Georgia Southern University

This year, the admissions team at Georgia Southern University’s College of Arts and Humanities set themselves a goal — take on the national enrollment crisis and increase undergraduate recruitment by 10% year-on-year.

Arts and humanities admissions teams around the country have been wrestling with enrollment challenges for over a decade, but the current climate has given rise to a new set of obstacles. A potent blend of factors define the post-Covid higher ed market — low unemployment levels, increasing cost of living, declining numbers of college-age students and worsening cultural attitudes towards the value of humanities degrees. Colleges are modernizing their marketing and recruitment strategies in order to outmaneuver these challenges.

In 2023, GSU College of Arts and Humanities partnered with Hybrid Media to do just that.

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Bringing innovation to recruitment campaigns

A top 10 ‘Best Hidden Gem Public University’ (U.S. News), with outstanding Division I athletics and a large, vibrant student community, GSU has a strong value proposition. However the College of Arts and Humanities needed to better convey their unique offering to the right people, connecting with eligible prospects in more meaningful ways. With Hybrid’s specialist technology and data-driven strategy, GSU were able to bring genuine innovation to their marketing activity, driving outstanding brand cut-through and return-on-investment.

Hybrid’s strategy focused on the following key pillars:

Effective audience mapping
Informed channel selection
Compelling, insight-led creative
Personalized remarketing

Effective audience mapping

With a shrinking prospect pool, colleges need to invest in inventive ways to increase market share. Through proprietary audience mapping tools, Hybrid employed predictive modeling to identify GSU’s high-yield audiences or ‘missed potential’. In conjunction with IPEDS, National Student Clearinghouse, US News and GSU CRM data, these tools produced accurate, high-return geo-targeting strategies for the College of Arts and Humanities.

Informed channel selection

With more universities upping their advertising spend and volume to compete for students, it’s vital every placement is intelligent and ROI-driven. Hybrid’s channel forecasting, testing and third party data analysis determined the most effective channels for different GSU demographics at particular moments in the recruitment cycle.

Compelling, insight-led creative

In a saturated market-place, campaign creative needs to be dynamic, attention-grabbing and in touch with audience drivers. Our creatives developed content that communicated GSU’s message in more powerful ways. Our research showed that GSU humanities prospects were concerned about the ‘career utility’ of a degree — we rolled out design, video and messaging that showcased how GSU enables students to ‘harness’ their passion and utilize their creativity in fulfilling careers.

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Personalized remarketing

Personalized remarketing turns effective awareness campaigns into effective enrollment campaigns. Through data-led attribution modeling, UTM tagging and CRM integration we were able to remarket to prospects in relevant, personalized ways, guiding them from their first interaction through the recruitment funnel.

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Impact

Hybrid Media delivered outstanding levels of engagement and enrollment for Georgia Southern University College of Arts and Humanities, enabling them to outmaneuver regional enrollment challenges and exceed their marketing goals. Hybrid is continuing to work with Georgia Southern University to make them a market leader, using innovative digital marketing to expand their reach and drive success on a regional, national and international scale.

+20%

Enrollment YOY

+30%

Applications YOY

+8%

Engagement rate YOY

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