Six months after becoming Drury University’s 18th president, Tim Cloyd is setting in motion a marketing plan to position the private school as a boutique institution aimed at strategically growing revenue and enrollment.
Speaking this morning for Springfield Business Journal’s 12 People You Need to Know live interview series, Cloyd said school officials currently are actively involved in shaping the plan.
“What are you known for? What is it that has sizzle among 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds?” Cloyd said. “What is going to be our positioning platform? That’s the main question right now for us, and everything else will flow from that — the master plan, the comprehensive campaign, our priorities, etc.”
For Cloyd and his team, the positioning platform starts with Drury’s status as boutique, which he described as a smaller institution with individualized and customized studies and a sense of connectivity among students and faculty.
The strategy involves getting in front of potential students through traditional snail mail, meetings at specifically targeted high schools, search engine optimization and electronic media buys via Spotify, Pandora or YouTube.
“We’re using that sophisticated approach,” Cloyd said. “It’s never a good idea to throw a glass of water out of the window and hope it hits somebody.”
Cloyd said Drury also should use its geographical position as a marketing tool. Already well established in Springfield and southern Missouri, Drury is using its name recognition to target students in areas like St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas and Chicago.
Stemming from its marketing plan and with a new president in place, Drury already has raised its fundraising goal for the year and is looking at increasing its endowment goal.
This year, Cloyd said Drury has a $1.1 million fundraising goal, up previously from $750,000. The school’s endowment currently is $80 million, and Cloyd would like to double that figure. The school draws 4 percent from the endowment on a 30-month rolling average.
“Our goal is to grow that endowment through gifts,” he said, noting the fund would be used strategically to upgrade the institution, including new facilities. “No one has ever saved their way into prosperity.”
Another goal is enrollment growth, but Cloyd won’t let that interfere with the school’s boutique status.
In the fall, 503 new students joined the Drury campus, a 39 percent increase.
“We’re looking at what is the optimal capacity for Drury, beyond which we are going to realize significant incremental costs,” he said, noting if enrollment reached the 1,800 area, new academic facilities would be needed. “We’ve got some slack there to grow before we hit that point.”
