Case Study: Career Education and Training - ROI

Case Study: Career Education and Training - ROI

 

Problem
This leading career education provider has multiple locations and offers multiple degrees via both on-campus and online programs. Management wished to assess the relative effectiveness of various marketing activities in achieving its lead and enrollment goals. Issues to be addressed included:

• What is the relationship between overall marketing communications spending and the achievement of student lead and enrollment goals?
• How does each of the major components of the marketing communications budget impact leads and enrollments?
• What are the ranges of investment levels for each media that are required to effectively impact lead and enrollment goals?
• How do external factors (e.g. economic indicators, unemployment rates, Consumer Confidence, etc.) impact the effectiveness of spending levels and media mix?

Approach
Our ROMI™ (Return On Marketing Investment) suite of modeling tools was utilized to determine which activities were working and which were not. ROMI not only analyzed the direct impact of specific spending but also the interaction of multiple activities over 3 years. As importantly, this tool evaluated the impact of external (non-marketing) factors (e.g. unemployment, consumer spending, etc.) on the effectiveness of those activities. This tool utilized multiple modeling techniques including Genetic Modeling, Graphical and Regression Modeling and Structural Equation Modeling to create a broad picture in the generation of prospects and student enrollments.

 

Results
The analysis was used to improve the allocation of marketing spending designed to meet lead and enrollment goals. The results revealed which external variables as well as marketing spending played a significant role in business results. Certain marketing spending areas were particularly effective in generating leads and as much spending as possible could be moved in that direction without diminishing the rate of return.

 

Additionally, marketing activities in other channels were crucial to converting leads to enrolls. Finally, it was discovered that spending in several other channels was not adding anything to the lead/enroll results and needed to be discontinued.