YOUR INSTITUTION IS BLEEDING STUDENTS.
YOUR SYSTEMS SHOULD BE CATCHING THEM.
Prospects don’t see the value of the degree. Applicants get lost in communication chaos. Enrolled students disengage before they finish. These aren’t three separate problems — they’re one broken system. Southpaw Media builds the lifecycle marketing infrastructure that catches students at every stage and keeps them moving forward.
THE EXPERIENCE GAP IS COSTING YOU ENROLLMENTS.
Higher ed and certification organizations face a marketing challenge that most agencies don’t understand. You’re not selling a product — you’re guiding people through a high-stakes decision that will shape their career. The journey from "interested" to "enrolled" to "graduated" is long, emotional, and full of friction points where students fall off.
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Your CRM has thousands of records, but your admissions team can’t tell which prospects are actually warm.
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Students get 40+ emails before enrollment — and half of them feel like they were written by a robot.
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Your departments operate in silos, so the student experience feels fragmented at every handoff.
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You’ve invested six figures in MarTech but your team only uses a fraction of its capability.
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Application starts are healthy but completion rates are dropping — and nobody knows exactly why.
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These aren’t just marketing problems. They’re experience problems. And experience problems become enrollment problems.
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WE'VE DESIGNED THE SYSTEMS THAT IMPROVE THE STUDENT LIFECYCLE.
Southpaw Media isn’t a generalist agency that dabbles in education. We’ve spent over a decade embedded in the higher education and certification space — building the CRM architectures, email design systems, and student journey strategies that move the needle on enrollment, engagement, and retention.
We’ve helped institutions improve email engagement by 73%, save $450K through automation, free up 22,000+ hours of manual work, and design, build, and execute 200+ lifecycle marketing campaigns.
As a StoryBrand Certified Guide, we also ensure your messaging is clear and compelling at every stage of the student journey — so your systems aren’t just technically sound, they’re saying the right things to the right people. We know the difference between a prospect and an applicant. We know why your nurture sequence breaks down at week three. And we know that the real issue isn’t usually your technology — it’s the gap between your tools and your processes.
A CLEAR PATH FROM CHAOS TO CLARITY
BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL
We sit down with your marketing and operations leadership to understand your student lifecycle, your tech ecosystem, and your pain points. No assumptions — just honest assessment.
BUILD AN IMPROVEMENT ROADMAP
We test the student experience — from first awareness through enrollment, onboarding, and persistence. We identify the communication gaps, misalignment between teams, and automation opportunities with high impact.
WATCH THE EXPERIENCE UNFOLD
We implement the strategy: rebuilding email flows, configuring your CRM, aligning cross-departmental communications, and work with your team to see what's working. Then we optimize, iterate, and scale.
FOUR TYPES OF EDUCATION ENGAGEMENTS
WHAT HAPPENS IF NOTHING CHANGES
Every semester you operate with disconnected systems, you lose students to institutions that made the experience easier. Your admissions team burns hours on manual follow-ups that should be automated. Your marketing team sends campaigns that overlap, contradict, or miss entirely.
The gap between your institution’s mission and your students’ experience grows wider. And in a market where 20–35 digital touches are needed to move a prospect to application, every missed touchpoint is a missed enrollment.
WHAT’S POSSIBLE WHEN YOUR SYSTEMS ACTUALLY WORK
Your admissions team opens their CRM in the morning and sees exactly which prospects are warm, which need attention, and which are ready to apply. Your email campaigns run automatically — personalized to each student’s stage, interests, and motivations.
Marketing and admissions are finally reading from the same playbook. Your students feel supported, not overwhelmed. They know their next step at every stage. Your retention improves because the experience after enrollment matches the experience before it.
That’s what a connected lifecycle marketing system delivers. That’s what we build.
SOUND TOO COMPLEX?
LEARN ABOUT ONE CHANGE THAT SAVED A UNIVERSITY 22,000 HOURS
One simple change to an email campaign removed 22,000 hours of manual work at one of the nation's largest nursing universities. Not only that, but it decreased friction for existing students and their upcoming registrations.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q1: WHAT SIZE INSTITUTIONS DO YOU WORK WITH?
We’ve worked with organizations ranging from small certification bodies to publicly traded education companies. The principles of lifecycle marketing scale — what changes is the complexity of the implementation.
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Q2: DO YOU WORK WITH OUR EXISTING CRM OR RECOMMEND A NEW ONE?
Absolutely. In fact, this is the best time to get your systems right — before your list grows and bad habits become expensive to fix. We work with coaches at every stage.
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Q3: HOW LONG DOES A TYPICAL ENGAGEMENT LAST?
That is vast and varied depending on the type of engagement, the teams involved, the complexity of your systems and the scope of the project. It would be unfair to misrepresent that by listing a time here. What we do know is that we provide quality work in a reaonsable amount of time.
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Q4: CAN YOU WORK WITH OUR INTERNAL MARKETING TEAM?
Absolutely. We’re designed to plug into your existing team — not replace them. We often work alongside in-house marketers, providing the strategy, architecture, and execution muscle they need to level up.
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Q5: HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS?
We set KPIs at the start of every engagement tied to your specific goals — email engagement rates, application completion rates, enrollment yield, retention metrics, or operational efficiency gains. We report monthly and adjust strategy based on what the data tells us.
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Q6: WHAT IS STORYBRAND AND HOW DO YOU USE IT FOR EDUCATION MARKETING?
StoryBrand is a proven messaging framework that positions your student as the hero of the story and your institution as the guide. As a StoryBrand Certified Guide, we use this framework to ensure your marketing communications — at every stage from recruitment to retention — speak clearly to what prospective students actually care about, not just what your institution wants to say.
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