The University of Cumbria

  • Challenge: Drive quality traffic to the website throughout key periods in recruitment cycle to generate applications & open day bookings at below benchmark CPA.

    Approach: I was solely responsible for the set up & delivery of all paid social campaigns, including remarketing, & overseeing the paid search activity.

    Results: Campaigns regularly drove high volumes of engaged traffic to the website, achieving channel benchmark CTRs, CPCs & CPAs at the time of running.

  • Challenge: Marketing department required a detailed & easily digestible understanding of web performance & effectiveness of traffic from various campaigns & sources.

    Approach 1: Developed an inaugural suite of Google Data Studio reporting dashboards, collating all key performance metrics, with context regarding KPIs & recommendations for future activity.

    Approach 2: Further in-depth analysis was undertaken through tools such as Hotjar & Google Tag Manager to understand user behaviour & intent, both on single pages & as full user journeys.

    Results: Dashboards were regularly used & referred to for a number of wider reports & continued to be developed in line with new priorities. Intent analysis informed both short-term page developments & long-term design & layout.

  • Challenge: Improve visibility for key course terms in local search, covering primary catchment area for new students.

    Approach: Utilised organic performance data in Google Search Console to identify opportunities based on priority & competitiveness, with site content audited & updated accordingly, supported by usability checks & further fixes resulting from SEO tools.

    Results: Within four months, many of the University pages moved onto the first page of Google for related search results, & previous top results either maintained position or saw minor improvement. Some paid search spend was also scaled back as a result of this.

  • Challenge: Improve on-site conversion rate for open day bookings.

    Approach: Undertook analysis of relevant data capture points across the website to first of all identify a conversion rate benchmark & then tested various styles & structures with the forms such as positioning & data field across multiple pages.

    Results: Through implementation of winning versions, the conversion rate across the various booking pages saw increases ranging from 0.5% - 2.5%.

  • Challenge: Produce new content to fit with overall omni-channel content strategy.

    Approach: Arranged & filmed interviews with academics, current students & alumni, which were then edited into a range of formats & incorporating into various marketing collateral, including digital campaigns, email, social media & on the website.

    Results: Uplift in video views across the website, as well as in digital campaigns which enabled the creation of multiple remarketing audiences. Short shout-out clips by academics for various cohorts were also positively received on social media during graduations.

  • Challenge: Refresh marketing messages to show thorough understanding of differing student needs.

    Approach: Assisted with the development of student personas for all faculties through in-depth campaign analysis & collaboration with academics & marketing peers.

    Results: Five distinct personas were created to reflect all types of prospective students, covering aspirations, motivations & backgrounds. It was subsequently calculated what percentage of each persona made up each academic faculty, so marketing messages were tailored accordingly.