Pearson’s Maestro of Marketing Brings a Human Touch to a Customer-Centric Strategy
Brought to you by Pearson’s Online Program Management team.
Since Michael Collins joined Pearson Online Learning Services as senior vice president of marketing and learner acquisition, he’s been working to harmonize and humanize everything we do to engage and enroll learners in our partners’ online programs.
Collins brings a background in journalism, marketing, public relations, corporate communications, and — not least — music. In this interview, he shares insights that reflect where he’s been, what he’s seen, and where we can make the greatest impact for partners by building lifelong relationships that keep learners coming back.
You studied music in college. What did you learn from that experience?
Sometimes you can be the lead in a musical or in a play, right? But many times, you’ll be part of the ensemble. In marketing, I’ve learned it’s much the same. Sometimes you’re still part of the ensemble, and you have to switch between supporting roles. I may be leading marketing and learner acquisition, but I’m also part of a leadership team working to achieve shared outcomes. Even where I’m the lead within my own team, sometimes another member of the team has the stage.
Beyond that, when we work with our partners, we’re also part of their team. So, knowing how to make all these teams work together well at the same time is one of the most important things I can do.
You come to Pearson from the CFA Institute, the leading global provider of investment management education. But you’ve also played key marketing roles in other industries. What lessons do you see as especially relevant for your work here — especially your work with institutions?
There’s a note that runs through my career in terms of working in-marketing, whether it’s been in retail, manufacturing, distribution, technology, or tech-enabled service companies. And that’s about creating affinity that makes customers want to keep buying from you.
I ran global marketing at Iomega, which made external storage drives: Maybe you remember the Zip drive. We went from $140 million to $2 billion in revenue in under 36 months. We sold through retail channels like Best Buy, as well as through distributors who sold to retail. And I learned the power of channels and partnering.
It’s one thing to sell your product or service, but how will you help partners be successful, so they want to keep partnering with you? That’s our challenge, too. We’ve built a business model where, when Pearson’s partners are successful, we’re successful. And our partners in turn succeed when their learners succeed.
And it’s never one-and-done. In our student success and retention work, and in everything else we do, we need to be relentlessly focused on making both learners and partners more successful continually.
“We have a shared goal and a shared sense of accountability with our partners.”
As for my experience with CFA Institute, people knew us as the leading provider of investment management credentials worldwide, but we offered a selection of other of certificates and credentials. We also worked closely with partners on innovative non-degree programs, such as ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing around climate, and big data analytics. I gained powerful insight into how important that kind of content innovation can be in developing a lifelong relationship where a learner always sees you as the provider of choice.
We didn’t want people simply to take a CFA Level 1 exam to get strong fundamental knowledge, and then be done. We wanted them to take Level 2 and Level 3 and then participate in other certificates, interact with educational webinars and events, stay fresh, and be part of a member community.
You’ve been responsible for adult learners’ entire journeys, from consideration to enrollment, onboarding, and their ongoing experiences as “customers.” What advice would you offer institutions that want to delight learners and build stronger lifelong relationships with them?
You must keep the end customer’s experience front and center and keep everything else in your peripheral vision. The way we’re successful helping our partners is to really focus on the individual learner’s needs.
We have to put that experience front and center as we think about program design, marketing and demand generation, and how we develop relationships with prospective learners.
We have an opportunity to delight learners in our interactions with them. Our enrollment advisors, the professionals who speak with learners, provide one of the most important touch points in our nurture lifecycle.
Higher education is one of the highest-dollar-ticket items a learner might ever purchase, other than buying a home.
“Students have choices. We need to lead with empathy as we develop strategies to speak with learners about those choices. There’s a lot of noise in the marketplace. So, building a one-to-one relationship to help guide them in the selection process, on behalf of our partners, is critical.”
I’m excited about bringing more out-of-the-box ideas to our partners’ campaigns. One campaign I’ve admired is the Fearless Girl, the bronze statue originally installed facing off with the iconic bull on Wall Street, that drove the conversation around diversity on boards and in the financial services industry. That viral campaign also generated tens of millions of dollars’ worth of exposure. I'm not saying we can do that every time, but we have an opportunity to help our partners create even more memorable brand experiences than we already do.
A related question: One of the biggest challenges institutions and OPMs face is the rising cost of recruiting quality students who can succeed. What can we do together to address that challenge?
For one thing, we have to take more disruptive approaches to marketing, so we bring in more earned, owned, and organic media, not just paid. We have an opportunity to integrate a full-performance marketing engine that encompasses all our channels, brings acquisition costs down, attracts more prospective learners, and enrolls more of them sooner.
I expect we’ll do more events and pursue other strategies that can deliver more high-volume, low-cost social shares. At CFA Institute, we created a campaign called My Charter Story, focused on real stories from professionals who earned their CFA designation. Our own CEO shared a video about her own story: She’d just had a new baby and went to take her CFA Level 1 exam, fell asleep, and failed it. But she persevered, and now today she’s the CEO of CFA Institute. That’s the kind of social sharing campaign that makes the biggest impact: one with heart and a message about overcoming challenges. We all have something to overcome.
You’ve only been here a little while, but what has struck you so far? What are you hearing from our partners and the teams that report to you? How is that shaping your priorities as a leader?
Right now, everyone is thinking about how to increase enrollments. I want to add a more human touch to that process. I think we have a big opportunity to amp up how we’re touching more inquiries with a human being throughout the process, especially at the highest points of receptivity. We have great people who really want to help learners: Now we need to infuse the entire process with more empathy, more personal touch, and more personal care.
Learn more, and explore Pearson's online learning offerings and OPM services.
About the author
Michael Collins
Michael Collins leads the marketing and learner acquisition team at Pearson Online Learning Services. Prior to joining Pearson, he was managing director and chief marketing officer for CFA Institute, the leading provider of global investment management education and testing across 165 countries. Michael’s worldwide team aligned centralized global strategy with regional marketing execution, orchestrating functions including learner acquisition, onboarding, product marketing, advertising, PR, branding, internal communications, digital transformation, customer experience, and global customer service and satisfaction.
Collins has worked for public and private companies including JPMorgan, Rockefeller & Company, Iomega, SAGA Software, Mercator Software, Gevity HR, and Computer Sciences Corporation (now DXC Technology). He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ.
