Keep Your Registration Form

“Don’t give up your registration form,” direct marketing expert Paul Franklin told a standing-room only crowd during a session on the best promotion ideas of the year. The evidence from the direct marketing business is that dropping your registration form reduces your registrations and income potential.

He says already 10 percent of lifelong learning programs have dropped the registration form in their print brochures. And that’s a big mistake.

The registration form is a ‘call to action,’ says Franklin, which is a motivation and marketing page that increases registrations.  It is also another way to register, and programs should keep many options for ways people can register.

Even with websites and digital brochures, Franklin reports that people spend five-times more time with a print brochure than on your website, and that increased attention means you can and should keep every marketing tool in your print brochure to enhance registrations.

He reports the data shows that just putting a dotted line and image of a scissors along the edge of the registration form increases registrations 3 percent.

Without data, some programs are dropping their registration form for two mistaken reasons.

• The registration form page in your print brochure does cost money, but like your course descriptions, pictures and marketing copy, the registration form page generates more income than it costs.
• And with people moving to online registration, there is a mistaken notion that the registration form is unnecessary. Actually the data shows that people reading your print brochure register for more courses, or higher priced courses, than people not receiving a print brochure.  Again, the data comes from the highly sophisticated direct marketing business, where companies measure everything.

Want more proof?  Check out the next catalogs you receive in the mail.  Most catalogs will have an order form.

Keep your registration form in the print brochure. And maximize your registration income.