College Enrollment Marketing Case Study

A large public university elevated its strategic approach for organizing and activating First-Party data leading to increased leads of general admission applications.

“Simply put, KORTX has been an invaluable partner and a true extension of our team. We were immediately drawn to KORTX through their expertise in data collection and ability to utilize logic to activate audiences for our various campaigns. We have been impressed by their strategic approach and ability to drive performance across both our general admissions and curriculum specific campaigns.”  – University Director of Marketing

Challenge

Seeking marketing ideas to increase college enrollment and admissions, a large public university sought to elevate its strategic marketing approach by organizing and activating First-Party data to drive and measure increased leads for general admission applications.

The university partnered with KORTX based on our ability to implement an advanced data and media strategy, across each unique department, through KORTX Audience Manager.

Strategy

As the university’s primary data management partner, KORTX took a consultative approach and recognized that campaign performance was limited as only a fraction of potential First-Party data was being captured and utilized.

DISCOVER

The first step toward a solution included executing a full technical audit of the university’s site to assess every component of the tag mapping structure. Our audit revealed that unique landing pages were built for each campaign initiative.

DEFINE

Limitations in site tagging caused the university to miscalculate and undercount performance attribution. KORTX provided an updated tagging recommendation to be placed throughout all campaign landing pages, which led to accurate campaign measurement, attribution, and data collection.

ACTIVATE

Our analysis of the university’s media strategy revealed that digital marketing budgets were spread thin across multiple tactics including Pre-Roll Video, Paid Social, YouTube, and Display.

MEASURE

KORTX made a strategic recommendation to remove the branding element of Pre-Roll Video and pivot to Display-only, which resulted in a significant positive spike in performance. Utilizing KORTX Audience Manager data, the final step was to streamline First-Party audiences based on unique campaign and site attributes (i.e. Transfer Students vs. Incoming Freshmen).

Success

Shifting the university’s overall digital strategy resulted in a nearly 200 percent increase in admissions leads compared to the previous year.

To date, KORTX has driven 793 site conversions, of which 726 are freshmen applications. We’ve also tracked over 58,000 views on designated program pages across the entire site.