Enrollment Campaign: MBA

If you’re going to fill seats, you have to fill your funnel. We developed an integrated marketing strategy where brand awareness led to Boston College’s part-time MBA program exceeding its enrollment goals. This is how we did it.

BC’s Carroll School of Management contacted CCA at a time when demand for an MBA in the heavily competitive Boston higher education market had been in a downturn for almost a decade.

They came to us with the need to strengthen their part-time MBA enrollment—starting with an immediate (6-week) impact. Their specific ask? Run a radio campaign for this immediate purpose. But we had other ideas.

In addition to being very familiar with the Boston media market and knowing what it takes to drive graduate enrollments, we’re also always wary of single-vehicle media buys. So we suggested a different route for their immediate needs and tight budget.

Using their CRM lists—in addition to GRE and GMAC lists—we produced a number of targeted emails encouraging last-minute applications and deployed paid search. It worked, fast.

We began the next phase of work by developing a messaging platform and tagline for the MBA program, “Become Iconic.” These components leveraged the classic elements of the BC MBA and the power of the larger, globally respected BC brand, which we knew would be important in strengthening awareness.

With the messaging in place, we set out to produce content. On BC’s behalf, we developed print collateral, shot photography and B-roll on campus, designed and managed a BC MBA admissions blog, created digital ebooks and landing pages, and interviewed a handful of students and faculty for short videos that spoke to the program’s unique strengths and curriculum.

At the same time, we developed a comprehensive media campaign in the Boston market that included outdoor and digital tactics.

To nurture inquirers, applicants, half-apps, and admits, we produced a number of segmented email nurture streams, useful ebooks, and informative landing and thank you pages that continued to move them down the funnel. Each asset was written for a specific persona—like military veterans or working women.