Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, stands among America’s highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities. The oldest, largest, and top-ranked public university in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, you’ll find us at our main locations in three New Jersey cities, and our footprint can be seen around the region. We’re an academic, health, and research powerhouse and a university of opportunity.
Rutgers School of Engineering
Company Bio
Overview
- Industry: Education
- Location: Piscataway, NJ
- Size: 9,930 active students
Awards & Mentions
- 2021 MarCom Gold Awards
Overview
The Ask
Rutgers University approached us with an ask to increase applications and enrollments, specifically for their highly accredited School of Engineering (SOE). The objective was to reach accepted applicants with messaging that encouraged them to enroll in Rutgers School of Engineering.
The Challenge
The challenge that Rutgers SOE was facing prior to the launch of this TikTok campaign was getting their accepted students to follow through with enrollment.
Why it Worked
The Approach
ESM utilized professionally-produced creative that had the look and feel of authentic, user generated content. We activated this campaign with 1-to-1 targeting capabilities to capture these Gen-Z users in real time as they interacted with the TikTok social platform.
The Solution
Due to the nature of the ad format, we activated the ads on TikTok, a newly emerged social platform that leans heavily towards the college age demographic of our target audience. The campaign audience was built by converting encrypted first party data into a format compatible for the TikTok app, and then overlapping geographic data to capture potential students, specifically from New Jersey.
Results
Campaign Results
The ads were liked by over 8,000 users, which helped further boost enrollments, as well as applications for the following semester, in the midst of a global pandemic. This campaign also provided social proof to rising sophomores and juniors who have not yet started their college selection process. Additionally, the campaign has a click rate of over 1.2% which yielded over 10,000 engaged students we were able to continually market to throughout the remainder of the enrollment period.
In spite of the challenging environment, applications to the program remained strong and exceeded Rutgers goals.
10.5
Clicks
8,408
Likes
1.22%
CTR
249
Shares