€1.6 million
revenue

3 million
reach

13 million
impressions 

Winner
- 2020 Best Marketing Automation in Content Marketing - Content Marketing Institute Awards.

- 2020 Best Annual Always-On Content Strategy, Bronze, Content Marketing Association Awards (Global)

- 2018 Best Content Creation for Digital Media with the Eir Spiders - Spider Awards.

Objective
To drive postgraduate applications to the University of Limerick; increase awareness of UL’s USPs for its postgraduate offering; reach, engage and convert audience segments; build attendance at UL PG events; and maximise the opportunity for UL to get front of mind ahead of competitor universities.

Solution
While it has excellent facilities and is one of the top universities in Ireland, UL faced stiff challenges in its postgraduate drive: its website was difficult to navigate, its analytics hadn’t been set up, it didn’t use email marketing, and its faculties were siloed.

UL needed to unify its channels to compete, with a custom-built postgraduate hub and pivot to HubSpot for an integrated inbound marketing campaign including PPC, video, social, content assets and blogs, display, and email marketing across bespoke workflows.

Tactics included:

• A custom postgraduate hub built in HubSpot to house the relevant student stories, ebooks, assets, and blogs.
• Detailed email workflows to nurture prospective students and an integrated inbound strategy.
• On-campus awareness including campaign videos, digital screens, events and student ambassadors around the college.
• Google PPC, retargeting, display banners and ads on relevant third-party news sites.

Key to the success of the campaign was the emphasis on the audience of one: with so many workflows and smart content, UL could determine the information that mattered to prospective students and market accordingly, including everything from potential course options to faculties and where they lived.

Results

• 3 million reach.
• 13 million impressions.
• 100,000 video views.
• 5% engagement rate across social.
• Over 4,000 leads driven from the downloads: including individual faculty prospectuses, overall prospectus, the no-regrets guide.
• The results showed an increase of 25% above target for the year, with the campaign driving €1.6 million in revenue.

Above all else, the postgraduate application process was simplified; the journey was made clear; and inbound is set to revolutionise how UL attracts and converts students well into the future.

Awards
The campaign was very well received, scooping the award for Best in Content Creation for Digital Media at the prestigious Eir Spiders in 2018.

It was a finalist for the 2019 Best Content Marketing Program in Education in the Content Marketing Institute awards.