CASE STUDY
Higher Education + Omni-Bridge 2.0®

Omni-Bridge 2.0® is an innovative omni-channel marketing tool integrating online channels like Social Media Marketing, Informed Delivery, Personalized QR Codes, and Google Retargeting Ads with direct mail. The campaign metrics are tracked in real-time through a centralized portal

SITUATION

A mid-sized, midwestern university faced several adverse impacts due to the pandemic: lower than normal student enrollments; diminished prospect and applicant pools and decreased on-campus visits.

In prior years, the university’s on-campus program was a valuable component in a prospective student’s decision to attend. Because of pandemic restrictions, an “on-line campus visit” was created for prospective students and parents.

The challenge was to increase “on-line campus visit” engagement through direct mail and grow enrollment numbers at all stages in the recruitment funnel.

METHODOLOGY

We created an omni-channel solution to enhance our client’s marketing effectiveness using Omni-Bridge 2.0®. A 30-day strategy was developed integrating two direct mail campaigns with targeted online follow-up using these tools: SocialMatch, Mail Tracking, Informed Delivery®, Call Tracking, Social Media follow-up and LEADMatch.

LEADMatch allowed the university to identify anonymous website visitors providing their postal addresses and their actions taken on the website. These interested potential students were re-targeted with a highly personalized direct mail piece.

The LEADMatch list was segmented into potential students going to the website from the mailings, as well as organic visitors. The Admissions Department called all potential students who went to the website but did not schedule a campus visit.

The list was filtered by the specific pages visited and time spent on pages relating to admissions. This was used to build the perfect funnel for direct mail re-targeting

RESULT

  • 14% increase in target audience
  • 12% increase in applications received
  • 22% increase in student admission to completed applications
  • 53% increase in total deposits 20% increase in website page views

2,655,056

Total Ad Displays

16 touches to target audience across all channels

5,990

Engagements

3.52% engagement rate, 166 calls, and 4.2% re-engagement on social media

24,340

Total Leads

4.38% of identified website visitors from direct mail campaign

1,067

Total Matches

25% response rate from direct mail retargeting to LEADMatch leads

CONCLUSIONS

With limited numbers from the ACT/SAT data pools, the university’s direct mail strategy not only supplemented but exceeded the university’s goals and expectations for online visits.

Using an omni-channel strategy focused a consistent and repetitive online messaging to prospective students and allowed for specific direct mail follow-up based on their website activity.

Omni-Bridge 2.0® was able to identify a large potential group of anonymous interested students for digital follow-up and direct mail re-targeting to increase conversions.