giving me too many potential lines to use in the the Anna Iveson: you Nik Higgins: the the pun laden title that we'll inevitably create. No, that's really interesting. Okay, so your advice would be remind your younger self on day one of becoming a school marketer that legacy media and PR does have a significant role to play. Nice. Anna Iveson: Yeah, you've summed it up better than I expressed it, so thank you for that. Nik Higgins: No, no, well we're putting you on the spot. Thank you, Anna. All right, question three. Taking a little bit of a departure. What is one thing that keeps you sane amongst the madness? Anna Iveson: Definitely my team and humor. We laugh a lot as a team. We work really, really hard and I'm really fortunate to have the most dedicated team you could ever imagine. But we also like to keep things light and we joke together and we socialize together when our lives allow it. And I think that really helps because often it can be quite a stressful role and... I think just having the ability to look at what we're doing and sometimes laugh about our experiences together I think is really important. Nik Higgins: Thank you, Anna. Amazing answers to your madness satchel. So in the next section, we're gonna go to Pass the Pod, which is where we with varying levels of success depending on how well we managed to record the clips and pass them on, we get a previous guest to ask the next guest a question. So our Anna Iveson: Okay. Nik Higgins: previous guest was Matt Hall, who's the director of marketing and admissions at Nexus International School in Singapore. And he had this question for you. I'm always curious about this one. What would you do if you weren't doing your current job? Or you know, if you know, what would you go and do if you had no risk fear? What would you go and do? Okay. So Matt's question was, What would you do if you weren't doing this job? Or he kind of he cheated there. He got two questions in actually. He was like, if Anna Iveson: So, yeah. Nik Higgins: there were no restrictions, what would you go out there and do? An interesting question. So thank you, Matt. Anna, what are your thoughts? on that. Anna Iveson: Okay, so one thing that I have noticed here in Japan is that there's a definite gap in the market for holiday camps that are done really, really well. It's one thing that I think we do here. We have taken camps to a different level, I feel, obviously biased, but that's probably something that I would want to explore, is to work, find partners that I can work with to deliver holiday camps, but like really good ones. Nik Higgins: That's really cool. So gone, two quick quick follow-up questions for that, because that's and a very interesting answer. the first is I don't know where that floating thumb up has come from, but we'll get rid of that any idea. so Anna Iveson: Hahaha! Nik Higgins: what have you done at RSJ to make holiday camps great? And two, w what do you think that gap is? How would you make them better if you were doing this as a venture? Anna Iveson: So the first part is that they're often marketed badly. I think we do a good job on that. Again, we use funnel marketing to market our own camp, which means we can market at scale because it's automated. The whole lead flow is hands off. So for our own summer camp this year, we've got 120 people coming in one week. We've generated a really... substantial amount of revenue from it, which is fantastic. And the whole process has been very hands off from the team. Once we'd set the funnel up and done all the technical work, it pretty much just sold itself, which is great. So on that side, there's definitely scope to sell camps at scale in a way that I think a lot of providers aren't doing because they don't have the technical expertise to do it. And then the other side, I... I just think that they're almost, and I say this with the utmost respect, they're kind of an afterthought sometimes for some of the providers. The delivery is not amazing. And we very much see our own camp as part of our enrollment funnel. So the experience is Nik Higgins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anna Iveson: really important because it's the first experience they've had with their school. And if they don't have a great experience with us, they're not going to come back. Every touch point for us is really important at the camp. So the material that we're providing in the run up, all the information, the communication, that's really important to make sure the families are well prepared. From my own personal experience in enrolling my children in camps, especially residential camps, some of the information can be quite limited and you're trusting this provider that you know nothing about to take your child away somewhere that you know nothing about again for a week with. one sheet of information that's got half a packing list on it. So we make sure that the information we're sending out is really detailed so that the families can feel like their child is in safe hands. And then on the delivery side, again, all of the processes, thanks to Marie, who is amazing, everything, just the attention to detail that she puts in, the experience, just, we hope, really positive for the people that come. I think more providers could go to that trouble and that's definitely a gap that I see here. Nik Higgins: What a great answer. Thank you, Anna. That was incredibly thoughtful. And I think that's really interesting. So Camp's potentially an early and crucial but underloved and under thought about and resource touch point. Anna Iveson: Yep, totally. Nik Higgins: Okay. All right, let's continue past the pod. So Anna. We are now going to ask you to pose a question to the next guest. But because this is the Madness podcast and unfortunately, therefore, is fundamentally riven with madness, we're not sure which one of about three people are gonna be the next guest. So we're gonna do Anna Iveson: Okay. Nik Higgins: a little bit of different flavor on this. I'd like you to ask a question for our next guest, which we will put to them, whoever that ends up being. But I'd like you to ask one thing that you've always wanted to ask a fellow senior market and admissions leader, but either never had the opportunity to, or maybe thought, it'd be a bit rude to ask that, but you don't know who you're asking, so you're totally off the hook. You can ask literally anything to our theoretical next guest. Anna Iveson: Okay, so what I would ask is what is your number one frustration with other senior leaders in your school when it comes to recruiting pupils? So how are they? I'm asking a double question again, sorry. So do you feel that there are any areas where you're maybe being blocked by the other leaders when it comes to enrollment? I'm going to get people in Nik Higgins: That is Anna Iveson: trouble, aren't I? Nik Higgins: no, you're not. That is absolutely great. So, what's the frustration with the senior leaders and how do they or do they not create blockers? I think that is a fantastic question. And we will put that to whoever comes next at the potential risk of their career, but that's okay. We're gonna ask them, we're gonna ask them anyway. You come on the madness Anna Iveson: No. Nik Higgins: podcast, this is the kind of thing that happens. So, Anna, that brings us to the end of our episode. I wanna say a massive thank you from being on. Honestly, it's it's it's been really refreshing this conversation. I think you come at things from a different angle. I think your interest in AI is schools should be terrified several years ahead of the curve and other schools are gonna have to catch up. Anna Iveson: Thank Nik Higgins: And I love the answers to your madness, Satchel. So thank you so much for speaking with us and sending you good vibes back to back to Tokyo. Anna Iveson: Thank you for having me as well. It's been really fun to geek out on marketing with someone that actually wants to hear about it. Nik Higgins: We definitely do. That's what we're all about. Thank you so much, Anna. Anna Iveson: Thank you.