Transforming Enrollment with Smarter Digital Marketing

The challenge was to find and focus on the right students in a market where U.S. college enrollment had fallen by 1.9 million from 2012 to 2022, nearly 10%, while an enrollment cliff was looming from 2025 to 2030. Mizzou needed to attract more and better qualified applicants on a flat budget as digital performance stalled, and its media spend was spread evenly across nearby states without tailored messaging, creative, or narrative. Lacking a clear plan for where and how to concentrate efforts for maximum impact, the work required sharpening strategy by market, aligning storytelling to audience needs, and turning stagnation into momentum.

We audited Mizzou’s acquisition programs, identified untapped segmentation, and built a data-powered student recruitment model. Using Slate CRM, marketing performance metrics, third-party census data, and student survey insights, our Data & Analytics team developed a proprietary model to score right-fit prospects and pinpoint markets across the country. Guided by four focus questions: who are the right-fit applicants, where to find better-qualified students, how to reach them efficiently, and what the data revealed about investment, we reallocated media to the highest-potential locations, refined creative and placements by audience, and launched a targeted national campaign without increasing the budget. We also delivered modular recommendations that individual colleges, specific academic programs, and priority regions could customize to sustain results.

By eliminating low-yield locations and channels and reallocating spend to right-fit personas, Mizzou lifted every key KPI in year one: ad engagements rose 47%, applications generated increased 69%, and total enrollments grew 36%, while total ad spend decreased 8% year over year; applicants sourced through our campaigns were also 50% more likely to enroll than applicants from other sources.