Adelphi University’s School of Social Work needed to boost graduate enrollments, particularly in its MSW programs. Their structure required a strategic shift away from the low-residency format in order to attract more working adults and meet market demands.
Our Objective
The primary goal was to increase MSW and Advanced Standing MSW enrollments without compromising on the quality of education. Secondarily, the Adelphi and AllCampus teams wanted to consolidate marketing efforts and develop a more cohesive approach across Adelphi’s online portfolio.
Getting to Work
In April 2018, AllCampus and Adelphi University launched a comprehensive marketing strategy with the following key steps:
Proving the viability of online programs with market research
Introducing a fully online option with virtual residencies
Renaming the program to “Online MSW” to better reflect the format and appeal to prospective students
Key Features/Benefits
Market Research: In-depth market analysis guided marketing decisions, including the decision to transition to a fully online format.
Collaborative Approach: AllCampus’s enrollment and marketing teams worked closely with Adelphi faculty and stakeholders to implement best practices for online student recruitment and support.
Flexibility for Students: Introducing virtual residencies allowed working professionals to pursue an MSW without significant disruption to their lives.
The Results
Since the partnership began:
Enrollment Growth
The Spring 2024 term saw the highest spring start in the program’s history and a 15% increase in enrollments from the previous year. The program also had the second-highest start in program history for Fall 2023.
Lead Generation
AllCampus and Adelphi gained a 13% increase in leads year-over-year while reducing cost per lead.
Program Renewal
The partnership was renewed in May 2023.
“AllCampus’s marketing strategies have allowed us to deliver our MSW program to more working professionals aspiring toward social work. A high-quality education has always been Adelphi’s top priority, and now we can bring that to busy students who need flexible online programs..”
— Patricia A. Joyce DSW, Associate Professor School of Social Work, Director of Online MSW Program School of Social Work
AllCampus’s partnership with Adelphi University demonstrates the impact that strategic marketing and collaboration have in higher education. By embracing innovative solutions and adapting to market needs, Adelphi has grown its MSW program and set a new standard for flexibility in social work education.
Contact Information
For more information on how AllCampus can revolutionize your university’s enrollment strategy, contact our University Solutions team at sales@allcampus.com.
A top-ten university (“the University”) needed to reach an ambitious enrollment growth target for their online master’s program. They wanted to support that initiative with a focus on digital marketing and enrollment management. The University sought a short-term partnership, which allowed them to fill their needs gaps as they built up internal capabilities.
The Solution
After considering many options, the University chose to enter into a customized, fee-for-service partnership with AllCampus to grow the enrollment in their online master’s program.
To provide the adaptability that the University requested, AllCampus agreed to review the agreement and budget annually.
The University did not require a full suite of services. Several teams at AllCampus leveraged the company’s expertise, resources, technology and services to contribute the following:
Corporate partner channel manager tapped into new channels of prospective students by presenting the program to AllCampus’ extensive corporate partner network, encompassing more than 4,000 companies and organizations across 60 industries.
Enrollment specialists nurtured prospective students at every point of the enrollment process — from initial contact to completed application.
Digital marketers deployed and optimized targeted advertising campaigns for paid search and social media by factoring in enrollment funnel metrics.
Content writers, designers and developers created compelling, informative and user-friendly collateral for the program’s new organic site, hosted within the University’s site architecture.
“AllCampus saw this FFS partnership as a significant success, as it achieved the client’s goals,” said Kyle Shea, EVP of partnership development at AllCampus. “We grew the program to a sustainable enrollment size and then helped our partner get to a position where they could bring their program back in-house with new additions to their staff to manage the marketing and enrollment services.”
Results
The collaborative partnership scaled up the University’s enrollment and operations to a sustainable level, enabling the university to begin managing the online program internally.
Enrollments Grew by 2.5x
New enrollments rose from 20 in the year before the partnership to 50 in its final year
$9.5 Million
University’s net revenue from the partnership
Over the span of the partnership from spring 2019 to fall 2021, AllCampus generated the following results:
The number of students enrolled in the online master’s program more than doubled, from 20 students pre-partnership to 50 students in the final year.
The University’s digital properties generated more than 125,000 unique visits and more than 6,000 inquiries.
Paid efforts resulted in more than 34,000 visitors and nearly 2,400 inquiries, with a 7 percent on-page conversion rate.
The partnership generated more than $9.5 million in net revenue for the University.
13x Increase to Landing Page Conversion Rate
Optimizations to paid marketing led to steady performance gains over the partnership
124% Increase in Inquiry-to-Attending Rate
Marketing and Enrollment teams worked closely together to improve identification and targeting of qualified prospects
Conclusion
No two programs are the same, and not every college or university has the same goals; a one-size-fits all approach to program management is not enough. By providing both fee-for-service and revenue-share options, AllCampus is able to expand the customization available to their partners.
The University had a critical need that did not require a full suite of marketing services. Instead, they were able to enlist the exact, targeted support they required — in this case, digital marketing and enrollment support. Not only did they achieve 250 percent growth, but the University’s internal team gained insights and guidance that empowered them to maintain this success after the partnership concluded.
Want to learn more about what AllCampus can do for you? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in contact with you soon.
National Median Salary With Certification (46,766 job postings): $80,773
National Median Salary Without Certification (7,541,124 job postings): $67,744
Reviews job postings requesting information technology skills refine job postings
Source: Lightcast
The Cost of Non-Credit Certifications
$100 (low)
$2,000–$6,000 (mid)
$6000k (high)
Universities can choose to develop non-credit certificate programs that align with these disciplines and facilitate certification. Programs vary in cost and structure, ranging from free MOOCs; monthly, low-cost subscription-based programming; high-priced, high-intensity boot camps; and mid-priced, primarily asynchronous, months-long programs.
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) — 102,444
IT Infrastructure Library — 97,475
*Of these, CISSP has the largest estimated salary return at $31,771.
Based on salary, tech-related certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect, CISSP and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control have the highest return with an estimated average salary increase of $27,457 across the six reviewed tech-focused certifications.
Certified Scrum Professional, Certified Salesforce Administrator and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) are non-tech certifications that generate the highest estimated salary return (between $23,757 and $27,985).
Non-credit certificates that can help professionals pursue these certifications have the potential to increase professionals’ annual salary by up to 59%. On top of this, their newfound skill set can open the door to job opportunities with higher demand in the market. In only a few months, professionals can completely change their career outlook by upskilling. Because of this, universities are looking for opportunities to expand their certificate offerings to meet demand. AllCampus knows how to help.
Leading universities around the country have sought our expertise to design and develop online certificate programs that serve a rapidly growing population of students while, unlike some private companies, maintaining the highest standards for instruction and achievement. We’re on the pulse of higher education upskilling with partnerships in industries including business, IT, healthcare and law.
Our upskilling program design and development services integrate our expertise and resources to develop and promote a program that realizes our partner’s vision and aligns with the job market. From guidance on course curriculum design to student marketing and enrollment, we work with our partners every step of the way and leverage our years of marketing, recruitment and retention experience to ensure your program’s success.
Interested in learning how we can help you design and maintain a certificate program? Connect with us to learn more about how non-credit certificates can help diversify your university portfolio.
We’re more than representatives. We serve as coaches, mentors and counselors.
David Chiscon, director of enrollment at AllCampus
Walk around the enrollment offices at AllCampus and you’ll immediately notice them: mugs, banners, the occasional stuffed mascot. School emblems hang from walls and logoed water bottles share space with keyboards.
You might assume that these are the desks of alumni, but these are the workspaces of our enrollment advisors. They consider themselves an extension of the schools they represent and are proud to support the universities that partner with AllCampus.
This team of highly skilled advisors is critical to AllCampus’s focus on exceptional recruitment, enrollment, and retention services. The team has a longstanding history of exceeding expectations because they share their schools’ goals of attracting high-caliber students who will thrive.
How does AllCampus continually foster a strong enrollment team? First, they hire people who have a talent for making connections and who embody the company’s core values.
Second, they take the time to thoughtfully train new advisors. This is not a place where new hires are handed a headset and a binder of scripts; AllCampus uses a formalized, tested and proven approach. Advisors are trained in a service-based, consultative process. They can evaluate a student’s fit with a program and nurture the student’s understanding of why that college or university is the best opportunity.
Finally, our advisors prioritize their relationship with their partner university. They are in direct contact with the schools’ enrollment teams and sit in on bi-weekly updates. This allows AllCampus advisors to know their partner programs inside and out. They understand what makes the program distinctive and what will make applicants successful.
The result is more satisfaction from students and stakeholders, more completions and ultimately stronger programs that enhance the universities’ reputations.
The Challenge
This case study focuses on that second point: making new advisor training a top priority, even as the team and the company expand.
Demand for online education was on the rise even before COVID-19 led to 65% of all institutions moving to fully online or hybrid models in 2020 (NCSL). Since 2017, graduate enrollment increased by 134,000 in fully online programs and by 26,000 in partly online programs. At the same time, residential programs saw their enrollment decrease by 87,000 (IPEDS).
The accelerating interest in graduate online education is reflected by growth at AllCampus and its partners:
The enrollment division grew 48% between 2019 to 2021.
AllCampus saw a 39% increase in students serviced between 2019 and 2021.
This led to the challenge: How do we scale on-boarding in a way that ensures that new advisors
ramp up in a timely manner,
meet the needs of university partners,
adhere to industry standards,
and embody AllCampus’s core values?
The enrollment team needed an approach that would help any new advisor learn the ins and outs of the role, but that wouldn’t overload them with too much information at once.
The Solution
The enrollment team dug into the on-boarding process. They evaluated every step based on the criteria above. The result was a intensive on-boarding plan that relied on three key components:
The AMPED approach: A unique, proprietary approach to recruitment that prioritizes what the school can do for the student, not what the student can do for the school.
Three-stage timeline: New hires move through three gateways, starting with intensive training, moving to mentor-led check-ins and continuing with ongoing professional development.
Dedicated trainers: In addition to enrollment advisors and enrollment managers, the team includes training coordinators who administer the on-boarding process.
“As a growing team, it has become increasingly important for us to onboard new advisors quickly but thoroughly,” explained Sara Nolte, AllCampus’s EVP of enrollment management and student services. “The introduction of AMPED, the three-staged training approach, and the addition of the training team have allowed us to do this while maintaining the high level of service that our partners and prospective students have come to expect from the AllCampus enrollment team.”
The New Advisor Journey
Elaine Van Buskirk was hired as an enrollment advisor in 2020. While she hadn’t worked in higher education enrollment directly, Lain spent more than nine years working in senior living, where she honed her customer service and conversational skills, all while staying within state regulations. She had transferable skills but knew she would need guidance at this new company and industry.
“The amount of thought that went into the training process is incredible,” Lain said. “It’s really well planned. I completed the training with all the tools I needed.”
Phase 1: Learn the Ropes, Learn the Approach
Lain will work with Pace University, a nationally ranked institution that emphasizes transformative education for diverse students. Pace partners with AllCampus on more than 20 undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs.
From day one, Lain built her understanding of both Pace’s programs and AllCampus’s systems. She entered three weeks of intensive — but supportive — onboarding. Every day of training was planned out ahead of time.
“The structure was so welcoming,” Lain said. “I was never left to my own devices and told ‘just figure it out.’ There was always someone helping me throughout the process. It felt like a well-oiled machine.”
Over these weeks, she was immersed in AllCampus’s AMPED recruitment strategy, which emphasizes a pleasant and proactive approach. She learned how to overcome prospective students’ objections without pushing them into a program where they won’t succeed.
Throughout, Lain’s trainer emphasizes that contact with prospective students should be about having conversations, not making sales pitches or checking boxes. When a prospective student requests information for a specific program, advisors do their best to reach out without hounding them.
Phase 2: Practice in a Low-Stakes Environment
Once Lain had a strong grasp on the process, she worked through role plays that tied the student engagement processes together. These let her practice asking open-ended questions, selling the benefits of a program and handling concerns, all while honing his closing tactics.
Lain also sat in on real calls with prospective students. She likes that each advisor has their own style. “It’s okay to have our own personality,” Lain said. “The advisors all follow the AMPED approach but we don’t have to read from a script. We can do what works best for us and for the person we’re talking to.”
Phase 3: Partner Matching and Mentor-Supported Calls
After three weeks, Lain is familiar with the AllCampus process, understands the program and systems the team uses, and is compliant in FERPA and FA. She is ready to get started.
Every week, Lain logs on and sends emails to her partners at Pace, checking in on any updates or requests from the Pace admissions team. “I’m their teammate,” she explained. “I try to be conversational and personal. I’m always telling them: I’m here to get these students enrolled. Let’s talk about what we can do to make that happen.”
“Even though we work for different companies, we have the same goals.”
After Training: A Continuing Partnership
This isn’t the end of the training process. She gets feedback during check-ins at 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. After the three-month mark, Lain is connected with a mentor who can offer support and advice as she settles into her role. This senior enrollment advisor also ensures that she continues to be an excellent representative of Pace.
The Results
Even with the addition of 15 new advisors from spring of 2020 to fall of 2021, results have remained strong: AllCampus generated 74% more applications in Q1 2021 vs Q1 2020.
The employee retention rate of the enrollment division is exceptionally high. This means that partners have consistency in their representation as most advisors stay with their programs for years.
Training That Serves Our Partners
This in-depth training process gives our partners the assurance that:
The enrollment team serves as a true extension of their college or university.
Potential students are supported every step of the way, retaining and building their positive impression of the school.
Accepted students are high caliber and more likely to complete their certificate or degree.
The work of the enrollment team will complement the efforts of other AllCampus teams, ensuring a cohesive program management experience.
When prospects assume they are talking with a program representative, it’s the ideal outcome—the AllCampus advisors pride themselves on being authentic representatives of their school. They’re not just working on behalf of the school, they’re fans and advocates as well.
Training That Serves Our Students
Beyond stats, a sign of success is the satisfaction reported by students.
“One of the best parts of this work is when students come back and say ‘thank you’,” David said. “It’s an incredible feeling that we are making a difference in people’s careers.”
“I love being able to coach someone through a life-changing decision in their life. If they’re overwhelmed, I’m here to guide them.” Lain said. “Working in higher education with people who are at a turning point in their career — that fills my cup. You’re helping people towards something that’s going to be a positive step forward.”
Want to learn more about what AllCampus can do for you? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in contact with you soon.
In Q3 of 2020, the AllCampus digital marketing team ran ad copy that promoted one partner’s top-5 U.S. News ranking within its discipline. It was expected that this copy would perform well, as the long-standing prestige and general awareness of university rankings suggests they matter to prospective students when selecting an online master’s program. However, we were surprised to see this copy significantly outperformed by an ad that mentioned the ability to study and work at the same time.
The two ads did not constitute a strict A/B test due to the presence of other variables, but they called into question our assumption that prospective students are attracted to university rankings in ad copy, especially given the particularly high ranking of this school. We wanted to perform a test that would provide clarity around the question, “How much do people searching for master’s programs really care about rankings?”
Parameters
Using new copy, we created a series of formal A/B tests that pitted two Google search ads against each other. We used the expanded text ad (ETA) format, which shows 2-3 short headlines in a large font, along with 1-2 prose descriptions underneath in a smaller font. Below is an example of the format as used in an ETA for AllCampus.
Expanded Google text ad
In each test, we used a “ranking ad” that promoted university rankings in a headline and a “control ad” that promoted an alternative value proposition for the program but was otherwise identical. In most cases, the ads differed only in the single ranking/control headline, with one exception outlined in the results section.
In order to have a result that could be broadly applied, we activated ads in a variety of programs from a range of academic disciplines, and we tested the ranking headlines against different alternative headlines in each program.
The tests ran at different intervals between September 30, 2020 and May 18, 2021. All ads were tested within non-brand search campaigns, meaning they showed to individuals searching for the program being offered but not the university showing the ad.
Key Performance Indicators
A number of key performance indicators (KPIs) were used to judge the success of these ads, each giving insight into a different component of performance.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This metric is calculated as Clicks / Impressions. It expresses the number of times the ad was selected as a percentage of the number of times it was seen. CTR is often an indication of how appealing the ad is to its audience; the more appealing the ad, the more people are likely to click it.
Conversion Rate (CVR)
Also called click-to-inquiry rate, this metric is calculated as Inquiries / Clicks. It expresses the number of inquiries that were generated as a percentage of clicks on the ad. CVR indicates whether the right individuals within the campaign’s target audience clicked the ad. If an ad is appealing but not to the right people, engagement on the landing page will be low, and CVR will suffer.
Inquiries per 1,000 Impressions (IPM)
This metric is calculated as (Inquiries / Impressions) x 1000. By relating inquiries to impressions directly, this metric creates a composite from both CTR and CVR, giving the net impact of both, which is especially useful when CTR and CVR move in opposite directions. The rate at the base of this metric is multiplied by 1,000 in order to make it easier to understand and compare. While this study is confined to search advertising, IPM can be used for social and display channels as well.
Cost per Inquiry (CPI)
This metric expresses the average investment needed to generate an inquiry. The lower the CPI, the more inquiries AllCampus is able to generate based on a given level of investment.
Results
Test 1
Ranking Ad Lost Decisively
A test for one partner’s online master of health administration program ran from April 14 – May 18, 2021. We tested two ads that were identical with the exception of headline 2, where one ad included the #1 ranking of the university in a particular category and the other had “GMAT/GRE Not Required”.
Ranking AdControl Ad
The chart below reveals worse performance by the ranking ad in every metric. Most notably, it had 39% fewer inquiries per 1,000 impressions (IPM) and a 29% higher cost per inquiry (CPI) than the control ad.
We used a statistical significance calculator to estimate the likelihood that the same ad would win if the test were repeated; the calculator takes into account the size of the sample and the difference in performance between the two ads. In Test 1, there was 99% certainty that the ranking ad would have a lower IPM than the control ad if the test were to be repeated. In other words, moving forward we would expect to be able to generate more inquiries with the control ad, which promoted the accessibility of the application process.
Ranking
Ad vs.
Control
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Inquiries
Click-
Through
Rate
Conversion
Rate
Inquiries
per 1000
Impressions
Cost
per
Inquiry
-45%
-29%
-44%
-57%
-21%
-23%
-39%
+29%
Test 2
Ranking Ad Lost Decisively
A test for another partner’s online cybersecurity master’s degree programs ran from November 17, 2020 to February 17, 2021. The ranking ad placed the brand and degree name in headline 1 with a ranking in headline 2, whereas the control ad spread the brand and degree names across headlines 1 and 2. Headline 3 and both descriptions were identical.
Ranking AdControl Ad
In essence, the ranking ad was denser and contained more information, whereas the control ad gave greater prominence to the essential information, allowing more real estate for the brand and degree names. We expected that adding information about the university’s strong ranking would be more appealing than not mentioning another value proposition at all; however, the results proved otherwise. The ranking ad fell far short of the control in all key performance indicators with an 82% lower IPM and 169% higher CPI. The margin by which the control ad outperformed the ranking ad once again provided 99% statistical certainty that the ranking ad would have the lower IPM if the test were repeated.
Ranking
Ad vs.
Control
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Inquiries
CTR
CVR
IPM
CPI
-55%
-8%
-69%
-83%
-67%
-46%
-82%
+169%
Test 3
Ranking Ad Lost, But Statistical Significance Is Limited
Our initial test for this same program, the one mentioned in the question section above that spawned this case study, found that the ranking ad had a lower IPM than the control ad and had 95% statistical certainty in a repeated result. However, a variety of assets differed in that test aside from the ranking headline, so we ran a more controlled test to isolate the variable.
A controlled A/B test used the headline 1 slot to test the school’s top-5 U.S. News ranking in its discipline against a headline asserting that students could complete the degree while working full time. It ran from September 30 to November 4, 2020.
Ranking AdControl Ad
Results of the test favored the control ad. In contrast to the other tests, the ranking ad was the clear winner in terms of CTR, but it again lost substantially in CVR. This caused IPM to be 19% lower and CPI to be 58% higher than for the control ad.
Recall that CTR is viewed as a measure of the ad’s appeal to prospects on the search engine results page while CVR indicates the willingness of the “clickers” to complete an inquiry form on the landing page. In the context of an ad test, a lower CVR indicates that either more of the wrong individuals are clicking the ad or the clickers are being set up not to feel compelled to convert when they arrive at the landing page. One of those two scenarios appeared to be occurring in this test.
Because the number of inquiries gathered during the test was low and there was a relatively close disparity in performance, there was only 66% statistical certainty that the ranking ad would continue to lose in repeated tests. However, the case for the control ad is strengthened by the less formal test conducted for the school previously, which found 95% certainty in the ranking ad losing.
Ranking
Ad vs.
Control
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Inquiries
CTR
CVR
IPM
CPI
+148%
+93%
+188%
+57%
+49%
-46%
-19%
+58%
Test 4
Ranking Ad Lost Decisively
An additional experiment that ran from October 1, 2020 until March 1, 2021 tested ranking and control ads in the second headline slot. In this test, the control ad included “Advance Your Career” rather than a program ranking.
Ranking AdControl Ad
Click-through rate (CTR) was nearly identical, but the much lower landing page conversion rate (CVR) for the ranking ad caused it to have a 67% lower IPM and 175% higher CPI. While the inquiry volume was low for this test, the stark difference in IPM led to 99% statistical certainty in a repeated result. As with the formal experiment conducted in Test 3, the results of this test suggested that lower-quality clicks were being driven to the landing page.
Ranking
Ad vs.
Control
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Inquiries
CTR
CVR
IPM
CPI
+63%
+79%
+78%
-41%
+0%
-66%
-67%
+175%
Aggregate Results
Ranking Ads Lost Decisively
Overall, out of the four tests we ran, the control ad won decisively in three and won in the fourth with lower statistical significance.
Though an aggregate of all the data skews metrics in the direction of the individual tests with higher amounts of impressions, clicks and inquiries, this angle is useful in drawing general conclusions from this study as a whole, especially because total impressions for each test fell within a relatively narrow range. The aggregate numbers show the ranking ad underperforming against the control ad in every KPI.
Ranking
Ad vs.
Control
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Inquiries
CTR
CVR
IPM
CPI
-27%
+6%
-21%
-53%
-25%
-41%
-56%
+57%
Analysis
The primary conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that search ad copy that touts school or university rankings underperforms. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that a wide variety of wording was used in the ranking headlines tested and a range of alternative value propositions were tested against the ranking headlines.
Losing Headlines
Winning Headlines
#1 Ranked [in Category]
[University Name] Master’s in Cybersecurity | Top [X] in Online Engineering
Ranked Top 5 By U.S. News
Top [X] Global University
GMAT/GRE Not Required
[University Name] | Cybersecurity Master’s Degree
Study Part-Time; Keep [Working]
Advance Your Career
On our digital marketing team, these results have spurred a move away from advertising rankings in search ad copy. From viewing the winning headlines, one possible conclusion is that search ad copy that is either informational or prospect/benefit-centric tends to perform better than ranking headlines, which are more university-centric. It is these types of prospect-centric headlines that we are favoring as we move forward with further tests.
An interesting element of this study is that while the control ads had more inquiries per 1,000 impressions in all four tests and higher click-through and conversion rates in the aggregate, the primary KPI driving the high IPM was CVR rather than CTR. In fact, CTR was really only decisively higher in two out of the four tests: in Test 4 it was practically equal, and in Test 3 the ranking ad actually had a higher CTR. The mixed results for CTR suggest that ranking headlines may sometimes pique a prospect’s curiosity about a program, but with their low CVR, they either drive less serious prospects to the landing page or do not create an experience that inspires a strong enough interest in the program to want to submit an inquiry upon viewing the landing page.
At AllCampus, we appreciate the willingness of our partners to follow the data, even if it means a top-ranked university forgoing an opportunity to speak to a potential point of institutional pride. Perhaps this should come as no surprise since our partners tend to be academics who, like us, are inspired and motivated by data and reason. The more efficient we can be in our ad spend, the better the economics are for the university and, in the end, students.
As helpful as these results are to our marketing efforts, we caution against concluding that university rankings are entirely moot in recruitment efforts for master’s programs. They may serve a role in raising awareness about a program via external ranking lists, and they often factor into prospects’ ultimate decisions about which schools to consider. Strong programmatic rankings may also assist universities that are not nationally ranked as a whole in conveying prestige to prospects who may not be aware of the university’s particular strength in a specific field. Since our test focused on school-wide rankings, further testing is required to determine the efficacy of rankings for specific programs or for university/program features such as overall value.
Another use case for rankings is to validate broader marketing claims made elsewhere. For instance, if a compelling headline on a landing page communicates a university’s creativity and innovation, it may not be necessary to reference the school’s ranking in the same headline. The ranking could, however, serve a support role in a lower-profile section dedicated exclusively to rankings and accolades. In other words, it’s likely that rankings are still important evidence points of an institution’s prestige, but they may be better used as supplemental proof rather than as bold claims in search advertisements shown to prospects who are often only forming their first impressions of a program.
Stefan Scherer-Emunds Associate Director of Digital Marketing
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Introduction: Customized Strategies for World-Class Online Education
Online programs have transformed higher education, empowering students to take courses from top thinkers in almost any field while working in a different state or on another continent. But to build online learning initiatives that thrive for years to come, universities must be able to routinely get in touch with prospective students, wherever they are, and guide them through the admissions process. Recalibrating a university’s marketing and enrollment efforts for this new era can be tough, and the challenges are exacerbated when it comes to launching and growing an online degree in a highly specialized or emerging area.
That’s why Northeastern University School of Law partnered with AllCampus to boost the online Master of Legal Studies (MLS) and Master of Laws (LLM). AllCampus came to the table with strategic plans, a targeted approach to digital marketing and a team of experienced enrollment specialists. With those resources in place, the faculty and administrators at Northeastern Law could focus on sharing their expertise with new students across the country and around the world.
The Challenge: Scale Up Without Watering Down
Northeastern Law partnered with AllCampus to manage marketing and enrollment for two online programs. These master’s degrees each delve into advanced legal concepts and serve students who have distinct backgrounds and goals:
The Master of Legal Studies provides non-lawyer professionals with a thorough understanding of legal issues as they apply to heavily regulated industries. Equipped with these cross-functional skills, graduates can be more effective leaders in fields such as business, healthcare and intellectual property.
The Master of Laws helps lawyers who were trained overseas develop their knowledge of the U.S. legal field, but domestic attorneys can also bolster their credentials with this degree. Students choose from tracks focused on international business, intellectual property and technology, or preparing for the bar exam in the state of California.
AllCampus set out to grow these online offerings by attracting students who fulfilled the expectations of a world-renowned private research university. That meant consistently finding and supporting people who would not just meet the admission requirements, but complete the programs successfully and become valuable members of the Northeastern community. To realize this partnership’s full potential would take close collaboration between the stakeholders at Northeastern and AllCampus researchers, marketers and enrollment specialists.
Data-Driven Strategic Planning
AllCampus customized a strategy to scale up Northeastern Law’s online master’s programs based on our years of domain experience and thorough quantitative analysis. Researchers took a deep dive into the market and competitive landscape for both degrees, examining the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), real-time labor data, Bureau of Labor Statistics reports and other proprietary sources to predict performance over the next several years.
Underlying all these figures, there were widespread shifts in law school enrollments that signaled possibilities for the future. An annual questionnaire from the American Bar Association found a 51% increase in enrollment in non-JD degree programs between 2015 and 2019. Plus, a higher proportion of those non-JD students took their courses online, rising from 17% In 2015 to 37% in 2019.
ABA Annual Questionnaire 2015-2019 Summary
Year
Total Non-JD Enrollment
Online Enrollment In Non-JD Programs
YoY Change in Online Enrollment In Non-JD Programs
Proportion of Online Enrollment In Non-JD Programs
Total JD Entrollment
Total Enrollment *
2015
13,086
2,239
–
17%
114,044
129,369
2016
13,826
2,820
26%
20%
110,951
129,369
2017
17,117
4,558
62%
27%
93,039
110,156
2018
18,523
5,588
23%
30%
111,561
130,084
2019
19,819
7,378
32%
37%
112,882
132,684
* Students enrolled in JD/Non-JD Joint Degrees are counted once in Total Enrollment
Proportion of Online Enrollment in Non-JD Programs
Figure 1: ABA statistics show changes in enrollments for non-JD law school programs over five years
Since master’s-level law degrees may focus on a wide range of topics and fall under a variety of codes in the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) that’s employed by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, developing a full picture of the market from these numbers required careful attention. Some of the data points that influenced our decisions included:
Annual graduates with MLS and LLM degrees in the U.S.
Number of institutions offering the degrees online
Percentage of master’s degrees in these fields completed online
Tuition costs for comparable programs
Average monthly Google searches for degrees and related keywords
An assessment of perceived value based on Northeastern’s brand and prestige
U.S. News & World Report law school rankings
By examining these metrics and others, AllCampus projected a trajectory for the law programs that coincided with Northeastern’s long-term objectives. Our researchers determined that an investment in marketing carefully aligned to those plans could bring enrollments to the desired scale by the fourth year of the partnership while laying the foundation to sustain the programs at that size.
“At AllCampus, our paramount responsibility is to use our experience and resources to help our partners navigate the dramatic changes taking place in higher education,” Executive Vice President of Partnership Development Kyle Shea said. “If the past couple years have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t predict all the challenges that are coming, but we can work with our university partners to transform some of those disruptions into opportunities.”
An Integrated Approach to Marketing
Some graduate degrees, like an MBA, are familiar to just about everyone. But when it comes to more specialized, emerging programs, it’s especially necessary to grow awareness and provide informative content by connecting with audiences through multiple channels. The AllCampus Formula centers on maximizing the value of marketing by targeting and nurturing relationships with the people who are best-suited to our partners’ programs.
Accordingly, AllCampus went to work on an integrated marketing campaign for the online MLS and LLM that included a combination of emails, paid media and search engine optimization (SEO). The marketing and design teams customize creative assets for every partner, ensuring that messages and imagery fit a partner’s brand and the overall strategy for advancing each program.
“We’ve built a strong foundational approach based on our experience in recruiting on behalf of nearly 130 programs across over 25 partners,” said Andrea Maconachy, the executive vice president for marketing at AllCampus. “But every university and program is different, and their audiences behave differently. That’s why it’s critical that we connect a partner like Northeastern directly with our experts. We ensure that our strategy is optimized based on testing, insights from market research, real-time search data and the feedback our enrollment specialists hear directly from prospects.”
1. Email Outreach to Previously Unconverted Leads
Cooperation is vital to every aspect of an AllCampus partnership and can be especially beneficial for email campaigns. Carefully timed remarketing messages, sent to those who have shown an interest in the department or related offerings, are a powerful means of deepening relationships with prospective students. Thus, to ramp up enrollment as quickly as possible, AllCampus coordinated with Northeastern on engaging with individuals who’d previously contacted the university about online law programs.
Operating in compliance with information privacy rules, AllCampus created automated emails specifically for this audience. The messages invited qualified individuals to learn more about the options that the law school offered for earning an online master’s degree. Recipients could then choose to take the next step by downloading a brochure or getting in touch with an enrollment specialists.
The past contacts soon paid off and kickstarted the future of Northeastern Law’s online programs. Ultimately, about a quarter of students who started one of the programs during the partnership’s first term had been among the university’s previously unconverted leads.
2. Digital Advertising
As the email remarketing campaign illustrates, established relationships are crucial to scaling online enrollments. But one of the primary reasons why a university enlists an online program management partner is to find students who may have never even considered applying to that school before. Efficiently targeted digital marketing campaigns get the word out to a wider pool of future applicants through paid search, display ads and social media.
To promote the Northeastern Law master’s programs, AllCampus digital marketing specialists drew on a budget that was closely tied to the projected enrollment targets. They constantly monitored results to find the best ways of drawing more visitors to our custom-designed landing pages and encouraging them to request program details. Achieving those objectives required marketers to research high-value keywords and embrace the differences between the two master’s programs:
For the LLM, it was vital to reach international students and U.S. residents who graduated from international universities. Half of the inquiries that resulted from placements in paid media were from U.S. residents, but the rest were spread across 96 other countries.
The audience for the MLS, on the other hand, is heavily concentrated in the university’s own geographic region. While inquiries through paid channels came from all over the county, 56% were located in the Northeastern U.S., and especially Massachusetts.
These insights served to guide both future targeting and the messaging choices in ads. For the MLS, the breadth of academic options in New England make it crucial to emphasize the specific characteristics that make a program different, like the available concentrations. In fact, the digital marketing team found that ads employing concentration-related keywords resulted in a 22% lower cost per inquiry and Facebook ads gained a 12% higher clickthrough rate.
Figure 2: Facebook ads for the LLM and MLS programs
One aspect that was the same for both programs was the importance of paid search, which became a key factor in how the digital marketing team directed their spending. A higher rate of potential students moved from an initial inquiry to starting their applications when compared display or social ads. Google and Bing drove more than three quarters of the initial inquiries for the LLM and over 80% of those for the MLS.
3. Organic Search Visibility
No matter where they live or what areas of law they’re interested in, potential students are likely to begin investigating their educational possibilities with an organic search. AllCampus works to maximize organic search traffic by developing program websites showcasing content that’s both informative and rich in relevant keywords. The SEO team at AllCampus took steps to grow the authority for the MLS and LLM websites associated with legal education through program content and articles.
Since the program sites launched, this SEO strategy has resulted in steadily improved rankings for targeted keywords and greater visibility for the homepages. Blog articles are currently the biggest driver of traffic to the sites: That’s in part because prior to the partnership, Northeastern had already posted blog articles on popular topics like “What Can You Do With a Master of Legal Studies Degree?” The university agreed to move two existing articles into the new AC-managed site, and we drew lessons from what had worked for the MLS to drive content production for the LLM. The result has been articles titled “What Can You Do With an LLM?” and “LLM vs. JD,” each promoted with remarketing emails sent to prospects who expressed interest in the program.
In addition to garnering attention from search engines, these sites serve to convey what students can expect from a master’s program, helping them through the often long and complicated process of deciding to apply. AllCampus went beyond the usual explanations of the curriculum and admission requirements by providing pages featuring walkthrough videos as well as student profiles for both the LLM and MLS. Visitors who are contemplating one of these specialized law degrees can explore a firsthand perspective on what it’s like to learn from Northeastern faculty in an online format. With these experiences readily available, prospective students have ample opportunities to engage with a school and make more informed decisions about what programs are right for them.
Guiding Prospective Students Through the Next Steps
The AllCampus philosophy and business model are built around ensuring every student who enrolls in an online program is in a position to succeed. Enrollment specialists make that possible by serving as the main points of contact to help qualified individuals throughout the application process and beyond. These personalized services ensure that the vast majority of those who make it as far as submitting their materials for review by Northeastern’s admissions committee are accepted to their respective programs.
For a demanding curriculum like a master’s degree in law, nurturing applicants who will not only be admitted, but retained through graduation requires a meaningful level of engagement. Each potential applicant who requests information about the online degrees is assigned a dedicated AllCampus advisor. These professionals, most of whom hold master’s degrees themselves, don’t speak from a script as they communicate by phone, email and chat. They have candid, personal conversations while emphasizing the school’s strengths like:
The quality of the online learning environment
Opportunities for interacting directly with faculty
The sense of community among online students
“AllCampus advisors develop a nuanced understanding of every partner institution and what makes their programs and cultures unique to the marketplace,” said Director of Enrollment David Chiscon. “We’re so successful at enrolling and retaining students because we’re passionate about education and committed to making sure that a student’s program of choice is the correct one to help in the advancement of their careers. When it comes to the Northeastern Law programs, the feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Advisors are able to adapt to the needs of a diverse, geographically disparate population of individuals. About 44% of the MLS applicants enrolled through AllCampus are located in Massachusetts. However, others live up and down the East Coast or on the other side of the country. Many are considering other types of professional programs, such as an MBA and Master of Human Resources, and discuss with their advisors what educational path will best serve their goals.
Meanwhile, 60% of LLM students now live in the U.S., but others are located around the world in countries including Germany, Turkey, Costa Rica, Mexico, Luxembourg, Uganda, Bahrain and Lebanon. That means applicants come from an enormous variety of backgrounds and may be available to communicate on very different schedules from one another. In addition, international students have specific needs for assembling their application materials, such as submitting results from an English language proficiency exam like TOEFL and collecting transcripts from schools they’ve attended outside the U.S. AllCampus enrollment specialists assist throughout these processes, taking the time to forge the individual connections that result in high retention rates and satisfied graduates.
Results
With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, many unexpected things happened that affected people’s educational plans for the 2020-2021 school year. According to the National Student Resource Clearinghouse, while U.S. undergraduate programs experienced significant drops in attendance, enrollment in master’s programs in Spring 2021 were 5.2% higher than one year before.
AllCampus was able to leverage the increased interest in graduate education by efficiently targeting marketing efforts and attentively helping students through the application pipeline, As a result, the first year of the partnership with Northeastern Law exceeded expectations with enrollments in the online MLS and LLM programs swiftly beginning to outpace projections:
% Increase in Total Enrollment
Program
Total
Master of Legal Studies (MLS)
15%
Master of Laws (LLM)
18%
With the programs hitting targets sooner than expected, AllCampus was ready to adapt and increase our investment. We have accordingly revised projections, scaling up enrollments for both programs. We now expect to reach full scale a year ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, our marketing team has gleaned important lessons from our early successes and plans to:
Focus paid efforts on search marketing while also reaching out through social media.
Consolidate our organic search authority and continue to build out high-quality content.
Test more international campaigns for the LLM, including a dedicated digital campaign in China.
Figure 3: Landing page layout for a dedicated digital campaign in China
AllCampus partnerships depend on careful attention to the key performance indicators, student feedback and broader conditions in the higher education landscape. Our quantitative insights gave direction to marketing and enrollment, setting up the online LLM and MLS programs for lasting success.
Conclusion
AllCampus forms lasting relationships with some of the world’s greatest universities by always putting data at the forefront of our work. At every stage of a program’s lifecycle, we strive to maximize value with a flexible approach informed by research, testing and analysis.
For Northeastern Law, we discovered what elements worked best in our strategies and adjusted our marketing investments as necessary to reach scale a year ahead of schedule. By getting to know our partners, we can dispatch compelling messages to the right audiences and prepare our advisors to act seamlessly as an extension of the university. We customized our services for an emerging market in law education, connecting well-qualified individuals around the world with unique educational opportunities through a combination of quantitative research, marketing knowhow and high-touch advising.
But there’s always another semester coming. We prepare to meet the challenges ahead—whether foreseen or otherwise—by constantly improving our strategies, providing our partners with the information and expert guidance they need to adapt to a new era in education and deliver the best possible experiences for all their students.
Want to learn more about what AllCampus can do for you? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in contact with you soon.
Introduction: A Great Partnership Demands a Really Spectacular Website
When AllCampus first paired with Pace University in summer 2018 to launch an online MS in Information Technology, it was the start of a beautiful partnership. After achieving consistent success with the MSIT program, Pace envisioned a central hub for all their online programs. AllCampus was the clear choice for making that hub — online.pace.edu — a reality.
As we continued to scale our online presence, we wanted the new portal to open the lines of communication with prospective students, convey a unified identity for our university and power long-term growth for our programs.
Shawn O’RileyAssociate Vice President of Professional Education and Special Programs at Pace
The enterprise site was an ambitious undertaking with some unique design and user experience obstacles along the way. Fortunately, AllCampus has the people, processes and technology to make an awesome-looking, high-performance online hub that fits seamlessly into a university’s brand. Here’s how:
The Challenge: An Enterprise Site Custom-Built for Higher Education
By 2020, AllCampus managed marketing and enrollment services for seven of Pace’s online graduate and undergraduate programs in fields ranging from business to literacy. The digital design team built an online presence for each of these programs, creating custom websites across four different subdomains. But complications emerged when AllCampus committed to manage all of Pace’s online offerings going forward.
“As we entered into this agreement we felt it wasn’t scalable to continue to launch individual programs on individual subdomains and approached the idea of a dedicated site for all online programs that AllCampus would manage,” said AllCampus Vice President of Creative Design Steven Robinson.
Making that one-stop portal for all the university’s online degrees and certificates would require addressing several key issues:
Design Challenges
Plan the structure and navigation for a highly scalable site, appropriate for both for the current set of online programs managed by AllCampus and the incoming waves of additional programs that would launch between 2019 and 2021.
Ensure the site could support programs that Pace would continue managing in-house by linking out to their respective web properties.
Efficiently route prospects to their program of choice, whether that meant staying on the AllCampus-managed site or visiting a web property managed by one of Pace’s departments.
Earn the stamp of approval for the design’s appearance, functionality and accessibility from a diverse range of stakeholders at the university including administrators, program directors, webmasters, developers, marketers and communications leaders.
Designing a Partnership’s Future
Collaboration and communication were critical from the start as AllCampus set out to create a highly user-friendly site that would welcome and guide prospective students as they researched the next step in their education. The design team met with stakeholders from more than 50 programs to ensure that the final result would meet the needs of everyone from faculty and program directors to Pace’s marketing and communications team. Those discussions informed the portal’s structure, appearance and language.
Figure 1: Mapping a structure for the new site.
AllCampus designers assembled a high-fidelity mockup to show how they would incorporate Pace’s style guidelines into the proposed site while previewing its navigation and structure.
“The mockup was an important component of the process to get buy-in from the different stakeholders from Pace,” said AllCampus Senior Digital Designer Noel Robinos. “It was also a great way to present design ideas and get pre-development feedback.”
That sneak peek went a long way toward ensuring that the portal would not just meet Pace’s functional needs, but become a compelling resource for prospective students looking for the next step in their education. The team garnered valuable responses to their work that led to revisions like incorporating more images that emphasize Pace’s New York location and adding icons to clearly indicate which programs are available on campus.
Obtaining the university’s go-ahead for the overall design at this early stage forged a productive relationship that would carry on throughout the rest of the development process. AllCampus maintained open lines of communication and stayed flexible in order to achieve a look and feel that would become a prominent expression of Pace’s online identity.
Figure 2: A detailed mockup offers a peek at what the website will ultimately look like and can generate great ideas.
But just making a site that looked great wasn’t good enough. The portal brought together extensive content for many different programs, targeting audiences at various points in their education and careers in a wide range of fields. AllCampus had to make it as easy as possible for prospects to find relevant information, while still indicating the full breadth of Pace’s online program offerings.
The design team and front-end developers at AllCampus teamed up to simplify site navigation by implementing:
A program finder that enables searches by the degree type, program type, school and number of required credits
A drill down search that narrows results from a general area of interest to program type and finally a focused list of relevant programs
Figure 3: Nuanced search features result in a website that’s user-friendly and engaging, even with a sprawling range of programs to explore.
Laying Out the Virtual Welcome Mat
AllCampus officially launched the enterprise site at online.pace.edu in March 2020, migrating content from all the online programs we managed and ensuring that we linked out to online programs still managed by Pace.
In turn, Pace redirected the properties still under their own management and implemented linking recommendations from our SEO specialists. Those links served to indicate that the new site was the central authority for online Pace programs, which is highly valuable for helping the page appear high on the search engine result pages for multiple keywords.
One of the biggest long-term benefits from having the enterprise site is offering a hub of information for external sites to link back to. These links signal to Google that the website is a respected authority, which improves its position in search rankings. In turn, that higher ranking leads to even more site visitors and greater opportunities for conversions.
Figure 4: In both the desktop and mobile experiences, the search features tend to draw the most attention from visitors.
There’s nothing AllCampus designers love more than testing their work and gathering data, so they were soon able to see their strategies paying off. Heatmaps tracked the areas that visitors tended to click or tap most often, demonstrating that highly visible and reliable search features kept them on track toward the pages for programs. Prospective student are more likely to click on the search fields than other areas of the portal, with those interactions potentially deepening and extending their engagement with the content:
The drill down search feature on the homepage received more than 67% of the clicks from desktop users and more than 82% of clicks from visitors on mobile devices.
On the program finder page, the search filter section got the most attention from users with more than 40% of clicks on desktop and about 25.5% of mobile clicks.
Figure 5: The heatmap for the program finder viewed on a desktop shows users drawn to the search filter.
The People Love online.pace.edu, But Does Google?
The AllCampus approach always puts people first, so we make our creative decisions with user experience at the top of our priority list. However, unless Google’s algorithms like our work, those users won’t be able to find it in the first place.
By ensuring that one site would rank prominently in search results as the go-to authority for all online education at Pace University, we created new opportunities to engage prospective students. That means more chances to hit our conversion goals by encouraging site visitors to take the next, crucial step of filling out a form and requesting more information.
The portal ranks highly in search results for the broad, branded keyword searches that are most likely to result in conversions. When we had individual program sites, our strategies for branded keywords had to be narrowly directed at a specific field (e.g. “pace msit,” “pace security masters”).
As we moved content to online.pace.edu, we preserved the high rankings for those branded concentration searches, but could also now rank for broader keywords. Developing these links on related sites, all pointing to online.pace.edu, improved rankings for highly relevant phrases while the portal’s own authority spread “link equity” to other Pace program pages, enhancing their rankings as well:
“pace university online” brings an average of 200 searches per month
“pace graduate masters” and “pace online masters” each attract an average of 150 monthly searches
The standalone MSIT page had ranked around #12 for “online MSIT,” but exercising the portal’s authority and redirecting traffic from the the older site resulted in a #3 ranking for this vital keyword by February 2021
Consolidating four properties into one allows us to expand our backlink profile and increase link equity across online.pace.edu, which leads to increased rankings.
Matt BoehlerDirector of SEO
When programs are spread out among several individual microsites, they’re only likely to get backlinks from websites that are directly related to a specific area of study. But, with a huge assortment of disciplines and programs all in one place, we’re able to capture a much greater breadth of keywords without sacrificing how well we rank for narrower searches. By creating the online.pace.edu site, we’ve built a domain that will amplify the reach of all of Pace’s online programs, resulting in greater search authority for the whole array of sites branching off from the pace.edu root directory.
Conclusion: Going Big is Just the Beginning
A robust, centralized portal is just the first step to attract a broader range of online students while deepening the relationship between AllCampus and Pace University. We now have the infrastructure in place that will allow our designers, marketing and enrollment teams to launch new programs in areas like data science and cybersecurity more efficiently. Plus, we can count on the portal site’s authority to draw web traffic, informing a growing audience about all the degrees and certificates they have to choose from. Our SEO specialists will continue to find opportunities to build additional links from high-quality sources.
“Serving Pace students is a team effort, and AllCampus really stepped up by creating an enterprise site that encompasses our full range of online graduate and undergraduate offerings,” said O’Riley.
As a university, Pace prides itself on teaching students practical concepts and skills that advance their careers. With online.pace.edu up and running, we can connect more prospective students with the programs that will make a difference in their lives. And it all starts with web design that draws visitors in and helps them find exactly the information that they need.
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