Objective

Drive attendance for in-person info sessions for Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in Dallas, TX, and Seattle, WA, with relatively small budgets.

Action

To reach the most relevant prospects, we leveraged HGSE’s past applicant and enrollment data to build lookalike audiences on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

We ran paid social campaigns to this lookalike audience, geo-targeted to Dallas and Seattle. All paid social clicks went to a landing page with an event RSVP and automated tracking tied to their Slate CRM. Campaign messaging was crafted in partnership with the HGSE marketing team to ensure it reinforced the overall brand. 

Outcome

The campaigns generated over 200 RSVPs at an all-in cost per conversion of $27.50, and in-person attendance doubled compared to the previous year. Because of advanced data tracking, we were able to identify which attendees came from which channel. These attendees then applied at a 5% rate, driving a cost per application of $550.

This campaign was run prior to a larger lead generation effort that started the following spring. We also added 10 additional events in the fall of 2019 with similar results.