An effective clearing paid media campaign for the University of East London

The Project

MintTwist were asked to help the University of East London execute an effective clearing campaign to reach their undergraduate student recruitment targets.

Our effective strategy

We developed a detailed campaign plan using a range of conversion and awareness platforms. Media spend was split between search (Google and Bing), display, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Spotify and Pinterest.

Working collaboratively with the University, we split our budget by priority regions dependent on student application numbers and previous campaign results from each location.

We created individual search campaigns for each school, and the allocated budget took into account the varying priorities of each school’s recruitment. A branded search campaign was created alongside it to capture users actively searching for UEL, whilst ensuring that they also appeared for broader clearing terms to reach those searching more generally.

Search activity was complemented by a paid social campaign using highly engaging video content to reach the target audience, raise awareness of UEL to prospective applicants, and encourage them to apply.

Ongoing Optimisation

Throughout the campaign duration we reallocated budgets away from budgets that had reached their student recruitment targets to campaigns that needed a further push. We regularly adjusted audience targeting and channel budgets based on channel performance. Working closely with the University’s creative team, we implemented regular creative refreshes to reduce ad fatigue and improve on performance.

The campaign’s successes

As well as reaching the core target audience, our analysis showed an increase in search intent from mature students and parents researching universities on behalf of their children.

As such the age targeting across all channels was not restricted to ensure that we reached this wider audience. The campaigns ran for over three months to cover pre-clearing, clearing day itself and post-clearing. This was to capture and drive early awareness and interest and applications on the day.

And so...

Because of the positive results from the clearing campaign and other domestic and international recruitment campaigns, the University of East London decided to continue to work with us after a rigorous tender process. We have taken the learnings from the original clearing campaign and used these within our current recruitment campaigns.