AI Enhances Personalization, Efficiency, and Lifelong Learning at Road Scholar

Michelle Ober:

Hi there, my name is Michelle Ober from WongDoody, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys. I lead our new business team here for North America. I’m really excited to be here today with you, coming to you from Orlando, Florida at the ANA Masters of Marketing 2025. And with me is Steve August from Road Scholar. Steve, you want to introduce yourself?

Steve August:

Sure, hi. Steve August from Road Scholar. I'm the Vice President of Marketing. We're an educational nonprofit organization designed to facilitate lifelong learning specifically for seniors.

Michelle Ober:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Steve. Really excited to chat a little bit about marketing and everything we've heard this week. I feel like the flavor du jour at Masters of Marketing has been by and large AI in marketing and how it's affecting everything that we're doing, how our teams are working. So I'd love to hear a little bit about, from your perspective at Road Scholar and more broadly just in your experience as the industry is moving so fast, what have you seen within your organization as you're sort of introducing new ways of working with AI into your marketing workflow. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Steve August:

Yeah, absolutely. So we use a tool called Optimizely. Optimizely has an internal AI engine called Opal and we've been using that to help facilitate our workflows. One of the more exciting pieces of it is the whole agent aspect of it. And we're looking to kind of develop agents to help facilitate even more development of creative and communication and accelerate and improve our efficiency.

Steve August:

I will say, the whole aspect of AI, it's you have to not just look at the tools, but you also have to look at sort of the policies and everything. So internally, we're developing a team that's looking at what is our AI policy, how that should be structured and really what should we allow people to do, what should we allow people not to do, right? So that becomes important. And also the functions within the organization. Today at Road Scholar, there is no manager of AI or anything like that. Out of the summit here, that's something that I'm now thinking about. I should probably have a position in marketing. We've got 35 folks and they all are doing some little bits of AI, but maybe we should have someone who is just focused on AI to help facilitate that, monitor that as well as make sure that we're getting some of the gains, as well as looking even more forward than we are today.

Michelle Ober:

Right. And you touch on so many important things. There's so much to unpack with this topic. And one of the things that I love to dig a little deeper on is when you talk about a tool like Optimizely and Opal and some of the things that are built in naturally as some of the new functionality that you're starting to experiment within your team, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you are going to the business to talk about the value of these AI investments and what it's doing from a marketing efficiency perspective and sort of how you're communicating that to your business counterparts?

Steve August:

Yeah. Well, I have to say that the investments that we've made, we made them a few years ago and it wasn't on the backs of like, hey, we're going to all have this spanking new AI, we're going to invest in our website, we're going to improve it so that we can improve conversion. And those key KPIs like that. So really leveraging that aspect just for the suite of products that come within sort of our platform, not necessarily the AI component. The AI has been sort of a sweetener to everything and as we look at it. Now we are doing additional consulting arrangements with folks to facilitate some of that now, but I mean relative to our overall marketing expenses it's pretty small. So it doesn't necessarily need sort of a senior leadership team approval and growth we just added into the budget.

Michelle Ober:

Yeah, that's great to know and I know at the beginning of the week when we were in our CMO summit and really talking about some of the metrics that matter, one of the things that we talked quite a bit about was those golden metrics, if you will, and how we articulate the value of what marketing is doing, AI or not, to the business. And so I know you mentioned some core KPIs and when we're looking at things like conversion rates. From your experience at Road Scholar, do you find that there are any specific ways of communicating what you're doing and your marketing strategies to your CFO or your CIO or some of these other folks who don't necessarily speak the marketing language, but you're trying to really clearly articulate why you believe something is the right decision?

Steve August:

Yeah, that's a great question. I have to tell you, we're in a bit of a growth mode right now. I mean, you've got 10,000 boomers who are retiring every day. It's 4 million a year. And so when you think about the senior market, it's a huge opportunity. So I'm constantly interested in making sure we're reaching out to that market and investing. And so I am increasing spend. And so much so that I just recently sat down with our CFO to that point to kind of walk him through what we're doing, why we're doing it, why it makes sense. And those key metrics are, what is the cost per enrollment? How does that cost per enrollment compare to what we have a measure which is called net marketing revenue per enrollment, which is really margin less the marketing cost. So showing them that, yeah, well, the cost per enrollment is going up. We're seeing the net marketing revenue go up even further, right? So you're actually making more money than you made before it. Now we're a non-profit so money is not necessarily a goal for us but for marketing I like to know that whatever I'm spending the stakeholders resources on we're getting a return for that investment.

Michelle Ober:

Right, absolutely and speaking of return on investment, just sort of circle back to the theme of AI and some of these efficiencies. I imagine that to your point, some of your revenue is able to go up because of these workflow optimizations that you're making.

Right, absolutely and

Steve August:

Starting to. What it has allowed us to do more specifically is not necessarily have to hire as many people. There are concerns about, oh AI is going to replace people and you're going to downsize. Not for us. We're still very much focused on having an authentic conversation with our participants. So from a copy standpoint, sure, we might use AI to do that initial draft or to kind of help do an outline, but then that's being completely fleshed out by our writers and everything. And so that's fine. And so it's gaining us some efficiencies in that way. And it may mean that we don't necessarily need to hire on as many writers for all the different campaigns that we're doing.

Michelle Ober:

Right, right. That's such a good point. And I love how you touched on it, especially in your business, the importance of the human angle and maintaining that brand authenticity and staying true to who you are and what your clients value you for.

Steve August:

Absolutely.

Michelle Ober:

With the human touch as sort of a human in the loop with the AI efficiencies that you're finding. And to that point, one of the other things that we sort of kept hearing about this week is the general perception amongst marketers and creatives that are like, oh my gosh, AI is coming for my job. And I think it's something that if you're not intimately working with AI tools and platforms every day, it's easy to feel that way. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about, as you've rolled out tools, whether it's, Optimizely and Opal or others in your stack to your employees, how have they been reacting and what has your approach as a marketing leader been to sort of bring them along on that evolution with you?

Steve August:

Another great question because people are people and they have fears and they have emotions. I will say, you know, early on when we approached it, we knew that people were going to be a little bit skittish around it. And so we took it at a slow pace to kind of expose them to it, let them know that it was going to be a tool for them that we weren't looking to replace them. I mean, theoretically you could but that's not what our goal was at all. We really just wanted to kind of bring them up to speed. And so we shared with them, had them the whole process of what we were planning to do, how we were planning to approach it and to bring them along simultaneously. And it worked really well. They now have adopted it. We've had a number of different sessions and open hours for them to have questions. And oh my gosh, the writers now love it. It really kind of takes the drudgery away from some of the work that they had to do before. And it gives them a second, there's a whole, we have a person that does nothing but proofing. Well, this gives them a second eye to it. Now they're still going to prove, but there might be things that AI catches that they wouldn't have otherwise caught. But, again, from a creative standpoint, in terms of imagery and everything, there's resizing that they hate doing. They don't like that. And AI in an instant you can have, all the different banner sizes and everything. They like the initial creative. I love the work that they do, but you know, and I can see why they wouldn't want to take that and then take that same work and put it into a thousand different sizes, right?

Michelle Ober:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so great and I love the way that you've approached educating your organization and helping unlearn the idea that AI is something that's going to replace me, but rather it's something that is going to augment the strategic work that I'm able to do and free up my time so I don't have to do things like resizing assets. I can really be a more valuable contributor to this workflow. I think it's really great. Another question that I've got for you is when it comes to the way that your team is starting to use AI, or I guess coming out of this week, with everything that we're hearing about and all the different ways that we're seeing brands apply AI in their workflow. When you think about the future of your organization or the industry beyond, are there any examples or thoughts that you've got on what you think the next big wave of AI is going to be for marketing within your org or how your team is working?

Steve August:

For me, the foundation of what we do has to do with data and understanding what of what we do is effective. And today we use multi-touch attribution. It’s a great example to assess everything that we're doing because we're in direct mail, we're in radio, we're in TV, we're in all the digital platforms you can think of. And so we have a view today of how that performance breaks out. But I think AI could be really helpful for really understanding, instead of using sort of logic-based rules for sort of splitting out all this channel information and activity, I think AI could be really helpful there. I haven't seen a partner yet, so if you know anyone who’s doing something in there that could really help, that would be very useful to me.

Michelle Ober:

Yeah, I think it's been really great to hear a lot of the different, I don't want to call it experimental because I feel like that reduces the impact of what folks are doing, but I've heard a lot of people talking about how they're starting to use AI a lot more to do test-and-learn and really get out there and measure not just something simple like a click through rate, but looking at all the different implications and codependencies and really extract insights through AI, so you're allowing analysts on your team to be more strategic in workflow.

Steve August:

Well, one of the things we're doing at Road Scholar, so with the Optimizely platform, they have this product called ODP, the Optimizely Data Platform, and it allows us to personalize every page of the website for every individual throughout and create a journey for them. So that's one thing that we are looking at. We've implemented it. We're starting some initially test and learn. Right now, we're doing it in segments. So for instance, you have a solo traveler. So when you arrive to the website, we already know a lot about you based upon your activity and that's all stored within the platform. So we are serving up, these programs are great for solos. Here's a blog about solos. Here's some other content about solos. Maybe here's a video of a solo traveler really and trying to kind of connect with that individual one-on-one and keep that journey going not just on the homepage, but throughout the entire site and maybe even from a navigation standpoint. So that's more at a segment level. Our ultimate goal is really to take that and push that down through AI and really kind of have that on a one-to-one level and have the AI be making a lot of those changes. Because the person just couldn't do it. Because if you think, we'll have about 100,000 or so folks travel with us this year, as they come to the website, that's 100,000 different unique individuals who we want to kind of present something different to.

Michelle Ober:

Right, absolutely. And I think you're in a really interesting market where your audience and the folks that are interacting with your content every day aren't necessarily a group that are AI native.

Steve August:

Oh, yeah.

Michelle Ober:

So I'm curious what the general sentiment has been from your client base. Do you find that a lot of folks are reactive to the introduction of, if it’s obvious from the get-go, like an AI-backed feature on your site or the experience? Is there a lot of reaction there or are you finding that it's just a little bit more naturally integrated into the journey and?

Steve August:

We've been doing a lot, and I think email is probably the best way to maybe to read that because it's sort of a two-way conversation, I feel. And one of the things that we do is, a lot of people do, we do a thumbs up, thumbs down on the emails. Our emails that we send out have historically been more static. I've been pushing the team over the years to make them more and more personalized and using dynamic content that will eventually incorporate AI into that. It's not today. It's really kind of tabular, table driven. But those emails, when we send those, one, they're the best performing emails that we do by far by a factor of like three or four. And then when you go to look at the thumbs up or thumbs down, like 97% of them are thumbs up because you're serving up people the things that they want, the things that they're interested in, the things they’re going to engage in, right? And anytime you can have a conversation, versus just using a bullhorn talking to someone. It's so effective.

Michelle Ober:

Absolutely, that's fascinating and it sounds like your team has done a really great job of sort of bringing your audience along on that transformation journey with you as you’ve evolved the way that you're interacting with them.

Steve August:

Well, I think part of it also has to be with our marketing strategy. We’ve been more digital. So as you are more digital, you are attracting those people that are more comfortable in a digital environment.

Michelle Ober:

So true, so true, that's really great. Awesome, well thank you so much. This was really a fantastic conversation. I've so enjoyed it.

Steve August:

Me too.

Michelle Ober:

And I'm really looking forward to seeing what you all do next.

Steve August:

Thank you, Thank you so much.