Communicating about a communications degree

For several years, it’s been our job to help our client at the U of M’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications (HSJMC) find prospective students for their M.A. in Strategic Communications program, and this year was no different.

Well, actually, it was.

When the economy is up and unemployment is low, people with undergrad degrees are more likely to put off continuation of their education. So, in addition to being highly visible on Google when prospective students are actively searching for programs to fit their needs, we looked for ways to connect with those who may have postponed their search. And we had some successes.

First, we developed a prospecting email campaign. It included three deployments to a highly targeted list of prospects and included ad retargeting on Facebook and Instagram. Based on final analysis of the campaign, four new students have been attributed to this effort. We also ran a social media awareness campaign on Facebook targeting prospects that resulted in six serious inquiries.

As for the ongoing SEM campaign, even with a reduction in impression shares due to increased competition for similar degrees with other schools, we were able to attribute almost 60% (68 out of 118) of their serious leads to our Google ad efforts.

At first glance, these numbers may seem small. But this is a highly specialized degree that runs on a cohort model and class sizes are typically capped at 20, so every lead is critical and highly nurtured. As a result, we are happy to report that another class has been filled for the 2019/2020 school year.