Data-Backed Social Media Strategy Boosts Enrollment for College’s Professional Development Courses

CHALLENGE

Based in Livonia, Michigan, Schoolcraft College is a public college that has over 130 different academic majors and programs. The college enrolls more than 30,000 students each year in both credit programs and Personal and Professional Learning (PPL) courses.

Schoolcraft was looking to grow its enrollment in professional development, career advancement and certificate programs, including upskilling courses for add-on skills and certifications, as well as reskilling courses for individuals who are looking for a career change.

SOLUTION

Phoenix Innovate (PI) had already been successful in improving enrollment by reimagining the college’s magazine-style PPL catalog. In a follow-up solution for the college, we proposed ways to increase enrollment in their professional development courses, which included our recommendation for a social media campaign.

Building upon the success of the PPL catalog, we used insights we had gleaned from this process and combined them with our strategic digital marketing techniques to create an omnichannel campaign that helped the college meet its goals of increasing enrollment.

Through communication with the PPL team and by utilizing a variety of data resources, we developed a deep understanding of target audiences that we believed would be interested in continuing education classes at Schoolcraft. We then created a series of social media posts that leveraged the power of LinkedIn and Facebook to drive viewers to the course landing page and other digital assets.

RESULTS

Through our data-driven, transformative and sustainable approach to higher education marketing, the client experienced the following results: 

• Many of the classes that were promoted through social media achieved enrollment rates that were much higher than they were in the previous year, and 13 percent of the people who enrolled that semester had not registered for a class in the previous 36 months.
• Revenue related to the courses we promoted increased by 43.6 percent from the previous period.
• Facebook posts generated 1,161 unique link clicks.
• On LinkedIn, the click-through rate was 1.68 percent, which is above the national average for all industries (0.56 percent).
• The cost-per-click for advertisements on LinkedIn was less than 20 percent of the national average.
• The college’s online flipbook version of the catalog had an 82.53 percent increase in clicks and a 38.54 percent increase in impressions.