University of Wisconsin Sustainable Management Summer Scholarship Campaign

Role

Project Manager, Graphic Designer

Project Description

Led by UW-Extension Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning (CEOEL), University of Wisconsin Sustainable Management is an online, collaborative program offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees to busy adults who are balancing work, family, and other responsibilities. College affordability is often a pressing issue for these students. Each fall and spring semester, the Sustainable Management program offers scholarships to its bachelor’s degree students to help alleviate their financial burden and keep students on track toward graduation. For the first time in summer 2017, Sustainable Management offered scholarship awards to both bachelor’s and master’s students. CEOEL’s marketing, program management, and media teams collaborated on a mixed media campaign that encouraged current and prospective students to apply for summer scholarships.

Marketing materials created for the mixed media campaign:

Objectives

  • Generate 40 summer scholarship submissions
  • Contribute to summer enrollment goals (54 for the bachelor’s program and 120 for the master’s program)
  • Encourage prospective students to apply for summer semester
  • Achieve open rate of 22 percent for the prospective student email
  • Drive 150 sessions to web content post
  • Produce 50 “engagements” (likes, shares, comments) on the Facebook retargeting ad
  • Build compelling Sustainable Management fall marketing campaign around scholarship submission materials

Results

The Sustainable Management summer scholarship campaign met or exceeded each of the objectives and resulted in the highest number of scholarship award winners in the program’s history.

  • Generated double the scholarship submissions. The campaign was a success, with a total of 92 scholarship submissions for summer semester, more than doubling the 40 submission goal! That means the program was able to award $92,000 in tuition assistance to summer students. For many, the award covered tuition for the entire summer semester.
  • Reached enrollment goal. The semester enrollment exceeded the goal; 56 bachelor’s students and 146 master’s students took summer courses.
  • Encouraged prospective students to apply. The email to prospective students resulted in 39 clicks to the website—25 of those clicks were to the application page. And, a total of 23 students started the program during summer semester. Based on these numbers, we feel that the campaign successfully encouraged prospective students to apply and begin the program.
  • Achieved high open rate. The industry standard for email open rate in higher education is 22 percent. The email to prospective students achieved a 23 percent open rate, which exceeded the goal.  
  • Drove sessions to the web content post. So far, the post has generated 182 sessions, exceeding the goal. The average time on page for content is 1 minute and 11 seconds; the higher time on page for this post (1 min and 17 seconds) suggests that readers were highly interested in this post.
  • Produced high number of Facebook engagements. The overall paid and organic reach of the retargeting Facebook ad was 4,061. The ad also produced a high number of clicks (68), conversions (3), and shares (9), surpassing our goal and suggesting the audience is engaged with the ad’s image and copy.  
  • Built compelling fall campaign. Students who applied for the scholarship were required to submit a photo and essay about their summer plans. The marketing team repurposed this material for a fall campaign. Pieces created include: