Summary
A leading private university was under increasing pressure to grow enrollment opportunities year-over-year while managing a complex, multi-channel media mix and a flat marketing budget. Despite investing across both traditional and digital channels, the team lacked clear visibility into what was actually driving enrollments.
By implementing Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) with Arima, the university gained a unified, data-backed view of marketing performance, allowing them to optimize spend, improve timing, and unlock media synergies - resulting in a 30% increase in enrollment opportunities.
The Challenge
The university's marketing team faced several structural and measurement challenges:
- Attribution ambiguity: No unified measurement framework existed to assess the true impact of digital and traditional channels on enrollment outcomes. Clicks and impressions failed to reflect the full enrollment journey.
- Budget misalignment: A large portion of spend remained locked into TV and print due to historical buying patterns, leaving little room for testing new platforms or reaching emerging audiences.
- Seasonal blind spots: Campaign timing was misaligned with key academic milestones such as application deadlines, open days, and enrollment decision periods.
- External noise: Factors like tuition changes, economic conditions, and demographic trends were not accounted for, distorting performance evaluation and ROI analysis.
Leadership needed clear answers to two critical questions:
- Which channels meaningfully drive enrollment opportunities?
- How can the university spend more efficiently to increase enrollments and lower cost per enrollment?
Solution
The university adopted Arima's Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) module to establish a single source of truth for marketing effectiveness.
Key insights included:
- Digital performance clarity: Non-brand SEM keywords and conversion-focused campaigns on Meta and LinkedIn delivered the lowest cost per enrollment opportunity, despite being historically underfunded.
- Diminishing returns in traditional media: TV and print had passed optimal saturation levels, offering limited incremental impact on conversions.
- Timing optimization: MMM revealed a three-week adstock peak across most channels, enabling smarter pre-activation and budget redistribution around peak enrollment periods.
- Media synergy opportunities: Prospects exposed to both paid media and owned channels (email, events, campus promotions) were twice as likely to enroll.
Using these insights, the team rebalanced spend, optimized campaign timing, elevated first-party channels, aligned stakeholders around CPA-focused measurement, and launched localized pilots in underperforming markets.
Result
- 30% increase in enrollment opportunities in the following campaign
- 18% year-over-year growth in total applications
- 10% average monthly increase in enrolled students above target rates
- 25% of budget reallocated from TV and print to digital and experimental channels
- Stronger cross-team alignment across marketing, admissions, and finance
By replacing fragmented attribution with MMM-driven insights, the university transformed its marketing strategy into a more efficient, scalable, and outcome-focused enrolment engine.
