Case Study 11 · EdTech · Student Acquisition
Performance marketing that generated 15,000+ student applications at 20% better ROI
The brief
Universities are not used to thinking like performance marketers. But when the product is a vocational skill programme with limited public awareness competing against traditional degree programmes, you have no choice.
I ran campaigns that generated 15,000+ student applications, nurtured 70,000+ leads, and improved ROI by 20% for TISS, one of India's most respected institutions.
At a glance
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Academic and vocational programmes across India. Challenge: vocational programmes had high value but low public awareness. Database: 40,000+ leads, under-segmented. Manual reporting. National scale campaign execution.
The challenge
Students and parents understand an MBA or a BCom. They don't always understand a professional development programme in social work or skill education, even when the career outcomes are strong.
Awareness gap
Many programmes had genuine value but almost no public recognition outside their niche. Generic advertising wasn't going to work, this required audience-specific messaging and precise targeting.
Under-segmented database
40,000+ contacts but mass email blasts weren't converting. Regional differences, programme preferences, and student stage weren't being accounted for. Same message to everyone = no message to anyone.
No real-time visibility
Reporting was manual, slow, and incomplete. Leadership couldn't see what was working. Campaign decisions were made a week late, after the opportunity had passed.
The solution
Audience segmentation before campaign planning.
Researched student behaviour, geographic demand patterns, competitor positioning, and programme-specific value propositions. Different programmes needed different messages for different audiences, and the targeting was built around those differences.
Improved direct marketing across 40,000+ student database.
Managed email and SMS campaigns with better segmentation, personalised messaging, and optimised send timing. Engagement rates improved significantly across programmes.
Built Power BI and Excel dashboards for real-time reporting.
Application numbers, engagement rates, conversion trends, and CAC tracked in real time. Leadership could see what was working and make decisions without waiting for a weekly manual report.
Cross-functional coordination across content, design, and ops.
Campaign execution coordinated and on schedule across teams. Also supported the Maha Kumbh Mela project during this period, adding large-scale stakeholder coordination under strict timelines.
Results
Key takeaways
01
Vocational and non-traditional programmes need more contextual marketing than degree programmes. The audience doesn't have a reference point, so you have to build one for them.
02
Segmentation inside a large database is where the conversion improvement lives. The same message to everyone is the same as no message to anyone.
03
Dashboards that leadership actually read change the quality of decisions. If the data is hard to access, it doesn't get used, and campaigns keep making the same mistakes.
Education marketing
that converts?
Applications are the metric. Everything else is vanity.
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