Gettysburg College Case Study

Gettysburg, a long-time partner of Carnegie, knew that to be competitive in their marketplace, they needed to better understand their market and how best to communicate the value of a Gettysburg education. Gettysburg’s enrollment and marketing leadership came to Carnegie with a new strategic plan and some new ideas about how they might connect with prospective students. Their goal was to test the effectiveness of their plan in the market, ensuring they were not only exploring new avenues for connection but also effectively conveying the unique experience that Gettysburg offers its students.

Together, Carnegie and Gettysburg rolled out a custom research project comparing Gettysburg's position amongst its competitors. This project provided invaluable insights into the themes and messages that would not only attract students but also distinguish Gettysburg from the competition. With these findings, Gettysburg launched a new messaging campaign in the fall of 2022.

To broaden its reach and get their new messaging to critical audiences, Gettysburg expanded its paid digital strategy to include a blend of SEO, PPC, IP Targeting, and social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and OTT into its marketing mix. The implementation of GA4 and Carnegie Clarity played a critical role in this phase, ensuring optimal investment returns through precise measurement, attribution, and enhanced on-site personalization. This holistic digital strategy paid off, with a remarkable 86% increase in new site visitors, 69% of which were directly attributed to Carnegie-Gettysburg campaigns.

A key component of Gettysburg and Carnegie's multi-layered marketing + enrollment strategy was the focus on inquiry acquisition through CollegeXpress, Carnegie's student database and lead generation platform. This initiative proved successful, with 10% of admitted students, and 15% of Fall 2023 net deposits being sourced through CollegeXpress.

Further integrating their strategy, Carnegie leveraged Gettysburg's Slate instance to launch Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Student Search communications. Carnegie's Slate team designed Slate communications campaigns in the client’s instance, giving Gettysburg real-time insights into campaign performance and rich behavioral data about their potential incoming class. Together Gettysburg and Carnegie used these real-time insights to optimize campaigns toward engagement, and to align campaigns with new priorities as they emerged.

Gettysburg celebrated increased engagement and conversions in the awareness, inquiry, and applicant stages of the student journey, thanks to their data-driven mind-set and their partnership with Carnegie. They are also looking forward to rolling out more data-driven decision making in 2024 with new insights from brand new Admitted Student Research!