Leveraging LinkedIn for Retargeting and Nurturing

Improving Application Rates with LinkedIn

A graduate law school established in 1989 and has been a beacon of excellence in higher education. The school offers a range of part-time and full-time programs, empowering students to immerse themselves in specific areas of legal study with flexibility. This approach ensures that students acquire a comprehensive and directly applicable legal education, preparing them for successful careers.

The Challenge

The graduate law school has been working with EducationDynamics for several years, successfully helping the school rapidly grow enrollment through digital marketing and enrollment management services. While both performance marketing efforts and enrollment coaching efforts have been consistently overperforming goals, the EDDY team recognized there was a greater opportunity for engaging prospective students who were already considering the school’s masters programs.

LinkedIn is widely recognized as the leading professional social media platform, and the school already enjoyed a positive presence on the platform. As an advertising platform, LinkedIn was being leveraged to identify and engage with prospective students. Through EDDY’s long-term strategic relationship with LinkedIn, a collaborative initiative was launched to test new strategies for increasing program applications while maintaining existing budgets.

The Objective

• Reevaluate LinkedIn’s strategy and regain the platform’s status as a high-performing channel for engagement and inquiries.
• Optimize budget allocation that aligns with performance goals by evaluating the ROI across the platform’s various advertising ad types.
• Improve the platform’s cost-per-application.
• Increase overall applications.

The Solution

To address the immediate challenge, EducationDynamics reallocated budget from LinkedIn and other platforms and implemented a multi-faceted solution that leveraged the power of retargeting and diversified ad types. Within the first three months, EducationDynamics initiated a series of campaign tests with differing ad types utilizing known prospective students who previously interacted with the university’s website.

At the conclusion of the initial campaign period, the results spoke for themselves. By leveraging conversation ads targeted at strategically identified audiences, the school was able to significantly increase the number of applications while also improving their cost per application. EDDY further expanded the targeted audience to leverage LinkedIn’s conversation ads as a nurturing platform; re-engaging potential applicants and guiding them to application and enrollment.

EducationDynamics’ multi-faceted approach, including targeted campaigns and audience expansion, proved instrumental in addressing the graduate law school challenge. These initiatives not only exceeded expectations, but also paved the way for future growth and success lead generation and enrollment.

The Results

Within the first three months of launching the new campaigns, there was a substantial 38% reduction in the cost per application. In months five and six, the school achieved an even more impressive 48% decrease in the cost per application while maintaining a steady application volume. It’s worth noting that between months five and eight, a notable 45% of the generated application volume came from LinkedIn’s conversation ads. Overall, the school saw a 48% improvement in cost-per-application for conversation ads vs. LinkedIn’s overall cost-per-application.