34% inCREASE IN ENROLLMENT. 43% DECREASE IN COST PER LEAD. 19,000+ QUALIFIED LEADS.
Higher education is a full-contact sport.
In a highly-competitive market, we were tasked with driving results for all graduate business programs for the University of Miami’s Herbert Business School. Our challenges ranged from external competition from same-state universities offering totally free MBA tuition to internal competition from online programs.
DB Dynamo served as the social media buying agency alongside a partner creative agency. In all, we marketed 13 programs over the course of 24 months.
We grew enrollments 12% in year one, and an additional 20% in year two. All while reducing cost per lead from $185 to $95.
Here’s how we did it:
Drove leads globally: While our lead generation efforts were isolated and targeted by program, we cumulatively ran campaigns in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Used an arsenal of ad platforms: Our platform choices? Best-performing. We routinely allocated and re-allocated funds based on what worked, testing and integrating new platforms along the way. These channels included LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram, Bing, Google and YouTube.
Leveraged big data: We employed sophisticated targeting approaches that were underpinned by the use of 1st party, 3rd party, and ad platform data, then improved through AI tools. This data included previous student demos and geos and program information, previous program applications and registrants, data from MBA.com and GMAT test registrations, and website visitation data for remarketing.
Each channel served a purpose from awareness to nurture to enrollment (average lead-to-conversion timeline was 9 months).
Display filled the funnel: We used display and video to built our remarketing audience pools and to heavy up in key geographic markets.
Social drove action and reaction: We drove engagement and conversion with program-specific image and video ads across formats.
Gmail ads drove intenders: We used Custom Audiences and Remarketing to make Gmail ads one of the hardest-working and most effective tactics.
Search ads converted: We drove search efficiency by leveraging responsive search ads, search retargeting, campaigns by match-type and keyword selection by location.
Custom landing pages sealed it: We created 10 brand and program-specific landing pages optimized to convert campaign traffic. Bite-sized content. Perfect for mobile. Easy to convert forms.