Pearson Online Platform and University of Leeds Partnership

Overview:

Working with the Group since 2009 across all their portfolio and associated marketing disciplines. Initially we helped launch Pearson College London (primarily a business school), we then progressed to help advertise and market Escape Studios, Higher Nationals, BTEC, International Programmes and Online Programmes and Distance Learning. This case study will focus on Pearson OLP (Online Programmes) to show how insight drives progression.

Pearson OLP and University of Leeds Partnership for MSc Engineering Management

Pearson Education Online Programme Management is as an online service for key University partners in the UK. We were tasked with launching an online version of a successful campus-based programme in partnership with University of Leeds – their MSC Engineering Management – regarded as ‘the engineers’ MBA.

We started by undertaking research to inform strategic methodology as follows:

1. Programme analysis:
   • Value proposition
   • USP’s
   • Curriculum
   • Progression routes
2. Market analysis:
   • Industry
   • Audience
   • Competition
3. Market demand
4. Barriers and drivers
5. Decision paths
6. Customer journeys
7. Channels for engagement
8. Messaging
9. Destinations
10. Conversion

Assessing market demand

We utilised several approaches to understand market demand, these included:

1. British Council data – to review the global macro-economic trends for engineering on a country by country basis
2. Employment Vacancy and Recruitment data – to assess the number of vacant positions in engineering globally and looking for country by country trends
3. Search Volume Analysis – to see who is looking
4. Key Word Research – into what people are looking for and to assess affinity categories
5. Education Portals – evaluation of demand within key website study portals
6. Social Media Listening – to assess volume of commentary and share of voice

Targeting and segmentation

Research enabled development of primary, secondary and tertiary country market strategies and then to model the size of the audience universe and potential market demand. We then tailored approaches and tiered investment across media channels accordingly e.g.:

1. Primary markets – e.g. USA, UAE, UK, China, Singapore and Malaysia
   • Criteria – high audience demand, strong market conditions and high affinity for online learning
   • Media repertoire – search, social, display and native
2. Secondary markets – e.g. India, North Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
   • Criteria – high audience demand and strong market conditions
   • Media repertoire – search and social
3. Tertiary markets – e.g. Germany, Italy, Ireland, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya
   • Criteria – moderate demand, but trends increasing
   • Media repertoire – search

Our international experience ensured we didn’t waste money on poor performing markets e.g. India can look great, driving significant engagement and even applications BUT often few convert. This wastes money and saps resource for admissions to chase conversion. It was crucial that reporting was two-way and that we had an excellent relationship with sales and admission to keep focussed on conversion metrics.

Overview of media approach

Rationale for media campaign execution

To ensure that we deployed the appropriate weight of activity in high-performing markets we validated the assumptions made in our marketing plan and quantified the size of opportunity thus guaranteeing the appropriate volume of media impacts.

We ran an initial validation phase prior to the formal launch campaign. Firstly, to understand current demand in the key markets, and then to further identify any secondary and tertiary markets that might demand our attention. We proposed promoting the programme on one of the major programme aggregation sites. This solution offers both guaranteed traffic volumes (to ensure a robust sample for validation) as well as qualified lead guarantees (to ensure we’re serving business objectives from the outset). The institution and programme listing were open to all global markets so that we could discern levels of interest by market, to inform which we support with robust awareness – and consideration-building activity, and at what weight. Activity included:

• Institution Profile and Programme Listing on internationalgraduate.net for three months – 5,000 guaranteed programme views per month (fuelled by uncapped display assets served across the platform)

• 10,000 solus emails delivered weekly to the most recent and relevant enquirers on the platform

• Sponsorship of the Engineering Guide – guaranteed minimum 1,000 course visits per month

• Co-sponsorship of the Study in the UK Guide – guaranteed minimum 1,000 course visits per month

• Uncapped social media postings across ISAS Online social media network (the social platforms of the International Student Admissions Service)

All this activity drove call enquiries to the International Student Admissions Service (ISAS), where a highly qualified team of 3 dedicated call centre agents (1 Researcher, 1 Admissions Officer and 1 Senior Admissions Officer) screened all prospects to assess whether they meet the programme’s specific qualifying criteria. Those that did were passed over to Pearson as ‘hot’ qualified leads. In addition to this, we also developed an agreement with ISAS to capture insight from their agents’ engagement with in-market prospects to inform campaign focus and messaging.

The insight we generated over the initial 3-4-week validation stage helped us to refine targeting in our first channel of engagement for launch: Programmatic Display. This served as our initial awareness channel in our formal launch campaign – as well as a critical channel for evolving market and prospect insight generation. For assets we created a message matrix informed by what we understood to be the prevailing prospect barriers and motivations to study in each target market.

China specific strategy – based on our knowledge of the Chinese market, our media strategy recommendations were, once again, to focus on digital channels, with a special focus on platforms organised around the popular instant messaging and social networks, such as LinkedIn, Weibo and WeChat. We also knew that we had to tier targeting to specific cities based on demographic profiling, affiliated subjects and careers, focus on mobile first and deliver messaging that persuades a sceptical on-line learning audience that this is a high-quality viable option for career development.

Once live, our digital operations team monitored performance daily with a view of directing focus to those markets, audiences, platforms, formats and messages that were driving highest conversion rates. We also used insight from our programmatic display activity to put focus on our next (consideration-building) phase of engagement: Social content deployment. The geo- and demographic targeting of this activity, and weight of activity by platform was informed by insight from the validation workstream as well as engagement with the programmatic display assets. Content was focused on addressing the study barriers and motivations highlighted by that validation workstream.

Engagement with this content provided insight into who and where we focused more direct engagement, via email marketing and LinkedIn InMail deployment. Email bursts were deployed tactically, where we identified strong pulses of engagement with our display and social assets. These direct communications served as our key harvest channel, inviting participation from markets and prospects that are clearly most engaged.

Our key campaign was then supported by:

• A robust programme-specific Search campaign, activated from the initial validation phase, to ensure that post-research interest was captured. Our keyword strategy, and ad text, was generated in close alignment with Leeds’s own Search team to mitigate against competitive bidding

• YouTube pre-roll videos, were served to those that had actively searched for the specific course type in each key market, to ensure hyper-relevance

• An incremental presence on other programme aggregator sites, cherry-picked for their strong attraction of prospects in the key primary and secondary markets we identified.

• Programmatic display remarketing, to re-engage with those that visited the programme landing pages but not converted. We created a strong suite of remarketing assets that allowed us to reconnect with messages that reflected the point at which users left their discrete journey, delivering ‘new news’ to draw them back.

As you can see from above, the campaign approach was intuitive and wholly informed by real-world prospect engagement. Our focus was on serving prospects messaging and content that resonated with them, so we maintained a daily view of who and where core prospects are (in terms of geography and channel) and with which messages they were engaging.

Results

In 4 months, we met an incredibly challenging lead target and delivered just over 1,000 leads. They delivered against key lead criteria and provided an ample pool for the first cohort of the online MSc Engineering Management.

Critically our insights gathered through the campaign have helped inform the subsequent phases of development of the campaign as Pearson aim for 3 cohorts a year!

Country Insights

Channel Insights