Charles Darwin University

Successfully remarketing and gaining industry insights with the latest Ad technology

Charles Darwin University (CDU) is one of the countries longest service educational establishments and, as the main university for the Northern Territory, it has always found competing for both domestic and international student challenging, not for the quality of it’s product, but driven by its location.

We started working together a number of years ago and since that time have helped the business increase its student intake through careful and considered strategic design of communications and acquisition practises across a range of digital channels and for all aspects of the university.

In the same way that we always want to understand what we are designing for, regardless of if the challenge will resolve into a product or a practise, it was no different with CDU.

We started by visiting the campus to meet the stakeholders and students to understand and gather information. In order to know how to attract potential candidates we needed a deep understanding of how the current student body connected and valued their time at the university. We ran a number context sessions which gave us a better understanding of the people and systems we’d need to involve, incorporate and co-ordinate to ensure we created an effective start to driving digital acquisition.

"The team is tireless in chasing down every last bit of data to drive the best results for us. Deepend has not only helped us drive better outcomes in all of our acquisition activity, but they’ve also helped us grow in our understanding of this space as a whole."

John Stewart - Marketing Director

We then dove into the data and through our proven CI framework we were able to surface the right insights quickly that helped build out the media and creative strategies we’d follow to quickly get to market and test and learn. With a complicated digital ecosystem comprised of over 20 different websites, effectively leveraging and channelling the right interest to the right channel and re-marketing was the net result of our strategic design process.

Technology

For CDU, we predominantly embrace Google’s AdTech stack utilising it’s 360 suite across the full range of products.

Understanding the right tech and its role in driving acquisition is part of the holistic view we provide CDU. Understanding attribution across channels and platforms informs our strategies on a quarterly basis.

Dashboards are only worth the value they generate. For CDU a single place to track and report on all acquisition made perfect sense given their location and number of stakeholders. We are transparent and clear on the actions we take and the client sees this daily.

We constantly evaluate new channels to help drive outcomes and have incorporated new video strategies that are helping connect Brand and Acquisition models together to ensure every dollar spent, send people in the right direction.

Data

The successful selection of channels and strategies is just the beginning. We tend to think of acquisition strategies as being the starting point. But once they’re in market, it’s a balancing act to optimise what the market actually desires i.e. working out what to stop, start or continue.

Results

10% compounded, annual growth in intake attributed

We have driven 10% annually compounded growth for CDU over four term periods which as increased their student intake over 6x the investment with Deepend.

14% increase in course completion

A significant finding has been the corresponding rate of completion for student who have been found through channels we manage.